Technology continues to disrupt the monitoring and evaluation operating environment, and the field itself is morphing to more readily embrace research on effectiveness and a focus on organizational learning.
In other words, M&E as we know it is blurring with research and learning to hatch a new acronym: MERL. Positions posted on Devex are increasingly reflecting the need for “MERL” advisers, and practitioners in the space are focused on improving the quality, capacity, ethics and security of data collection — while everything from mobile phones to remote sensors are creating new ethical and privacy challenges, along with security risks.
Organizations taking M&E seriously are often more inspired by a passion to improve their own work than by a global framework, and this means spending time to bring program staff and M&E staff together as part of a strategic thinking team, which was discussed heavily at last week’s MERL Tech event, hosted by FHI 360 in Washington, D.C. (Where speaker after speaker unknowingly provided a creative repertoire of MERL and big data similes).