NRI's Performance and Impact Programme (PIP) comprises a group of professionals with substantial experience in Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E). The PIP works with a diverse range of clients, including Northern and Southern governments, NGOs, and bilateral and multilateral donors. We deliver services that:

• Provide M&E solutions within complex environments
• Offer innovative approaches in response to clients changing information needs
• Build clients M&E capacity to help them meet emerging programmatic and organizational challenges

We have identified and prioritised key issues that orientate the PIP's work:

• an increasing requirement among agencies and governments for achievement-based systems of accountability that assess the quality as well as the quantity of expenditure;
• greater emphasis on developing local M&E capabilities that build on national processes such as poverty reduction strategy papers and medium-term expenditure frameworks, reflecting the shift from projects to sector-wide approaches;
• a need to develop country-level systems that establish the linkages between macro- and micro-changes as required by the Millennium Development Goals;
• changing relationships between the public sector and civil society mean that service users are now expected to play a greater role in assessing service quality;
• reflecting the changing demands placed on M&E systems, traditional academic approaches to impact assessment are increasingly being complemented by methods and processes of communication developed in the private sector.
  

See Ticehurst and Cameron (2000) and Smith with Sutherland (2002) for more information on these issues. In recent activities:

• our staff have been working with other consultants and the Evaluation Department at DFID to produce DFID's first corporate-level report on its development effectiveness;
• we have implemented a performance assessment framework to evaluate a DFID-funded legal and human rights programme in the Pacific region;
• we are assessing the M&E system of DFID's current natural resources research strategy in order to inform and improve the design of a successor strategy.