INTRODUCTION TO SMART INFO AND SMART INFO MANUAL

Target audience

People and organizations involved in setting up and implementing proper systems for Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting (PMER).

Summary

SMART INFO is a management information system for Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting (PMER). PMER is important because you want to:

P (Plan) – Plan and develop proper projects and adapt project planning in a proper way whenever required.
M (Monitor) - Know whether activities are executed properly, whether realized products function and are used properly, and whether progress is sufficient and in line with the expenditures.
E (Evaluate) – Know whether the results and effects of the projects are good enough.
R (Report) – Have reports for different stakeholders, in different levels of detail (e.g. from scores per indicator to average scores per product and Expected result) and combining different types of information (e.g. financial versus narrative progress) that cover the information users need and that are structured in such a way that the users can easily digest and understand the information.

The SMART INFO manual attached describes how SMART INFO functions. Additionally it describes the generic SMART INFO minimum standards for PMER that we believe also lay a basis for future worldwide minimum standards for PMER in development work.

The attached folders give a short further introduction to SMART INFO that enables the ready to get quite a good idea about this system in a very short time.