Below are listed the most important findings of the evaluation exercise. There are more detailed findings in each section of the report. But the team would like to, referring to the general activities and operations of IMS, highlight the 44 findings that are listed below. They follow the structure of report
Findings in Relation to IMS Organisational Setup
1. There is a measure of confusion as to the exact role of the generally assembly in relation to the board on the election of members.
2. More diversified funding may imply changes in the composition of the board.
3. The board seems to act generally in an advisory way and the Advisory Council, which formally should have that role, does not exist as such.
4. Board members, who are said to sit in their personal capacity, perceive themselves as representing institutions. The only regular participant, except for the Chair, meeting in a personal capacity, is not a full member of the board.
5. Conflict of interest issues are framed in terms of personal gains and do not speak of organisational gains accruing from board membership.
6. Regular staff is too steeped in project management to allow room for monitoring and evaluation and forward- looking planning. The secretariat is overworked and do not have time to sit down to assess and plan in relation to the situation of IMS. There is a need for making strategic decisions and planning.
7. Work performance is highly regarded by the board, and this is confirmed by the observations by the evaluation team through our interactions with the staff.
8. There is a request from board members for more regular information on IMS activities between meetings.
9. Consultants “represent” IMS, but it is not clear whether consultants thereby are entitled to speak on behalf on IMS.
10. Job descriptions for the regular staff are still non-existent.
11. Minutes of board meetings read more like narratives of what was being said than digests of decisions.
12. There is a need for more office space. It is, however, a great advantage for IMS to be housed together with The Centre for Human Rights.
Findings related to IMS’ implementation modalities
1. IMS has aptly and justifiably used its pilot phase to explore its options within its mandate. This has resulted in a broad interpretation of its overall mandate to include interventions in situations where media are threatened whethe r or not organised armed conflict is taking place.
2. There seems to be a certain inability to assess overall impact of interventions and how to utilise lessons to be learned for further interventions. There are certain difficulties in accumulating experiences and in developing organisational knowledge, which impacts on IMS’
choices of models and tools.
3. The overall ratio between administrative and project expenditures is good.
Activities and consultants take up more than the double of what is spent on administration, and of this a quarter more is spent on consultant rather than on activities, but since the operations consist of many small projects this is also a good ratio.
4. Though IMS has some mechanism in place for monitoring and evaluating its activities, they remain weak and inconclusive.
5. IMS is very good at raising co-funding and at getting others to take over/continue activities: At least 7 countries where IMS has supported a second phase of an activity; at least 10 projects where there has been a commitment by another party to take up the activity either through funding or operational manners. Among the latter, there are at least six a firm yes, four interested, but without binding insurance.
6. With regard to networking, the list of IMS partners is impressive and indicative of IMS’ commitment and ability to work symbiotically with others. Its networking function, arguably its most important, has enabled it to achieve much more than would be expected from a three-person organisation in such a short period of time.
7. The IMS partners that were interviewed unanimously praised IMS for coming onto the press freedom/media development scene without
“stepping on anyone else’s toes”. They have been complemented for being creative, flexible and rapid in their actions, having funding available with few strings attached and successfully connecting and forging relationships with and between existing organisations. Its comparative advantage over other like- minded organisations is clear.
8. The budget ceiling is too low.
9. IMS’ double role of donor and implementer risks hindering the organisation’s ability to learn from its activities. As a donor, it does not benefit from having hands-on involvement and therefore first hand learning in order to develop and re-adjust its approaches. Unless its evaluation mechanisms are strengthened, it is not able to learn from the projects it is helping implement.
10. The annual reports seem to confuse outputs with impacts, and there is no real assessment in the reports of what impacts (criteria of success) have been the results of the IMS interventions. It is early to get a sense of
impacts, but they have not built in proper evaluation practices that determine impacts. Financial resources may have to be dedicated to this end
Findings in Relation to Projects
1. The assessment reports are generally of a good quality.
2. Names and affiliations of the authors of reports and other consultants should be clearly identified at the beginning of the report
3. The criteria of low-profile and high-profile do not seem to be particularly useful.
4. IMS is willing to take risks and to be experimental and creative. And this is a great asset.
5. In the documents on the different interventions it is in many cases not possible to find out where the idea for intervention originated.
6. There is need for proper evaluation of the quality of the workshops and training that it lets partner organisations undertake.
7. It is necessary with very thorough preparations for and identification of suitable partners, particularly in situations of violent conflict.
8. The fact that IMS follows up its missions with concrete commitments and activities, and quickly, increases its credibility with its partners.
9. IMS’ involvement in the Horn of Africa exemplifies how IMS has broadened its interpretation of its mandate to include post-conflict scenarios.
10. It is not always clear from IMS’ documents what the organisation’s overall objective is in each country, beyond responding to a large spectrum of problems faced by the media, and on what basis it believes it can have an impact on a particular identified problem, especially concerning the role of media in conflict.
11. It can be safely said that IMS’ activities in several of the “case studies-countries” have been unique and catalytic.
12. IMS’ success also comes from its ability to rapidly link local organisations to international groups.
13. In general, it is very difficult to gauge the impact of many of the activities IMS has supported to date. For the most part, outputs are clear but criteria for success have not been developed by neither IMS or by its partners.
Furthermore, IMS largely relies on reports from its consultants and partner organisations to assess activities it has not directly been involved with.
14. The longer-term effect of many of IMS activities will depend entirely on whether they continue beyond IMS’ engagement.
15. It would be important to get qualitative feedback from the consultants and reference group members why they felt the mission was strong or weak.
16. There is a need for continued assessment of how long IMS should stay involved in a given country and how many resources it should invest in a given country over time. Some countries register excess expenditure, due to a string of IMS activities in these countries, while others feature interventions that may be too brief to have much of an effect. While the answer should ideally be based on a case-by-case analysis, stronger consideration for the necessary conditions to enable IMS to exit should be given at the start of an activity. Exit points are as important as entry points.
17. IMS could, in some instances, consider increasing its grants to local organisations. This is especially true here, where IMS’ investments in missions almost equals its investments in concrete activities. The scale should tip more in the direction of concrete activities.
18. In interventions in conflicts zones it is important to seek the media most effective in the local context.
19. The IMS secretariat should where possible seek to attend workshops and training in order to observe the work of external consultants, and gain first-hand experience and learning.
20. In depth training in media monitoring issues must consist of more than what can be achieved at short workshops, and it is particularly important that this training takes into consideration local and national circumstances and institutions, e.g. the legal situation and the need for legal awareness.
21. Provincial and local media are easily overlooked.
22. In some countries, there is some uncertainty about which groups to target (publishers, editors or journalists), creating possible problems for the effectiveness of the intervention.