Monitor and Regularly Report Progress - Is the
Action Plan making a difference?
Now that it is in place, you need to have a system for collecting information
about how well your action plan is doing. The population accountability
leadership team plays an important part in this regular review.
Section contents:
- Monitoring the Action Plan
- Progress reports
You will need a structured approach to assessing overall progress and thinking
about the Action Plan as it moves forward. Questions that need regular
attention include:
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Are the actions being implemented on time?
One strategy for keeping track of this aspect of your action plan is to
keep a task chart. You can develop a task chart with information
from your action plan about who would do what, by when.
| Task plan example |
| Action |
Who is responsible |
Start date |
End date |
Status or comment |
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What is the quality of the activities in the Action Plan?
This is a critical part of performance accountability. Click
[here]
for more information.
Performance accountability is one form of program evaluation. Program
evaluation reports often have mixed results. This information should
be presented in a way that includes comments on how the results can inform
future population accountability choices and what needs to be done to move
toward the desired end-result.
- Is the Action Plan making a difference?
- Does the action plan need to be changed? How?
Progress reports can include:
- Information that compares current status of an indicator with its baseline
forecast. It usually is not possible to show this type of change, which
makes this type of report rare.
- The effects of a program on the well-being of customers, which would then
contribute to a difference between an indicator’s current status and baseline
forecast.
- When tasks in the Action Plan are complete (e.g., a bike path was opened),
or accomplishments connected with these tasks (e.g., a school program received
an award).
- Stories about people who have been helped by activities in the Action Plan.
This is a very powerful kind of reporting.