Palabay, A. G. (2019). Strengthening the policy monitoring and evaluation of the RDC-1 (Unpublished master's thesis). Public Management Development Program, Development Academy of the Philippines.

Public Management Development Program Middle Managers Class Thesis (MMC)--Development Academy of the Philippines.

The policy process of the Regional Development Councils (RDCs) starts with the formulation of the Regional Development Plans (RDPs). The development plans identify the policy objectives that the RDCs and their respective committees need to operationalize through the issuance of council resolutions. Specific policy instruments need to be reflected in the resolutions to spell out the specific activities and expected outputs to be implemented in achieving the RDP policy objectives. In the context and scope of the study, these policy instruments together with the policy objectives that they support constitute RDC policies. Equally important is the need for these policies to be assessed to check whether their respective success indicators along the policy logic levels are achieved or not. In the case of RDC-1, prior to the implementation of the project, a gap existed in its policy process. Specifically, there is a need to strengthen the policy monitoring and evaluation of the council to ensure the alignment of the RDC-1 resolutions to the Ilocos RDP policy objectives. There is also a need to establish a procedure as a means to regularly conduct policy monitoring and evaluation which will serve as a written guideline for the secretariat. If this gap in the policy formulation process of RDC-1 is not addressed, this may affect the council's compliance to Good Governance principles. The study made use of qualitative descriptive research to generate data on the strengths and areas for improvement of the current RDC-1 policy monitoring and evaluation process. Using the same research design, data on various best practices from other institutions were generated. The practices of foreign organizations and all other RDCs in the country were assessed for this purpose. With the strengths, areas for improvement and best practices of other institutions as input, the study utilized action research to come up with a set of procedures on RDC-1 policy monitoring and evaluation. The scholar together with his project team consisting of RDC-1 committee coordinators and members of the RDC-1 unit used thematic analysis to come up with appropriate provisions for the procedures. In particular, the procedures detail how to conduct a quarterly policy Implementation Monitoring and an annual Results Monitoring. Likewise, the conduct of various types of policy evaluation was covered. Further, the actors and schedules were indicated as well. One set of information that can be generated regularly from the procedures is the number of resolutions passed by the council aligned to the policy objectives set in the RDP. The secretariat will be able to monitor how many of the RDc-1 policy objectives are yet to be discussed and operationalized in their respective committees. Likewise, based on the policy monitoring and evaluation reports to be generated, the council and its committees will be able to make necessary interventions or take advantage of policies depending on their results. The results of the study will help improve operation of RDC-1 and other policy-making bodies that will opt to adopt the procedures. The results can also be an input to any legislation that aims to strengthen the RDCs to ensure better policy implementation towards faster realization of the development outcomes and goals indicated in the RDPs. Further, it is envisioned that the implementation of the procedures will result to better compliance to Good Governance by helping RDC-1 have an effective and efficient, responsive, warrants accountability, and transparent mechanism of ensuring that the policies it generates are implemented.