MCC needs to ensure that evaluations assess the linkage between outputs, short-term outcomes, and longer-term outcomes. The CLS independent evaluation could have benefited from a greater focus on the post-Compact status of outputs and their linkage to targeted outcomes. The continued monitoring of outputs, like the delivery of land certificates, is especially important when implementation continues right until a compact ends, and/or the partner country is expected to complete work started during the compact. For example, while this evaluation highlighted the delayed delivery of land certificates, it did not provide the definitive status of this delivery, primarily because the use of administrative data was not factored into the design and MCC did not have a ready means for accessing these data post-Compact. Furthermore, the fact that the target for Household land rights formalized was just under half of the target for Parcels corrected or incorporated into the system obscured the reality that land certificates should have been delivered to many more households before the Compact ended. In other words, despite meeting 86% of the land rights formalized target, less than half of the registered land rights, i.e., for parcels corrected or incorporated into the system, had been delivered by the end of the Compact. However, the need to monitor the delivery of leases was not built into the Namibia post-Compact M&E Plan. In order to ensure access to accurate land data, MCC needs to build effective tools during implementation that facilitate the collection and reporting on key project outputs, like land certificates, during and post-Compact. In the Morocco II Rural Land project, MCC tried to improve the post-Compact reporting ability by requiring that the implementer develop a GIS system that will produce reports to track project outputs. In most other countries, where the incomplete status of implementation was clearer, MCC has more comprehensive post-Compact M&E Plans and robust relationships with government counterparts to facilitate annual reporting on key land metrics using administrative data. MCC must ensure that these data sources and relationships are built into the project and M&E frameworks, which requires that project leads and M&E leads are collaborating about these needs. Mozambique, Cabo Verde, and Lesotho, have all attempted to use information systems funded under those Compacts to report toward post-Compact M&E Plans.
Lesson Learned