EITI stakeholders measure and understand impact in different ways, depending on their background, viewpoint and priorities. For some, it is about creating trust and lessening conflict, for others it is about economic growth, attracting investments, widening the democratic space or improving government accountability.

How the EITI contributes to such changes is challenging to measure because there are usually several forces at play, making causality difficult to establish. That is why any monitoring and evaluation of the EITI’s impact should be conducted first and foremost at the country level.

At the country level, the EITI process has a robust, built-in monitoring and evaluation system to measure progress:

• Every year, each implementing country is required to update a fully-costed work plan to reflect the objectives and actions of the national EITI. The work plan is required to reflect how the EITI relates to progress (see requirement 1.5).
• At the end of each year, each implementing country is required to produce an Annual Progress Report (APR) that reflects and monitors the progress against the objectives and actions set out in the work plan and any impact the EITI has had (see requirement 7.4). The APRs are listed on the EITI country pages under "key documents".

Both the work plan and the APR are developed and approved by the multi-stakeholder group, ensuring that the framework for routine monitoring and evaluation has the support of government, companies and civil society. This a collaborative and deliberative process (distinct from a “top down” set of indicators imposed on countries).

In addition to the annual review countries conduct themselves, the country is required to undertake an external evaluation: Validation. Not only does this process assess the country’s progress against the EITI Standard, it also makes an impact assessment (see requirement 7).

Collectively, these tools ensure an in-country planning, monitoring and evaluation process designed to improve implementation and deliver real impact on the ground. 

Recognising that country-led implementation cannot simply be captured by quantitative analysis alone, the EITI Board has monitored the results from the implementation of the EITI Standard since 2007 through:

• Regular implementation and outreach progress reports. These are confidential Reports prepared by the International Secretariat and the Implementation Committee and submitted to the Board prior to a Board meeting.
• Monitoring Validation results
• Key performance indicators of the International Secretariat
• External evaluations of the EITI

The International Secretariat measures its effectiveness and impact along three dimensions: 

1. Impact indicators, or “big picture” indicators, measure the direction of travel of EITI countries based on indexes that measure the quality of governance. Although not attributable to any single organisation, selected proxy indicators such as investment climate, human capital spending, corruption and poverty levels are all relevant to the EITI’s goals. If the EITI is successfully being implemented in accordance with its Principles, countries should score better every year on those selected indexes. 
    
2. Outcome indicators quantify the number of countries with transparent systems. These are based on the outcomes of Validation, the quality assurance mechanism of EITI implementation. It measures the number of countries that have achieved “satisfactory progress” or “beyond” on the related EITI Requirements. 
   
   The level of transparency can partly be attributed to EITI implementation. Other factors, such as political will and opportunity, as well as work by partners (for example the World Bank and NRGI) may also impact a country’s performance. 
    
3. Secretariat’s effectiveness indicators that monitor value for money. These can be directly linked to the International Secretariat’s and the EITI Board’s activity: input and output in relationship to the allocation of budget and staff time. 

The International Secretariat documents these indicators in its yearly Secretariat Work plan, under the annex "Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)". The International Secretariat highlights progress and impact across EITI countries in its annual report, “Progress Report”

The effectiveness and impact of the EITI is also the object of research. These papers are made available in the publications repository on the EITI’s website, if they are free of access.