The urgent need for micro data to identify poverty conditions initially emerged from the high rate of program undercoverage and leakage that occurred in several poverty reduction programs in Indonesia. In additon, the decentralization era in Indonesia requires that local officials own disaggregated data for policy intervention. These factors supported the need for a welfare monitoring system that is capable of providing quick, objective, and accurate poverty data, and that also takes into account local characteristics. This system is known by the name of Community-Based Monitoring System (CBMS).

Given the importance of CBMS in the efforts to reduce poverty, edition No. 18 of the SMERU Newsletter presents the main findings of the test pilot implementation of CBMS and the experience of other institutions in poverty monitoring activities. Apart from the main findings, the “Focus On” column also explains the advantage of CBMS compared with existing monitoring systems and looks at the benefits of community involvement.

The column “And the Data Says” explains the use of the statistical method, “Principal Components Analysis” (PCA), for the determination of poor communities in a locality. Meanwhile, the column “From the Field” describes the selection and training process for enumerators. For the “Opinion” column, Celia Reyes, Director of the Micro Impacts of Macroeconomic Adjustment Policies (MIMAP) project provides a brief picture of the history of CBMS and its implementation in other countries, especially in Asia. Rounding out this edition, the column “News From NGOs” presents the experience of PKBH-B, an NGO in Bengkulu, in undertaking data collections and poverty monitoring.