Yes, yes...I know I haven't been a good boy in the blogging department!  And I've promised Santa that I'll be better this year.  No excuse really except for the familiar cries of too busy, too much international travel, a new baby... Anyway, enough with excuses. An issue that has come up several times recently is the role of information systems in support of M&E; specifically, the relative merit of technology-based systems. As one of the founders of Aid-IT Solutions, I obviously have a view that IT systems can help to improve M&E outcomes.  But it is clear that IT is no 'magic bullet'.The world learned a very harsh lesson about being unrealistic in this regard during the Dot.Com mania of the new millennium! A technology-supported M&E system does not change the fundamental problem facing M&E practitioners...that measuring amorphous social change and atributing this to particular interventions is difficult.  Computers can't help with this.  It is ludicrous to believe ...