Terms Of Reference Podcast

Similar to essentially any other industry, the problem of efficiently collecting project or program level data that can be readily crunched, analyzed and, ultimately, used by managers for decision making has been, and will continue, to be a conundrum for the development and humanitarian aid community for the forseeable future. I have often heard the frustration from professionals in the field, who wonder out loud why we haven't be able to put together one, or perhaps a small set of, technology solutions that can be used for monitoring any output, anytime. Beyond the actual technology itself, a key part of this conversation is the question of how to implement such a solution in a way that is not only relevant for a project, but also for the workers tasked with the actual data collection. And, going further, how to build a tool that doesn't add a massive time burden to those who are already tasked with the impossible.

Dimagi is one company who are attempting to solve these problems and today's guest on the 110th Terms Of Reference Podcast, Mohini Bhavsar, is on the front lines for them in Dakar, Senegal. She is Dimagi's Deputy Regional Director in West Africa and she has extensive experience supporting mHealth (or Mobile Health) projects at scale. Currently, she provides strategic guidance for scale-up and trainings for Dimagi’s largest mHealth projects in West Africa, including a partnership with Terre des Hommes in Burkina Faso for the implementation of a tablet based clinical diagnostic tool for eIMCI protocols, a pregnancy danger sign and referral management application developed with Africare in Senegal and a multi-pronged health services and stock management application developed with URC for community health workers in Benin. Formally based in India, from 2011 to 2014, Mohini supported over 50 local and international NGO partners pilot mHealth applications. She has worked closely with partners such as Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, Save the Children, and the Indian Council of Medical Research. Prior to Dimagi, Mohini worked with Tula Salud in Guatemala to evaluate and support scale-up of their mHealth initiatives.

It is no secret that we live in a truly connected world. I can speak from experience that it is possible to be online in every nook and cranny of the planet - from deep inside the Ugandan countryside, to the middle of war torn Syria to the Islands of Fiji. The opportunity to connect to "the net" anywhere, for whatever reason - business, social, and yes, even evil - is here, now. There are many consequences, externalities and unknowns associated with this connected reality - some of which we are painfully aware of, like trolling, and some we don't have the ability to image yet (for example, what happens when virtual reality becomes ubiquitous)?

One of the things we know, is that every time you use your mobile phone, swipe a credit card, surf the internet or basically any other activity that involves passing digital information across the internet, you leave a small, unique breadcrumb or fingerprint behind. If you were to capture and review these breadcrumbs for one individual, across any length of time, you would have the the ability to learn an astonishing amount about them. If we perform this exercise across communities and whole populations, who generate what we now call "big data," the learning and insights can be profound.

Today's guest on the 109th episode of the Terms of Reference podcast is Emmanuel Letouzé and Emmanuel has dedicated his career to thinking about how big data can be used to help those most in need. He is the Director and co-Founder of Data-Pop Alliance, a Visiting Scholar at MIT's Media Lab, a Fellow at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, a Research Associate at ODI, and a Non-Resident Adviser at the International Peace Institute (IPI).

Emmanuel is the author of the UN Global Pulse’s White Paper, “Big Data for Development: Challenges and Opportunities”, where he worked as Senior Development Economist in 2011-12, and the lead author of the report “Big Data for Conflict Prevention” and of the 2013 and 2014 OECD Fragile States reports. He is also a regular speaker on Big Data and development issues. In 2006-09 he worked for UNDP in New York, including on the Human Development Report research team. In 2000-04 he worked in Hanoi, Vietnam, for the French Ministry of Finance as a technical assistant on public finance and official statistics.

As you'll hear us discuss towards the end of the interview, Emmanuel is also a political cartoonist.

If you're like most people, you're probably listening to this podcast on a smartphone of some type - maybe your on your commute, or an after-work walk with the dog. Others will listen to it on their laptop or office desktop machine in the background as they perform some other task. When I talk about using technology, these types of examples are, what I believe, pops into most people's mind. And, rightly so. I can attest to the fact that, even in the most remote corners of Uganda, technology - as mobile devices and their applications - play a front and center role in the minds of everyone.

But the term technology - the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes - extends far beyond smartphones and laptops. Technology can be as simple as a pulley system, a dam for a reservoir, or a hand cranked water pump. As amazing as it sounds, for a huge amount of people in the world today, these simple types of technology are not only breakthrough, they are the key to a hand up out of poverty through the efficiencies they bring.

Paul Smith Lomas, my guest on today's 108th episode of the Terms of Reference podcast, not only thinks about how how the application of technology can help lift people out of poverty, but the organization he leads - Practical Action - actually pursue Technology Justice. That is, they seek to "create a world in which technology and innovation is used to end poverty and provide a sustainable future for everyone on our planet."

Paul was appointed CEO of Practical Action in November 2015. Prior to this appointment, Paul was Practical Action's International Director, responsible for the overall operation of its programmes and policy influencing around the world.

Paul's professional background is as a mechanical engineer. He worked originally in the water treatment industry in the UK, before going on a VSO assignment in 1985 to Eastern Sudan, where he set up water and sanitation systems for refugee populations from Eritrea & Ethiopia. He then worked with ActionAid in the Nuba Mountains, still focusing on public health engineering with rural communities. After a short spell in the commercial sector, Paul returned to the voluntary sector in 1991 as Technical Adviser for Oxfam, based in the UK. He was awarded an MBE for services to international development.

Prior to joining Practical Action, Paul was the Regional Director for Oxfam in the Horn & Eastern Africa, where he managed a large programme covering development, campaigning, and emergency response.

For most of us, a critical factor in creating a sustainable and satisfying career is the formal education we acquire. In the in development and aid space, a master's degree from a credible institution is really the minimum bar for even an entry level position at any top shelf organization. Access to this type of education, and its benefits, are things many of us simply take for granted.

But what if your community were caught in the grips of conflict? Or what if you find yourself growing up in camp for displaced people? Or what if higher education infrastructure just simply doesn't exist in your neck of the woods?

My guest today for the 107th episode of the Terms of Reference Podcast is Barbara Moser-Mercer. She is the founder and Director of InZone, an initiative that pioneers innovative approaches to multilingual communication and higher education in communities affected by conflict and crisis by designing, developing and scientifically validating learner-centered and technology-supported pedagogical models.

Barbara is also a Professor of conference interpreting at the University of Geneva where her research focuses on cognitive neuro-science aspects of the interpreting process, the human performance dimension of skill development and expertise, and on pedagogical approaches to digital learning in fragile contexts. Barbara also co-developed the Virtualinstitute, which is a virtual learning environment specifically designed for the acquisition of complex skills, which has been used by ICRC, ILO, UNHCR, and UNAMA for enhancing interpreting skills of interpreters working in conflict zones and to advance formal and non-formal higher education in emergencies (HEiE).

If you've been a part of the "innovation" conversation in the humanitarian aid and international development sector for any amount of time, you have - more than once - admitted to yourself two things:

Innovation is only second to strategy as the most overused and abused word in the development/aid lexicon, and
When people are talking about innovation, they're usually talking about technology.
While I am as guilty as the next person, I try my best to avoid stumbling into the trap of either of these pitfalls. However, when we mentally get past these two speed bumps, oftentimes, we find that what we're really talking about is how do we get more/better data in a cost effective way. Technology is helping to answer that question in a big way and, increasingly, I find myself having conversations with individuals and organizations that have access to some fairly large datasets.

But then we quickly run into the next speed bump which is, unfortunately, much bigger than the first - how do we use this data to actually get better results from programming?

Luckily, people like Dustin Homer of Development Gateway have the privelage of thinking about this issue everyday. As my guest here on the Terms of Reference Podcast for our 106th episode, Dustin and I discuss Development Gateway’s Results Data Initiative, which explores how development results data can be collected, shared and used more effectively.

Dustin has learned, thought and written a lot about how tech and data actually matters for governments and development orgs – and how it doesn’t. He has also worked with DG's clients to manage development assistance portfolios, open up development data and visualize performance information. Dustin’s current day job is leading partnerships, communications and new business for DG. His background is in tech, M&E (especially impact evaluation) and transparency. He also co-founded and worked with a community development NGO in Haiti.

So often these days we hear about the need for real time monitoring, fail fast, quick results and projects that make an immediate difference in the lives of those we are serving. While these are often excellent goals to have, the cost, complications and ability to implement and simply deliver on these demands can be overwhelming to the average development worker or aid provider.

At the same time, our community has often acknowledged the need for a deeper, more rigorous approach to understanding how the programming we implement ultimately creates short and medium term outcomes, and ultimately produces longer term results. This is where the work of Annie Duflo and the people of Innovations for Poverty Action excel and I'm happy to have her on the show for our 105th episode.

As the Executive Director of IPA, Annie is responsible for leading the organization to implement its strategic plan and day to day operations. Previously, Annie served as IPA's Research Director where she managed its research network, staff capacity-building, and new project development. She also played a key role in the scaling up of successful programs with particular focus on education. Annie has a wealth of experience implementing and managing randomized evaluations in the field. Prior to joining IPA, Annie was the Executive Director of the Centre for Microfinance (CMF) at the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) in Chennai, India, which she joined at its creation.

How do you go about monitoring and tracking the work that you've accomplished as an implementer of humanitarian aid or development assistance? This question has been answered 1000s of times by 100s of organizations around the world.

Even though we're in the year 2016, the reality of tracking progress for the vast majority of initiatives out there is one of two things: written reports in Microsoft Word or numbers on an Excel spreadsheet.... that then get translated into a narrative report in Word. I'm not kidding. I've been evaluating programming in this world for more than 10 years and I have yet to be hired for an assignment where, as a first step, my client sends me a username and password for their online information management that has the ability to instantly report on total program progress with a complete package of visualization and analytical tools.
This isn't to say this doesn't exist: in fact, when I first cut my teeth in development with a large NGO back in the early 2000s, they already had built an internal, web based monitoring system. And I've seen a bunch of flavors of the same type of thing in organizations around the globe. For some reason, even though there have been countless attempts at making this process better, at the project level, we still revert back to spreadsheets and reports.
Herb Caudill is on a mission to change all of that. As my guest today for the 104th episode of Terms of Reference, the founder of DevResults thinks we might finally be at a stage where data, connectivity and capacity are all at levels that real time project analysis and management is possible.

Herb loves to make elegant and efficient systems that solve real-world problems. He is a data-visualization geek, a graphic designer, and a programmer, he started out building websites and software for international development organizations, including USAID, the World Bank, GIZ, DFID, the World Resources Institute, and Chemonics International. Herb grew up in Latin America and worked in Africa for 5 years, first teaching high-school math with the Peace Corps and then working on internet connectivity initiatives with USAID.

How much time did you spend wondering about the potential quality of the last medical procedure you were involved with? More specifically, did you spend a lot of time consternating about whether or not the tools being used in the procedure (either by you or the medical professionals you were with) were reliable and safe?

This is an intriguing question for many of us. For example, I was born in the United States, but I have lived outside the US for the last 11 years and I spend a good deal of my time in parts of the world that do not have running water, reliable power or iron clad hygiene practices. When I consider the question of reliability and safety while wearing each of those three hats, I come up with very different answers, as I'm willing to bet, so would many of you.

This is a question that has plagued Kate Michi Ettinger since 2010, and, as our guest today for the 103rd episode of Terms of Reference, I talk with Kate about OpenQRS - an organization she founded to the issue. Kate is a social innovation consultant, product designer and health care ethicist. She is trained in law, bioethics and conflict resolution and has over fifteen years of health-related experience in private, government, academic, non-profit sectors. The "QRS" in OpenQRS, as you might guess, stands for quality, reliability and safety. As the catalyst for OpenQRS, Kate currently focuses on how to harness new technologies, such as sensors, wireless, mobile – to make it easy, effective and affordable to monitor data on quality, reliability and safety for medical devices deployed anywhere in the world.

The idea of innovation has become so popular in the development and aid community that, unsurprisingly, it is difficult to keep up. There seem to be forums, conferences, blogs (and yes, even this podcast) that are putting information out there for your consumption to the point of overwhelm and it can be difficult to cut through the noise to create a better understanding of what works - and more importantly - what doesn't when it comes to better serving those in need.

Luckily, there are also people out there like Alice Obrecht who are helping to curate some of the learning around innovation and make it accessible to everyone. In this 102nd episode of Terms of Reference, I speak with Alice about her work as a Research Fellow at the Secretariat for the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance (ALNAP), where she is currently leading research on the themes of innovation and effectiveness. And, as part of this work, she has led the ALNAP Secretariat’s involvement in the World Humanitarian Summit process.

This isn't, of course, Alice's first gig in our industry. Prior to joining ALNAP, she worked in policy research at several institutions focusing on capacity building of regional inter-governmental institutions as well as accountability practices and frameworks both in and outside the humanitarian aid sector.

Peace Corps has had an office of innovation for almost 5 years now, and there are some very cool things happening. To learn more about them, I spoke with Patrick Choquette, who has served as the director of Peace Corps’ Office of Innovation since 2012. He is the agency’s second director of Innovation and manages a small team within the Director’s office with the mission of empowering staff and volunteers with a work environment that breeds innovation.

As you've come to expect from guests here on Terms of Reference, Patrick is no slacker: In 2014, he was awarded the prestigious NextGov Bold Award for his accomplishments in creative problem solving and innovation. He has also previously served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana, an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer, a middle school educator, and was one of the first field operatives hired in Iowa for President Obama’s 2007 primary campaign.