Experience with CRS ICT4MEAL - Paperless MEAL System Ethiopia CRS Ethiopia YARED G.MICHAEL

Project Background The Development Food Assistance Program (DFAP) is a USAID funded program that builds upon the Government of Ethiopia’s (GoE) Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) to strengthen seven food insecure districts in Ethiopia. DFAP works to address the key issues that cause food insecurity by building community assets, developing nutrition, water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions, and mainstreaming the cross cutting themes, gender, disability inclusion, and capacity building.

Projects Location and Partners Locations East Hararge Woredas Namely Melka Bello, Meta, Goro Gutu, Kersa ( Traditional Woredas) and Babile and Deder ( Expanded Woredas) Arsi Zone Woredas Namely Dodota and Sire ( Traditional) Arsi-Negelle and Shalla (Expanded) Partners Government of Ethopia For East Hararge – HCS Arsi-Zone- MCS/WCC

Traditional M&E without evidence and learning - Increased efficiency and effectiveness in MEAL Delay’s in Reporting, High Cost of Data collection and Poor Quality of Reports – Timely, cost effective and efficient reporting. ( the future ) Lack of learning and decision making from collected data - Improved capability for learning and action ( learning community ) Lack of Transparency - Ensuring Accountability for the donors and beneficiaries ( evidence based real time/space data ) To make use of MEAL transformation by actively using the enabling technology to Improved the project management and decision making. ICT4D Opportunity / Issue being addressed

ICT4D Solution Devices (65)Software (57 – Licenses)Reporting (16)Staff (52) iOS devices that can be outfitted with ruggedized cases. GPS to capture location information Barcode Scanners iFormBuilder : installed on mobile devices. Provides pre-defined forms in a library to capture Project, Beneficiary & Services data. M&E Database : From the iFormBuilder database detail data is validated and loaded into an SQL database structured for reporting and aggregation. Zoho : takes data from the SQL Database to create consolidated reports & dashboards, aggregated at different levels ArcGIS*: uses GPS data to provide GIS mapping capabilities MEAL Team - focuses on interpreting the Project indicators to data collection formats and follow up on the implementation of Digital data collection as per the SMILER PMP. ICT4D Team - bridge between the two IT team – Focuses on the technology part of the system ensuring constant trouble shooting and maintaining all the hardware components

Process Digital Forms Identified Indicators, attributes, form and report needs SMILER Simple Measurement of Indicators for Learning and Evidence base Reporting

ProcessProcess Demo

Key Successes Digital M&E systems show improved completeness and lower criticalities of errors The data validation and standardization ensured by the digital device reduced the effort required to clean the data Using a digital device, the effort (and hence time) required from design to reporting is less than the time required for the same indicators using the conventional method In the long term, digital M&E is less expensive than conventional methods

Key Successes Improved decision making is facilitated by the analytics and availability of information delivered by the digital M&E system and improved cross project and region collaboration and global performance It is easier to provide improved transparency of result to the donor using the processes in the digital system There is no personal preference (bias) by the enumerators or any other member of the study team for digital devices or conventional pen and paper The digital M&E system is suitable to be scaled across CRS which leads to economies of scale

Key Issues / Challenges Current state of technology infrastructure in Ethiopia, challenges with 2G, 3G and broadband connection. Poor telephone communications and unreliable electricity made it very difficult for the system to scale up. (Using Solar Chargers and Thunder plugs) Devices –Taxation - The Government policy, Making IPod and IPads Luxury items, made the cost of the ICT4D project the more expensive.. (Cooperate- with Donors and Government) Budgeting, Replacing Devices, Software and User turnover with short lifetime than the project is challenging – (plan ICT4D during project design, not after) Using SAAS (Software as a Service) in reporting will have an impact on the sustainability of the system that partners may not afford paying for licenses after handover. (Infoveave Development)

Lessons Learned It is important to design projects activities and strategies that focus on the most relevant areas for partners, stakeholders and beneficiaries in order to implement effectively and efficiently. A partnership will provide the following benefits: (Create Knowledge community) –Experience in project management and monitoring and evaluation. –Grassroots services & experience with working in the field –learn from the community –Familiarity with analyzing long term rural challenges. –We are sharing experience with Ethiopian Government to scale up the system Don’t start ICT4MEAL in the middle of the project, start from the beginning with SMILER

INNOVATION TO IMPACT ICT4D Projects Improved program monitoring support (MEAL) Project Impact

Impact (Key Takeaways) Building partner organization capacity –Trainings on the use and application of the ICT4D system –Allocating enough resources (tools, budget and man power) Facilitated direct transfer of knowledge increasing project sustainability –Real time data helps to make changes improve implementation –Increased transparency improves accountability to the community. Improved roles in Job descriptions of responsible MEAL Personnel –Partner staff are knowledgeable and competitive Documentation, sharing and learning among stakeholders brings trust, collaboration and reduce redundancy of effort. –Increased competitiveness of CRS and partner organizations

Thank You!