Maria Comanescu, Melanie Bacou, Beliyou Haile (IFPRI)
Project mapping, monitoring and data management tools for Africa RISING
Africa RISING Monitoring and Evaluation Meeting
Arusha, Tanzania, 13-14 November 2014

Project Mapping and Monitoring Tool
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Scope and Purpose
New Developments
http://dev.harvestchoice.org/africarising/

Need for a simple, flexible and engaging tool to report on program performance and capture key results over 5-year program lifecycle:
−Baseline site characteristics
−Site stratification and selection
−Intervention details
−Bi-annual FtF and project-specific, aka. “custom” indicators
−Surveys and evaluation results
−Links to intermediary and final output (incl. primary data) hosted on CKAN and to AR wiki
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Evaluation design is hard. Monitoring is painful…
Aligning project goals, 2012.

M&E site stratification & selection. Powerful spatial visualization features to provide rich contextual information, and overlays of local biophysical characteristics with socio- economic data in support of action/control site selection process.
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PMMT combines powerful spatial data visualization features…

Streamlined indicator data entry and reporting. Familiar, secure interface for data entry with pre- set list of indicators help clarify reporting requirements. Data import/export tools for multiple end-uses.
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... with project performance monitoring tools

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PMMT Monitoring: Basic Concepts
Data Report
time-series of indicators at the site and/or work package level
Indicator
Indicator
Category
Measure
Category
Measure
Measure
1 of 9 selected FtF indicators, or
project-specific indicators (e.g. sustainability indices)
Breakdown of indicator by gender, technology, beneficiary, etc.
Recorded value (incl. unit, time, author)

Rolled out PMMT project performance monitoring module (improved work package metadata and data entry workflow)
M&E Coordinators delivered x4 PMMT training
−Arusha, July 25 (Ainsley, and 16 participants)
−Tamale, August 1 (Cecile, 10 participants)
−Lilongwe, August 2 (Ainsley, 13 participants)
−Chipata, August 5 (Ainsley, 11 participants
−Addis, Oct 20 (Kassahun, 15 participants)
On-line PMMT User Guide and video tutorial
Y14 indicator data submitted (12 reports)
Progress and Developments in Y14
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Mapping & Visualization
Top pane: header toolbar with quick site navigation and filtering
Bottom pane: map tools, rendering options (layer legend, base layers, administrative boundaries)
Left pane: data toolbar (contextual overlays)
Map: Africa RISING megasites and community clusters.

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Data Toolbar: Contextual Overlays
High-res intermediary and final stratification/ segmentation layers
AR baseline survey results (forthcoming) and other socio- economic indicators
HarvestChoice/IFPRI raster collection for sub-Saharan Africa (over 600 layers)

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Data Toolbar: Selected Layer Panel
Access to full layer meta-data
Re-arrange selected layers
Manipulate layer transparency

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Header Toolbar: Navigate AR Sites
Filter and zoom to AR sites by study area, target technology, or by research partner.
Access additional tools for printing and embedding map views into external sites.
Links to external AR report and data catalogs.

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Site Info Box
Navigate sites in each cluster.
Identify site names, type, contact information, and full site details.
Zoom in to specific sites.

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Research Activities Tab
Full site description
Links to individual data reports

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Data Toolbar: Overlays
Snapshot of HarvestChoice 5- arc-minute layers for sub-Saharan Africa, also accessible at http://apps.harvestchoice.org/mappr/ (with advanced data query tools)

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Population, Poverty, Nutrition, Climate, Soils, etc.
Explore AR sites in full context.

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Contribute your own vector maps…
PMMT can incorporate contributed maps (e.g. MEASURE DHS sub-national child mortality estimates)

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Header Toolbar: Print and Share
Export to PNG and insert all layers and legend into your own documents.

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Report Creation Workflow
Simple step-by-step wizard to generate new report templates:
1.Overview
2.Partners
3.Technologies
4.Value-chains
5.Target sites
6.Indicator list

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Report Creation Workflow
Simple step-by-step wizard to generate new report templates:
1.Overview
2.Partners
3.Technologies
4.Value-chains
5.Target sites
6.Indicator list

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Report Editing Workflow
Standard FtF data report with jump-list between the 9 indicators retained for Africa RISING.
Report is designed to match AR 5-year span, but can be customized to suit other USAID programs.
Indicator definitions are also customizable.

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Report Editing Workflow
Revisions are clearly identified (but cannot be rolled back).
Underlying data may be exported to CSV for further tabulations, or else the entire report may be printed out.

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On-line PMMT User Guide
Video tutorial
Additional Training Resources
Interviewing a farmer, 2013.

Managing Research Data with CKAN
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Objectives, Rules, and Workflow
http://data.ilri.org/portal/organization/ifpri

CKAN is an open-source data management platform hosted and maintained by ILRI
Wide user base in government and academia with plenty of contributed “modules” (enhanced features)
Complies with industry data standards, i.e. machine-readable and harvestable records (can inter-operate with 3rd party platforms)
Allow for searching datasets across geography and preview of spatial data
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CKAN complies with CG Open Data Policy and guidelines…

ILRI offers 3 levels of access:
1.Private is for data that is not yet available to the public. User name and password is required.
2.Confidential is a dataset that has sensitive information like farmers names, telephones that can only be shared with a "Non- Disclosure Agreement" on a case by case basis.
3.Public is public, only a registry in the Guest Book is required.
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Access permissions and data licensing

Data Coordinator with IFPRI to set standards, provide training, and co-maintain AR section on CKAN platform with ILRI
Data Curator assigned on each research team, familiar with licensing policies and dataset metadata and with permission to post into CKAN
“mini” data release schedules at the project or work package level
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Data Collection and Curation

Project metadata
Project title
Project abstract
Grant code
Donor
Partners
Start date
End date
Principal investigator
Other staff involved
Project/Activity Metadata
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Contact person
Contact email
Main researcher
Other staff involved
Partners
Groups
Commodities
Technologies
Subjects
Other tags
Region
Country
Sub-national Level
Date of collection
Availability date
Data owner
Sharing agreement
Usage conditions
Citation
Spatial area covered
Dataset Metadata
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Next Steps
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On-going Training of Field Staff , Y15 Data Collection, PMMT and CKAN Enhancements

Build support for off-line asynchronous data entry (possibly using tablets)
Provide vertical roll-ups of indicators across megasites, and mini program dashboard
And/or allow editors to also record country- and megasite- level reports
Add new spatial layers using results from recent LSMS-ISA surveys and from ARBES baseline surveys
Tighter integration between PMMT and AR report and data catalogs (CGSpace and ILRI CKAN)
Allow 3rd-party spatial data to be read into and visualized alongside Africa RISING layers
Batch import/export of FtF indicators
Embed HarvestChoice MAPPR tools (point/polygon/domain summaries) for advanced spatial analyses
PMMT Development Roadmap…
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Finalize metadata requirements with research teams
ILRI/IFPRI to offer a series of WebEx training sessions
Research to issue data release schedules
Open publishing permissions to Data Curators on research teams and define strict data curation mechanisms
CKAN Development Roadmap…
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Africa Research in Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation
africa-rising.net