Monitoring, Evaluaton and Learning Consultant – 10-12 days per month

About Flowminder

Flowminder Foundation is a non-profit foundation specialising in the use of big data for public policy and humanitarian purposes. Using mobile operator, geospatial and survey data, Flowminder’s focus is on improving the wellbeing of vulnerable populations in low- and middle-income countries. Flowminder provides information and capacity strengthening to governments, mobile network operators, national and international agencies and researchers in low- and middle-income countries for humanitarian and development purposes. We are striving to create a world in which decisions that can improve the lives of vulnerable people are based on the most appropriate evidence.

Role Overview:

Flowminder is launching a programme of work which will focus on strengthening our organisational strategy and theory of change. This work will support evidence-based decisions for key interventions, models and approaches at an organisational level. We will work to embed this within Flowminder’s culture and ways of working, providing a narrative that reflects organisational approaches to achieving impact.

At the implementation level, Flowminder is a project-led organisation, where work is delivered to meet the requirements of end users while delivering the organisational strategy to achieve impact.

Flowminder is looking for an experienced Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Specialist who can operate at the organisational and implementation level to support our organisational development alongside leading project-level MEL work.

At the project level, the focus for the next 12 months is our largest project, OPAL. The consultant will be responsible for reviewing and implementing a monitoring and evaluation framework and will assess the progress, achievements, and challenges of the OPAL programme. This will involve working across the organisation and with partners to ensure that the impact of the OPAL programme is identified and measured and that learnings are collected and disseminated.

We are looking for an experienced advocate for MEL, with the skills to work across teams as we build this function; leading, training, advising and supporting.

Main Responsibilities:

Support and contribute to the organisational level theory of change development

• Support and contribute to strategic development work
• Lead internal awareness training and capacity strengthening on MEL
• Facilitation of internal workshops
• Establish a proportionate organisational monitoring and evaluation programme, including;

o Develop new and existing monitoring tools, systems and storage as required

o Ensure a robust governance framework for monitoring and evaluation

o Training and development

• Produce and deliver presentations and reports

• Develop, manage and implement a project-level monitoring and evaluation framework to measure progress and evaluate impact, as well as support collaboration, learning, and adaptation for the OPAL programme

• Communicate information obtained through M&E activities to enable informed decision-making;

• Support in the preparation of donor reports by providing information coming from monitoring findings

• Produce a midline and an endline report for the OPAL programme that will include at a minimum the following:

  • Executive summary;
  • Progress on the logframe(s);
  • Key lessons;
  • Synthesis of challenges faced;
  • Recommendations for the improvements and changes needed.

• Review of documents, including;

  • Proposals, budgets, logframes, progress reports, financial and operational reports to donors;
  • Documentation shared with external stakeholders (MNOs, Ministries departments and agencies, CODEs, Universities, etc.) or published online/at conferences ;
  • Internal documentation on business strategy, governance and technology.

• Conduct semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders. These will include key informants such as:

  • Donors
  • MNOs representatives
  • External stakeholders in Senegal and Haiti: representatives from the MNOs; Ministries, departments and agencies; members of the Ethics board, etc.
  • Internal stakeholders

Experience and Qualifications

Essential

• Knowledge of international standards and guidelines for design of M&E data collection instruments and procedures, to ensure accurate data collection and verification
• Demonstrable experience and technical skills in Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning (MEAL)
• Excellent organisational, verbal and written communication skills to manage project communications, disseminate project information, and strategic decision-making in programme implementation
• Ability to actively listen and facilitate solutions to complex challenges
• Proven experience of strategic approaches
• Tact and diplomacy working with diverse stakeholder groups
• Experience of Google Workspace

Desirable

• Knowledge of international research and data ethics standards and guidelines
• Advanced analytical skills

Languages:

· Fluency in written and spoken English (essential)

· Fluency in written and spoken French (desirable)

Additional Information: The OPAL Programme

The OPAL programme (for Open Algorithms) originally developed by a group of partners from the MIT Media Lab, Imperial College London, Orange Group, Telefonica Group, the World Economic Forum and Data-Pop Alliance, will be operationalised by the Flowminder Foundation for Mobile Network Operator (MNO). It aims to spur the use of MNO data for public good purposes in a privacy-preserving manner.

The data involved is known as Call Detail Records (CDRs). These are generated by an MNO when a mobile phone user makes or receives calls/SMSs or starts a data session on their phone. Use cases for these data include supporting the allocation of resources in disaster response contexts, improving disease spread models or planning public infrastructure work.

The objective of the Flowminder’s work in the OPAL programme is to enable access to such data in privacy-preserving ways and at an affordable cost via a secure web platform to a wide set of stakeholders from the public and private sector while fostering the inclusion and inputs of the civil society on the kinds and uses of analyses performed on these data.

The OPAL programme will be implemented in Haiti and in a Western Africa country. The activities will focus on developing and operationalising the technology, supporting the set-up of national committees with representatives from the civil society, developing the collaboration with the MNOs to ensure their long-term commitment, and supporting pilot use cases and capacity strengthening in both countries.