Transitional arrangements to support governing, coordinating and funding for collective impact

The Communities council provides strategic coordinaton for collective impact. It is comprised of the leaders of groups with ‘skin in the game,’ including newly named ESIC infrastructure leaders and key interest-holder representatives.

The ESIC infrastructure leaders who have received funding that enables them to coordinate their work with ESIC for collective impact include:

1. Isabelle Mercier, co-chair of the Global SDG Synthesis Coalition – a founding partner in and key contributor to and user of ESIC (including the work of the sectoral and regional hubs and the open-data system) – and director of the UNDP Independent Evaluation Office
2. Andrea Cook, member of the leadership group of the Global SDG Synthesis Coalition and executive director of the UN SDG System-Wide Evaluation Office
3. Jan Minx, lead of the DESTINY (Digital Evidence Synthesis Tool INnovation for Yielding improvements in climate and health) consortium, which will be the central contributor to the sectoral hub for climate solutions and – via contributions led by James Thomas (see below) – a contributor to the open-data system
4. Sarah Miller, lead of METIUS consortium, which will be the central contributor to each of four sectoral hubs and a contributor to the open-data system, as well as a possible a sub-regional hub and a proposed methods transformation
5. Declan Devane, director of Evidence Synthesis Ireland, which will be a central contributor to the sectoral hub for health – particularly the health emergencies ‘spoke’ in the health hub-and-spoke model – and to the open-data system and our future capacity sharing
6. Rhona Mijumbi-Deve, chair of the Africa Evidence Network – a central contributor to the proposed regional hub for Africa – and the executive director of ACRES Center for Rapid Evidence Synthesis
7. Laura dos Santos Boeira, co-director of the Hub de Evidencias de Latinoamérica y del Caribe – a central contributor to the proposed regional hub for Latin America and the Caribbean – and director of networks and partnerships (and founding executive director) of Instituto Veredas
8. James Thomas, lead of many grants’ technology work packages that will be key contributors to the open-data system – DESTINY, METIUS, a minimum-viable product for the education sector funded by the Jacobs Foundation and partners, and technology supporting evidence-synthesis groups that were awarded funding by NIHR – and professor of social research and policy at the EPPI-Centre
9. Laurenz Mahlanza-Langer, executive director of the Pan African Collective for Evidence (PACE), which has led or procured the development of several techology solutions that we hope will play a central role in ESIC’s open-data system.

Additional infrastructure leaders will be added as they are selected through competitive processes. These include the leaders of five new sectoral hubs, the living inventory of AI-enabled DESTs (digital evidence-synthesis tools), and the monitoring, evaluation and learning infrastructure.

The interest-holder representatives are or will be drawn from multilaterals (see 1-2 above plus 10-13 below), government policymakers (14-15 below), citizen leaders (16-17 below), evidence intermediaries (6-7 above and 18-20 below), evidence-synthesis producers (3-5 above and 21-24 below), related technology developers (8-9), those working with other forms of evidence such as evaluation (25-26 below), funders (27-28 below), and methods experts (29).

The additional Community Council members include:

1. David Kelly, the lead for the Scientific Advisory Board – an emerging partner in and user of ESIC – in the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General
2. Lisa Askie, the lead for SMART (Standards-based, Machine-readable, adaptive, requirements-based, testable) guidelines – which will be a key user of ESIC’s policy-scale, AI-enabled living evidence syntheses (prepared by the sectoral hubs) and contributor to its open-data system – and the methods lead for quality, norms and standards at the World Health Organization
3. Arianna Legovini, the lead for ImpactAI – a pioneer in the use of AI in evidence synthesis that we hope will contribute to, leverage and benefit from ESIC’s open-data system – and the director of the Development Impact (DIME) department at the World Bank
4. Megan Kennedy-Chouane, leader of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Network on Development Evaluation – home to the DAC Evaluation Resource Centre, or DEReC, that we hope will contribute to, leverage and benefit from ESIC’s open-data system – and head of the evaluation unit in the OECD Development Co-operation Directorate
5. Kabir Hashim, lead of the steering committee for the Global Parliamentary Forum for Evaluation – a key ‘peak body’ for parliamentarians committed to evidence use, and one that we hope will be a key vehicle for demand-side engagement and capacity sharing – and member of parliament in the Government of Sri Lanka
6. Josephine Watera, provider of evidence support to Ugandan parliamentarians and hence in a role that we hope will be a key vehicle for demand-side engagement and capacity sharing
7. Maureen Smith, citizen leader from the Global North
8. Ndi Euphrasia Ebai-Atuh, citizen leader from the Global South
9. Shaheen Motala-Timol, chair of the African branch of the International Network for Government Science Advice (INGSA), which we hope will be a key vehicle for ESIC-related capacity sharing among government science advisors, particularly in Africa
10. Mathieu Ouimet, director general of the Réseau francophone international en conseil (RFICs), which we hope will be a key vehicle for ESIC-related capacity sharing among government science advisors, particularly in La Francophonie (French-speaking countries)
11. Juan Manuel Hernández-Agramonte, senior director of Embedded Labs, Innovations for Poverty Action, which are a key network of evidence intermediaries that we hope will be a key vehicle for ESIC-related capacity sharing
12. Karla Soares-Weiser, chief executive of the Cochrane Collaboration (the world’s largest network of evidence synthesizers), one of three organizations leading Building a Global Evidence-Synthesis Community, the principal grant holder for the ESIC planning process, and we hope a central contributor to the sectoral hubs, open-data system and other infrastructure elements
13. Will Moy, chief executive of the Campbell Collaboration (a network of evidence synthesizers working across sectors other than health), one of three organizations leading Building a Global Evidence-Synthesis Community, a key leader in the ESIC planning process, a key leader in METIUS, and we hope a central contributor to the sectoral hubs, open-data system and other infrastructure elements
14. Zoe Jordan, executive director of JBI (a network of evidence synthesizers in health), one of three organizations leading Building a Global Evidence-Synthesis Community, a key leader in the ESIC planning process, and we hope a central contributor to the sectoral hubs, open-data system and other infrastructure elements
15. Andrew Pullin, chief executive of the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence, a contributor to the ESIC planning process, a key leader in the METIUS environmental-protection hub, and we hope a central contributor to the open-data system and other infrastructure elements
16. Jos Vaessen [pending confirmation], program lead for the Global Evaluation Initiative, a key supporter of national evaluation capacity development, and we hope a key vehicle for ESIC-related capacity sharing at the country level
17. Dean Karlan, a methods leader in the field of 'smart buys' and development economics more generally, and co-director of the Global Poverty Research Lab at Northwestern University and key player in the Smart Buys Alliance
18. Isabel Fletcher, co-chair of the Funder executive and the Funders interest group and staff lead for ESIC at the Wellcome Trust
19. James Canton , co-chair (alongside Isabel) of the same two bodies and staff lead for ESIC at UK Research and Innovation
20. Shiv Bakrania, a methods leader in the field of evaluation synthesis and the use of synthesis in the UN and broader multilateral system.

The Communities council is facilitated by John Lavis, advisor to the Wellcome Trust.