Overview
We are co-building a more fit-for-purpose evidence-synthesis infrastructure, which is exciting (and scary).
We are working within a collective-impact approach, which is hard and often requires difficult conversations as we move towards a ‘new equilibrium.’
We are striving for full coverage, whether that be sectors (and prioritized questions within sectors), regions (and countries within regions), and interest holders (and capabilities among each type of interest holder).
We hope that the ‘monitoring and evaluation’ part of our monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) infrastructure can help move us towards accountability to one another and the decision-makers we aim to serve. We have many ideas for the types of public reporting (or ‘dashboards’) that can underpin such accountability, including:
- measuring the shift in power to the Global South, particularly in concrete domains such as the leadership of key infrastructure elements and the resources to execute them
- measure progress in locating equity at the heart of the infrastructure (step 1 in the ESIC roadmap), processes and outputs enabled by it (synthesis, intermediary work, embedding in tools people already use, and use in decision-making - i.e., steps 2-5), and its impacts on people (improving lives and saving money).
During the planning process we considered many dimensions of equity in participation – including sectors, languages and career stages, as well as gender, region and interest-holder category (e.g., policymakers and citizens) – and anticipate that these will continue to be highly important as we move forward.
We hope that the ‘learning’ part of our MEL infrastructure can support learning and improvement cycles within an across our ‘community of communities,’ as well as organizational learning among the organizations that are part of this community.