Evaluation database

Evaluation report

2003 Global: ChildInfo — Consolidated Assessment Report

Author: UNICEF, NYHQ

Executive summary

Background:

UNICEF is committed to promoting and monitoring progress on the Medium Term Strategic Plan (MTSP) targets, the World Fit for Children (WFFC) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). The agency has extensive monitoring experience at both the national and global level, derived primarily from tracking progress through the 1990s on the World Summit for Children goals, including the development of relevant tools, such as the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys.

Purpose/Objective:

With its monitoring experience, and with more than one-third of the 48 indicators for monitoring the MDGs directly related to children, UNICEF is uniquely placed to provide support to the UN system in monitoring the MDGs, and the Executive Director has recently made such an offer to the Secretary General.

At the same time, information on the scope, performance and relevance of ChildInfo, particularly in relation to its ability to function well in a worldwide monitoring system, was unknown. Given this situation, and the need to quickly resolve if ChildInfo could play a role in supporting the UN monitoring of the MDGs at country level, the Executive Director approved a rapid assessment of ChildInfo.

Methodology:

In order to facilitate the assessment of ChildInfo, the work was divided into four major components, which were subsequently reviewed together to provide an integrated set of findings and conclusions. The major components are as follows:

Survey on use of ChildInfo at country level;
Institutional assessment of Community Systems Foundation (CSF);
Contractual assessment; and
Technical evaluation of ChildInfo.

Findings and Conclusions:

Assessment of use of ChildInfo in country

The assessment of use of ChildInfo in country divides the use by UNICEF Country Office (CO), UN Country Team, Government, and other national groups. Although over 80 countries say they have ChildInfo, only a little over half (44) have developed a country database. More governments use ChildInfo than do UN Country Teams. Not surprisingly given the recent implementation of ChildInfo in most COs, its use is often limited to a small unit, such as the planning, monitoring and evaluation unit. Other sources, including a small phone survey of countries making more extensive use of ChildInfo, indicate that availability of experienced monitoring and evaluation (M&E) staff is a concern, particularly in smaller offices.

Pros:

44 UNICEF Country Offices (27%) use ChildInfo, 40 more (25%) have initiated use
23 governments use ChildInfo

Cons:

Few staff use ChildInfo in Country Offices (CO) and the databases are small, mostly less than 4MBs
Only 10 UN Country Teams use ChildInfo
Effective use of ChildInfo limited in CO by resources, particularly expertise of M&E staff, also concern about additional demands that may be made through UN commitment

Institutional and contractual assessments

The institutional assessment describes a small non-profit NGO that has gone out of its way to develop and support use of ChildInfo at country level. CSF has had to use its own money to overcome delays in contracts and last minute changes by country offices of ChildInfo related tasks. The majority of total CSF funding comes from the ChildInfo contracts with UNICEF and the NGO operates with a very small staff, with software and help desk tasks contracted out to an Indian company. At the same time, CSF is very dependent on one person. If this person were incapacitated in some way, the support provided to ChildInfo by CSF would be severely affected. With this minimal infrastructure the capacity of CSF to meet major increases in ChildInfo work is problematic.

Pros:

Small NGO that has done good work and gone out of its way to develop and support use of ChildInfo at country level

Cons:

CSF very dependent on one person
Depends on software company subcontract• UNICEF mechanism for contracting with CSF is problematic for both CSF and UNICEF
Capacity of CSF to meet larger needs in use of ChildInfo is uncertain.

Technical evaluation

The technical assessment found ChildInfo works well within the present limited installed base. However, if it is to be used more widely, across UNICEF Country Offices, UN Country Teams, as well as in Government, changes need to be made to the software, help desk and ChildInfo support structures. For example, the software is individually customized for specific country users. This could be improved through the development of software modules that facilitate this change by others than CSF. Another example is the creation of a comprehensive training packages to support capacity building in use of ChildInfo.

Pros:

CI works well within present limited installed base, and is a software package that has met a demand for better organization and display of data at country level

Cons: