INTEGRATED SAFEGUARDS DATA SHEET IDENTIFICATION / CONCEPT STAGE Public Disclosure Copy Report No.: ISDSC14914 Date ISDS Prepared/Updated: 21-Sep-2015 I. BASIC INFORMATION A. Basic Project Data Country: South Asia Project ID: P156902 Project Name: CLEAR - South Asia Team Leader(s): Elena Ximena Fernandez Ordonez Estimated Date 15-Oct-2015 of Approval: Managing Unit: IEGCS Lending Lending Instrument Instrument: Sector(s): General public administration sector (100%) Theme(s): Other public sector governance (50%), Managing for development results (50%) Financing (in USD Million) Total Project Cost: 1.05 Total Bank Financing: 0 Financing Gap: 0 Financing Source Amount Public Disclosure Copy ECD FOR REGIONAL CENTERS 1.05 Environment C - Not Required Category: B. Project Development Objective(s) The grant seeks to contribute to M&E information being increasingly used to make policy and program decisions and the strengthening of country monitoring and evaluation systems in South Asia. C. Project Description CLEAR is a multilateral partnership established in 2010 to support a network of centers through recipient executed grants to strengthen monitoring and evaluation (M&E) capacities and systems in the World Bank Group’s client countries. The centers develop, deliver (locally and regionally), and share knowledge regarding high-quality M&E capacity development services for government agencies, civil society, the private sector, academia, as well as for other providers of M&E capacity building services. The grants function as seed funding to establish and strengthen the centers, and help them develop their workprograms and strategies, materials and expertise in order to become self-financing by the end of the program, currently estimated for 2018. CLEAR currently support such centers in competitively selected academic institutions in Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Senegal, and South Africa. The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) implements the program in line with its mandate to build client capacity in evaluation, serving as the CLEAR Global Hub, or secretariat. CLEAR Public Disclosure Copy complements and builds on the experience of the well-respected International Program for Development Evaluation Training (IPDET) , established by IEG 15 years ago in collaboration with Carleton University in Canada. CLEAR’s Trust Fund is supported by the evaluation offices of nine major multilateral and bilateral donors: the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Australian government (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade), the Belgian Development Cooperation Agency, the Inter- American Development Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Swedish International Development, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, and the UK Department for International Development. The Jameel Poverty Action Lab South Asia at the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR-JPAL) in India was competitively selected in 2010 to implement the CLEAR program and to establish the CLEAR Center in South Asia (CLEAR SA). IFMR-JPAL will provide a range of sustained, context-relevant high quality and cost-effective capacity building activities on M&E to strategic clients in government, civil society, the private sector, academia and other providers of M&E capacity building services. The grant will be organized around three components: 1) Capacity Building Activities for IFMR-JPAL, to strengthen IFMR- JPAL’s own capacities and visibility 2) Capacity Development Services for Clients, to provide strategic clients with capacity building services, including training, technical advisory, knowledge products, applied research, outreach, and M&E network support 3) Monitoring and Evaluation of the CLEAR activities, to assess the effectiveness of the program in South Asia, implement course corrections and learn from implementation. Please see the “Component 2: Capacity Development Services for Clients” for a description of the Strategy through details of the intermediate outcomes, or business lines. Public Disclosure Copy Component 1: Capacity Building Activities for IFMR-JPAL: Component One will aim to strengthen the internal capacity of the Center. This includes ensuring that the Center is adequately staffed and has the skills and expertise necessary to deliver high-quality technical advisory and capacity building services. It also includes the Center’s plans to gain more visibility among strategic stakeholders in South Asia through improved networks and communications. In order to meet the objectives of Component One, the Center will engage in a variety of internal capacity building activities, which will help develop its management, administrative, and professional capacities. Management and Administrative Capacity The Center will strengthen its management and administrative capacity by hiring and retaining the necessary staff to deliver its work program. The Center will also engage in Learning from Performance Reviews (LEAP) to ensure that there is continuous learning. The Center’s communication plan includes expanding the content and information on its website, as well as developing a stronger presence on online blogs and discussion forums. Professional Capacity CLEAR SA has actively recruited J-PAL South Asia research staff (host institution staff not Public Disclosure Copy currently part of the core CLEAR team). The Center is also drawing upon select individuals from its wide network of academics and M&E professionals to develop and deliver capacity building services. The Center will continue working under the guidance of its Regional Advisory Committee (RAC) to manage its strategic direction in the region. The RAC provides key inputs on developing professional capacity, as well as necessary information on M&E needs and trends in South Asia. The RAC – made up of external advisors nominated by CLEAR SA and approved in 2013 by the CLEAR Board of Directors - meets approximately twice a year and be called upon for advice on an ad-hoc basis. The RAC currently has members from India and Sri Lanka, and will be expanded to include members from Bangladesh and Pakistan. In addition to the RAC meetings, the Center will engage with key M&E stakeholders both throughout South Asia and globally. Globally, the Center’s staff and key stakeholders will participate in CLEAR’s global forums and meetings, which will bring together other centers operating under the CLEAR program and the CLEAR Global Hub. Regionally, the Center’s staff and affiliates will participate in regional evaluation conferences, where they will present evaluations and conduct workshops. Additionally, the Center will organize in-house training activities for its staff. These include an annual week long internal staff training on managing evaluations, biweekly brownbag lunches on topics ranging from the current policy climate in South Asia to innovative M&E methods, as well as field visits to ongoing evaluations and capacity building activities led by partners. Together, these activities will provide the CLEAR South Asia Regional Center the necessary skills and knowledge to design and implement targeted, effective monitoring and evaluation capacity Public Disclosure Copy building programs. Component 2: Capacity Development Services for Clients Component 2 will provide capacity development services for clients, will develop and share knowledge/learning on the “how to” of building M&E capacity, and contribute to CLEAR Global Knowledge Hub. The activities undertaken under this component are divided into business lines which focus on specific intermediate outcomes. The main areas the program will address are: 1) raising the knowledge and skills of current and prospective M&E staff; 2) increasing the organizational capacities to produce evaluative evidence, widening the coverage of evaluations, their relevance and their quality; 3) strengthening the links between the information generated and policy making, planning, and budgeting and leading conversations on best strategies on how coordinate M&E systems. These areas will be addressed through the specifically targeted business lines described below. The business lines were developed during the second grant. BUSINESS LINE 1: Building Skills/Awareness for High Quality Impact Evaluation & Data Collection Among Policymakers, Practioners, and Researchers IFMR-JPAL has focused on building skills and awareness for high-quality impact evaluation and data collection, among a wide-range of partners and clients (i.e. the Indian Economic Service). It maintains a portfolio of activities which aim to jointly affect the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of partners and clients towards impact evaluation and high-quality data collection. This includes a portfolio of open-enrollment and customized courses, as well as technical advisory services. The Public Disclosure Copy Center employs a comprehensive approach towards this business line, in which each individual activity has multiple objectives. The intended outcomes of each comprehensive activity are: (1) clients increase knowledge of impact evaluation and data collections, (2) clients positively change attitudes towards impact evaluation and data collection, (3) clients go on to commission and/or fund impact evaluations, (4) clients themselves conduct impact evaluations and high-quality data collection. The activities described below will continue in the third grant period. Executive Education: Impact Evaluation The flagship activity for this Business Line is the Executive Education Course. This course is targeted at practitioners, policymakers and academics. It focuses on understanding the necessity for rigor and scientific evidence, thinking about creative strategies in M&E within the context of the participants’ work, and managing common pitfalls of program implementation and impact evaluation. The goal is for participants to be able to identify research opportunities within their organizations, advocate for rigorous evaluation, be better consumers of evidence, and gain preliminary skills to conduct rigorous evaluations (particularly among participants from academic institutions). To this end, participants work with their counterparts from different communities (e.g. donor, academic, practitioner, policymaker, etc.) to develop potential evaluation ideas. At its core, this process is meant to help participants understand what goes into designing and implementing an impact evaluation. Open Enrollment M&E Courses IFMR-JPAL has developed a set of other open enrollment courses (Measurement & Survey Design in India, Basic M&E in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, etc.) with a fee-based model. Thus far, these Public Disclosure Copy courses have been high in demand. IFMR-JPAL plans to continue these courses, as they provide a good opportunity to bring together different partners from different sectors, building their knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors towards high-quality M&E. The main objective of these open enrolment courses is to provide a basic understanding of measurement, data collection, and impact evaluation, which can then be translated into using, commissioning/funding, and/or conducting high-quality evaluations and data collection. Technical Assistance and Custom Courses for Civil Servants Since 2013, IFMR-JPAL has been conducting Monitoring and Evaluation trainings for the Indian Economic Services (IES) and Indian Administrative Services (IAS), as well as providing advisory services for the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) (the premier civil service training institute in India). The trainings includes a combination of technical lectures, case studies, guest lectures from prominent government officials and M&E professionals, as well as the option of group work to design their own impact evaluation. This activity focuses on working with the top-level civil servants in India, who have the decision-making power to commission evaluations and use evaluations to inform future policies. Targeting this group is also strategic, in that both the IAS and IES remain in the government for the tenure of their career, regardless of political leadership. Technical Assistance and Custom Courses for Civil Society IFMR-JPAL is working with civil society organizations (including BRAC, Breakthrough, Education Public Disclosure Copy Alliance, etc.) to develop their awareness and skills of M&E. These are customized courses and technical advisory services on new and ongoing evaluations, including developing data collection plans. For each engagement, IFMR-JPAL conducts an in-depth mixed-methods needs assessment. The needs assessment informs the content of the custom course and/or technical advisory service, as well as the specific objectives for the engagement. BUSINESS LINE 2: Strengthening State Government M&E Practices IFMR-JPAL is working with state governments (e.g., Government of Haryana, Government of Tamil Nadu) to strengthen their monitoring and evaluations systems. These are longer-term engagements in which the Center conducts a needs assessment and diagnostic exercise of M&E practices within various departments/ministries at the state level. After the diagnostic review, IFMR-JPAL proposes a series of technical advisory services and custom workshops to address any gaps in M&E practices (data collection, monitoring, outcome tracking, etc.). This service is fully subsidized for the client for an initial period, after which the state government will take personnel costs associated with the activities. BUSINESS LINE 3: Raising Awareness for High Quality M&E As part of its ongoing outreach activities, IFMR-JPAL organizes knowledge-sharing activities, including roundtables on best practices in M&E. These are a series of half-day events, which cover fundamental topics in monitoring and evaluation, and target government and civil society organizations in South Asia, including those partners that may be unable to attend multiple-day or in- person workshops. Topics of these roundtables are both method-specific (qualitative methods, mixed-methods, participatory approaches, collecting data for scale-ups, etc.), as well as topic/theme- specific (evaluation and gender, evaluation and crime, monitoring education and training, etc.). Public Disclosure Copy IFMR-JPAL also delivers presentations at external conferences and trainings on the importance of high-quality evaluation and evidence-based policymaking (e.g., Sri Lankan Evaluation Association conference, Community of Evaluators-South Asia Conclave, World Bank – BRAC conference on impact evaluation, 3ie-Asian Development Bank conference, etc.). The Center also contributes to onl ine blogs and publications, highlighting the importance of prioritizing M&E in decision-making. BUSINESS LINE 4: Diagnosing and Strengthening Regional and International M&E Networks In order to build regional and international M&E networks, IFMR-JPAL provides support to M&E networks and evaluation associations in the form of: (1) sponsorships to attend evaluation field- building events, (2) organizing panels and workshops for regional and international M&E conferences, and (3) partnering on advocacy and outreach events. BUSINESS LINE 5: Building Local Institutions’ Capacities to Conduct Rigorous Evaluations Throughout South Asia, there is a high demand for evaluation skills training, but very few institutions that provide this service. IFMR-JPAL has worked to develop relationships with top-level universities (Indian Institute of Management – Bangalore, Indian Institute of Management – Ahmedabad) that have expressed an interest in M&E short courses and semester-long curriculum at the post-graduate level. Additionally, it has received requests from the Sri Jayawardanapura University in Sri Lanka to conduct lectures and develop content for an M&E diploma course. As there is a growing demand for M&E training at the university level, IFMR-JPAL is working to Public Disclosure Copy further these services. It will also conduct similar courses for non-university research organizations (i.e, International Center for Integrated Mountain Development), in order to further build local researcher capacity to conduct high-quality evaluations. Business Line 5 specifically works to develop the technical skills of current and future researchers to conduct high-quality evaluations. It also creates an awareness of high-quality research. One of the final deliverables of Business Line 5 is the creation of university-level curriculum (syllabi, presentations, case studies, etc.) which can be shared and used by other evaluation capacity development providers. IFMR-JPAL plans on sharing these resources with universities throughout the region, as well as the other regional centers. Business Line 6: Conducting and Sharing Research and Generating Evidence on 'How To Do' High Quality M&E As part of IFMR-JPAL’s commitment to promoting high-quality research and data collection, it is working to conduct research on best practices in M&E. This will include research projects on developing parsimonious survey instruments, when/how to use digital data collection, and best practices in grassroots M&E. IFMR-JPAL will work disseminate this research through knowledge products for M&E practitioners. By June 2018, the Center will share developed knowledge products and “how to” documents on the CLEAR wikispaces/C4D, based in IEG. Business Line 7: Sharing research and lessons on “How to do” quality Evaluation Capacity Development (ECD). IFMR-JPAL will produce and share knowledge and knowledge products related to the lessons that Public Disclosure Copy IFMR-JPAL has learned on “how to do” evaluation capacity building through the planning and implementation of the various activities in the other business lines. The LEAP reviews will surface this knowledge and identify the lessons that are worth to be codified and shared. These lessons will be targeted towards CLEAR centers and other providers of ECD services. Activities in this business line will often be implemented in combination with activities in the other business lines. For example, related to Business line 1, IFMR-JPAL is currently undertaking a review of past participants in the Executive Education course on Impact Evaluation, starting from 2007. This will involve an in-depth quantitative and qualitative tracer survey and the end product will b ea set of guidelines on best practices in targeting the correct audience, ensuring that the content is relevant for the audience, and how to successfully conduct training follow-ups. Related to Business Line 2, work might be undertaken on how to conduct the nee ds assessments and diagnostic work. In relation to Business Line 5, work might be undertaken in sharing how to knowledge on ECD with the local institutions that they will be working with, etc. Component 3: Monitoring and Evaluation of the CLEAR activities Under Component Three, IFMR_JPAL will collect and keep systematic electronic information on its operations, and provide quarterly monitoring data and annual reports to the CLEAR program at IEG. It will also provide annual audit reports (coinciding with IFMR’s financial year). Public Disclosure Copy The monitoring information will include: Course descriptions (including their objectives, intended audiences, participant selection criteria [if any], dates, duration, faculty, and fees/costs); standardized data on participant participation (disaggregated by gender, nationality, organization type) for each training/workshop; assessment of quality and usefulness of each training/workshop and advisory services (using standardized quality assessment tools); and records on the objectives of each set of advisory or evaluation services. Where a package of services, bundling workshops, advice, evaluations, etc. is provided to a group of clients, IFMR-JPAL will also develop concept notes articulating the overall objectives of the package of services and the rationale for the package to be provided. Additionally, IFMR-JPAL is working to develop a comprehensive monitoring, evaluation, and learning strategy for its programs. The Center will use rigorous qualitative methods (detailed needs assessments, surveys, participant and partner interviews, and field visits) and quantitative tracer and follow-up surveys to track capacity building activities, learning outcomes, and longer-term impacts for key clients. These longer-term impacts for IFMR-JPAL’s clients may include: a better understanding of impact evaluation, changing attitudes towards evidence-based decision making, conducting more internal M&E, using data and evaluation research to inform decision making, and providing evaluation capacity building for other regional organizations. These learnings will be shared with other CLEAR regional offices and other ECD providers. Finally, the Center will conduct annual reviews of its performance (the Learning from Performance (LEAP) reviews) to assess its performance and make adjustments to it portfolio of business lines.. See also Component 1. D. Project location and salient physical characteristics relevant to the safeguard analysis (if known) Public Disclosure Copy E. Borrower’s Institutional Capacity for Safeguard Policies F. Environmental and Social Safeguards Specialists on the Team II. SAFEGUARD POLICIES THAT MIGHT APPLY Safeguard Policies Triggered? Explanation (Optional) Environmental Assessment OP/ No BP 4.01 Natural Habitats OP/BP 4.04 No Forests OP/BP 4.36 No Pest Management OP 4.09 No Physical Cultural Resources OP/ No BP 4.11 Indigenous Peoples OP/BP 4.10 No Involuntary Resettlement OP/BP No Public Disclosure Copy 4.12 Safety of Dams OP/BP 4.37 No Projects on International No Waterways OP/BP 7.50 Projects in Disputed Areas OP/BP No 7.60 III. SAFEGUARD PREPARATION PLAN Appraisal stage ISDS required?: No IV. APPROVALS Team Leader(s): Name: Elena Ximena Fernandez Ordonez Approved By: Safeguards Advisor: Name: Maged Mahmoud Hamed (SA) Date: 28-Sep-2015 Practice Manager/ Name: Nidhi Khattri (PMGR) Date: 28-Sep-2015 Manager: 1 Reminder: The Bank's Disclosure Policy requires that safeguard-related documents be disclosed before appraisal (i) at the InfoShop and (ii) in country, at publicly accessible locations and in a form and language that are accessible to potentially affected persons. Public Disclosure Copy