Strengthening the Office of the Prime Minister’s Monitoring & Evaluation System
General Info
Supported entity and its role in implementing the program:
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Uganda Office of the Prime Minister, Department of Refugees
Sector:
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Forced Displacement, Migration
Instiglio’s point of contact:
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Douglas Emeott – douglas.emeott@instiglio.org
Type of support provided by Instiglio:
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MEL design
Executive Summary
Currently, Uganda is home to approximately 1.7 million refugees, representing about 27% of Africa’s refugee population, making it the largest refugee-hosting country on the continent. Its location and progressive refugee policy make it a suitable destination for refugees and asylum seekers. However, the protracted nature of the refugee situation, coupled with reduced humanitarian funding and rising refugee numbers, has created significant economic, environmental, and infrastructural challenges, especially in refugee-hosting districts. These challenges hinder efforts to achieve sustainable development for displaced persons.
To address this, the Government of Uganda’s Office of the Prime Minister Department of Refugees must enhance its capacity to monitor, coordinate, and make evidence-driven decisions on refugee protection and management. This will promote self-reliance, resilience, and improved development outcomes for displaced persons and host communities. However, significant fragmentation within the sector, lack of a centralized monitoring system, and limited transparency in spending for the over 250 refugee partners have constrained the government’s ability to manage the refugee response effectively. In response, Instiglio collaborated with the Office of the Prime Minister to strengthen the government’s monitoring and evaluation system.
Through this engagement, Instiglio designed (1) a national Theory of Change (ToC) for the Uganda Refugee Response, (2) a national Harmonized Indicator Framework to measure programmatic, financial, and beneficiary feedback results, and (3) an Operationalization Strategy. This suite of results frameworks intends to inform better decision-making and promote accountability, transparency, and feedback between refugee response partners, the Government of Uganda, and displaced persons and host communities.
Key lessons learned from this design experience include: (1) designing contextualized need-based solutions is crucial to generating stakeholder buy-in and ownership and (2) establishing early and constructive engagement with stakeholders enables leveraging of different expertise and prevents duplication of efforts.
Project
Partners
The challenges and opportunity
With approximately 1.7 million refugees and asylum seekers, nearly 27% of all refugees in Africa, Uganda hosts the most refugees on the continent. The majority of refugees and asylum seekers come from South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo and are women or girls. Uganda’s location and progressive refugee policy make it a suitable destination for refugees and asylum seekers.
However, the protracted refugee situation (i.e., many refugees have lived in Uganda for more than five consecutive years with limited prospects for durable solutions), decreasing funding for humanitarian assistance, and continued increases in the number of arriving refugees impose economic, environmental, and infrastructural challenges on Uganda, especially in refugee-hosting districts. These issues constrain progress towards achieving sustainable development for displaced persons.
To help manage these challenges, there is a need for more cost-effective spending on refugee protection and management in Uganda. As the entity in charge of the government’s refugee response and planning, the Office of the Prime Minister’s (OPM) Department of Refugee’s (DoR) must enhance its capacity to monitor, coordinate, and make evidence-driven policy decisions on refugee protection and management. This can promote self-reliance and resilience among displaced persons and host communities and enhance their social development. Specifically, the OPM DoR can adopt a more evidence-driven policy to drive refugee programming based on lessons learned of what programming works (or does not work) and push the over 250 collaborating refugee partners to be more accountable for results.
However, the government faces constraints to execute its mandate over refugee response, ultimately hindering effectiveness, transparency, and accountability. For instance, significant fragmentation in the displacement sector and absence of a centralized system and process to measure and track progress on the refugee response, including spending by partners, has limited transparency over partners’ activities.
What was our response and what was it about?
Working together with the Office of the Prime Minister, Instiglio guided designs to strengthen the Government of Uganda’s monitoring and evaluation system to improve capacity to oversee and coordinate Uganda’s refugee response. Goals of this design work included:
1. Evolving the Uganda Refugee Response Monitoring System (URRMS) into a centralized data hub for refugee response partners to improve access to standardized data for line ministries and strategic users and to inform decision-making,
2. Facilitating greater localization of refugee and host community support initiatives to enhance collaboration with relevant partners and ensure alignment across services, and
3. Promoting accountability, transparency, and feedback between refugee response partners, the Government of Uganda, and those receiving services, including refugees, displaced persons, and host communities.
To these ends, Instiglio created a workplan of support together with the Office of the Prime Minister and relevant stakeholders in three phases. Outcomes of each phase include:
Phase 1: Design a harmonized indicator framework and generate initial stakeholder buy-in for the URRMS
Phase 2: Build synergies and inter-operability between monitoring and evaluation platforms
Phase 3: Strengthen uptake and utilization of URRMS data by strategic users to inform decision-making, policy making, and program planning for refugee response in Uganda
To date, Phase 1 was completed thanks to support from Instiglio’s partner, the Conrad. N. Hilton Foundation. More specific accomplishments of Phase 1 include:
1. Creation of a National Theory of Change (ToC) for the Uganda Refugee Response.
Why it matters: The national ToC articulates how the collective efforts of the 250 refugee partners will specifically contribute to the articulated outcomes and impact of improved and sustainable development of displaced persons and host communities. It is a holistic framework grounded in the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, articulating both the short- and long-term needs of displaced persons.
What we did: The design of the ToC was informed by (i) insights from stakeholder engagements, (ii) a review of policy and regulatory frameworks that guide Uganda’s refugee response, and (iii) a mapping of refugee needs from when they enter to Uganda (i.e., point of entry) to their decided resolution (e.g., repatriation, integration).
Stakeholder engagement: Instiglio and the Office of the Prime Minister consulted key stakeholders, including various United Nations’ agencies (e.g., UNHCR, WFP), bi- and multilateral development agencies (e.g., the World Bank, USAID, JICA, IGAD), and Local District Governments, such as the Ministry of Gender, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Education and Sports, and Ministry of Local Government.
Policy and regulatory frameworks: Instiglio reviewed the following policies and regulatory frameworks that guide Uganda’s refugee response:
i. The National Development Plan III (2020-2025), which sets the key objectives, interventions, and targets for sustainable socio-economic transformation of Uganda.
ii. The Settlement Transformation Agenda II (STA II) (2022-2027), which operationalizes the provisions of the Refugee Act 2006 and the Refugee Regulations 2010. Its six pillars comprehensively cover the refugee response, including: i) land management, ii) sustainable livelihoods, iii) governance and rule of law, iv) peaceful coexistence, v) environmental protection, and vi) community infrastructure.
iii. The Uganda Country Refugee Response Plan (UCRRP) (2022-2025). The UCRRP is a joint plan between the Office of the Prime Minister, UNHCR, and UN Agencies, international and national partners. The plan aims to respond to challenges in a holistic, comprehensive, and integrated manner to achieve strategic objectives of strengthening Uganda’s asylum space, providing lifesaving assistance, improving access to public services, strengthening co-existence and self-reliance, and pursuing durable solutions.
Refugee needs map. This structural framework underpins the design of the national Theory of Change. It maps the needs of refugees from their point of entry in Uganda (through reception and admission at border or ungazetted entry points) through transit and allocation to settlements, up to exit (durable solutions). It also identifies the relevant stakeholders at each point, their roles, and the services they provide.
Collectively, stakeholder engagements, the policy and regulatory frameworks, and the refugee needs map enabled us to design a comprehensive Theory of Change that captured the key activities, outputs, and outcomes that influence the achievement of sustainable development for displaced persons and host communities.
How it contributes to improved refugee response: The national Theory of Change is a strategic framework that outlines government priorities on the refugee response. Using it, partners across the humanitarian-development-peace nexus align their interventions. Thus, the national Theory of Change is a clear mechanism the Office of the Prime Minister can use to hold partners accountable for results achieved.
2. Creation of a National Harmonized Indicator Framework to measure programmatic, financial, and beneficiary feedback results.
Why it matters: A National Harmonized Indicator framework, measuring programmatic, financial, and beneficiary feedback results, is essential for understanding progress made towards meeting the goals of Uganda’s refugee response. Programmatic indicators measure the progress for a subset of results in the national Theory of Change, selected against pre-defined criteria. Financial indicators enable the comparison of financial spending for different interventions against results achieved. And, beneficiary feedback indicators amplify the voices of displaced persons and host communities and create a feedback loop, empowering end users to hold partners accountable for services provided, thereby fostering a more responsive refugee response.
What we did: Guided by the STA II, the CRRF self-reliance indicators, and the IGAD Results framework, Instiglio defined and refined performance indicators for measuring programmatic, financial, and beneficiary feedback results. Programmatic indicators were structured along the pillars and objectives of the STA II, which include land management, sustainable livelihoods, governance and rule of law, peaceful co-existence, environmental protection, and community infrastructure and access to social services. In particular, sustainable livelihoods indicators were defined in collaboration with the Self-reliance Reference Group, a working group composed of different partners developing the Minimum Standard Indicators for measuring self-reliance of refugees and host communities.
How it will contribute to improved refugee response: The National Harmonized Indicator Framework will improve Uganda’s refugee response by strengthening performance monitoring and assessment of the response. It will improve access to standardized data for line ministries and strategic users to inform decision-making based on what is working and what is not. Reporting against these indicators will help create more transparency, thus empowering displaced persons and host communities to hold partners accountable for results achieved.
3. Creation of an Operationalization Strategy.
Why it matters: This roadmap outlines how the harmonized results frameworks will be implemented and the roles of persons responsible. It serves as a change management strategy, ensuring that the current framework integrates with ongoing efforts and is taken up by all refugee response actors.
What we did: Instiglio mapped the key operationalization needs, including the system, tools, and resources (i.e., financial, people) needed to implement the results frameworks. Timelines for implementing different activities were defined and potential risks and mitigation were identified.
How it will contribute to improved refugee response: The operationalization strategy and roadmap aims to ensure a successful roll-out of the results frameworks. This is the first step in meeting the goals of this undertaking.
Lessons Learned
Designing contextualized need-based solutions is crucial to generate stakeholder buy-in and ownership
Successful design solutions must be based on the specific needs of the context. This is key to solidify buy-in and ensure ownership. To these ends, key success factors include:
a) Grounding interventions in a thorough understanding of the local environment, challenges, and resources. In Uganda, the demand for improvement came from the Office of the Prime Minister who requested technical assistance from Instiglio to enhance their monitoring and evaluation system and process. Following this, Instiglio conducted desk research and stakeholder engagements to deepen our understanding of the challenges, allowing us to design the most practical solution given the identified existing constraints. For example, we engaged active agencies from the UN, donor agencies (e.g., World Bank, USAID), and various Local District Governments (e.g., Ministry of Gender, Ministry of Health). The outcome was a clear value proposition for all stakeholders and, therefore, a willingness to engage in designing the solution. Engaged parties enthusiastically participated in interviews and workshops, providing feedback and insights that set the course for ownership.
b) Having a clear stakeholder engagement strategy led by the government, involving co-creation and regular touchpoints with key stakeholders. Instiglio involved the government in every step of the design process, adopting a co-design approach where all critical decisions on the results frameworks contained input from and were validated by our government champions. Further, Instiglio ensured all engagements with other stakeholders were led by the government. This ensured strong government ownership of the process and government-led engagements sent a strong signal of that government commitment to stakeholders, thus facilitating better engagement and cooperation. Strong buy-in and ownership from the government was a critical success factor in garnering stakeholder support for the results frameworks, evidenced by the communique signed by stakeholders during a validation workshop.
Establishing early and constructive engagement with stakeholders enables leveraging of different expertise and prevents duplication of efforts
a) Stakeholder engagement is critical to leverage different expertise and ensures that unique knowledge is integrated into designs, ultimately avoiding too many time-intensive iterations. One key success factor for a smooth stakeholder validation workshop was to consult stakeholders prior to familiarize them with the results frameworks under development. Accordingly, stakeholders were able to cut to the meat of relevant content points. This ensured smooth deliberations and built excitement for the government’s efforts to enhance tools, processes, and strategies in its refugee response.
b) Regular iteration and engagement prevent wasteful duplications of effort. Early into the design of the harmonized indicator framework, Instiglio established a partnership with the Self-reliance Reference Group, a working group comprising humanitarian and development partners developing the Minimum Standard Indicators for measuring self-reliance of refugees and host communities. This early partnership ensured the Harmonized Indicator Framework leveraged efforts already ongoing, which greatly contributed to creating efficiencies, and mitigating duplication of efforts.
