Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, and Learning Innovations (MERLIN)
Addendum #0000008
to
The USAID Development Innovation Accelerator (DIA)
Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for
Science, Technology, Innovation, and Partnership
“And most important, we must stay relentlessly focused on results - which means establishing
baseline data, measuring progress, being transparent about both our successes and our failures
- learning from both and improving our approach as we go forward. It is through this relentless
dedication to results that we do justice to our motto, 'From the American people'."
- Dr. Rajiv Shah, USAID Administrator, March 3, 2010
“To fulfill its responsibilities, USAID bases policy and investment decisions on the best available
empirical evidence, and uses the opportunities afforded by project implementation to generate
new knowledge for the wider community.”
- USAID Evaluation Policy, 2011
Background: The US Global Development Lab – Innovation and Learning
The US Global Development Lab (Lab) seeks to harness the power of science, technology,
innovation and partnership (STIP) to source, test, and scale dramatic breakthroughs that
accelerate achievement of foreign policy and development goals. The Lab recognizes that our
ability to identify development breakthroughs will be determined, in large part, by whether we
are able to quickly gather evidence on how the programs we support are performing and use
this data to iterate and improve them. Given the Lab’s mandate to source and test innovations,
monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (MERL) will be key to the Lab’s success. As such,
the Lab’s interest in developing new and improved approaches to MERL is driven not just by a
need to improve the Lab’s own activities but also to pilot new MERL approaches that the rest of
USAID may use in the future.
There is a deliberate recognition, on the part of the Lab, that approaching MERL in a systematic
way is critical to both proving (or disproving) effectiveness and improving our approach to
development. The Lab intends to conduct rigorous, evidence-based analysis to determine
whether STIP-focused approaches and interventions are delivering development impact more
quickly, cost-effectively, sustainably, and are reaching more beneficiaries. Determining which
innovations, within USAID and outside the Agency, have the greatest potential for
transformative, cost-effective impact at scale is at the core of this model. As scaling is a
relatively new focus of the Agency, and the broader development community, there remains
broad and varying interpretation as to what it is, how and when to do it and how to measure it.
With a relatively underdeveloped evidence base and technical capacity on scaling and affecting
system-wide change needed to achieve scale, it is difficult to build commitment, align
programming and secure resources for scaling.
The Lab recognizes and embraces the need for reimagining and reshaping the way monitoring,
evaluation and research is used to inform the innovation pipeline and the aspiration for scale.
Current USAID partnership and procurement structures and approaches to MERL can be rigid
and restrictive when attempting to understand complex systems and ecosystems where scale
and innovation take place. Knowing what tools to use and when to deploy them in the life cycle
of a program, project, or activity is not always easy. Allowing for flexibility, speed of iteration,
adaptive management of interventions, and sharing of knowledge and resources between
partners is critical for responding to the challenges of the 21st Century.
US Global Development Lab Innovation Pipeline
The Need for New Approaches to Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning
Exciting advances in the field of monitoring and evaluation have generated interest throughout
the international development community in recent years. Donors, developing country
governments, implementers, think tanks, academic institutions, the private sector, and other
stakeholders are building capacity in this area and recognizing the need for efficiency, efficacy,
and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances in measuring impact and accordingly
adjusting implementation of interventions, potentially (though not always feasible) in real time.
But many of the traditional challenges remain. Resources for MERL remain scarce and continue
to be underfunded in the planning and design process of programs. Incentive structures
between all types of funders and implementers can hold back rigor and the necessary levels of
open and frank discussions on development failure. And simply ‘not knowing what we don’t
know’ can prevent the level of understanding and research necessary to understand complex
systems in which all development takes place.
Scarcity of resources is pushing the development community (donors, recipients, implementers,
researchers, etc.) to search out efficiencies and flexibility in all areas of MERL, while also
encouraging rigor to determine value for money in development investments. But many
current approaches have not allowed for sufficient understanding of complex systems nor have
they overcome all challenges around data quality, limitations in funding and time, and political
will. Despite recent advances in the field of monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning, the
way USAID engages in this work, the relationship between evaluators and program
implementers, and the tools used in the field are largely the same as what the development
community has been using for decades. Furthermore, taking a more real-time and iterative
approach to M&E will allow a continuous flow of evidence to transition the development
community from an M&E paradigm of “what happened” to an analytics paradigm of “what is
happening” and close the gap in the data-decision cycle to improve the adaptive capacity and
efficacy of development interventions.
Solutions Sought
The Lab seeks to continuously and iteratively examine its development hypotheses and theories
of change, to be a nimble, learning organization embracing the realities and challenges of the
systems within which particular solutions aim to provide impact. Through this Addendum, the
Lab is seeking new approaches to MERL that will allow it to more rapidly learn about the
effectiveness of its programs so that it can iterate and improve. Some examples of the types of
new MERL approaches the Lab is interested in hearing about are new evaluation tools and
methodologies, new approaches to how the Lab engages and structures evaluations of its
projects, and new sources of data or tools for collecting data. USAID seeks partners to engage in
a co-creation process to achieve these objectives. This process could potentially result in one or
more activities that contribute to a systematic enhancement of traditional MERL through use
and design of flexible, responsive, nimble, cost-effective approaches to understanding complex
systems and development interventions.
USAID seeks to partner with organizations whose priorities lie in improving development
impact through improved tools for monitoring, evaluation, research and learning. This
addendum does not commit funding to this program but it could lead to funded procurement
actions.
For the purposes of this Addendum, USAID seeks new perspectives through co-creation with a
diversity of partners, which possess a number of the experiences below, both in the
development field and private sector innovations. While experience listed is considered
important to ensuring success of the MERLIN Program, they are simply illustrative. More
importantly, the Lab is seeking partners who have the ability to transform the way USAID
understands the success or failure of innovations and scaling efforts around them:
Processes
•
•
Planning for and implementing adaptive and/or iterative MERL programming that allows
and promotes early and mid-course corrections through effective learning feedback
loops
Development and management of successful peer-to-peer networks in the MERL space
Monitoring
•
•
Design and implementation of complex program monitoring systems that will allow for
rapid feedback loops and synchronize monitoring with the pace of change
Develop monitoring tools that emphasize verification and contribution to impact.
Scaling
•
•
•
Helping establish/understand the “tipping point” of scaling efforts
Helping understand the many complex enabling external and internal factors at all
stages of innovations
Pathways analysis
Systems Thinking
•
•
Complex systems, outcome, and network mapping, modeling, and simulation for
decision-making
Collective impact approaches and contribution analysis
Evaluation and Research
•
•
•
•
•
•
Rapid and flexible survey data collection and design
Economic analyses (i.e. cost-benefit analysis, cost-effective analysis, etc.)
Performance, impact, and developmental evaluations
Testing the validity of theories of change, hypotheses, and assumptions embedded in
strategy-level results frameworks and project level Logical Frameworks
Lean, agile, flexible and participatory evaluation and research approaches
Conceptual and/or computational systems maps, models, and/or simulation to assist in
decision-making for planning and implementation of development interventions
Submission Instructions
Please submit your Expression of Interest indicating the research or development idea which
will work towards discovering potential solutions to the Solutions Sought, above, by increasing
knowledge and understanding of potential solutions, exploiting scientific discoveries or
improvements in technology, materials, processes, methods, devices, or techniques, advancing
the state of the art, or using scientific and technical knowledge in the design, development,
testing, or evaluation of a potential new product or service (or of an improvement in an existing
product or service). Please describe your idea/approach for enhancing MERL as it relates to
scaling innovations and systems change, and highlight your group’s value to the partnership.
Organizations are encouraged to consider collaborating with peer organizations that bring
differing perspectives and/or comparative advantages.
Submitted expressions of interest will:
•
•
Not exceed 1000 words, excluding header and optional graphic
Contain a header with the following information, not included in word count:
o Respondent Name/Group and Contact Information:
Response Title:
BAA Addendum Name/Number:
Be in .pdf or .docx format
Contain the following:
o Idea/approach to MERL, including brief identification/summary of supporting
evidence (the evidence itself does not have to be submitted, but should be made
available to USAID if requested)
o Talent and other resources you are willing to dedicate to this collaboration
o Your organization’s unique perspectives and capabilities, as well as your ability to
harness the comparative advantages of other parties.
o
o
•
•
Review of Submissions
The following criteria will be applied to all expressions of interest:
1. Idea/Approach: In evaluating the idea/approach, USAID will focus on how the applicant
contributes fresh, informed and realistic thinking, and how the applicant uses supporting
evidence and analysis. The idea/approach will not be judged solely on its merit, but in addition
to the qualities that the applicant would bring to the discussion.
2. Partnership Expectations and Value: Strengths of your group as a partner, including the
talent your organization would bring to the discussion, and your ability, if any, to provide a
financial, in-kind, or leveraged match at various stages of the process.
3. Diversity of Perspectives and Capabilities: USAID seeks to bring together a diverse set of
co-creators in collaboration in order to enable broader thinking and innovation. The selection of
individual applicants will be with the goal of achieving this diversity.
Information Protection
USAID’s goal is to facilitate the research that is required to lead to innovative and potentially
commercially viable, solutions. Understanding the sensitive nature of submitters’ information,
USAID will work with organizations to protect intellectual property.
Expressions of interest should be free of any intellectual property that the submitter wishes to
protect, as the expressions of interest will be shared with USAID partners as part of the
selection process. However, once submitters have been invited to engage in further
discussions, submitters will work with USAID to identify proprietary information that requires
protection.
Therefore, organizations making submissions under this BAA Addendum hereby grant USAID a
royalty-free, nonexclusive, and irrevocable right to use, disclose, reproduce, and prepare
derivative works, and to have or permit others to do so to any information contained in the
expressions of interest submitted under the BAA Addendum. If USAID engages with the
organization regarding its submission, the parties can negotiate further intellectual property
protection for the organization’s intellectual property. Organizations must ensure that any
submissions under the Addendum are free of any third party proprietary data rights that would
impact the license granted to USAID herein. This Addendum falls under the Development
Innovation Accelerator Broad Agency Announcement for Science, Technology, Innovation and
Partnership (STIP). Specifically, this addendum is focused on monitoring, evaluation, research
and learning.
Selection Process
Selection: USAID will review and select expressions of interest (EOI) submitted in accordance
with the guidelines and criteria set forth in this Addendum. USAID reserves the right to
disregard any expressions of interest that do not meet the guidelines.
Stage 1: Selected groups will be invited to join the co-design process which will consist of a cocreation workshop(s) in Washington, DC, where USAID, partners, and selected groups will
gather to collaboratively develop the program(s). This will result in one or more concept papers
of 5-7 pages each, outlining the concrete programmatic plan, focus areas, goals, timelines, etc.
Travel costs for participants will not be reimbursed by USAID.
Stage 2: Final concept papers will be submitted to USAID’s Internal Review Board. Approved
concept papers for programs will be further refined (co-design) and potentially implemented.
USAID is not obligated to issue a financial instrument or award as a result of this Addendum.
Response Date
Please submit your expression of interest in English to [email protected] no later than 11:59
pm EST, April 27, 2015.