Khulisa often supports clients with improving their data management systems. Recently, we did an M&E System Assessment for two Foundations (and for one of them, we assessed five of their implementing partners). Our findings consistently showed that organizations struggle with both data use and data quality. While they acknowledge these issues, often they struggle with how to start overcoming these challenges.
As part of our results, we have recommended that these organizations use a checklist embedded in CLEAR AA’s recently released Guidelines on Responsible Data Governance for Monitoring and Evaluation in the African Context (See Part 1 and Part 2). The checklist outlines best practices sorted into the seven stages of the data lifecycle:
- Design and plan your data-related process
- Collect or acquire data
- Transmit and/or store your data
- Clean and analyze your data
- Share and/or open your data
- Visualize and/or communicate data or use data for making decisions
- Retain, maintain, and destroy your data after the project or initiative is complete
Already, we have seen that these checklists help these organizations to start implementing our recommendations!
