To assess the national WASH M&E system in Liberia, a generic organizing framework for a functional national WASH sector monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system was used. The framework supports an assessment of the current state of the national WASH M&E system in Liberia. The assessment up until this point is performed by representatives from the Ministry of Public Works, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, the WASH Secretariat, the EPA, and LISGIS.

In this workshop, the assessment phase will be validated by both national and subnational level stakeholders. In the coming days, we not only validate the work that has been done so far but also include the perspective from WASH experts at the subnational level, crucial for a well-functioning national M&E system.

In the workshop, we also look ahead towards implanting, planning, and costing for a country-led national M&E system. On Saturday all participant join in an effort to develop a roadmap of activities for the next 5 years by prioritizing key activities and assigning responsible stakeholders. In the last phase of the workshop, a costing exercise is performed to make a detailed scheme of activities for 2018 and a corresponding planning and costing for the activities.

Workshop Goals

The following goals are defined for the validation workshop:

• Validation of the assessment phase. National and subnational level stakeholders have discussed and revised the strengths, weaknesses, and recommendations of all 12 components in the framework.
• A roadmap towards country-led monitoring. All stakeholders work together towards a roadmap of activities for the next 5 years. The activities are based on the recommendations per component and prioritized per category.
• Costed plan for 2018. The short-term activities in the roadmap are further specified in sub-activities. These sub-activities are costed and planned for 2018.

Workshop day 1

The focus of day 1 is on validating the assessment of the national M&E system in Liberia.

Introduction to Country-Led Monitoring

Country-led Monitoring (CLM) focuses on a participatory assessment to evaluate the national WASH M&E system and come to recommendations signed off by lead government institutions. These recommendations focus on the conditions for strengthening national WASH M&E systems and routine monitoring. In Liberia, a program to start up CLM started in 2016. Currently, we are ready to validate the assessment of the state of the National M&E system in Liberia and make a roadmap of activities to achieve results.

Introduction to the 12 components assessment framework

This framework provides (1) a description of the main components of a functional national WASH M&E system, and (2) some benchmarks against which to assess progress in establishing such a system. The components are visualized below:

In a plenary session, the results of the assessment phase of the first component – Organizational structures with WASH M&E functions – is presented. In detail, it is described how the methodology works and what the state of this component is in Liberia.

Break-out session: Validate the components

The participants are divided into 6 different groups. Each group should include both national and subnational level stakeholders. In the first part of the session (before the break/lunch) component 1-6 are validated. In the second part of the session component 7-12 are validated. The groups have a digital copy of the synthesis report available. The groups review the component in the document. The session includes the following steps:

• Groups will assign a chair and a notetaker. The chair will facilitate the discussion and the notetaker is responsible for capturing the validation in the digital report.
• Verify the strengths and weaknesses.
• Verify the recommendations.
• Rate the importance of the recommendations relative to each other
• Define how urgent the recommendations are (< 3 months, < 6 months, < 1 year, 1-3 year, > 3 years)

Presentations of the break-out groups

Each group is asked to present the components, with a focus on the recommendations. The groups will have 10 minutes per component. Before the presentations are started all groups upload their document to a common folder.

 

Workshop day 2

Today, the focus is on developing a roadmap of activities for the next 5 years.

The CLM Roadmap

The roadmap is a planning of activities for a 5-year period. The activities in the roadmap are derived from the recommendations of the 12 components. In the roadmap, the recommendations/activities are planned, scheduled and assigned to institutions that will take the lead in implementation. The 5-year plan provides an overview of steps and responsibilities for strengthening the national M&E system and moving towards Country-Led Monitoring.

Break-out session: SMART recommendations

The recommendations of the 12 components need to be as precise as possible to fit into the roadmap. We’ll split up into 6 groups again. Preferably different groups compared to yesterday’s and reviewing different components. The groups will each assess and update the recommendations and ensure that they are SMART:

• Describe the exact activities to be performed.
• Describe when an activity is successfully performed.
• Describe who will perform the activity.
• Make sure the recommendation is doable within the capacity and resource boundaries.
• Time-bound. Assign a time component to each of the recommendations. E.g. ‘performed by Q3 2018’.

Priority Areas

All the recommendations and activities derived from the recommendations will feed into the Roadmap. To structure the roadmap and the discussion around recommendations we define priority areas that we center our discussions around. These can be themes such as the enabling environment, database alignments, and sub-national data collection. The main point of importance is that is should be those areas that are most important for the national M&E system in Liberia.

Break-out session: a Roadmap for the priority areas

We’ll split into groups again. One group for each of the priority areas. The groups will construct a 5-year roadmap for all the recommendations that concern the priority area. The groups might follow some of these activities:

• Identify all recommendations/activities related to the priority area
• Structure the recommendations/activities in order of importance (e.g. should be done within 3 months, within 6 months, within a year, no later than 3 years, etc.)
• Place the recommendations on a 5-year timeline

A Roadmap for CLM

The groups will share their timeline of activities. The different priority areas will be combined into one roadmap. The facilitator of the session will bring up challenges and chances that occur when combining the different priority areas.

The focus is on costing the first activities in the roadmap.

Costing of (sub) activities in the Roadmap for 2018

Try to give a solid impression of the costs associated with the activities in the first year of the implementation of the plan, the sources of funding, and the responsible institution(s) for execution. Joint execution of this exercise will give all participant an equal feeling about the magnitude of the tasks ahead and the need for alignment throughout the process.