Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Expert at Palladium Group

Project Overview and Role

• The UK Support to Health transformation in Nigeria through the Lafiya Programme is a flexible, demand-led strategic partnership with the Nigerian Federal and targeted State governments designed to address equity, improve and sustain health outcomes for the most vulnerable States with the worst health statistics.
• The desired objectives of the programme included fostering an enabling environment for UHC policy reform and implementation, institutional management capacity building and health system strengthening.
• This required the full engagement and participation communities with a view to contributing to ending preventable maternal and new-born deaths.
• The programme operated at the Federal level; and geographically in five states of - Borno, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano and Yobe. Following the ODA cuts, from 0.7% to 0.5% and the spend review handrails, the FCDO reprioritisation and business planning exercise beginning in the last quarter of 2020 and first quarter of 2021 the programme had to scale down some key interventions and consider reviewing the geographic scope going into the next financial years.
• The programme now focuses on contributing to two outcomes (1) Morbidity amongst women, newborns, children, and adolescents significantly reduced in targeted states; and (2) Covid-19 transmission and vaccine hesitancy reduced including improved plans and capacity for emergency preparedness and response in the targeted States:
• Output 1: Advocacy & Accountability - Leadership and Governance of primary health care services structures or planning and delivery teams are functional in targeted states (through partnership)
• Output 2: Adequate health workforce for primary health care including RMNCAH service delivery and BHCPF available and sustained in targeted states
• Output 3: Health information management systems capacity to support decision-making for primary health care including RMNCAH and BHCPF service delivery in targeted states increased
• Output 4: Health financing and public financial management to strengthen and sustain access to high quality and affordable primary health care in targeted states increased
• Output 5: Health security and epidemic preparedness and response (EPR) plans developed and operationalized within the targeted states (by addressing social norms/behaviour change)

Position Description

• The MEL Expert will oversee and support all the monitoring, evaluation and learning activities of the Palladium Lafiya programme.
• She/He will lead planning and execution of monitoring and evaluation, ensure quality in accordance with accepted standards, provide essential feedback for learning, accountability and decision-making in line with the programme’s design.
• She/He will be responsible for developing tools and supporting analysis, spearheading evaluative activities, capturing collective progress and impact of the programme, and reinforcing the utilisation of MEL products to support overall institutional learning, strategic planning, and advocacy.
• The MEL Expert will report directly to the Programme Director and will continuously liaise with programme technical teams and will supervise M&E Consultants who will retain responsibility for the regular monitoring of activities in targeted states.
• Reports to: The Programme Director

Primary Duties and Responsibilities
The MEL Expert will:

• Ensure that all MEL systems comply with Palladium’s and FCDO’s policies, procedures, standards and strategic initiatives and specific requirements as agreed with the FCDO.
• Lead the development of the programme’s MEL system, including developing and refining indicators; setting targets; monitoring progress; ensuring timely data collection; writing quarterly and annual reports; and working with the programme state and federal teams to track programme results and outcomes.
• Support best practices in collecting sex and age disaggregated data and using gender-sensitive and equity collection methods in order to understand and respond to programme results with diverse stakeholders and recipients ensuring no one is left behind.
• Lead all MEL initiatives for the programme including monitoring data quality, tracking the progress of activities, collect and report key indicators as required for the monitoring of the programme logframe and informing staff capacity building initiatives (including cross cutting issues such as human capital development, gender, social inclusion and equity).
• Support the linkages between DHIS2, HRIS and LMIS including interoperability in line with national and state plans.
• Work with technical, communications and IT teams to maximize the value and utility of technology initiatives for effective data collection, analysis and dissemination.
• Ensure quality control procedures and accuracy of entered data and comparing it with the existing filing system to make sure all records are consistent and aligned.
• Support the integration of appropriate data platforms and flexible cloud solutions to more accurately collect, monitor and verify programme results and ensure they are aligned with programme MEL plan.
• Support the programme team to perform supervision field visits to ensure the validation and verification of the data collected for accuracy in reporting and to collect supplementary data, stories and conduct qualitative research.
• Contribute monitoring data into the regular programme and technical reports for informing day to day programme management.
• Maintain a database that reflects progress on programme indicators and regularly produce high-quality reports on the results of the programme against its results, and outcomes to the Programme Director and National Team Leader and others as needed.
• Facilitate synthesis of best practices and lessons learned and promote an overall culture of learning through systematic analysis and reflection on programme data.
• Support operational research, documentation, drafting papers for publication and evidence to guide innovative approaches to deliver programme interventions, including those to ensure no-one is left behind, in collaboration with FCDO and other partners.
• Build the capacity of team members across the programme through the circulation of resources and ad hoc mentorship on MEL.
• Other duties as assigned by Programme Director.

Required Qualifications

• Advanced Degree in a relevant discipline (Statistics, Evaluation Science, Public Health, Public Policy, Social Sciences, Political Science or other related degree).
• Demonstrated experience designing and implementing monitoring and evaluation activities with a demonstrable excellent command of monitoring and evaluation methodologies.
• Previous experience implementing and managing a rigorous M&E system including developing and refining performance monitoring plans is required; experience managing Management Information Systems (MIS) on large-scale health programmes is essential.
• Working knowledge of UHC, health systems strengthening, Adolescent Sexual Reproductive Health, Health Security and mechanisms for advocacy and accountability is preferred.
• Ability to build strong working relationships to enable effective management of partnerships and work collaboratively as part of a large and diverse team.
• People management skills with a robust diplomatic understanding of culturally and ethnically sensitive issues.
• Excellent organizational, verbal and written communication skills to manage project communications and disseminate project information are required.
• Excellent skills in MS Excel, Word, PowerPoint; proficiency in MS Access and infographics preferred.
  English language fluency required.
• Willingness to travel and to conduct regular field visits in Northern Nigeria.