MCC's_Geospatial_Strategy_Highlights.docx

MCC Geospatial Strategy

Highlights - May 2016

Summary The Geospatial Information Needs Assessment and Strategy[footnoteRef:1] identifies current use and opportunities for expanded use of geospatial information technology at MCC and presents a set of strategies for addressing a set of critical needs. These strategies can produce benefits across the MCC Compact Cycle, for both MCC and our partners, helping us to achieve our development objectives. MCC management reviewed and discussed this strategy, adopting its recommendations on April 28, 2016[footnoteRef:2]. [1: MCC is grateful for the support provided by CH2M in developing this assessment and strategy. ] [2: Matt Bohn (AF/AF-FO), Kamran Khan (DCO/FO) and Nancy Lee (DCEO), with the active engagement of Vincent Groh, Vincent (AF/OCIO), Jonathan Nash (DCO/IEPS), Jonathan Richart (DCO/IEPS-ESP) and others.]

Vision Geospatial information provides a unique opportunity to significantly improve data-driven decision-making for MCC and its partners. By improving the use of geospatial information and technology, MCC will:

· Facilitate effective collaboration, as staff visualize and analyze data through intuitive and interactive map based platforms.

· Facilitate quicker and/or deeper insights regarding its investments, from beginning to end, allowing MCC to make more informed decisions.

· Improve overall delivery efficiencies and meet operation’s needs.

· Showcase to external audiences and expand MCC’s industry-leading[footnoteRef:3] transparency with geographic detail. [3: MCC is ranked 2nd globally in the Aid Transparency Index. http://ati.publishwhatyoufund.org/index-2016/results/]

· Reduce waste and fraud in compact delivery through the rigor of geospatial analysis.

Although MCC has some excellent examples of good practice, current use of geospatial information and technology at MCC is inconsistent. This Needs Assessment and Strategy explores opportunities to expand upon these examples and improve geospatial use across MCC.

Methodology This assessment is based on a four-part methodology that involved over 60 staff across MCC: (1) key informant interviews; (2) an agency-wide survey (52 staff from DCO, DPE, A&F, and CPA participated); (3) a workshop to vet findings and prioritize recommendations; and (4) final recommendations developed in collaboration with a steering committee composed of members from A&F, DCO, and DPE.

Key Findings

1. Using geospatial technology is important in achieving MCC’s goals. Participants were unanimous in this conclusion.

2. MCC has implemented excellent examples of good practice within existing compacts. MCC can emulate these across its portfolio, building on successful engagement with country partners (e.g. Indonesia), effectively using geospatial information to communicate project issues (e.g. Senegal), and improving design quality (e.g. Burkina Faso and Ghana).

3. Current use of geospatial information is largely ad hoc and inconsistent across investments and organization units. This is primarily a result of low awareness of geospatial applications within MCC, few systems in place to support them, and varying capacity and data resources within MCAs and partner countries.

4. Data are being produced but not captured consistently for use across the investment cycle. Geospatial work products by consultants and contractors are inconsistent and are not systematically collected and stored to maximize their use and value. This is common in organizations involved in infrastructure development, where geospatial data is often treated as a byproduct of planning, design, and construction activity instead of an (information) asset in itself.

5. Awareness of the potential utility of geospatial data and applications is uneven across the organization. Current use at MCC exists in pockets and is driven by staff with prior experience in geospatial technology and information. While geospatial analysis does not need to be a core competency of MCC, high-level geospatial literacy should be. In other words, MCC staff do NOT need to be geospatial experts, but they DO need to be competent consumers of geospatial data and services.

Critical Needs and Proposed Strategies Based on these findings, we propose four broad strategies (Figure 1) to enable the use of geospatial data and technology to:

1. Facilitate more consistent and effective use of geospatial information across MCC.

2. Make more informed investment and operational decisions.

3. Support monitoring and evaluation.

4. Communicate better with external audiences.

Figure 1. MCC Geospatial Strategy Recommendations

Each strategy is introduced below. Short-term actions can be completed within one year, whereas medium-term would occur within three years.

1. Facilitate more consistent and effective use of geospatial information across MCC.

In order to implement the overall strategy, we recommend that MCC designate a Geospatial Coordinator. The Coordinator will be a bridge between IT and operational units, and serve as a primary technical resource for delivery of geospatial initiatives. The Coordinator would lead implementation of the recommendations provided within this document, as without this leadership, MCC will not have the bandwidth or expertise to execute the strategy. Given the responsibilities outlined here (and in a draft Position Description), we recommend that the position be full time. It could reside in A&F-IT.

Over the short term, the Coordinator would lead implementation of the strategy, including quick wins described below. These include creating enabling conditions such as better guidelines, standards, contract templates, and information security protocols to capture and share geospatial information consistently throughout compacts and threshold programs. The Coordinator would lead the effort to identify capacity building opportunities within MCC and its compacts and facilitate actions to increase capacities for utilizing geospatial information across the compact cycle.

The Coordinator will also manage and facilitate access to geospatial data throughout the organization. This will require the consistent capture of geospatial metadata, which can be quickly and easily improved by establishing standard contract requirements for geospatial deliverables. We also recommend that MCC acquire a platform to diagnose demand and design investments using open, public data. This capability can be purchased as a service and should be extremely user friendly so as not to burden MCC staff with complexities like finding and preparing data for overlay analysis. MCC should also establish a platform, within its existing IT environment, to store and share geospatial information across the compact lifecycle and provide easy access for project design, due diligence and M&E. MCC’s IT group has the technology and expertise to accommodate geospatial information, but adjustments may necessary.

Figure 2. MCC Geospatial Coordinator’s roles

The Geospatial Coordinator could also help extend the benefit of using geospatial information to MCA partners. While the capacity of compact partners varies dramatically between compacts, greater consistency between compacts will benefit MCC in the content and quality of geospatial deliverables.

2. Make more informed investment and operational decisions.

We recommend MCC require location-based recording and reporting of MCC’s work (at multiple geospatial scales – including national, sub-national, exact project location) and associated documents. This will facilitate the next logical step in advancing MCC’s industry-leading transparency and improve the visibility and traceability of MCC’s investments. Spatially explicit project mapping will also benefit M&E program design. In the short term, this could be implemented as an amendment to MCC’s Open Government Plan. Figure 3 illustrates two different geospatial scales: sub-national mapping at the region level and exact project location.

Figure 3. Illustration of regional mapping vs. exact project locations

We recommend MCC take full advantage of available geospatial tools and information to improve decision making. MCC can assess whether off-the-shelf tools and information are sufficient and where purpose built analyses are needed. Depending on the need, this step could be achieved in the short- to medium-term. These geospatial tools and information could be leveraged to support investment and operational decisions. Figure 4 lists several high potential spatial application concepts identified during the assessment.

Integrate work across MCC technical areas and operational units

Figure 4. Geospatial tools and information which can improve investment and operational decisions

A number of tools exist that address the concepts listed in Figure 4. Figure 5 provides illustrations for many of these from which MCC could learn and potentially leverage.

Figure 5. Examples of existing spatial applications relevant to MCC’s work.

3. Support monitoring and evaluation

We recommend MCC and their MCA partners collect consistent aerial project imagery during the compact lifecycle (planning, design, implementation, post-compact) to enable automated geospatial change detection. This could complement costly field surveys, and when they are required, help scope them so they are well targeted. Costs could range significantly depending on what data is publically available, the technology required to fill gaps (drones vs. satellite), and the willingness of partners (donor partners, national governments, private sector) to share costs. DCO and DPE would both lead and benefit from this initiative.

Figure 6. Aerial imageries show project impact over time

We recommend MCC develop tools to collect consistent and secure household survey information and a chain of custody system for any geospatial information that involves personally identifiable information (PII). This will reduce risk of compromising privacy and improve consistency and accuracy for monitoring.

4. Communicate better with external audiences.

We recommend MCC develop an interactive public web map (Figure 7) to communicate compact activities with increasing geographic specificity. This will expand on MCC’s industry-leading transparency work and provide stakeholders with a better sense of what MCC is doing where. In the short term, this would involve mapping project information at a sub-national level. As more spatially explicit information becomes available, geographic project locations could be mapped. With this increased detail, project information could be mapped along with contextual data to illustrate decision logic and M&E reporting data to convey investment outcomes. Geospatial information and technology provide powerful and effective communication tools. Improvements to geospatial data and information management as described in preceding strategy elements will benefit CPA’s work by putting geospatial content in usable forms that allow MCC’s stories to be told through rich and intuitive maps.

Figure 7. Interactive public web map example by the World Bank

In addition, tools and protocols for preparing anonymized and aggregated M&E data for release in the public domain as open data are needed. This would supplement the independent evaluation data currently being released. This effort would be a collaboration between DPE and CPA.

Quick Wins The following quick win opportunities could bring immediate benefits to MCC and its partners, and sustain momentum towards achieving the overall geospatial strategy:

1. Connect MCC needs with available geospatial information and services. This would be part of a broader effort to help MCC staff become good consumers of geospatial services, understanding what is available, and how to use it. The initiative could include success stories in using geospatial information (such as aerial photography), a resource guide listing relevant geospatial resources (web sites, data sources), brownbag lunch sessions on geospatial topics that engage MCC leaders, and project maps posted in high traffic locations to elicit interest. The purpose of this effort is to increase MCC staff’s awareness of available geospatial data and potential applications to facilitate project work.

2. Provide better geospatial guidelines, standards, tools, and protocols. This would facilitate MCC efforts to capture and share geospatial information consistently throughout compacts and threshold programs. It includes:

· Adopting preferred methods for capturing geospatial data and metadata (remote sensing, field survey, sourcing existing data);

· Developing guidelines for geospatial work that can be provided to consultants and MCAs (and their contractors); and

· Developing basic specifications for the acquisition of primary geospatial datasets – such as roads, political boundaries, and aerial photos – as addenda to procurement documents.

3. With IT, identify and provide access to a web-based interactive planning mapping tool. This would support project planning and analysis that is accessible to MCC staff, MCAs, consultants, and contractors. This would provide easy access to publically available aerial photography and other GIS data layers, such as demographics, land use, roads and political boundaries. The tool will provide the ability to overlay project location and alignment data when available. This is a diagnosis and design tool intended for the pre-compact phase of the compact cycle, and will not include sensitive project engineering and M&E data, nor financial information, for which a more robust geospatial platform will need to be developed by MCC in the future.

Support of MCC’s Overall Strategy Making better use of geospatial tools and information will help MCC achieve the goals outlined in NEXT: A New Strategy to Broaden and Deepen Fight Against Poverty by:

· Helping MCC and its partners make data-driven decisions, increasing impacts, reducing costs, and improving delivery.

· Facilitating collaboration and learning.

· Helping to better measure the impacts of its investments.

· Reinforcing its leadership in transparency.

· Serving the broader development community as MCC shares its geospatial information and analysis, leveraging the value of its investments.

Further, these recommendations support MCC’s key founding principles of data-driven decision-making, transparency, and accountability.

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