Amendment 0006 for the NOFO APS to announce winners for technical area five change PD and applicants for window 2 final AO signed.pdf

Amendment 0006 for the NOFO APS No: 95332418N0002

NOFO APS Name: “PARTNERSHIPS with MCC Program”

The purpose of Amendment 0006 is to: 1) Clarify the application review and selection process, 2)

Announce the Window 1 applicants invited to participate in the co-creation and Phase II application for the Technical Area #5 (High Frequency Monitoring Data), 3) Announce the applicants who submitted an application for Window 2, Technical Area #5 High Frequency Monitoring Data, and 4) Revise the

Partnership Opportunity program description for Technical Area #5 High Frequency Monitoring Data.

1. MCC hereby issues the following clarification regarding the application review and selection process:

For technical areas that receive Concept Papers in more than one window, MCC will complete the evaluation process (i.e., Phases I and II) in the previous window(s) before initiating the process in the following window. For instance, for a given technical area, the Window 1 application review and selection process will be completed before the Window 2 evaluation process is initiated. If MCC’s partnership needs are met in Window 1, MCC will not review

Window 2 Concept Papers; however, if the partnership opportunity (technical area) remains open after the conclusion of the Window 1 review process, MCC may initiate the Window 2 review and selection process.

2. The Window 1 applicant invited to participate in the Phase II Complete Application for the Technical Area #5 High Frequency Monitoring Data is:

AidData, College of William & Mary, PO Box 8795, Williamsburg, VA, Mr. Alexander

Wooley, AidData Partnerships and Communications Director, awooley@aiddata.wrn.edu

Following is the list of applicants that applied to NOFO during Window 1 but were not selected to continue to Phase II for the Technical Area #5 High Frequency Monitoring Data:

IMC Worldwide Inc., 4601 N. Fairfax Drive, Suite 1200, Arlington, VA 22203, Mr. Imad

Abousleiman, PE, Director of US Operations, Imad.Abousleiman@imcworldwide.com

Management Systems International, 200 12th Street South, 12th Fl. Arlington, VA

22202, Mr. Andrew Griminger, Executive Vice President, agriminger@msi-inc.com

3. The following applicant submitted a Concept Paper for the Technical Area 5 High Frequency

Monitoring Data, Window 2:

Westat, Inc.

mailto:awooley@aiddata.wrn.edu mailto:Imad.Abousleiman@imcworldwide.com mailto:agriminger@msi-inc.com

1600 Research Boulevard

Rockville, MD 20850-3129

4. In Section A, Program Description, Section IV. Program Description, part 2 Partnership

Opportunities, delete and add the revised program description for Technical Area 5, High

Frequency Monitoring Data. In Section B Federal Award Information, Section II. Estimated Funding and Number of Awards, delete the El Salvador Roads part, specifically, delete “The El

Salvador Roads portion is an additional/separate $150,000 - $250,000.”

TECHNICAL AREA 5: HIGH FREQUENCY MONITORING DATA PARTNERSHIP OPPORTUNITY

“Introduction The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) seeks technical recommendations and methodological guidance to improve its evidence gathering methods. Since its inception, MCC has been dedicated to the idea of rigorously evaluating every project. MCC’s approach to development assistance hinges on its smart and extensive use of evidence to inform investment decisions, guide program implementation strategies, and assess and learn from its investment experiences. However, recently we have seen the need to implement better monitoring techniques to inform program decisions in a more timely fashion and to improve evaluation planning. The rapid expansion of new data gathering and analytic modalities promises to improve the utility of its evidence and/or reduce its costs. The adaptation of these new types of data to inform MCC’s evidence requirements will require a systematic assessment of both MCC’s needs for evidence, an ability to assess the capabilities and maturity of the newly emerging modalities, and an ability to inform MCC’s choice of cost-saving or results-improving modalities.

Some of the new modalities MCC has considered for high frequency data include (but are not limited to):

remote imaging; crowd-sourced data; smart-sensors; electricity and water grid meters; traffic counts and origin/destination checks using cameras; and continually updated, confidentiality protected administrative data. The key features sought with these modalities include embedded geospatial information, known and acceptable data quality descriptors, low marginal costs of expanding geographic or target population coverage, and low costs of repeated or temporally-continuous reporting.

MCC’s Data Needs and Current Limitations

MCC’s data collection activities serve multiple functions including:

- Informing the investment choices of MCC and partner countries;

- Measuring baselines and counterfactuals;

- Monitoring and improving program implementation; and

- Evaluating the effectiveness of these investments to help inform future investment decisions.

These activities rely on a variety of traditional evidence-gathering modalities; modalities that are often slow to adapt to new data gathering opportunities – for good and practical reasons. For example, impact evaluations typically rely on micro-level individual, household and establishment surveys to document relevant characteristics and conditions. While these microdata can provide critical insights to investment decisions and results, they can be costly.

MCC wants to better study key assumptions in our program logics and the causal chains that result in project impacts. Persistent, high frequency, consistently measured data enhance opportunities to more accurately model causal patterns of development constraints and investment impacts. This is especially true when key intermediate outcome measures are not stable over time or when more immediate outcomes have great bearing on the probability that we will be able to detect an effect through an impact evaluation. For example, if teachers do not consistently attend and actively participate in trainings, we cannot expect to see a change in their pedagogy and thus in student learning outcomes. Or, if a project rehabilitates a water treatment plant expecting more water to get to customers, there should be high frequency monitoring of both rainfall and pressure in the pipes to ensure the supply of water is available to be treated and is getting to customers as would be expected.

New high frequency data gathering modalities provide opportunities to cost-effectively measure key program outcomes and provide valuable supplementary or alternative sources of evidence of program impacts. This sort of evidence will complement the rich micro-survey data, if it can reliably assess the observed micro-relationships affecting our projects.

MCC is looking for partners that can provide technical expertise and thought leadership on high frequency data gathering across multiple sectors. Partners should be able to provide guidance on the kinds of data that are feasible to collect; be able to collect the data or find additional partners that can collect the data; and provide analysis, as needed. All data should be in compliance with MCC’s open data guidelines.

MCC is particularly interested in partnerships with research and academic institutions.

Concept notes should describe the proposed technology and identify the specific indicators the technology will measure and the sectors where it would best be applied. MCC is interested in low-cost ways to measure indicators including, but not limited to:

Energy:

Power outage duration and frequency

Technical and non-technical losses on the grid

Voltage fluctuations

Electricity consumption by end users

WASH:

Water pressure at various points in the network

Continuity of service for end users

Non-revenue water

Water quality at various points in the network

Water consumption by end users

Roads:

Road roughness

Traffic counts

Origin-destination patterns

Maintenance

Agriculture:

Yields

Agriculture input use

Cropping practices

Irrigation flow

Land:

Land use patterns

Land attached investment

Education/Workforce Development:

https://www.mcc.gov/resources/doc/guidance-evaluation-microdata-guidelines

Learning outcomes

Education quality

Teacher or student attendance

Training participation

Wages

Examples in practice In Ghana, MCC is piloting an approach to monitor electricity grid outages using a cell phone app.

In Tanzania, MCC put pressure loggers on the water distribution network to measure when water was flowing through the pipes.

Possible other examples

For roads, using Bluetooth to capture origin destination data or using cameras for traffic counts.

For agriculture, using satellite imagery to measure crop yields.”

MCC encourages parties that are interested in teaming on Concept Papers to submit Expressions of

Interest (EOIs) that will be published on www.grants.gov. Please see Amendment 0001 for details on how to submit an Expression of Interest.

MCC is looking forward to receiving applications for Window 3. Concept Papers for all technical areas are due on March 30, 2018. Organizations are invited to submit Concept Papers for any of the Technical Areas featured in the APS.

Jacqueline H. Naranjo

Agreement Officer

End of Amendment 0006 http://www.grants.gov/