Monitoring & Evaluation Services for the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI)

Added: Sep 12, 2011 4:47 pm  

The United States Agency for International Development in the Dominican Republic (USAID/DR) intends to obtain the services of a contractor to monitor and evaluate Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI) activities for five years beginning in January 2012 (estimate).  The results of these evaluations will provide Washington and the regional Missions with a basis for judging program effectiveness, impact, and sustainability of implementing activities under CBSI. Furthermore, these evaluations will better inform the different stakeholders of future policy design, strategy interventions and resource allocation. 

 The contractor will be responsible for:

Compiling an inventory (last five years) of all studies/assessment/evaluations conducted in the CBSI targeted countries, addressing the identified CBSI programmatic areas. 

Creating a social justice index developing an appropriate set of indicators to track U.S. Government and host country interventions' impact in preventing crime and insecurity.  The index should look at those factors that drive crime, violence, and other risky behaviors among at-risk youth, as well as consider institutional factors such as, judicial and law enforcement capacity, civil society, and community engagement. 

Developing, standardizing, collecting and disseminating Mission-level output results emerging from CBSI priority areas.

Conducting a rigorous quasi-experimental regional impact evaluation of the changes that can be directly attributed to the CBSI intervention in the Caribbean region.  It is important to note that that even when the strategic areas for the CBSI intervention have been selected (crime prevention, justice sector reform and anti-corruption), specific activities in each country will be at different stages of design and or implementation.  The impact evaluation shall assess:

Relevance: the extent to which the objectives of the development interventions (CBSI programmatic sectors) were consistent with host country needs and policies, regional priorities and implementing partners. 

Efficiency: how economically resources/inputs were converted to results.

Effectiveness: the extent to which the development intervention's objectives were achieved.

Impact: the positive and negative, primary and secondary long term effects produced by a development intervention, directly or indirectly, intended (formal stated objectives) or unintended. 

Sustainability: estimate sustainability of the results from the different CBSI development interventions.

Conducting a mid- [contract] term performance evaluation with the objective of providing CBSI stakeholders with an opportunity for mid-project course correction, guidance and direction.  This mid-term evaluation shall be conducted using a representative sample (size of the project, funding levels, and geographic location) of the CBSI projects being implemented in the region.  At a minimum, the following questions shall be answered by this evaluation:

What project results are on track?  

Are project objectives and outcomes still appropriate? Are assumptions in project design still valid?

Are project work plans well aligned to ensure timely implementation?

Are there other key unintended outcomes?

Are there inconsistencies between the country level results and the regional goals? 

 How well are the projects aligned to CBSI goals? How are Missions planning to continue CBSI activities after end of project implementation?

How has the project supported or hindered collaborations with other donors, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and government agencies working in the region?

 Disseminating CBSI results.  Maintaining and distributing up-to-date M&E finding reports at regularly scheduled intervals to internal and external CBSI stakeholders via a mutually-determined web platform.

Organizing/executing an annual regional knowledge sharing conference/seminar, in cooperation with individual USAID Missions, to disseminate CBSI achieved results, lessons learned, strengths and weaknesses in design and implementation that affect performance, outcomes and impact, and recommendations. 
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Developing innovative and effective ways to widely disseminate results achieved and lessons learned throughout the region.