Results readiness in social protection and labor operations

The main focus of the social protection and labor portfolio is on strengthening client's institutional capacity in the design and implementation of programs, but projects are not well equipped to track progress in this area. Correspondingly, there is a need to strengthen approaches to measuring and monitoring a'missing middle'of service delivery, precisely those areas for which counterpart institutions are responsible during the course of a project. In particular, better measures of the primary functions of social protection and labor agencies are needed, such as identifying and enrolling beneficiaries, targeting, payment systems, fraud and error control, performance monitoring of service delivery providers, responsiveness to citizens, transparency, efficiency, management information systems and monitoring and evaluation systems. New World Bank initiatives particularly standard core indicators by sector and the introduction of results based investment lending call for substantial improvements in the use of monitoring and evaluation (M&E). Impact evaluations are included in about half of projects and should continue to be used selectively and strategically, particularly when the program is innovative, replicable and/ or scalable to reach a broader set of beneficiaries, addresses a knowledge gap and is likely to have a substantial policy impact. Structuring evaluations around core themes with common outcome measures is fundamental to building a global knowledge base on development effectiveness.Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Poverty and Social Impact Analysis,E-Business,Safety Nets and Transfers,Housing&Human Habitats

SIKAP MASYARAKAT TERHADAP ARUS INFORMASI DI MASA PANDEMI COVID 19: KEGIATAN PENYULUHAN KEPADA PERSATUAN WANITA DARUSSALAM (PWD)

The Covid19 pandemic that has hit the entire world since March 2020 provides various aspects of people's lives: economic, social, behavior, and life habits. One aspect that often occurs is the flood of information about a pandemic, especially in the early days of the virus outbreak. This community service aims to provide understanding in responding to the flood of information during the pandemic to the public, especially the women at the Persatuan Wanita Darussalam (PWD) in Darussalam 3 Residential, Ngemplak, Sleman. The method used in community service is by observing the subject, providing online counseling using the zoom meeting application by utilizing the RT / RW Net in the housing and followed by follow-up monitoring in the form of post-extension monitoring. The result of this service activity is that the community, especially, gets learning and understanding how to deal with the flood of information during the pandemic, especially in filtering real and false information (hoax)

Meeting the challenges of urban park management: A Study of Two Sites: a thesis completed and submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Resource and Environmental Planning, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

There are key environmental and management issues relevant to protected areas and national parks apparent world-wide such as: management of environmental quality, biodiversity conservation, management of visitor use and impacts, allocation of access, law enforcement and monitoring, facility design, park financial viability, and community development. Today, the trend has changed towards more specific and strategic management plans. Greater emphasis is put towards meeting targets and objectives and park managers are encouraged to have a direct hand in the preparation of management plans. Visitor impact is also creating problems in park management that was unforeseen in the past. The management of visitors may be viewed as an integral part of the operational network of service tasks, service standards, and service delivery systems of recreation sites. Comprehensive planning and on-going monitoring underpin much of the success in visitor management. Whether park management decides to use tools such as hardening, hedging, or flexing, controlling numbers and type of visitor, interpretation/information education, or even a combination of these, the vital ingredient is to have a framework for visitor management. Collaborative management is not a new approach and is the most recommended technique to achieve most management objectives within protected areas today. Collaborative management stands on the concept of "common good." Because it is a process, collaborative management requires on-going review and improvement. Its most important result is not a management plan but a management partnership that is capable of effectively responding to various needs and addressing boundless problems. In the Philippines where there is more uncertainty about protected areas management, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources has the primary responsibility for the establishment and management of protected areas. The Quezon Memorial National Park, classified as a strictly protected area and whose management objectives are categorized as a national park, is one example. Two urban parks that originally formed part of QMNP are the subjects of this study. This research compares and evaluates the management schemes of these parks based on: (a) park management, (b) visitor management, and (c) biodiversity conservation against the criteria set by international and local guidelines. It also makes recommendations on how to effect changes in the management of these urban parks to achieve environmental conservation goals

Use and outcomes of targeted therapies in early and metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer in Australia: Protocol detailing observations in a whole of population cohort

Background: The management of human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive breast cancer (BC) has changed dramatically with the introduction and widespread use of HER2-targeted therapies. However, there is relatively limited real-world information on patterns of use, effectiveness and safety in whole of population cohorts. The research programme detailed in this protocol will generate evidence on the prescribing patterns, safety monitoring and outcomes of patients with BC treated with HER2- targeted therapies in Australia. Methods/design: Our ongoing research programme will involve a series of retrospective cohort studies that include every patient accessing Commonwealth-funded HER2-targeted therapies for the treatment of early BC and advanced BC in Australia. At the time of writing, our cohorts consist of 11 406 patients with early BC and 5631 with advanced BC who accessed trastuzumab and lapatinib between 2001 and 2014. Pertuzumab and trastuzumab emtansine were publicly funded for metastatic BC in 2015, and future data updates will include patients accessing these medicines. We will use dispensing claims for cancer and other medicines, medical service claims and demographics data for each patient accessing HER2- targeted therapies to undertake this research. Ethics and dissemination: Ethics approval has been granted by the Population Health Service Research Ethics Committee and data access approval has been granted by the Australian Department of Human Services (DHS) External Review Evaluation Committee. Our findings will be reported in peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations and policy forums. By providing detailed information on the use and outcomes associated with HER2-targeted therapies in a national cohort treated in routine clinical care, our research programme will better inform clinicians and patients about the real-world use of these treatments and will assist third-party payers to better understand the use and economic costs of these treatments

Liberalization in China's Key Service Sectors Following WTO Accession: Some Scenarios and Issues of Measurement

This paper documents and assesses the significance of the policy changes in China that WTO accession implies in 3 key service categories (banking, insurance, and telecoms), asking whether it is likely they will really be fully implemented in their entirety as undertaken at signature in 2002. While it would seem that China will have extraordinarily open markets for these services by 2007 (and for banking, perhaps in the world), the starting point for implementing these policy changes seems so highly restricted that doubts have been raised about the feasibility of implementing such changes over such a short time even if threats of eventual retaliation from WTO partners speeds things along. WTO members are monitoring the implementation of China's WTO commitments, and following dispute settlement might retaliate in the future were these agreed changes not to be implemented. I discuss what scenarios this liberalization might follow, and ask whether these commitments can really be implemented as undertaken.

Role of Monitoring and Supervision to Improve Health Service Delivery in Basic Health Units of Punjab, Pakistan

Effective and efficient monitoring and evaluation system with a strong accountability mechanism have shown good results over the past few years in many countries of the world. Punjab has also successfully developed and implemented e-monitoring system by providing android phones to all district level health managers including Executive District Officer of Health (EDO), District Officer Health (DOH) and Deputy District Officer Health (DDOH). This e-monitoring system called as Health watch is being implemented successfully in all 36 districts of Punjab and real time data about availability of health facility staff, medicines and functional equipment and important service delivery indicators are being captured and reflected on a dashboard managed by Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB). In order to validate and verify the data collected by district level health managers, a second tier of monitoring and evaluation was introduced by hiring of 172 Monitoring Evaluation Assistants (MEAs) to monitor the primary health care facilities on the same dataset. The paper shows that field monitoring and validation of field monitoring through MEAs is bringing an improvement in service delivery indicators of Basic Health Units (BHUs). It also describes the process of e-monitoring for the improvement in health service delivery at BHUs. A real time data of all BHUs of 36 districts of Punjab has been taken into account. A quantitative comparison of Healthwatch data and MEAs data has been made to assess the situation of stock position of medicine, availability of functional equipments, staff absenteeism, and service delivery indicators. Subsequently evidence generated through the Healthwatch and MEAs data are used to develop appropriate strategies to address the bottlenecks. It has been shown that there is positive relationship between the results achieved and the resources used. This paper aims to provide a future course of action to strengthen the MEAs and Healthwatch data to be used for planning and policy making. Keywords: Healthwatch, Basic Health Units, Monitoring Evaluation Assistants, Policy and Strategic Planning Unit

Targets and indicators in World Bank population projects

In reviewing World Bank evaluations of the impact of population projects, the author explains the nature and uses of four families of performance indicators. Two measure inputs: Project implementation indicators, which are project-specific, are the principal measures used in Bank supervision. They measure success in creating sources capable of conducting certain desired activities. Process (or activity) indicators measure performance of a project's intended activities but tell nothing about the yield or output of those activities. Two measure output: Performance (or intermediate-output) indicators measure the yield or output-performance of a project or program. For family planning, the principal indicator in this category is acceptor figures, normally with details about methods used plus the age, parity, and geographical distribution of acceptors. Quality may or may not be good and coverage may or may not be comprehensive. These indicators do not directly measure ultimate demographic impacts - lower fertility and slower population growth. Demographic outcome (or impact) indicators do measure demographic impacts, usually the contraceptive prevalence rate and age-specific and total fertility rates. One can use a desired value of any comparator as a target, but a target is only one possible comparator. Two more widely used comparators for family planning are trends (comparing current with past performance) and international performance (an external comparison). The author recommends strengthening the Bank's use of world (successful developing country) standards and of trend analysis rather than increasing its use of target setting. The Bank's primary interest is normally the performance of the borrower's national program, so more attention should be given to program-level rather than to project-level performance - except for pilot projects. The author recommends: that the Bank standardize its terminology about these four families of indicators; that the Population and Human Resources Department periodically prepare comparator tables and graphs for use in Bank project and sector reports; that the Bank discontinue Project Performance Audit Reports on population projects, as they seldom add much to information and judgments contained in Project Completion Reports - the money saved could be applied to more effective evaluation research; that operational staff show more concern for a program's contraceptive mix; that more attention be paid to a program's service quality; and that the use of demographic and health surveys be the rule, not the exception, in Bank population and health projects.Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Agricultural Research,Health Economics&Finance,Scientific Research&Science Parks

Does climate information matter? A proposed monitoring and evaluation framework for participatory assessment of the impact of climate services for male and female farmers

This report summarizes a new contextual and gender-responsive monitoring and evaluation framework (M&E) to assess the added value of climate information and advisory services for smallholder farming communities across the developing world. The proposed M&E is based on three primary goals for conducting an evaluation of climate services for farmers: 1) to inform design of a new climate service project; 2) to identify gaps in climate service delivery, and improve project effectiveness and service delivery quality; and 3) to assess impact of provided services for farmers, hypothesized to benefit from the climate service. In order to meet these goals, we developed a multi-step process for climate service impact evaluation, including a pre-assessment (PA) toolkit of ethnographic and evaluative tools, followed by guidelines for baseline data collection, monitoring, and evaluation of climate service projects. The PA serves to build understanding of background contextual issues that constrain or enable the usefulness of climate information services in any given community, such as information about farmer’s decision- making, socio-economic and cultural constraints behind behavioral changes, and gender roles and norms within a given community. These elements may have impacts on information use and changes in practices, skills and abilities that aid farmers’ adaptation to a changing climate, and uptake of information to make decisions under uncertainty. Once such understanding of farmers’ decision-making context is determined, evaluators will be better equipped to define a contextualized impact pathway of climate information for rural farmers. The PA is the first step in a larger process of developing a targeted, locally-specific and gender-responsive M&E framework. This M&E framework will enable project teams to evaluate the relevance of climate services to support smallholder farmer decision-making under an uncertain climate and improve local management of climate related risks at the farm-level

REAL-TIME MONITORING OF WIND CONVERTERS BASED ON SOFTWARE AGENTS

Due to increasing numbers of wind energy converters, the accurate assessment of the lifespan of their structural parts and the entire converter system is becoming more and more paramount. Lifespan-oriented design, inspections and remedial maintenance are challenging because of their complex dynamic behavior. Wind energy converters are subjected to stochastic turbulent wind loading causing corresponding stochastic structural response and vibrations associated with an extreme number of stress cycles (up to 109 according to the rotation of the blades). Currently, wind energy converters are constructed for a service life of about 20 years. However, this estimation is more or less made by rule of thumb and not backed by profound scientific analyses or accurate simulations. By contrast, modern structural health monitoring systems allow an improved identification of deteriorations and, thereupon, to drastically advance the lifespan assessment of wind energy converters. In particular, monitoring systems based on artificial intelligence techniques represent a promising approach towards cost-efficient and reliable real-time monitoring. Therefore, an innovative real-time structural health monitoring concept based on software agents is introduced in this contribution. For a short time, this concept is also turned into a real-world monitoring system developed in a DFG joint research project in the authors’ institute at the Ruhr-University Bochum. In this paper, primarily the agent-based development, implementation and application of the monitoring system is addressed, focusing on the real-time monitoring tasks in the deserved detail