ICTworks

New technologies are creating a data-driven revolution in monitoring development programs and evaluating short and long-term impact, resulting in more responsive, adaptive, and impactful management. These advances also raise a new set of challenges for our field, in terms of quality, capacity, ethics, and security.

• Where once enumerators used paper surveys, mobile data collection is the norm, resulting in new insights, but also data overload and survey fatigue.
• Mobile phones are now commonplace, and their data exhaust is creating new impact measurement opportunities, but also ethical and privacy challenges.
• Soon sensors will be collecting data remotely, creating a whole new level of awareness, but also measurement bias and security risks.

As technology is changing the M&E operating environment, the M&E field itself is morphing from monitoring and evaluating, to include robust research on effectiveness, and a focus on organizational learning. Therefore, this year’s M&E Tech conference is now MERL Tech, brought to you by FHI 360, Mercy Corps, and TechChange.

Please register now to join over 275 of your peers and colleagues on October 16th at Academy Hall in Washington, DC for a deep exploration of four big questions relevant to ever sector in development:

• What does & doesn’t work when using technology in MERL?
• How can Big/Open Data and dashboards improve decision-making?
• What are the privacy, security and ethical issues inherent with MERL data?
• Which enterprise-level indicators and IT systems should we be using?

We are again creating a community-driven conference, where practitioners in monitoring, evaluation, research, learning, and technology will facilitate every session. Even though we will be charging a modest fee this year to better allocate seats to those who want to attend, we expect to sell out quickly

The day-long conference will be followed by a free open-bar reception and MERL demo session to allow the networking and connections that form the basis for productive partnerships. Be sure to register now for either the full conference + reception, or just the reception.