Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Adviser

Job Description (Roles and Responsibilities)

The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) is setting up a new team to support our diplomatic posts across the Indo-Pacific region with their bilateral project and programme management. This is to raise the quality and capability of our network’s programme management, in line with the FCDO’s Programme Operating Framework (PrOF). The team will be based in the British Embassy in Jakarta (as part of the Indo Pacific Regional Department’s Jakarta hub) and in the British High Commission in New Delhi, as part of the Indo Pacific Regional Department’s (IPRD) Delhi hub, to cover the range of time zones of the region. It will provide support to posts around the Indian Ocean region as well as China, North East and South East Asia and the Pacific. It will help with procurement, programme and financial management and monitoring and evaluation. In a consultation we ran with our Indo-Pacific diplomatic network earlier this year, between 10-20 posts indicated they needed support with this.

The wider Indo-Pacific Regional Department designs and delivers major trans-boundary regional programming and provides technical policy advice. The Team delivers major multi-year Official Development Assistance programmes in three main areas: Climate, Economic Development and Social Development. The team is a mix of technical advisors (focused on the Indo-Pacific), a policy lead, and Programme Managers. We support the delivery of HMG’s Indo-Pacific strategy, as set out in the UK Government’s 2021 ‘Integrated Review’. The team includes three Hubs based in Delhi, London, and ASEAN hub based in Jakarta.

We are looking for a Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Adviser who will be based in the British Embassy in New Delhi to:
a) Firstly, provide monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) support to all ongoing and future programmes of IPRD to ensure effective delivery. You will provide MEL support to all programmes from the design and business case stage to programme completion stage. This involves designing robust programme theories of change, results frameworks, and working with implementing partners to ensure these frameworks are implemented well and robust monitoring data are generated to review programme progress.

b) Secondly, you will deliver MEL support to designated UK Embassies and High Commissions across the Indo-Pacific region without an in-house MEL advisor, to design and implement a MEL plan for their bilateral programming. Delivering this objective will account for 50% of this role, and will contribute to the new Jakarta/Delhi based Post Support team, supporting our diplomatic posts in the Indo-Pacific with their bilateral programme management.

We consider monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) fundamental to successful programme delivery; to drive evidence-based decision making; and to broaden the UK’s (and global) evidence base for development interventions. At FCDO, the overall MEL activity involves: designing qualitative and quantitative systems to track progress of our programmes (monitoring); using the monitoring data to learn, adapt, and improve effectiveness of programmes (learning); and assessing whether or not our programmes succeed in achieving desired impact (evaluations) to improve future programming. In this role the jobholder will work 50% on IPRD’s own programmes, and 50% on supporting bilateral programming as part of the new IPRD Post Suport Function

The MEL Adviser will:
a) Work closely with IPRD’s Senior MEL Adviser to ensure the department’s overarching MEL strategy is successfully implemented, both at programme and portfolio levels, to ensure efficient tracking of progress and contribution to FCDO objectives.

b) Work closely with IPRD programme teams to provide monitoring, evaluation and learning support for ongoing and future programmes. You will work with the senior MEL Adviser to ensure all programmes have robust monitoring frameworks in place; ensure all ICF programmes have relevant ICF Indicators in their results frameworks; ensure that implementing partners supply robust data for tracking and reviewing programme progress; and ensure quality learning is produced and applied consistently to maximise programme effectiveness.

c) Proactively engage with programme implementing partners to ensure they buy into programme theories of change and clearly understand FCDO/IPRD expectations at outcome level.

d) Proactively engage with FCDO’s M&E networks, central teams, Statistics and Evaluation Cadres, to draw on best-practice approaches and adapt them to IPRD MEL requirements.

e) Throughout the implementation phase of all IPRD programmes, provide clear guidance to programme teams on best monitoring practices, ensuring data quality, and actively engage in annual review processes to ensure progress is reported correctly.

f) Work closely with IPRD’s Senior MEL adviser to develop a strategy for effective