Georgia Human and Institutional Capacity Development Activity Performance Monitoring Plan Year 1

The program began on December 21, 2020, and is scheduled to conclude on December 22, 2025. The program's primary objective is to promote human and institutional capacity development in Georgia, with a focus on improving governance, economic growth, and social development. The program's Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) approach is designed to ensure continuous learning, efficiency, and accountability throughout the program cycle. The MEL approach is rooted in USAID's Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) approach, which emphasizes broad-based stakeholder participation, evidence-based decision-making, and the generation, capture, analysis, and application of information and knowledge. The program's performance monitoring plan (PMP) is organized around four key areas: HICD services, Center of Excellence (CoE) activities, Local Subcontractor Development component, and Participant Training (PT) Support. The PMP includes indicator data related to HICD performance indicators, including baseline and targets, precise indicator definitions, data sources, data collection methodologies, and data quality assessment timelines. The program's MEL system is designed to be comprehensive and user-friendly, allowing the Chief of Party (COP), Deputy Chief of Party (DCOP), CoE Manager, and other technical staff to manage for results and make key decisions based on specific performance indicators. The CoE Manager took the lead in developing the system, using a participatory approach to ensure that all members of the project team, Georgian partners, and government counterparts understand the importance of performance-based management and their responsibilities. The program's MEL approach has several benefits, including efficiency, ownership, feedback, and capacity building. Project team members have first-hand knowledge of activities and immediate results in their areas of work and are best suited to efficiently collect and verify basic MEL data. By being involved in project MEL efforts, project team members appreciate that the MEL system belongs to the entire project team, ensuring that the information generated is relevant and consistent with the interests of the project. The program's MEL system is designed to promote learning and adaptation throughout the program cycle. The program will report on progress against the indicators and targets of the PMP in the quarterly, annual, and final reports. The PMP is a "living document" that will be updated periodically, with updates provided to the Contracting Officer's Representative (COR) for review and approval when revisions to the plan are proposed. The program's MEL approach is grounded in USAID's Evaluation Policy and Automated Directives System (ADS) 201. The program's performance indicators are specified in the HICD Activity contract, and the Performance Indicators Reference Sheets (PIRS) are included under Chapter H in the current PMP. The program's MEL data collection approach meets reasonable quality criteria of validity, reliability, timeliness, precision, and integrity, and is disaggregated by gender as appropriate and feasible.