USAID EPIC Performance Management, Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Plan (PMMELP)

Agency for International Development's (USAID) Office of Education (ED). EPIC's objective is to improve education sector programming, measurement, and management through four interrelated and mutually reinforcing workstreams: organizational effectiveness; professional development; knowledge management; and engagement, communications, and partnerships. The EPIC contract was awarded to Training Resources Group, Inc. (TRG), along with subcontractors Forum One and Social Solutions International, Inc. (Social Solutions), on October 1, 2015. Making Cents International (MCI) was added as a subcontractor in January 2017. The purpose of the Performance Management, Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Plan (PMMELP) is to organize and guide the project's efforts to assess the impact of EPIC and whether objectives are being achieved; inform decisions on whether and how strategies and activities should be adjusted; foster accountability in measurement; and tell EPIC's story (for possible application both within and outside of the education sector). The PMMELP serves both internal and external purposes - as a tool for documenting the observable changes resulting from EPIC's activities (to be shared externally), while serving as an internal tracking and learning tool for activity managers to guide the project's direction. Importantly, the PMMELP also enables the EPIC project to meet USAID requirements for monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL). The EPIC program was designed to make paradigm shifts within and across workstreams, to model how a large organization can transform itself, build quality sector-wide learning, become more productive and strategic, develop internal and external partnerships, and more effectively pursue its mandate and goals. To match the dynamic and holistic approach of EPIC, the PMMELP reflects a systems-thinking, mixed-method evaluative approach that combines traditional, output-focused monitoring and evaluation techniques to measure program progress with newer qualitative methods, such as Outcome Harvesting, Most Significant Change, and Social Network Analysis. The results gained through implementation of the PMMELP are expected to identify where EPIC's work increases the effectiveness of USAID's education programming, and underscore applicability for advancing other USAID sectors; stimulate dialogue among USAID, EPIC project staff, and external stakeholders on the ways in which EPIC contributed to the advancement of USAID's work in the education sector; document and learn from the process by which EPIC contributed to transformation within and across the education ecosystem, and important discoveries that occurred along that journey; inform the development of subsequent EPIC activities; and apprise USAID on the project's performance for accountability, organizational learning – via a Collaborative, Learning and Adaptation (CLA) approach – and documentation purposes within offices and sectors. The strategic results framework, depicted in Figure 1, illustrates the strategic objectives and intermediate results that support EPIC's overarching goal. The framework consists of five key performance indicators that quantitatively measure overall program outputs and qualitatively capture program outcomes. Data from these indicators will serve to inform and guide project management decisions, and further document the outputs and outcomes of EPIC. The EPIC Learning Agenda, which is designed to document EPIC's journey and lessons learned, could be usefully applied both within and outside of the education sector. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is a global leader in the international education sector, providing innovative, cutting-edge approaches and models to expand access to education and capacity development across a broad spectrum of economic and socio-political environments. The Office of Education (ED) within the Bureau for Economic Growth, Education, and Environment (E3) is responsible for implementing USAID's education programming. To reinforce and improve upon the Office's current efforts in support of the Education Strategy, E3/ED conceived of and designed the Education Performance Improvement, Communications, and Knowledge (EPIC) project. EPIC is a five-year activity of support services, managed by the Education Policy and Planning Division (EPP) within E3/ED. EPIC's objective is to improve education sector programming, measurement, and management in the areas of performance improvement and organizational effectiveness.