metrics Archives - Humanosphere

metrics

Philanthrocapitalists propose a Social Progress Index |

: Metrics Mania; Flicky, Beto Ruis Alonso

Measurement, in case you didn’t know it, is the new black for the aid and development community.

It’s true that innovation, as a buzzword anyway, hasn’t gone out of fashion yet and social entrepreneurship is still hot – despite the fact that few seem able to define it. But measurement is definitely this year’s favored wrap for the hip humanitarian.

Bill Gates’ annual letter this year was all about the need for better metrics and data in the fight against poverty and inequity. Bono, dutifully following suit at a recent TED talk, said he is actually sexually excited by data now and considers himself less just an anti-poverty activist and more of a factivist.

Measurement is it, fo shizzle! Nobody who wants to be anybody in fighting poverty and injustice talks about doing anything anymore if it can’t be measured.

Last week, at the Skoll World Forum in London, came more evidence of this trend. The Skoll Foundation and their gathering of social entrepreneurs helped launch yet another humanitarian yardstick – the Social Progress Index.

And who could argue against such a thing? Who wouldn’t want to be able to quantify the impact of an aid or development project?

Answer: Nobody

The only problem is that it’s not that easy to actually measure this stuff – equality, opportunity, security, happiness and well-being.

“These are tough concepts to measure,” said Michael Green, a renowned economist in London who with Matthew Bishop, a journalist at the Economist magazine, is one of the leading proponents of philanthrocapitalism (which, like social enterprise, I also think is ill-defined … but that’s another story).

“We need a new way to measure social progress that is independent of economic indicators,” said Green, who with Bishop is proposing just such a new measurement tool with this new Social Progress Index. It’s still just an idea to test out, he said, but we’re clearly in need of a better yardstick for aid and development. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, aid, Bill Gates, Bono, development, Matthew Bishop, measurement, metrics, Michael Green, philanthrocapitalism, Skoll World Forum

January 30, 2013 | 2:47 PM | By Tom Paulson |

Gates Foundation CEO describes how measuring polio is key to ending it |

Bill Gates issued his annual letter for 2013 today, in which he makes the case for measurement as a critical tool to fighting poverty, disease and inequality.

The call for better measurement and evaluation within the aid and development community is popular, but hardly new. And, as we noted earlier in the week when Gates spilled the beans on what he was going to say this year, it’s one thing to measure something and quite another to be certain you’re looking at the right variables, getting meaningful numbers and coming up with an answer that actually provides you with a useful new course of action.

That’s why I wanted to tell Jeff Raikes, CEO of the Bill& Melinda Gates Foundation, the story of the drunk under the street light.

You know, this guy sees a drunk guy crawling around under a light looking for his car keys. He asks the drunk where exactly he thinks he dropped the keys. “Over there in that dark alley,” replies the inebriate. So the guy asks, why look here? Drunk guy: “The light is better.”

“…” said Raikes, blankly looking like he thought agreeing to this interview maybe wasn’t such a good idea.

My point was that measurement and evaluation are fine, but as Albert Einstein said: “Some things that are worth doing can’t be measured; And some things that can be measured aren’t worth doing.”

The eradication of polio is a top priority right now for the Gates Foundation, as Gates notes in his 2013 letter and has said many times over the years — saying so again in a speech this week in London. He thinks it can be done by 2018, a fairly bold prediction because it’s been made by others so many times over and has, so far, never happened. Said Gates:

“The number of global polio cases has been under 1,000 cases for the last two years, but getting rid of the very last few cases is the hardest part.”

Yeah, so how can measurement help? Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, annual letter, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Jeff Raikes, metrics, Nigeria, polio

January 28, 2013 | 12:19 PM | By Tom Murphy |

Bill Gates talks metrics and spills the beans on his annual letter |

On Wednesday, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will officially release Bill’s annual letter.

You can sign up here to get it yourself, or just read the Wall Street Journal op-ed published last week in which he pretty much says the same thing:

“In the past year, I have been struck by how important measurement is to improving the human condition. You can achieve incredible progress if you set a clear goal and find a measure that will drive progress toward that goal.”

No surprise here. But there’s measurement and then there is evaluation. They aren’t always the same thing. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, annual letter, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, metrics

October 3, 2012 | 11:45 AM | By Tom Paulson |

METRICS MANIA

Threatening to pull the plug on a big malaria project — Metrics Mania? |

Flicky, Beto Ruis Alonso

Metrics Mania

The future looks bleak for a big anti-malaria project you may not have heard of — the AMFm, Affordable Medicines Facility for malaria.

The idea of the $463-million AMFm, launched in 2004, was to subsidize the supply of anti-malaria drugs so that people in poor countries could afford the life-saving medications. People did get them, and malaria rates have declined significantly since. But as Nature reports, experts are raising concerns about this particular initiative due to lack of clear evidence that it had much impact.

So the push is on to either significantly alter the AMFm initiative or just kill it.

But let’s try to keep in mind that old axiom – “Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence.” Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Politics, Affordable Medicines Facility, malaria, metrics

June 7, 2012 | 10:40 AM | By Tom Paulson |

METRICS MANIA

Metrics Mania afflicts the fight against poverty |

Flickr, chrisjohnbeckett

Newton, statue outside the British Library

A lot of people who say they want to help poor people — the aid and development community — have been getting really nasty with each other lately. Why? In part, it’s because fighting poverty is messy and hard to measure.

At the center of this nastiness is a well-known economist, Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, who is chronically accused by critics of promoting an anti-poverty strategy – known as the Millennium Villages Project – which they say is unproven.

The criticism flared again recently, prompting reports like this Forbes piece, which contends Jeff Sachs’ Millennium Villages Showing Zero Results

That’s not quite true. The more thoughtful critics don’t actually say Sachs’ approach doesn’t work. They just say it isn’t clear yet if it’s working.

But boy, does this lack of clarity make some folks angry! To wit:

One of Sachs’ leading critics, Michael Clemens at the prestigious Center for Global Development in Washington, DC, recently referred to Sachs on Twitter as “contemptible” for failing to acknowledge his project’s faults in an op-ed he wrote defending the value of foreign aid.
Timothy Ogden, editor-in-chief at Philanthropy Action, replied to Clemens (also on Twitter) that Sachs is to economics what Pat Robertson is to Christianity, which I assume was not meant as a compliment.

I have high regard for both Clemens and Ogden and this was, after all, just Twitter. But such hostility directed at Sachs is not that unusual. And it has gotten so intense lately I started wondering if the intensity is overwhelming the content here.

I’m no aid expert, economist or even really that good at math. I’m just a journalist who covers this stuff. And I do love a good argument. But I’m not so sure this qualifies as a good argument anymore. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Center for Global Development, development, evaluation, foreign aid, Jeffrey Sachs, metrics, Michael Clemens, Millennium Villages, Philanthropy Action, Timothy Ogden

June 7, 2012 | 10:00 AM | By Tom Paulson |

METRICS MANIA

Q&A with Jeffrey Sachs: Why is everyone so mad at this guy? |

Tom Paulson

Jeffrey Sachs, outside Paramount Theatre on recent visit to Seattle

Well, maybe not everyone.

But the world-renowned economist and director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute certainly has his fair share of angry critics.

Jeffrey Sachs draws fire like few others within the aid and development community. Yet it’s also fair to say he has done as much as anyone to promote the fight against global poverty and injustice.

Before he became known as an anti-poverty warrior, Sachs advised countries in Latin America and Eastern Europe on transitioning to market economies, an experience which led him to a focus on international development in general.

He’s become a vocal advocate of the power we have to end extreme poverty and a critic of the indifference of the rich world to the plight of the poor — or of policy makers who don’t take up the cause.

Sachs is perhaps mostly closely associated with the initiative known as the Millennium Development Goals, an ambitious scheme launched by the United Nations and international community in 2000 that set out eight goals aimed at reducing extreme poverty and global inequity.

To both prove the value of and learn how best to achieve these goals, Sachs launched the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) — a 10-year project based in 14 communities across Africa, involving some 500,000 people given funding to make strategic improvements in certain aspects of health, infrastructure, education and business.

Millennium Villages

It’s an investment of tens of millions of dollars over ten years that tallies out at $120 per person per year – aimed at demonstrating that key changes in health, agriculture, water, roads, education and business development can lift communities out of poverty.

And it is Sachs’ Millennium Villages Project that seems to get people hopping mad.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Jeffrey Sachs, metrics, millennium development goals, Millennium Villages

June 7, 2012 | 9:57 AM | By Tom Paulson |

METRICS MANIA

Metrics Mania: Background on the latest Millennium Villages flap |

A quick chronology of the recent flap over Sachs and the Millennium Villages Project (MVP)

————————————————————————————————————————————–

First came this report in The Lancet that reported in MVP communities – Child mortality rapidly declined over three years
The news media, like The Guardian, reports this – Child mortality down by a third in Jeffrey Sachs Millennium Villages
Some, like Christian Science Monitor, raise questions – Just How Effective is the Millennium Villages Project?
More questions, in media such as UN Dispatch – What have we learned from the Millennium Villages Project?
The Lancet issues a correction (retraction of some data) - Errors in Millennium Village report
Aid blogger Roving Bandit isn’t satisfied – The Lancet’s editors don’t get evaluation

The gist of all these stories, blogs and reports is that the claim that child mortality was significantly reduced as a result of the improvements made in the MVP communities could not be isolated from broader improvements seen in the region or nation as a whole. Child mortality did decline significantly. But the critics argued MVP can’t claim credit for this — and were mad it did.