Measuring the value of improving data governance and access in Gates Foundation programme: A case study of the Supporting Soil Health Interventions in Ethiopia projects

Abstract

In July 2019 the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI), partnered with the Open Data Institute (ODI) and commissioned a team of economists from the University of the West of England, Bristol (UWE) to measure the value of improving data governance and access in projects supported by foundation programmes. Following an iterative approach when a number of projects across India and Ethiopia were considered, it was decided that the Supporting Soil Health Interventions in Ethiopia (SSHIiE) project was the most appropriate project on which to focus. The SSHIiE project was a $1.5 million project led by the Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. The project ran from November 2017 to August 2020. Objective of the Study Given the challenges with valuing something so nebulous as data governance and access, and in the bsence of any formal frameworks previously applied to measure such concepts, two key objectives were identified. To develop a formal framework that could be used in the planning, measurement and evaluation of the value of data governance for future donor funded projects. To test the framework by evaluating the value of data governance of a foundation-funded project and identifying the mechanisms through which value is created. In order to identify the best approach, multiple frameworks and evaluation structures were tried and tested. Two separate but interlinked models were selected as potentially helpful in the evaluation of data governance and access. The qualitative model was based on the Five Safes framework which previously had only been used in the design of data strategies. The quantitative framework combined activity-specific logic models (theory of change models) with traditional cost-benefit analysis (CBA) techniques.