Hack-and-Learn Spring 2022

Overview

Interested in using data to better understand outcomes-based projects? Want to meet and work with other people with the same interest? Our bi-annual Hack-and-Learn event is designed to give anyone interested in learning more about the use of data in the field of social outcomes a chance to connect with others and work on a real-life project. Harnessing skills and experiences from a diverse pool of actors, we provide a space for learning and community building around the use of data and an opportunity to solve problems, co-produce and make better sense of the use of data.  

The Hack-and-Learn is a two-week online event where participants will have the chance to choose from a selection of data-related challenges set by our team at the Government Outcomes Lab and our partners. A letter of participation will be provided to those participants who actively engage in one or more challenges.

While some data enthusiasts might enjoy doing the coding and data wrangling, others might prefer researching, writing and tackling policy issues around the project. Those interested in graphic design can also help out by creating stunning data visualisations.  

This Spring's Hack-and-Learn sessions will be supported by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.

Agenda

• Kick-off session: 24 March 2022, 1 pm GMT. Come join our Hack and Learn and pick a challenge to work with. You will meet your team and challenge leaders and start planning your contribution.
• Hack hack hack: 24 March 2022 to April 6 2022. We will have two weeks to work. As participants may come from very different parts of the world, we will use Slack channels to communicate with each other.
• Show and Tell session: 7 April 2022, 1 pm BST. In this occasion, all teams will get together and show the outputs of their work. A group of discussants will provide feedback and there will be time for questions and answers from the other teams.Register here.
• INDIGO Peer Learning session: 26 May 2022, 1 pm BST. After the event, all participants are invite to write a blog sharing their learnings and reflections about their work. There will be time to discuss and reflect on this Hack and Learn and ask participants about improvements and changes for the next edition.

Kick-off session recording

The challenges

1. Social outcomes and Sustainable Development Goals (SDG): Building on our existing sankey diagram created at the last Hack-and-Learn, we will be honing in on the data to select a particular policy sector and focus on the social outcomes metrics of projects within the area. The analysis will be based on SDGs alignments and regional differences. Our Summer 2021 Hack and Learn completed the alignment of health and family welfare projects. This time, we aim at looking at the alignment of projects related with criminal justice, poverty reduction and agriculture and environment. In particular, we'll be asking ourselves: Which SDGs are being targeted in Latin America, Africa and Asia? Which SDGs are not target at all? Why these type of contracts seem to be better at tackling certain SDGs?
2. The SPARKS (Strategic Procurement Applied Research & Knowledge Sharing) challenge: The SPARKS challenge is to build a spreadsheet of government outcomes frameworks and strategic public procurement rules and/or policies. Many governments are increasingly trying to use public contracts to pursue economic, social, and environmental goals beyond the core goods, works or services being procured. This strategic use of public procurement is called different things around the world, including sustainable procurement, buying social, social clauses, community wealth building, broader outcomes and social value. In this challenge we will gather examples of outcomes frameworks (e.g. Scotland’s National Performance Framework) and strategic procurement policies (e.g. Scotland’s Community Benefit Clauses requirement in their 2014 procurement law or the more recent policy note, SPPN 10/2020, on measuring social impact in public procurement.) A map and visualisations may be developed. Eventually, we hope to use this information to explore the effectiveness of different policies and practices on different outcomes in different contexts. The SPARKS challenge is proposed by members of the Oxford Procurement of Government Outcomes Club (POGO Club) involved in the SPARKS working group.
3. Analysing Foreign Philanthropy in India: The Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy has collated data on various forms of philanthropic giving in India which includes data on foreign philanthropy in India. The available dataset on foreign philanthropy includes information on non-government organisations receiving foreign funding under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) 2010 as well as registered foreign donors. The challenge invites data enthusiasts to undertake a trend analysis of foreign funding into various sectors across the last 3 years.
4. The Village Enterprise challenge: Village Enterprise launched the first Development Impact Bond (DIB) for poverty alleviation in sub-Saharan Africa in fall 2017. This $5.32M DIB directed funding towards measurable results: increases in consumption and assets of first-time entrepreneurs living in extreme poverty. In December 2020, full delivery of the programme was completed. The IDinsight team, independent evaluator of the DIB, will provide data from their latest RCT results and we will think what is the best way to present this information to policy makers and practitioners (data is not an exact copy of the RCT results. It may include simulated variables). What are the most appropriate data visualisations for this project? How can we present insights from complex and large datasets in a simple and compelling way?
5. The Education Outcomes Fund challenge: The Education Outcomes Fund (EOF), hosted by UNICEF, is an ambitious effort to significantly improve learning and employment outcomes by tying funding to measurable results. EOF aims to pool $1 billion in aid and philanthropic funds to support governments to pay for results in education and youth employment over the next decade. The Government of Sierra Leone has partnered with the EOF and intends to use an outcomes fund approach. This outcomes fund will enable the government to deepen an evidence-based understanding of ‘what works’ in the local context, develop and improve existing interventions, and transfer much of the delivery risk to the non-state sector. When managing an outcomes fund, having timely data to support the different projects and understand how to achieve social outcomes is key. The Fund needs a data platform that enables all parties (service providers, evaluators, donors, etc) to input, check and analyse data. The EOF is currently working on the development of a data platform alongside UNICEF. However, we would like to invite participants to explore how we can design a prototype data portal that is both fit for performance management and also aligned with the learning agenda of the Fund.

Have a different idea of what you would like to explore with a team of data and policy enthusiasts? Please let us know and we will give you 10 minutes from our kick off session. You will pitch your idea and become the leader of your team. 

What we will co-produce 

The aim of the Hack-and-Learn is not just to improve data in the field, but also to share learnings with others. At the end of the two weeks, we will host a Show and Tell session on 7 April 1 pm BST for each team to share their reflections and outputs. Along with our partners, we will then collate these lessons learnt into a blog and discuss it at the Peer Learning session on 26 May. Any participant who wants to share their story is welcome to contribute as co-author of the blog. The blog will be part of our Oxford Government Outcomes Blog.  

Any open-source visualisations created over the two weeks will be either published on the GO Lab website or the INDIGO GitHub account.

For past Hack-and-Learn events, we had teams visualising foreign philanthropy to India, mapping the network of organisations involved in impact bond projects and investigating whether impact investors were aligning their outcomes-based contracts with the UN SDGs. To learn more about what the teams got up to in past editions of the event, you can read our the Hack and Learn Technical and Learning Report March 2021 here, or our Hack and Learn Technical and Learning Report September 2021 here.

What GO Lab will do

• Partner up with universities and research centres around the world to bring all kinds of experience and expertise to the table.
• Devise a series of engaging challenges that allow participants to analyse and contribute to. 
• Provide structured datasets, including our global dataset on impact bond projects around the world, an open-source code for the database and visualisations on the GO Lab website and INDIGO account on GitHub. 
• Support you during your 2-week journey by answering any queries and providing technical assistance through Slack and email during office hours. 
• Collate the lessons learned with our partners into a blog post which will be publish in our Oxford Government Outcomes Blog. 
• Organise a fun social online event to celebrate the end of the Hack-and-Learn event.

Why? 

The International Network for Data on Impact and Government Outcomes (INDIGO) is a community of peers with an interest in sharing data about the design, implementation and evaluation of cross-sector collaborations to address complex social problems. We are interested in fostering a culture of transparency, learning, and capacity development across public, private, and third sectors. In addition to publishing open data and open-source code, we want to explore and highlight opportunities to join-up various open data standards initiatives. (We are collaborating and borrowing wheels -- not reinventing the wheels.)