Track20 has always endeavored to put governments first – ensuring that they are positioned as the owners of and experts on their routine data. This country-first approach has enhanced and deepened the skills and agency of government M&E and HMIS teams and expanded access to freely available, user-friendly tools that reinforce governments’ agency over their own data. Dedicated to building sustainable data capacity within government systems, Track20 leverages existing infrastructure and trains local staff, empowering countries to independently collect, analyze, and utilize data to improve women's health outcomes.
The cornerstone of Track20's approach is working directly with Government FP Monitoring & Evaluation Officers and Program Leadership, building their capacity to improve the quality of data being collected and how the data is being used to inform regular monitoring and strategic decision making.
Track20 has cultivated a skilled network of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) professionals, whose data quality improvement efforts and analytic work have supported their countries' efforts to monitor progress toward fulfillment of their FP2030 commitments and achievement of their national FP goals.
Track20 M&E Officers work with and within governments to increase the visibility of FP data, cultivate demand for data and find innovative ways to use data to answer the questions relevant to their own contexts. While Track20 M&E Officers share some standard tasks in their scope of work, most are embedded in the Ministry and their work uniquely reflects their context and the priorities of the country. The brief Track20 Monitoring & Evaluation Officers: Keeping the Focus on Family Planning Data illustrates the dynamic and varied roles M&E Officers play and how they have influenced FP monitoring and data use in their countries.
To learn more about why Track20 has chosen to embed M&E Officers within Ministries and read examples of impact, read Highlighted Approach: Embedding Trained M&E Officers within Government FP Programs.
Track20 is committed to strengthening and improving existing government data infrastructure rather than creating parallel systems. In addition, the project has always taken an open-source approach, making our user-friendly tools, training modules, data, analytic code, and analyses freely available online, so Ministry staff and other FP stakeholders can access them at any time, without project support.
Track20's DHIS2 FP Data Pro application, developed under the previous grant, embeds complex data analytics, data visualizations, and proven data quality review processes directly into countries' existing HMIS system (DHIS2). Importantly, this approach makes the government the owner and keeper of the data, rather than project implementers, which is typically the case when external partners extract data from DHIS2 to perform analysis and create visualizations in external systems and dashboards. Keeping the data in the system rather than exporting it for analysis reduces the chance of error, guarantees that analyses are based on the most up-to-date data, and allows access to analytic results and visualizations for all levels of the government health system.
Each year, Track20 brings together M&E staff from across FP2030 and OP countries to:
Throughout the year, additional support on data issues or complex analyses are provided either by Track20 staff, or by M&E Officers through South-to-South support. The wide network of M&E Officers engaged by Track20 provides a wealth of experience that is available across the network. This South-to-South support is provided through casual virtual exchanges and through organized on-site technical support visits.