Objective
PEPFAR/Southern Africa supported an extensive OVC and HIV prevention programs portfolio that
focused on improving OVC and Youth (OVCY) service delivery systems as well as promoting linkages,
referrals, and coordination to mitigate the social impact of HIV. OVCY partners used direct service
delivery as well as technical assistance to reach over 250 thousand beneficiaries.
USAID|Southern Africa contracted Khulisa to carry out two rounds of external Data Quality
Assessments (DQA) of key indicators across PEPFAR-funded OVCY partners and sub-partners. During
both rounds, Khulisa assessed the readiness of the partners’ data management systems to report on
the key indicators, assessed the accuracy of reporting in the previous fiscal year, including estimating
error rates of reported data, and provided recommendations for strengthening data management
systems and data quality.
Approach
These two rounds of Data Quality Assessments (DQAs) fully demonstrate Khulisa’s capability to
execute comprehensive assessments of community-level programs.
Using a capacity-building approach, the DQAs evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of partners’ data management systems and verified the quality of reported data to determine reporting error rates. Khulisa applied the six criteria standards for data quality (validity, integrity, precision, reliability, timeliness, and confidentiality) to understand the extent to which the data can be trusted to influence management decisions. The two rounds of activities included:
Assess the appropriateness of the existing Data Management Systems (DMS) to collect and accurately report on selected key performance indicators (KPIs) for each partner/sub partner.
- Verification of program data quality.
- Assessment of OVCY program data management and M&E systems for routine data collection, management, and reporting of routine data.
- Estimation of data variance and error rates for the selected KPIs at IP-level and combined national-level.
- Evaluation of the readiness of partners’ data management systems to track the newly introduced OVC_HIVSTAT indicator (round 2 DQA only).
- Development of recommendations and action plans to strengthen data management and reporting systems and improve data quality.
- Providing Geographic Information System (GIS) coordinates on the sampled sites.