Learning from the Oxford Policy Fellowship

Emerging policy messages from a year of data

Embedded technical assistance (TA) has long been a model for support to government institutions in low- and middle-income countries. It is often seen as comparatively better positioned to develop capacity compared to short-term ‘fly in, fly out’ types of support. However, despite its established role in international development assistance, we know little about the underlying dynamics that make embedded TA a success or a failure in developing capacity and improving organisational performance.

The Oxford Policy Fellowship (OPF) has developed a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) framework and a set of monitoring tools that aim to address this knowledge gap by focusing on the process as well as results. This brief provides an outline of the OPF MEL Framework. It describes our four tools and how they measure different aspects of the OPF results chain. The brief also provides an initial analysis of the first year of data, covering both the results achieved to date, as well as the process whereby these results were achieved. Following the analysis, the brief concludes with a number of policy messages.