Designing violence monitoring tools for policy impact: Technical trade-offs

1. Designing violence
monitoring tools for policy
impact
Technical trade-offs
Sana Jaffrey, World Bank
sjaffrey@worldbank.org

2. 2
www.snpk-indonesia.com
National Violence Monitoring System-
Indonesia (NVMS)
Database
• Data on incidence and impacts of violence since 1998-
present—update every month
• Contains over 160,000 incidents and 40 variables
• Data available to the public through online portal and
interactive analysis tools-launched Dec 2012
• Support to Thailand and Philippines systems
Objectives
• Provide empirical basis for violence prevention and
management
• Enable cross-sector responses to violence;
• Increase transparency and accountability in violence
management policies through increased public
involvement
Impact
• Unprecedented release of data to the public to increase
participation in finding solutions
• Data continues to coordinate multi-sector responses to
emerging conflicts;
• Plans to feed data into evaluation of Conflict
Management Law
Government
of Indonesia
World
Bank
Civil
Society

3. Source Selection
• Reliability: quality of
information and its accuracy
• Accessibility: easy to obtain
and not confidential
• Frequency: can be updated
quickly
• Scalability: allows for a
national scale-up
• Cost
Survey Crowdsource
Local
Newspapers
Security
Agencies
Civil Society

4. Variable Specification
• Design the analytical framework in
a way that allows for prioritization
of response;
• Build categories based on pre-
existing concepts that correspond
well with policy makers;
• Quality matters: make definitions
‘code-able’;
• Allow for downstream
adjustments;
• Allow merging with other national
datasets;
• Cost
Map of Popular Justice incidents in Lampung
National: Map of Popular Justice Incidents, May-Sept 2012

5. Dissemination
• Update data frequently to
maintain policy relevance;
• Manage political sensitivities;
• Enable broad use of the data;
• Aim to building local
ownership;
• Cater to multiple levels of
data-knowledge
• Cost

6. Conclusions
• Clarity on the strategic objectives of the monitoring
system can lead to effective technical choices;
• Consulting shareholders on technical trade-offs
increases chances for policy uptake;
• Thinking about scale early-on can save time and cost
later;
• No choice is perfect: important to know the
weaknesses associated with an option so these can
be minimized.