mikocanares Africa, Asia, core expertise, Core services, Data empowerment, data for development, Governance, Latin America, Research Projects

Step Up Consulting Conducts Data Dive on a Global Project on Access to Energy

headingStep Up Consulting signs a contract with a major development organization to conduct a data dive on a global project on access to energy implemented in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.  The project aims to provide access to modern energy services across 25 countries. Step Up’s team is composed of the following:

OGP profile picMichael  (Miko) Canares, Team Leader

Miko has 23 years of experience in development work primarily in research, results-measurement, data-driven innovation design, and adaptive management.  He has proven expertise in developing and implementing research projects that use a combination of both quantitative and qualitative approaches and in developing robust monitoring and evaluation (M&E) frameworks and systems that document and analyse results of development interventions in governance reforms, road asset management, labour market, local economic development and internal audit. In the last five years, he has designed and developed data for development projects in Asia on key topics as open government, open data, digital literacy, and open contracting, and its applications in health, education, and natural resource management.

Awarded as the Philippines’ Most Outstanding Finance Educator in 2010 after 10 years of university teaching, Mr. Canares is a skilled adult-learning facilitator and is engaged to build capacity of international organizations, local governments, and non-profits in research, monitoring and evaluation, and organizational management, including financial management and audit.  His accounting and economics background are very useful in efficiency audits as well as value-for-money measurements.

He has solid experience in working with different stakeholders within and outside of government and is skilled at different approaches in adaptive management and reflexive practice. He is also a published academic, an author of three books to date (accounting, natural resource management, and child-focused development) and different articles in referred journals dealing with topics related to local governance.

freiMaria Jihan (Frei) Sangil, Data Science Lead

Frei worked as a cybersecurity professional in multinational cybersecurity giant Trend Micro, handling research and documentation, production of Level three (highest and most detailed) technical documentation which the teams of support engineers and technical managers refer to in handling customer cases and deployment needs. Example of her cases are Advanced Persistent Threats on large-scale enterprise espionage and breach detection and mitigation, Instant Messaging Security (monitoring) and several other malware and enterprise breach-related cases.

Frei started Layertech as a startup in Hong Kong Polytechnic University Global Innovation and

Entrepreneurship Challenge, with flagship innovation: Mileaf Medical Network. She then she used the same technology to create Balangay: A Cloud Based Information System for Disaster and located in Legazpi City Philippines, wherein she founded a corporation of the same name: Layertech Software Labs, Inc. a private Research and Development Company specializing in data analytics and business process optimization (www.LAYERTECHLAB.com).

Apart from being CEO of Layertech Inc., Frei is practicing as a professional data scientist and analyst, working with government officials, local government units, civil society organizations, the academia, and private businesses and corporations as a consultant on cybersecurity, data processing and analysis, and business process optimization.

icaMaria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez, Development Programming Expert

Born on 14 May 1987, Maria Carmen (Ica) Fernandez is a spatial planner working on the intersections of space, place, culture, sustainability, good governance, and armed conflict.

Ms. Fernandez has spent the last decade specialising in the implementation and evaluation of peace agreements and other issues related to violence, vulnerability, and social cohesion in conflict-vulnerable areas. In the last five years, she has designed and implemented projects related to open governance and open geospatial and statistical data for decision-making in transitional contexts and post-crisis reconstruction.

As a former worker in the Philippine ministry overseeing peace negotiations, Ms. Fernandez presently consults with governments, communities, and international development organisations such as the World Bank, the United Nations, British Council, JICA, and The Asia Foundation. She has a keen interest in interdisciplinary action research, specifically the use of alternative platforms such as visual art, music, movement, and community activities for participatory engagement.

mikocanares digital security, Monitoring and Evaluation, outcome harvesting, retooling, Training, Uncategorized

Step Up Attends Outcomes Harvesting Workshop and Data Security Training

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Step Up Research Manager, Jean Celeste Paredes, attends the Outcome Harvesting Workshop and Data Security training organized by HIVOS last October 15-17, 2019 at the Bellevue Hotel, Ortigas.  The activity is part of the series of activities that HIVOS offer to its partners in the Philippines.

Outcome Harvesting is an evaluation approach in which evaluators, grantmakers, managers and staff identify, formulate, verify, analyse and interpret ‘outcomes’ in programming contexts where relations of cause and effect are not fully understood. Through Outcome Harvesting, organizations collect (“harvest”) evidence of what has changed (“outcomes”) for HIVOS grantees, and then, working backwards, determine whether and how HIVOS interventions (grant allocation and linking and learning) have contributed to these changes.

On the other hand, the Digital Security Training aims to introduce and understand the communications model as a framework for digital security and to identify areas how each partner, including Step Up Consulting, can strengthen digital security within each  organization.

The training was attended by HIVOS partners in the Philippines, including LayerTech Labs, Bantay Kita, CODE-NGO, among others.

mikocanares conference presentations, data for development, Uncategorized, workshops

Step Up Attends WIKA Workshop in Germany

wika workshop

Step Up’s Strategy Advisor, Michael Canares, spoke at the recently concluded WIKA-Workshop 2019 that focused on “The Role of Civil Society in Cultural Relations”. The workshop was held at the WeltRaum at the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (IFA) in Stuttgart, Germany on 25-26 September 2019.

The rationale of the workshop is best described by the workshop organizers below:

“Civil society actors are gaining influence and are becoming political change-makers. Their local embedding and engagement at the grassroots level and the strength of internationally working NGOs who use their cross-border cooperation as a means of empowerment make them attractive partners for state-involved actors. The WIKA Workshop seeks to reflect on interdisciplinary topics such as “Cultural Cooperation and Shrinking Spaces”, “Youth as Civil Society Actors” and “Civil Society and Statehood” to relate them directly to fields of action of cultural relations and education policy.”

Mr. Canares presented his work on advancing digital literacy for girls in Indonesia funded by Goethe Institut Indonesien when he was still working as Senior Research Manager of the World Wide Web Foundation stationed at the Open Data Lab Jakarta.  For more details of this work, please visit the lessons learned paper written by Mr. Canares for the Jakarta Lab.

mikocanares cultural programming, feasibility studies, workshop design, workshops

Cultural Programming Design Workshop for Region VII

70226646_10158288536284041_3947478212388323328_oStep Up Consulting Services facilitated a cultural programming design workshop for the Regional Cultural Hub of Central Visayas at the Metro Centre Hotel on 16-17 September 2019.  The workshop was organized by the Bohol Integrated Development Foundation in cooperation with the Provincial Government of Bohol.

The workshop was attended by Silliman University Vice President for Academics and historian Dr. Earl Jude Cleope, UP Visayas Arts Studies specialist Jay Jore, Boholano artists and cultural leaders Architect Nino Guidaben, Architect Franz Labad, theater artist Engr. Jerrey Aguilar, Holy Name University history professors Cenon Agbayani and Agnes Bustrillos,  Artist Rama Marcaida, and Natatanging Gawad Buhay awardee Gardy Labad.  Bingbing Casenas of the Provincial Planning and Development Office of the Provincial Goverment of Bohol also attended. The workshop was supported by the Bohol Arts and Cultural Heritage team composed of Jose Nazareno and Charo Mae Apipe.  

The objectives of the workshop were to:

  1. Present the vision of the cultural hub/regional cultural complex and how it desires to promote cultural, social, and economic development of the region
  2. Present initial findings from the cultural inventories of the provinces in the Central Visayas region
  3. Discuss the importance of cultural inventories in the preparation of cultural programming for the regional cultural hub/regional cultural complex
  4. Draft a cultural program for the regional cultural hub/regional cultural complex for at least 3 year

 

mikocanares Capacity Building, Governance, Lectures, local governance, Local Government Units, road asset management, Training

Step Up Conducts Training of Trainers on Local Road Asset Management

ToT for LRAM

Step Up Consulting facilitated the conduct of a Training of Trainers on Local Road Asset Management (ToT on LRAM) sponsored by the United Nations Development Program‘s Roads2SDGs Project in partnership with the Department of Interior and Local Government.  The ToT on LRAM was held at the Bellevue Resort – Bohol  last August 19-23 2019.

The training gathered together close to 20 experts that are envisioned to become a resource pool for local road asset management in the country. The training aimed to enable the participants to (1) understand the basic principles underpinning the Local Road Asset Management (LRAM), as well as the different processes in ensuring that local government units achieve better road service delivery for its constituents; (2) learn the necessary knowledge and skills in rolling-out the local road asset management manual to local government units; and (3) realize the importance of asset management principles and practices to properly manage local road assets. 

The ToT was designed to enable participants to actually design and implement LRAM training sessions for local government officials.Those who performed well in the ToT will be asked to apply their skills in an upcoming run of the LRAM for provinces in the Visayas and Mindanao.

mikocanares Capacity Building, Consulting Services, Core services, Local economic development, project development, project management, Training

Step Up Conducts Project Development and Management Training for Iloilo LEIPOs

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The Provincial Government of Iloilo, through its Local Economic Development and Investment Promotions Center, invited Step Up Consulting to train more than 40 of its Local Economic and Investment Promotions Officers (LEIPOs) on project development and management. The training, which was held at the Century 21 Hotel in Iloilo City last 29-30 July 2019, aimed to build the capacity of the LEIPOs in applying project management and development concepts to local government projects and initiatives.

More specifically, the training aimed to enable the LEIPOs to understand, define, and clearly explain what is project development and management; understand the role of project managers, specifically in the local government scenario; identify the key activities in the project life cycle; learn the knowledge areas of project management, and identify what strategies can be used in each project management knowledge area; and know what is a project charter and how to develop one for their own projects in each LGU.

mikocanares Africa, Asia, Consulting Services, core expertise, Core services, Inclusion, Open contracting, Open Data, Research Projects, Uncategorized

Step Up Wins HIVOS Contract to Study Open Contracting in 4 Countries

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Open Contracting and OCDS (Image taken from https://openprocurement.io/en/ocds) 

Step Up Consulting was awarded a research contract by HIVOS, a development organization headquartered in the Netherlands, to undertake a research project to understand how open contracting reforms and increased availability of contract data can be used to realize results and benefits for specific, historically marginalized groups external to government.

Step Up Consulting is one of the several firms considered to undertake the research but got the final nod of the HIVOS review panel based on the strength of its proposal and the quality of the composition of its research team. The research will be conducted in Kenya and Nigeria in Africa, and Indonesia and the Philippines in Asia.

For this research, Step Up’s team is composed of Michael Canares, strategy advisor, as research lead and Francois Van Schalkwyk, a long-time collaborator of Mr. Canares, along with Fiona Smith and Ana Brandusescu as review panel.  The research will run from July 2019 to January 2020.

The research, using a case study approach, aims to identify and assess ways in which key aspects of open contracting reforms did or did not lead to circumstances where open contracting resulted in increased equality and inclusion in public contracting processes. More particularly, the research would like to answer the following questions:

  1. How can open contracting reforms and increased availability of contract data be used to realise results and benefits for specific, historically marginalised groups external to government? 
  2. What contextual and programmatic aspects in open contracting contribute to achieving meaningful results and benefits for these marginalised groups? 
  3. What do specific, historically marginalised stakeholders experience as significant barriers/impediments to achieving the desired results and benefits?
mikocanares conference presentations, Data empowerment, data for development, innovation, Lectures, Open Data, workshop design, workshops

Step Up Strategy Advisor Attends Data Innovation Clinic in Istanbul

11July2019 (7)Michael Canares, Step Up Strategy Advisor, is one of the individual experts invited by the United Nations Development Program Regional Hubs based in Istanbul and Amman to speak and attend in a Data Innovation Clinic held at the Hilton Istanbul Bosphorus last 9-11 July 2019.

Dubbed as #NextGenUNDP, the data innovation clinic aimed to reflect on data innovation work implemented by UNDP in both regional hubs, introduce approaches, methods, and tools in data innovation, and frame ways forward.  The activity was attended by 47 participants from 16 countries across Europe, Central Asia, Arab States and Africa, with 10 speakers from Asia, Africa, Europe and the United States.

Different topics were discussed during the data clinic. Michael Canares talked about the concept of data empowerment, one of his primary advocacies, while others talked about positive deviance, thick data, artificial intelligence, behavioral insights, big data, satellite data, machine learning, among others.

mikocanares Consulting Services, core expertise, Core services, Facilitation, Governance, National Government Agency, Non-Government Organizations, workshops

Step Up Facilitates OGP Commitment Design Workshop for the Philippine Government

IMG_20190416_114217Step Up Consulting Strategy Advisor Michael P. Canares led the design and facilitation of the Philippine Government’s commitment design workshop as part of the several processes in formulating its National Action Plan for the Open Government Partnership.

The Philippines is a pioneering member of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), a multilateral initiative that aims to promote transparent, accountable, participatory, and responsive governance.

The workshop gathered several representatives from national government agencies and civil society organizations to dissect and analyze two Philippine government commitments – the Digital Imaging for Monitoring and Evaluation (DIME) proposed by the Department of Budget and Management, and the commitment on Open Contracting, proposed by the Government Procurement Policy Board.

The workshop was held at the DBM Conference Room in Manila last 15-16 April 2019 and supported by OGP Support Unit‘s team based in Asia Pacific lead by Shreya Basu.

mikocanares Asia, Business Planning, Consulting Services, labour markets, local governance

Step Up Writes Labour Market Assessment for the Rakhine State

ILO reportMichael Canares, Strategy Advisor of Step Up Consulting was tasked by the International Labour Organization to write a consolidated report that looks into the opportunities and challenges of labour market development in the Rakhine State in Myanmar.  The report that Mr. Canares wrote, together with his team at Step Up was based on primary field work that was conducted by Synergia Consulting and Training and Myanmar Survey Research.

The report, entitled “Rakhine State Labour Market:  Assessing Assets, Projecting Demands, and Identifying Areas for Intervention” looked into current and projected demand for labour skills in the Rakhine state, quality and quantity of labour supply in the area, and potential areas for intervention to strenthen labour market quality and labour to industry matching processes.