Create a new country-level scorecard management tool

This guide is designed for African ministries of health creating a country level scorecard management tool. If you are from an African ministry of health, we can support you through this process. Contact us, at ALMA, for support.

If you are not from an African ministry of health, you can still follow this process to create a new country-level scorecard management tool and adapt it for your needs.

We offer an online course on creating a new scorecard management tool. The course includes specific lessons on country-level scorecard tools. It is free to enrol and you can learn at your own pace.

Process for creating a new country-level scorecard management tool

We’ve created this process in collaboration with African ministries of health. We recommend using an interactive workshop to create a country-level scorecard management tool. We call this the scorecard creation workshop. The workshop can take around 5 days to complete.

We can help facilitate and guide this process. However, the process must be country-led to make sure the scorecard management tool reflects your country’s vision and priorities.

Prepare for the scorecard creation workshop

You need to prepare several things before you can begin your scorecard creation workshop. Before your workshop, you should:

get support for the scorecard tool from senior leadership
identify all relevant stakeholders who should attend the workshop
draft the agenda for the workshop
identify and share key strategic programme documents
create a preliminary list of indicators using national strategic documents
identify who will be part of your core scorecard team
create an action plan for training relevant staff and stakeholders
schedule a debrief with the minister of health (or senior leadership) to share progress

1. Get support for the scorecard management tool from senior leadership

You need support from the minister of health or senior ministry leadership for the scorecard management tool to be a success. They must understand:

what is a scorecard management tool
what are the benefits of creating a scorecard management tool
how it will help improve health outcomes in your country

2. Identify all relevant stakeholders who should attend the workshop

Colleagues from all relevant ministry teams must take part in the workshop. A diverse group of stakeholders – representing a wide range of views – helps to create a scorecard tool that is a true reflection of your country’s needs and priorities. For example, this could include staff from:

relevant technical programmes
health management information system teams (HMIS)
district health information software teams (DHIS2)
the planning team
regional focal points
partner organisations in your country

3. Draft the agenda for the workshop

Having a clear agenda helps your participants understand what they will be expected to do. The workshop is split into five sections:

Introduction to scorecard management tools and your country’s priorities
Choosing categories and indicators
Creating actions and monitoring for accountability
Using the scorecard web platform
Implementing the scorecard management tool

As an African ministry of health, we can help you create an agenda based on your priorities.

To create a relevant and useful scorecard tool, the indicators you choose must reflect your country’s priorities. Therefore, it is important your workshop participants have a good and shared understanding of these priorities.

You should identify your ministry of health’s key strategic documents. We recommend you share these documents with your participants. The participants need enough time to read and understand the documents before the workshop takes place.

These documents usually include:

national health policies
strategic plans for specific health programmes (such as malaria or RMNCAH)
monitoring and evaluation plans

5. Create a preliminary list of indicators using national strategic documents

With an understanding of your country’s priorities, you should create a preliminary list of indicators. You should select preliminary indicators using data sources that already exist.

This preliminary list of indicators will help the workshop participants start the process of reviewing, prioritising and choosing the final indicators that will be part of the new scorecard tool.

6. Identify who will be part of your core scorecard team

Having a core scorecard team is vital to the sustainability of your scorecard tool. This team will be responsible for:

arranging meetings to identify underperforming indicators
helping leaders create recommended actions
tracking the progress of indicators
helping to develop and improve the scorecard tool

7. Create a plan for training relevant staff and stakeholders

You should make sure your colleagues are trained on following the scorecard process. You should create a training action plan that includes:

an introduction to the scorecard process
how to create a scorecard tool
how to analyse indicators and identify underperforming indicators
how to create and track the progress of actions

It is important the minister of health and senior leaders in the ministry are updated on the progress of the scorecard tool workshop.

You could schedule a meeting with them after the workshop to:

highlight your progress
explain the next steps
encourage their involvement in the process to help make the scorecard tool a success

What happens at a scorecard creation workshop

You should treat those 8 points as a pre-workshop checklist. If you have done all these steps, you can now start organising your workshop.

By working with countries, we have found that an ideal workshop covers 5 areas:

Introduction to scorecard management tools and your country’s priorities
Choosing categories and indicators
Creating actions and monitoring for accountability
Using the Scorecard Web Platform
Implementing the scorecard management tool

Part 1: Introduction

In the introduction, you should include:

background and benefits of creating and using a scorecard management tool
your country’s context and priorities
an initial demonstration of the Scorecard Web Platform – an online tool to manage your scorecard tools

Part 2: Choose categories and indicators

In this part, you should choose categories and indicators for your scorecard tool. You will:

choose categories to group related indicators together
review, prioritise and select indicators that reflect your country’s priorities
identify data sources that will be used for the indicators
identify baselines and set thresholds to help track whether an indicator is on track, making some progress or not on track
collect and validate the data to create a draft scorecard tool for your participants to analyse and improve during the workshop

Part 3: Accountability and action

In the accountability and action part, you will learn how to:

analyse a scorecard tool and identify underperforming actions
create actions when an indicator is underperforming
integrate the scorecard tool into your existing accountability structures and meetings
define how you will use the scorecard tools for continuous action

The process of analysing the scorecard tool, creating actions and tracking action progress happens regularly. Many countries do this process every quarter (every 3 months)

You should also use this part to identify who will be responsible for overseeing this regular process.

Part 4: Scorecard Web Platform training

The Scorecard Web Platform is an online service you can use to manage your scorecard tool. We created the web platform at ALMA. We continue to maintain, support and update the online service. African ministries of health can use it for free. Contact us to request access to the Scorecard Web Platform.

You don’t have to use the Scorecard Web Platform, but many African ministries of health choose to use it because it helps them:

manage their scorecard tool
keep track of actions to address underperforming indicators with the Action Tracker feature
monitor the implementation of strategic plans with the Workplan Manager feature
If you decide to use the Scorecard Web Platform, we will help run this part of the workshop. We will:
create user accounts for your attendees
provide in-depth training on how to use the web platform and its various features

Part 5: Implementation

Part 5 is the implementation stage. At this stage, you will:

communicate the objectives of the scorecard tool to all stakeholders
continue to learn how to track progress on a regular basis
create an action plan to improve the scorecard tool over time (such as adding new indicators at a later date)
plan the official launch of the scorecard tool

Summary and next steps

Following the pre-workshop checklist and covering the 5 parts of the workshop will help you create an effective and sustainable country-level scorecard tool that will improve health outcomes in your country.

You can customise and change parts of the workshop so it is relevant to your country’s processes. Your scorecard tool will be more successful if the process is:

country-led
reflects your vision and priorities

If you’re from an African ministry of health, we can support you through this process. Contact us, at ALMA, for support.