Evaluating Financial Inclusion Commiunities of Pactice using Social Network Analysis

Background:

The Financial Initiative is a peer-to-peer learning organization that encourages and enables financial policymakers to interact and exchange knowledge. This information interchange results in the building of a more comprehensive knowledge base on financial inclusion and the subsequent formulation and implementation of effective policy by members in their home countries.

The organization has a flagstone forum each year that brings together over 300 policymakers from over 100 developing and emerging countries to share challenges and lessons in the provision of financial inclusion services for the poor.  There have been five such Forums to date.  A feedback form has been administered at each Forum over the past 5 years.

Hypothesis:

·         The Forum provides an efficient way of establishing working relationships between policymakers from different developing and emerging countries

·         The Forum is an effective mechanisms to gain practical and useful information on Financial Inclusion

·         The Forum is useful to both new and experienced participants

Objective:

The Social Network Analysis will be used to:

1.    Evaluate whether the Forums have been effectiveness to date

2.    Inform the strategic design of future Forums

3.    Redesign future Forum feedback forms to maximize the collection of useful information

Outputs of SNA:

1.    Evaluation report of past Forums

2.    Survey format for future Forum

3.    Survey data collection methodology and rationale for future Forums

Available Data:

·         Forum feedback data from the last five years

·         Attendance lists for the past five years

·         Information from the poken devise from the last two years (www.poken.com)

Limitations:

·         Although there are certainly commonalities between years, the forum questions vary which means that it will be difficult to draw trends across all years

·         Individuals do not always identify themselves or their institution in their forum feedback form and therefore it would be necessary to select the responses