Section 3.2. Forming the MEAL team and clarifying responsibilities While it is everyone’s role in the NHRI to engage in MEAL, it is useful to have a team to coordinate the MEAL activity associated with each MEAL Plan. The size and make-up of your MEAL team will depend on the size and scope of the MEAL activity. Typically, a core group of staff will be involved in the activity. Key roles could include: • a team lead, • programme staff (subject matter expert/s) • a facilitator if data gathering will involve working with groups of people. You may also want to bring in external, technical expertise if you do not have it in-house. This could include: • someone with data analysis expertise (both qualitative and quantitative) • someone with data storage and ICT expertise. If your NHRI has MEAL capacity gaps, complement the internal MEAL team with external expertise. External MEAL practitioners can also help you to build the MEAL capability and culture within your NHRI. Think about how you would use external experts, particularly external evaluators. They need to understand the context of a NHRI and understand its mandate. Literature suggests that external consultants can bring as much bias into an evaluation as internally led evaluators. The Australian Human Rights Commission uses external evaluators for field work and analysis coordinated by an internally led integration and evaluation write up. They also mix this with a pro-bono critical friend who has external evaluation expertise. This helps build internal evaluation capacity too. It is also helpful to have a Senior Manager and/or Commissioner involved to advocate for the MEAL work at a whole-of-Commission level. Your NHRI should allocate staff with the responsibility and capacity to carry out your MEAL Plan. Information gained from the MEAL stocktake (refer to Module 1, Section 1.3) would have identified the MEAL capability of your NHRI. The first meeting of your team will be to decide who has what responsibilities, reporting processes and expectations. This is also the time to discuss a meeting schedule: how often you need to meet and what the overall focus will be for each. 57