Highlights

The increasing recognition of the importance of dashboards and visualisation tools, and how they can be applied to enhance MRC core services is evident in the number of initiatives and activities that were conducted in 2019.

This flurry of initiatives and activities were encouraged by a combination of factors including the MTR recommendations, the benefits demonstrated by using dashboards for financial management, and the increase in the commitment of the organisation to strengthen its internal operations and its systems for M&E, information management, modelling, forecasting, and communications.

These initiatives and activities included the completion of the system reinvigoration initiative, which produced a Design Concept that reinforced the need and importance of dashboard and visualization for effective data and information management, modelling, forecasting, and communications; the enhancements of the data portal specifically in the use of visualization tools for effective dissemination of forecasts; the completion and deployment on the MRC website of the interactive tool for the Council Study to communicate more effectively its findings and recommendations to a wider range of stakeholders; the completion of the national workshops participated in by MCs on Shared Vision Planning, which represents an approach and offers sets of tools, techniques, and case studies to facilitate a common understanding of the natural resources system and provides a consensus-based forum for stakeholders to identify trade-offs and management options; and finally, the completion of an M&E dashboard training for technical staff from NMCS, from which they produced dashboards for several key monitoring needs, including water level and discharge monitoring data in Cambodia, Nam Ngum reservoir operation in Lao PDR, salinity intrusion in Viet Nam, reservoir storage volumes in Thailand, and enhanced financial performance monitoring for the MRC.