In terms of new indicators, as I mentioned, one is an umbrella level of outcome indicators that say, “Within the period of this plan, we want to achieve the following”. I leave this entirely to the consultations you have with Canadian civil society and women around the world to tell you what should be in the plan. An example of that type of indicator would be something like, “Over the period of this plan we want to see a significant improvement in the attention to this agenda, in multilateral organizations of which we are a part, and in our partner nations' security forces.”
We want this firmer on the agenda of those organizations. Then we'll work backwards to determine how we are going to do that.
There is a whole other range of potential outcome-level indicators that you could say.... One is related to the topic we were just talking about. We want to see a significant improvement in the strength of local women's civil society networks and organizations and a targeted list of priority countries—determine how you are going to measure that and what your target is, and move backwards.
I was privileged to be here on Tuesday and hear some of the comments as well, and it's reflected in our report. It's what I mention in my remarks. There is a lot of focus on what we are doing on progress towards the plan in terms of the activities we are creating and not the difference it's making.
For example, the RCMP is working with the United Nations to contribute to and, in many cases, lead training, in many cases now for women only, in police forces abroad who are focused on and want to increase the number of women they send on UN missions. They were finding that the women in those police forces—for a whole range of reasons, in part because they were not exposed to training opportunities, promotion opportunities, etc.—were not passing these pre-selection classes at a high enough rate.
The RCMP was delivering training. They were saying, essentially, let's raise the standard of these police officers so they will be eligible to serve on international missions. They are tracking things like the changes in the pass rate of those classes. Instead of the national action plan calling for, “How many times did we advise the United Nations on this course?”, let's start tracking what difference it makes in the pass rate of the people we are working with. That's the type of outcome-level indicator I am thinking about.
There is a myth in this field that because it relates to advocacy or because things are so long-term or so focused on policy shifts, we can't track them or change them, but that is just not true.
There are a broad range of indicators we can choose from, from plans that measure this type of outcome behaviour that are not just the number of people trained, the number of classes held, etc. I think you all know training can be horrible, and then you get credit for doing the training, whereas in some cases it actually brings everybody backwards and leaves them more confused than before.
Focusing on this midterm outcome and then ultimately the bigger-purpose type of indicator is really going to be motivating for people, and it's actually going to give oversight bodies like yours a chance to assess whether or not we are making progress.