The DQA checklist, and what to have ready for each line.
Fifteen questions across the five dimensions, each paired with the specific document or record an assessor will ask to see. Use it as a self-assessment a quarter before the real one, when there is still time to fix what it finds.
Download it
| Checklist | Fifteen questions, five dimensions, with an evidence column and a status column. |
| Dimensions | What each dimension means and what a weak answer looks like. |
| Guide | How to run a self-assessment, and what to do with the result. |
Free to use, copy and modify, with or without attribution. This is Karagem's template, laid out to match what donors commonly ask for — it is not an official document from USAID, the EU, the World Bank or FCDO, so check your own award papers for the exact format your agreement requires.
Run it early, on purpose
A DQA is not hard because the data is bad. It is hard because the evidence for the data is scattered across a filing cabinet, a spreadsheet and somebody’s memory, and assembling it takes a fortnight nobody has.
Run this checklist a full quarter before the assessment. Every line you cannot answer is a gap you still have time to close; every line you answer with "we would have to reconstruct that" is a process problem, not a paperwork problem, and it will recur next year unless something changes.
The three answers that always cost points
"The person who did that has left." Provenance held in one person’s head is not provenance. If the recalculation logic lives in a workbook only one colleague understands, that is an integrity finding waiting to happen.
"We correct it at the end of the quarter." Corrections made in bulk, after the fact, with no record of what changed, are indistinguishable from manipulation to an assessor who has to be sceptical for a living.
"That indicator has not moved." Sometimes true. Often it means nothing has been recorded against it for months, and silence is a timeliness finding — the one nobody self-reports because nothing looks wrong on the dashboard.
What good looks like
A number in a report traces, without preparation, to an approved submission; to the person who collected it; to the time and place of collection; and to the version of the form it was answered on. For any month, not just the one being assessed.
That is a property of how the data is collected, not of how well the assessment is prepared for. It is also exactly what Karagem records as the work happens — which is why the assessment becomes an export rather than a project.
The other two
Logframe template
Four levels, seven columns, and a worked example from a real-shaped agriculture programme so the empty grid is not the first thing you meet. Free, no email wall, yours to modify.
Indicator tracking table
Fifteen columns, in the order a reviewer reads them, with the two most-forgotten ones included: per cent of programme time elapsed, and the deviation narrative you owe for anything more than ten points off.