Information Management

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• Information Management
• in Emergency Response

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How IM supports effective humanitarian response

• Improves capacity of stakeholders for analysis
  and decision-making through strengthened info
  collection, processing, interpretation
  dissemination
• Ensures humanitarian actors are working with
  complementary information baseline data
  (relevant, accurate timely)
• Data collected during emergencies also benefits
  early recovery, recovery, development and
  disaster preparedness
• Information is the foundation on which
  decision-making for a coordinated response is
  based

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IM Responsibilities in Emergencies

• Responsibility for IM for effective and
  coordinated intra-cluster response Cluster Lead
  Agencies
• Responsibility for IM for effective and
  coordinated inter-cluster response OCHA

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Responsibilities of Cluster Leads

• Allocate resources for IM appoint IM focal
  point
• Contribute to inter-cluster IM coordination
• Ensure adherence to norms, policies, standards
• Work with OCHA to establish systems/processes for
  effective info-sharing with cluster partners
• Generate cluster info (contact lists, meeting
  minutes, technical guidance, datasets, needs/gap
  analysis)
• Establish confidentiality and privacy policy
• Ensure information is age and sex disaggregated

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Responsibilities of OCHA

• Produce standardized info products
• - Contact directories of humanitarian partners
• - Meeting schedules, agendas and minutes of
  meetings
• - Who does What Where (3W) database and maps
• - Mission reports, assessments, etc
• - Inventory of common cluster data sets
• - Situation Reports
• - Mapping products
• Provide minimum services for clusters including
• - Space for humanitarian community to access
  info resources
• - Geospatial data and analysis for inter-cluster
  decision making
• - Management of collection and dissemination of
  inter-cluster info
• - Advocacy for data and info-sharing within
  humanitarian community
• - Technical IM advice to clusters on design for
  needs assessments
• - Cross-cluster needs/gap analysis based on info
  provided by clusters

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GIS Mapping Support
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Humanitarian Information Centre (HIC)

• Supports humanitarian community in standardized
  collection, processing, dissemination of
  information
• Complements IM capabilities of national
  authorities and in-country development and
  humanitarian actors
• Only deployed in emergencies that exceed capacity
  of government and partners to respond with IM
  capacity
• Common service for the humanitarian
  community

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New Developments in IM
OneResponse Website being launched mid-2009, to
provide a common information exchange platform
for all new emergencies (www.humanitarianreform.o
rg and www.humanitarianinfo.org combined)
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Reporting in Emergencies

• Situation Report
• Concise operational document used to support
  coordination of humanitarian response
• Provides snapshot of needs, response gaps
• First issued within 24 hours of emergency
• Cluster template being developed process agreed
  for providing info to OCHA for sitrep
• Clusters have key role to play in provision of
  sectoral info for common sitreps

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Assessments in Emergencies

• Range of assessment types are required in
  humanitarian response, including to
• - initially estimate severity and scale of
  emergency
• - rapidly assess needs to inform response
  planning
• - conduct more in-depth trend analysis to inform
  detailed planning
• - establish baseline for operational and
  strategic monitoring
• - conduct detailed sectoral assessment 

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Assessments in Emergencies

• One size fits all approach not appropriate or
  feasible for all assessments, as each situation
  is different
• Preferable to have single agreed interpretation
  of severity, needs, and action required - more
  rigorous harmonisation of data collection
  analysis
• Common interpretation of priority needs does not
  necessarily entail a joint multi-sectoral needs
  assessment often more appropriate for each
  sector to conduct their own assessments, BUT
  critical that results incorporated into common
  report

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Why Is IM Important ?

• Information is critical to coordination and
  decision-making in a humanitarian response but it
  must be actively and effectively managed.
• Cluster/Sector Leads are responsible for all
  intra-Cluster information management activities
• OCHA has responsibility for inter-cluster
  information management
• Numerous useful tools exist that can support your
  information management needs