IATI Humanitarian next steps

Community Zone Humanitarian
#1

@bill_anderson wrote this in the OKFest topic (as a “new user”, I’m not allowed to post any more replies there):

Great context

So what to do?

  1. Get a humanitarian marker in place
  2. Bring FTS extension covering emergencies, appeals, etc, into the main standard
  3. Redefine timeliness for humanitarian needs: best practice is daily, not monthly
  4. Focus on Result Outputs: Get WFP in the saddle for this
  5. Get into a situation asap that EDRIS and FTS feel comfortable with importing IATI data

Thanks, Bill — I that’s an excellent start. First, I’d like to add a couple more points for discussion:

  • Consider making transaction optional for field-level humanitarian reporting (an NGO will know outputs, e.g. how many anti-Malarial kits were distributed, but might not know how much money those represent until later).
  • Figure out the role of the cluster system in humanitarian field-level reporting. Since clusters already collect 3W information from their partners, are they the sweet spot for getting IATI humanitarian field-level information, or do we want to invest more energy reaching out downstream to the individual implementing NGOs and agencies?
  • Work with Publish What You Fund to come up with different report-card criteria for different types of humanitarian reporting.

For your original points, I think daily reporting could make sense from some HQ-level information systems, but the most-frequent I’ve seen so far at the field cluster level is weekly, and that’s only for an L3 (highest level) emergency that’s developing fast. Monthly, quarterly, or semi-annually seems more common for 3W, depending on the crisis and how fast it changes.

#2

Cheers David,

My mind was very much on the top down reporting when I wrote those points, and I appreciate that is a small part of the bigger picture. Personally I have no experience of humanitarian field operations and we are going to need proper guidance from you to get this right.

On the top down I was particularly concerned about whether IATI can be an efficient channel for pledges and commitments in the early days of an emergency. This would require daily reporting (and a new transaction type for pledges)