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11. Back to the Drawing Board: How to improve monitoring of outcomes

Author:
Neil Dillon and Amelie Sundberg
Publication Date:
06-2019
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
Abstract:
How can organisations provide holistic, meaningful analysis of the outcomes achieved by their activities? How can they situate their programming among the changes taking place around them? How can they understand the full set of changes experienced by an individual affected by crisis? This paper aims to encourage humanitarian agencies to step back and reflect on what is currently being done to measure outcomes and how it can be improved in the future. It starts by identifying core assumptions and foundational thinking behind current monitoring systems. It then outlines issues arising from current practice, and concludes by raising questions about to think about this differently.
Topic:
International Organization, Monitoring, and Humanitarian Response
Political Geography:
Global Focus

12. Shifting Mindsets: Creating a more flexible humanitarian response

Author:
Alice Obrecht
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
Abstract:
As humanitarian needs and situations change, and as our understanding of complex problems evolves, humanitarian agencies must be able to adapt. Yet in recent years, international humanitarian agencies have struggled with flexibility when it comes to adapting to context, changing the type and quantity of support at the right time, or responding quickly and appropriately to unexpected crises or challenges. To date, the flexibility of modern humanitarian agencies, and the capacities needed for response level flexibility, has not been explored in depth for modern crises. This is the end-of-project report for a two-year workstream that sought to address this gap by undertaking exploratory research on the support factors and barriers to flexibility and adaptation in contemporary humanitarian action.
Topic:
International Organization, Crisis Management, Humanitarian Response, and Flexibility
Political Geography:
Global Focus

13. Shifting Mindsets | Section 5: Funding

Author:
Alice Obrecht
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
Abstract:
This standalone section of the ALNAP Study Shifting Mindsets: Creating a more flexible humanitarian response focuses on funding for greater flexibility. This is one of the three pillars that flexibility relies upon according to this research and also one of the starting points to make humanitarian responses more flexible. It covers types of humanitarian funding and their relationship to flexibility, characteristics of funding mechanisms that support flexible and adaptive humanitarian action, and the future of flexible bilateral funding.
Topic:
International Organization, Crisis Management, Donors, Funding, and Humanitarian Response
Political Geography:
Global Focus

14. Shifting Mindsets | Section 4: Culture and people

Author:
Alice Obrecht
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
Abstract:
This standalone section of the ALNAP Study Shifting Mindsets: Creating a more flexible humanitarian response focuses on culture and people for greater flexibility. This is one of the three pillars that flexibility relies upon according to this research and also one of the starting points to make humanitarian responses more flexible. It covers flexible approaches in organisational culture and staff, as well as anticipatory and adaptive strategies to this extent.
Topic:
International Organization, Culture, Performance Evaluation, Humanitarian Response, Flexibility, and Organizational Learning
Political Geography:
Global Focus

15. Shifting Mindsets | Section 3: Systems for greater flexibility

Author:
Alice Obrecht
Publication Date:
09-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
Abstract:
This standalone section of the ALNAP study 'Shifting mindsets: creating a more flexible humanitarian response' focuses on organisational systems to support flexibility. This is one of the three pillars that flexibility relies upon according to this research and also one of the starting points to make humanitarian responses more flexible. It covers flexible approaches in: logistics, supply chain and procurement systems; programme design and programme cycle management; and monitoring of these systems.
Topic:
Procurement, Logistics, Supply Chains, Monitoring, Humanitarian Response, and Flexibility
Political Geography:
Global Focus

16. Beyond Assumptions: How humanitarians make operational decisions

Author:
Leah Campbell and Paul Knox Clarke
Publication Date:
11-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
Abstract:
The ability to make good decisions – particularly under urgent and uncertain circumstances – is fundamental to effective humanitarian response. Yet decision-making to this extent has received little academic attention. The ALNAP Study ‘Beyond assumptions’ seeks to address this gap and it is the result of over two years’ work exploring the nature of humanitarian contexts, the different types of decisions that they require, and the most suitable approaches to making these decisions at the country/ field level. This research builds upon ALNAP’s previous work on humanitarian leadership and coordination, where the importance of good decision-making emerged as a key theme. Time and again humanitarian evaluations have also flagged it as an issue, with decision-making receiving regular criticism for being too slow, disconnected from strategy, opaque and unaccountable.
Topic:
Leadership, Decision-Making, Coordination, Humanitarian Response, and Assessment
Political Geography:
Global Focus

17. Dynamic gridlock: Adaptive humanitarian action in the DRC

Author:
Alice Obrecht
Publication Date:
02-2018
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
Abstract:
Humanitarian actors are increasingly responding to more complex situations, such as protracted conflict and high-risk cyclical natural disasters. They face continually changing, uncertain and long term crises, which is a stark contrast to the shorter term rapid-onset situations - such as flooding or earthquakes - that the humanitarian system was built around. How can they adapt the response they deliver in these changing environments? As part of an ALNAP research project addressing this increasingly important issue of adaptive and flexible humanitarian action, this country study focuses on how agencies in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are responding to a complex and protracted crisis. The country has been in a perpetual state of sporadic conflict for the last twenty years, with huge numbers of people displaced and a chronic absence of adequate infrastructure or government response to address its people’s needs. Humanitarians are working in an environment that is continually changing, as many small-to-mid-level, complicated crises arise in different parts of this vast country on a weekly basis. Through interviews with international and local agencies, ALNAP Senior Research Fellow Alice Obrecht maps how programmes and donors have tried to adapt in a setting of complex protracted conflict.
Topic:
Conflict, Adaptation, Humanitarian Response, and Flexibility
Political Geography:
Africa and Democratic Republic of the Congo

18. What’s missing? Adding context to the urban response toolbox: Annex A

Author:
Leah Campbell
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
Abstract:
This annex contains a more detailed description of the 25 tools reviewed as part of the ALNAP Study What’s Missing? Adding Context to the Urban Response Toolbox. The research sought to find tools which could be used to improve understanding of context (the environment and circumstances within which something happens and which can help to explain it). 25 tools were identified, and have been grouped as follows: 16 ‘Core’ tools developed for, or used in, urban or sub-national contexts in an emergency or crisis context, and deal in whole or in part with context. • Six ‘Supplemental’ tools these deal in whole or in part with context. Some focus on a country or an urban level in a crisis context but in a development or planning context. • Three ‘Related’ tools these tools have been considered because they address context in some way, but have a larger focus on, for example, needs or conflict.
Topic:
Urban, Humanitarian Response, and Humanitarian Organizations
Political Geography:
Global Focus

19. What's Missing? Adding context to the urban response toolbox

Author:
Leah Campbell
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
Abstract:
Recognition of the need for humanitarian response to be ‘context relevant’ has been increasing. It comes up in discussions on coordination, accountability, localisation, and effectiveness and is now broadly accepted as something humanitarian response should be striving towards. Despite this awareness, there is little clarity about what context relevance looks like or how to achieve it. In order to explore whether ‘context tools’ can help improve humanitarians’ ability to think and act more effectively in urban environments, this paper asks the following questions: • What is context? • Do we need to understand it to respond more effectively to urban crises? If so, why? • What are ‘tools to understand context’? How do these differ from one another, and from other sorts of analysis? • How can humanitarians use these tools most effectively?
Topic:
Urban, Humanitarian Response, and Context
Political Geography:
United Kingdom and Europe

20. Operational Humanitarian Decision-making Infosheet

Author:
Leah Campbell and Paul Knox Clarke
Publication Date:
04-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
ALNAP: Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance
Abstract:
ALNAP is undertaking a new piece of research to better understand how humanitarians can make effective decisions in situations of urgency and/or uncertainty. Why study humanitarian decision-making? Decision-making is an important, yet often criticised, aspect of effective humanitarian response. Evaluations point to numerous instances where decision-making has been slow, opaque and unaccountable. The importance of good decision-making has also emerged as a significant theme in ALNAP’s previous work on humanitarian leadership and coordination. Despite this, relatively little academic attention has been given to decision-making in humanitarian response.
Topic:
Leadership, Decision-Making, and Humanitarian Response
Political Geography:
United Kingdom and Europe