Data, evidence and access to information

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Data, Evidence & Access to Information Judith Randel Development Initiatives www.devinit.org Evidence Based Decision Making in Uganda Annette Were Munabi Development and Research Training www.drt-ug.org

Transcript of Data, evidence and access to information

Page 1: Data, evidence and access to information

Data, Evidence & Access to InformationJudith Randel

Development Initiativeswww.devinit.org

Evidence Based Decision Making in Uganda

Annette Were MunabiDevelopment and Research Training

www.drt-ug.org

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Development Initiatives –the Role of Data in Decision Making

Development Initiatives:

• An independent organisation working for the eradication of absolute poverty• Our mission is to empower and enable people to make evidence-based and data-informed decisions to

deliver more effective use of resources for poverty eradication• Produce accessible data, analysis and infographics• Offices in Bristol (UK), Nairobi (Kenya) and through our partnership with Development Research and

Training in Kampala (Uganda)

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Funding According to Need

As a minimum, to meet those principles you have to be able to assess needs in a comparable way and you have to know what resources are available – not just from your own budget, but from other sources too

GHD 11: Strive to ensure that funding of humanitarian action in new crises does not adversely affect the meeting of needs in ongoing crises.

GHD 6: Allocate humanitarian funding in proportion to needs and on the basis of needs assessments.

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Drivers of Humanitarian Funding Decisions1. What we did last year plus or minus 10%

2. The bottom line – how much does the donor have to spend

Good News: quality and availability of information on risk, vulnerability and humanitarian needs is improving (DO WE WANT TO PUT IN SOME EGs or REFERENCES here???)

Good News: some donors are using this information to systematically inform decision making

Sweden, the CHF, the EC, OFDAIssue of Concern: strongly held beliefs demonstrably drive

resource allocation, which in turn influences the way that needs are articulated.

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A Case Study: Northern Uganda

What are the humanitarian needs?

In 2010: Uganda was the 23rd recipient of official

humanitarian aid Only 4.8% of total aid ($1.7bn) to Uganda was

for humanitarian response

The most frequent disasters: Displacement of people Famine Earthquakes Epidemics Livestock and crop diseases Floods Landslides

Who are the key actors? What role do they play?

The Government has played a major role: in providing security creating a conducive environment for socio-

economic activity coordinating humanitarian actors as a channel of aid

Partners – NGOs, donors, CBOs, FBOs, private and charity organisations – have:

Provided financial and technical support Delivered services

The role of affected communities is to: Participate in the delivery (& design????) of the

response Build confidence and trust

lauraj
I've assumed this is dollars, but it might be pounds?
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The flow of information to and from affected communities in Northern Uganda

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How can we achieve better outcomes?Activities to improve the decision making of

humanitarian actors

Establish and strengthen community based information systems

Ensure the feedback loop is closed Assist key actors to adopt the open data

initiative Training and capacity building on using data

incorporating evidence Involve beneficiaries in the design, delivery

and monitoring of responses will help identify root causes/problems

Link community based information systems (CBIS) to sectoral and national level MIS

Volunteer sector based community groups should be utilised to gather on-site evidence

Obstacles/Barriers

Though evidence from affected communities is increasingly demanded at the global level, demand from national and local level decision makers remains low

Investment in data, evidence and information systems is currently low

Require the Government to provide a basic minimum package of information to be shared by all

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Discussion Topics• Given the poor quality of much information and the range of legitimate

and other influences on decisions, are our expectations of ‘evidence-based’ decision making too high? Should we just aim for transparent ‘data-informed’ decisions?

• Can we make more use of technologies to gather, publish and aggregate information?

• How much priority should be given to strengthening management information systems starting with community based systems for improved humanitarian and development outcomes?

• Human intelligence, judgement and experience play a critical role in decision-making: is this sufficiently recognised in the context of the drive for evidence-based decisions?