Post on 30-Jun-2015
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
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)
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.
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.
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
The flow of information to and from affected communities in Northern Uganda
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
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?