Strengthening The Performance Monitoring Of Humanitarian Responses In The Sahel Region

Basic monitoring of key humanitarian indicators has been in place since June 2012, but it needs to be improved by strengthening data collection and extending across the affected countries. The Regional Humanitarian Coordinator (RHC) for Sahel requested the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) and other humanitarian partners to ensure timely and accurate performance monitoring of their responses. The Online Reporting System (ORS) is a web-based tool developed as a reporting tool for organizations working in the field to report their activities and share information. The system has been designed to provide a centralized platform for data collection and analysis to cluster members, allowing cluster coordinators and UNOCHA to obtain a more comprehensive and accurate overview of the humanitarian response in the respective clusters. The ORS is accessible to all humanitarian stakeholders, including UN agencies and NGOs, donors, and national government agencies. Summarized performance monitoring data is public and accessible to all, while detailed reports and other functionalities are accessible after registering to the database. The system has five different user roles, including Data Entry/Field Officer, Country Cluster Lead, Regional Cluster Lead, OCHA Country Admin, and OCHA Admin. Multiple interactive demo and training sessions were held in Senegal, Mali, and Cameroon, with participants suggesting requirements and changes to make the tool more user-friendly and get more information out of it. Most of the changes requested by users were completed, and the tool is ready for production. In May, multiple training sessions were arranged in Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, and Nigeria, and the old data from January to May 2014 will be imported into the system using the 'Bulk Import' functionality. The ORS has several key functions, including multiple dashboards, cluster leads' power to approve or reject entered data, cluster leads' ability to pick priority indicators for the country, and regional leads' ability to pick priority indicators for the whole region. The system also has pivot table reports, custom reports, and notifications for users to notify them of important activities on the system.