Humanitarian Dashboard – Guidance MYR 2013

Owner / The Humanitarian Dashboard is issued in the name of the Humanitarian Coordinator. Overall responsibility for its production lies with the OCHA Head of Office
Focal points / Field
Information Management Officer with support from an HAO and/or Reports Officer (with expectation that all will support production).
Headquarters
The Coordinated Assessment Support Section (CASS) in the Programme Support Branch is the focal point for technical support (guidance, standards).
For CAP dashboards the Common Humanitarian Action Planning Section (CHAP) in the Programme Support Branch is focal point).
Purpose / The Humanitarian Dashboard is an IASC agreed tool that presents a succinct and primarily visual overview of progress towards meeting needs in a humanitarian response. It allows stakeholders to quickly understand the strategic priorities of a response, how many people are being reached with humanitarian assistance and what constraints are influencing performance.
The strategic appeal document (CAP, humanitarian work plan) is the main point of reference for the Humanitarian Dashboard (i.e. progress will be measured against published CAP targets).
Trigger / The Humanitarian Dashboard is initially prepared for inclusion in the CAP document or alternative appeal documents.
In acute crises, an initial Humanitarian Dashboard should be produced to correspond with the publication of the Flash Appeal or a revision to a CAP.
Dashboards can also be produced when there is no formal CAP. It should be complementary to existing information products and ideally published together (see e.g.:
Frequency / A Humanitarian Dashboard should be issued regularly at a minimum ahead of the mid-year review and a new CAP cycle, ideally every month with the understanding that not all figures will change from month to month. Publication should be aligned with a Humanitarian Bulletin and Humanitarian Snapshot (See ‘Distribution’ below).
Process / Maintaining high-quality dashboards requires continued engagement with clusters and a process to facilitate data consolidation, agreement on key figures and monitoring. It is recommended to consult the annexedtechnical guidance on how to develop and maintain dashboards.
Audience / The Humanitarian Country Team, donors, host country authorities, host country nationals, humanitarian partners in-country and at headquarters, media.
Format / A4 size, portrait
Content / Most of the content of the Humanitarian Dashboard is fixed, although the judgment of the field office is required to determine which information to highlight in certain sections.
Page1:
  • Progress towards Strategic Objectives:Explain in two to three lines if the country team is on or off track in reaching their strategic objectives
  • Key Figures: The most important figures in the crisis that give the best available illustration of its scope. When available, figures include affected people, total refugees, total IDPs, total food insecure or receiving food aid. Highlight and visualise changes in figures (e.g. with arrows)
  • Crisis Description: A very brief description of drivers of the crises and humanitarian needs. This should not exceed eight lines.
  • Funding graphic: Overview of current funding required and received. If no appeal is in place, emphasis should be put on pooled funds and other funding streams.
  • Baseline: List of main baseline indicators
Page 2:
  • People in Need, Targeted, Reached by Sector:Chart that visualizes response progress. Can include funding status. This section should have no narrative text.
  • Indicator description: If helpful, describe what the chart is exactly measuring per sector. E.g. # of people receiving a food ration of any size and type for any period of time.ds that OCHA tracks over time. In new emergencies, stand-alone graphics or figures can be substituted until trends can be established

Clearance / The OCHA Head of Office clears the final Humanitarian Dashboard for publication as an OCHA information product. If desired, the field office may request support or feedback from relevant headquarters units in finalizing a Humanitarian Dashboard.
In corporate emergencies, the CRD Director may require that all OCHA information products, including the Humanitarian Dashboard, be cleared and/or produced in New York.
Technical Guidance / Minimum steps:
  • Standards and Definitions: Promote consistency among cluster members in the collection, sharing and reporting of data, as well as on terminology (affected, reached, covered – see below). Particularly important for consistent monitoring and trend analysis is to agree on the definition of beneficiaries, double counting and aggregation of figures.
  • Monitoring: Liaise with clusters on how they are doing in meeting their cluster objectives. Often the best way to capture this is to signal if a cluster objective is on or off track (sectoral work is often cyclical, agricultural inputs e.g. depending on the planting season). An inter-agency monitoring framework is currently being developed.
  • Sectoral Figures: Follow-up with clusters on the figures they provide. Ask them to explain their figures, follow up on inconsistencies, allow for estimations (as long the process to come up with estimates is transparent).
  • Cross-sectoral figures: Support the country team in establishing cross-sectoral figures, including overall caseloads. This includes maintaining a CODs registry, liaising with in-country statistical and demographic capacities, collaborating with technical partners (JIPS, REACH, etc) and designing a process that allows stakeholders to develop a shared analysis and agreement on key figures.
  • Data management: Maintain simple Excel sheets to systematically log and track figures (note: the Common Request Format is planned to be available to requesting country office in the course of the year to support the management of dashboard data).
  • Timing: It is important to start with updating the dashboard in time to be able to inform the CAP and MYR exercises. Cluster should be encouraged to first get their figures straight before jumping into analysis and process reporting. Dashboard updated published outside the CAP should be timed along with humanitarian bulletins and snapshots to promote consistency.
Additional steps to enhance the utility of the dashboard
  • Highlight changes: Highlight changes in figures and indicators.
  • Capture and visualise trends: The dashboard can be expanded to visualise trends, or through graphs or thematic maps where appropriate.
  • Inform coordination: The dashboard is not an end in itself. It should be used to inform coordination meeting or analysis. Use draft versions to consult and solicit feedback and information from partners.
  • Prepare for coordination meetings: Consider projecting draft of final dashboard at coordination meeting. Make sure somebody is present how can explain who certain figures were established and has a good overview of the information sources.
  • Increase cluster ownership over the dashboard: Make sure clusters are consulted. Compile and share a raw dashboard with clusters leads and convene a meeting to finalise it.

Standards Definitions / The Humanitarian Profile (sub-dataset of the Common Operational Dataset - CODs) provides a broad structure for categorising humanitarian caseloads. Within this structure below categorisation provides more detailed guidance.
  • Affectedpeopleincludes all people whose lives have been affected in some way by the crisis. Not all affected people are in need of humanitarian assistance. This figures can be used to define the overall number of people affected by the crisis.
  • People in needincludes those affected people who require humanitarian assistance in some form. People in need represent a sub-group of affected people and may differ from sector to sector.
  • People targeted includes all people the cluster system is trying to assist. This will likely be a sub-group of people in need, as there are many actors providing assistance that do not participate in the cluster system (affected communities, national authorities, Red Cross/Red Crescent, NGOs).
  • People reached includes those who have received some form of assistance from a cluster member. This figure says nothing about how long and how well this assistance covers the needs of the beneficiary. A more meaningful picture provides the estimate of people covered (see below).
  • People coveredindicates the number of people whose needs, defined by a humanitarian standard such as SPHERE, have been met. E.g. there is a significant difference between the two statements: 1000 people received water (people reached), or 1000 people received enough water to cover their needs (15 litres per day) for the next two weeks.