the UN cluster approach, what it did in 2006, what it's not doing very well (yet) including IT

--------
SUMMARY

There's a lot of information on the UN cluster
approach and the associated funding of responses. 
NGOs in particular have been critical of the latter.

What I found suggests there may be good reason to be
skeptical about the UN's bureaucratic approach.  One
need not adopt Newt Gingrich's view of emergency
response to come to the conclusion that the UN has not
(yet) addressed the many implications of mobile device
ubiquity, radical transparency, IP monoculture, online
matching and bidding, wikis, social networking, NGOs
leading public opinion, and an inceasingly web-aware
global population that's expecting to find any truly
important information on google, e.g. as google map
overlays.  Where, for instance, is a map of P-codes
showing their exact geographic boundaries in lat/long?

They seem not even to be doing meetings and reporting
very well, nor helping their people exploit the many
freely available coordination tools on the Internet. 
(I found mention of a Microsoft project that may be an
effort to displace Reliefweb.int with something
better)
 
The IT situation is frankly a mess, the web interfaces
use proprietary formats like PDF and PowerPoint and
seem mostly to be focused on making people aware of
current training courses and "evaluation" reports.  I
have to criticize humanitarianreform.org for, sadly:
- failing to impose stricter reporting in open formats
- failing to exploit RSS beyond training course
notices
- having no participant-generated content whatsoever
- having no social networking / user pages whatsoever
- not putting meeting agendas/minutes in one URL
scheme
- not having meaningful memorable URLs/URIs anywhere

I point to Centiare.com as an example of what the UN
(and W3) could do with battle-hardened free software. 
(If people balk at PHP they can use jamwiki and Java
though they'd have to add in the semantic tag
support).

That said, the clusters do appear to be evolving and
improving coordination as intended.  There's so much
to do to reconcile a Babel of incompatible approaches
and terminology that in 2006 the clusters were mostly
figuring out what they could actually agree on.  I've
a few concerns about following the UN lead everywhere:
- lack of NGO participation and cooperation with same
- "clusters" are skills-focused not
beneficiary-focused
- no outreach to include utility expertise outside ITC
- unclear role for local resilience
networks/volunteers

Very promisingly, there are numerous reports of
multiple agencies agreeing on deliverables notably in
the camp, nutrition and telecom clusters, e.g. the
camp, protection, shelter clusters have issued a
CD-ROM with IDP resources on it.  Has anyone got that?

Also, addressing the concern Gavin and I share about
utilities, telecom cluster work is focusing on
improved Standard Operational Procedures (SOPs) and a
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) regarding (I assume)
roles and handoffs in a challenging telecom situation.

Some skepticism raised on this list may be shared by
the clusters themselves:  The water/WASH cluster
critiques some field operations and complains in
particular about lack of meetings and contacts;  The
nutrition cluster raised some governance questions
like the actual meaning of "provider of last resort".

The cluster definitions are evolving with "Gender,
HIV/AIDS, Environment" as new "cross-cutting issues"
and a clarification that shelter includes non-food
items and protection includes human rights.  Little on
reduction of risk or resilience or how long term
efforts combine with short term (though telecom MOUs
may address that and it's obviously already of concern
to WASH cluster).

Most of this information is from 2006, I expect there
is little available as yet on progress so far in 2007.

---------------

OVERVIEWS

This orientation describes the entire UN program:
http://www.humanitarianreform.org/humanitarianreform/Default.aspx?tabid=223

Many documents, some critical, are at reliefweb.inet:
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/lib.nsf/doc207?OpenForm&query=3&cat=Humanitarian%20Reform

The FAQs focus on the implications for governance:

http://www.humanitarianreform.org/humanitarianreform/Default.aspx?tabid=202

http://www.humanitarianreform.org/humanitarianreform/Default.aspx?tabid=299

UN IT

The OCHA "IM Toolbox" and "3W Who does What
Where/Contact Management Directory" appear to be
efforts to standardize reporting, probably based on
the schema Soenke outlined.

http://www.humanitarianinfo.org/IMToolBox/index.html
http://3w.unocha.org/WhoWhatWhere/

UN FUNDING

Not all clusters are receiving equal attention.  In
2006 Camp Management and Coordination (100%),
Protection (96%), Water/sanitation (90%), and
Emergency Shelter (86%) were the most funded.  Others
were between 40 -50% funded so it's reasonable to say
they are not doing everything they think they need to.

Details of the funding are at
http://ochadms.unog.ch/quickplace/cap/main.nsf/h_Index/Revision_2006_Cluster_Appeal/%24FILE/Revision_2006_Cluster_Appeal.doc%3FOpenElement

Some 2007 documents indicate that "Gender, HIV/AIDS,
Environment, Protection (including Human Rights), Camp
Coordination and Camp Management, and Early Recovery
are currently recognized as Cross-cutting issues" so
there may be at least three additional clusters, and
some shifting of scope within (shelter now includes
non-food items, for instance).  Obviously resilience
and long-term recovery would be at least one more of
these cross-cutting issues.

UN PROGRESS IN 2006

The only reports I could find of UN progress were from
2006, which were in PDF format.  Some documents were
even in PowerPoint format.  This I find unacceptable
and I question the competence of the management of UN
IT functions if this is how they believe that critical
accountability information should be reported/stored.

Of course, they'd probably blame "underfunding" but it
seems to me that plenty of time has gone into creating
a rather confusing and overly layered user interface
for humanitarianreform.org (seems to be focused on
training) and a somewhat strange front end for the 3W
application.  I wish they would just replace it all
with a clean standard semantic mediawiki and wiki user
pages very soon and let google take over indexing. 
Centiare.com does exactly this and reports that it is
extremely easy to propagate phrases, proper names,
etc.

http://centiare.com/Centiare:Search_Engine_Optimization

Without burdening you with digging through all the UN
"newsletters" in propriteary formats, here's what I
was able to find.  There are, again unacceptable in my
eyes, no links to any of the critical resources, since
it's all in PDF, leaving anyone interested scrambling
using google to find the various CD-ROMs or reports
they're preparing:

--------------
As of 2006, the camp, protection, shelter clusters
have issued a CD-ROM with IDP resources on it.

The camp cluster is focused on operational data
management, and runs workshops for agencies.

The early recovery cluster (underfunded) is assembling
tools and methodologies and drafting a guidance
package for field-based staff.

The shelter cluster now includes non-food items (a
list has been reviewed) and is building web resources,
writing a document on monitoring and reporting tools.

The health cluster (underfunded) was differentiating
chronic emergency situations vs. sudden emergency
situations.

The logistics cluster (underfunded) is defining
stockpile mapping and supply tracking and the
logistics coordination role (which "entailed
prioritisation, consolidation of pipeline information
and mapping" and no it's not clear whether pipeline
means supply chain here or real actual oil pipelines).

The nutrition cluster (underfunded) partners (UNICEF,
WFP, WHO, IFRC, ACF) agreed in March on the 'essential
package' of guidelines (unclear if this also means a
definition exists for a humanitarian ration which
would be an actual physical package for a
beneficiary).

The protection cluster developed a Handbook on IDP
Protection based on its ("six SURGE, 11 ProCap Tier 1,
  and 13 ProCap Tier 2") current deployments, and held
meetings "focused on gender" and other issues.

The telecom cluster (underfunded) participated in
RIPLEX 2006, an "IHP sponsored event" that "simulated
the emergency response to a natural disaster with
standby partners..." committed to common "standard
operational procedures (SOPs) covering activation and
deployment [facilitating] use of standby partners to
provide expertise and/or equipment" and a "model
memorandum of understanding"; "A collaboration tool
has been established" but no indication who's involved
or using it, nor even the URL of its public interface,
if any.  Unclear if these MOUs and SOPs are meant to
cover utilities beyond telecom.

WASH/water (underfunded) had eight projects: "Cluster
Coordination, Information Management, Hygiene
Promotion, Capacity Mapping, Emergency Materials List
and Stocks, Training and Capacity Building, Learning: 
Joint Evaluations and Independent Reviews, Country
Cluster Resource Identification and Strategies." 
"TOR's have been prepared for three of those projects:
Cluster Coordination, Hygiene Promotion; and for the
Needs Assessment as part of Information Management." 
Unclear where the other five stand.

This one cluster seems to be critiquing field work.
WASH in Liberia "identified several critical factors
that impeded the cluster application in a coherent and
consistent manner. Among those are the lack of
emergency programming; absence of cluster lead
meetings; lack of clarity beyond Monrovia on agreed
approach to coordination of WASH; deficient 
information flow from the filed to national level; and
no established strategy or specific links between
cluster leader and Humanitarian Co-ordination Section
(which replaced OCHA and is part of UNMIL) on field
coordination."

The nutrition cluster was also seeking guidance on
conceptual issues such as the provider of last resort,
and concerned with ensuring that surveillance data
trickles up from district to national level, and that
decisions are based on indicators and data rather than
politics.  

Of all the clusters this was the clearest indication
that there were serious concerns about cross-cluster
"management" concerns.


       
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Received on Sunday, 24 June 2007 21:16:28 UTC