Why is counting humanitarian aid so complicated?
Data & Guides
Counting humanitarian aid is complicated because of the number of different people involved in donorship and delivery, all of whom define, channel, account for and report their contributions in different ways. There is no central repository of information. This makes it difficult to research and provide a simple answer to a simple question (“How much humanitarian aid is there?”), and tracking the money through the system impossible.
At every level choices are made about where, how and when to spend money. These choices will affect which organisations are supported, which people are prioritised and what type of need is met. More transparent data on how money is channelled through the system is a precondition for increased efficiency and effectiveness.
But the most important gap in the data is information about what has actually been delivered on the ground. We do not have systematic feedback from people affected by crises on what they have received and when. Without this feedback or aggregated data on what commodities and services have been delivered, the effectiveness and efficiency of the humanitarian response is hard to measure.
Stage one on the path of being able to track humanitarian aid from taxpayer to government to beneficiary is transparency by the donor. In some ways humanitarian assistance is ahead of official development aid (ODA or ‘aid’) as a whole since there is already a lot of real-time reporting. But all donors should make their humanitarian transactions fully transparent in a timely way, to common standards and in a form which makes them accessible to people and organisations in affected countries. Launched in September 2008 at the High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra, the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) aims to deliver a step shift in the availability of, and access to, information on aid flows by committing donors to work together to agree an accessible standard for the publication of information about aid including:
- an agreement on what will be published
- a common system for categorising different types of aid spending/commitments with all participants using the same terminology and definitions so that it will be easier to share and compare information
- a common electronic format that will make it easy to share information so that donors are not producing lots of different reports for different purposes but can publish data once in a form that allows it to be used in many different ways
- a code of conduct that will set out what information donors will publish and how frequently, how users may expect to access that information, and how donors will be held accountable for compliance.
The movement for improved reporting processes and increased transparency is gaining momentum and there are a number of organisations and governments working towards similar goals. In the meantime, we work with the best information we have and try to be clear about what it tells us and what it doesn’t. Using mainly data from the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and UN OCHA’s FTS, we provide an indication of the main trends, sometimes using proxy measures and imputations. We think that the data we provide is a good start – but we know that it only captures part of the picture in terms of overall volume. It is not comprehensive. So we complement this with information from other sources through desk and, increasingly, field-based research. Our work to provide better information on funding flows – notably in the areas of delivery, domestic response, conflict and the military, needs and on non-DAC governments – is ongoing.
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Steve Hutcheson says:
While the need to know where the money is going, an even greater need is to understand where the money has gone. Unfortunately, while a lot of effort is expended in managing how the money is utilized and accounted for, very little is done in the way of assessing the impact of humanitarian aid.
In business, it is standard practice to not only forecast what will be the outcome of an investment, it is also standard practice to measure the result. That is not necessarily the case with humanitarian aid. While the outcome is not in the way of financial return, the outcome of humanitarian aid is in its social return, the improvement in education, the change in livelihoods, the increased health of a population etc.
Looking at the billions of dollars that have been expended in pursuing particular goals we set for humanitarian aid, little if anything is done in measuring that outcome. We aim at specific results that can be accounted for at the conclusion, is the school built, were the book distributed, yet we are oblivious to the impact immediately after or even a year after we conclude each program.
At the conclusion of each program we take note of the lessons learned but very rarely do we collate those lessons into some meaningful database. we continue to repeat the same effort and end up with the same result ad infinitum. From the perspective of the humanitarian aid worker, their interest is not always in establishing an exit strategy of the need for aid but in ensuing that the process is continued and that their engagement in the process is continued.
DATE:
27/11/2010 4:02 pm
Lisa Walmsley (@GHA_Lisa) says:
Hi Steve. Sorry for this delayed response. Thanks for your great comments – so much in there that resonates with some of the issues that our work has raised this year, I’m not sure where to start!
Your first point, which distinguishes “where the money is going” from “where the money has gone” is an interesting one. Lazy writing on my part actually, as I should have written something that captured both these things. I guess that “where the money has gone” is an issue of accountability, while “where it is going” is one of programming and planning. The improved tracking of financial flows to people living in humanitarian crises has the potential to increase the effectiveness of humanitarian aid on both fronts.
We’re hoping to play a role in this and, working alongside our colleagues in aidinfo (who have been instrumental in the establishment of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI)), will be starting with looking at donor reporting procedures for humanitarian aid specifically in the New Year. I think this will be a great piece of work – and is just the start of the construction of a proper feedback loop, which would enable individuals and civil society affected by crises to actually participate in the impact and outcome assessments you mention.
Regarding your last paragraph .. totally agree!!
DATE:
22/12/2010 8:18 am