MDC support to the Livelihoods and Energy programs (UNHCR DRS)

Since March 2018, CartONG has been providing support to the Division of Resilience and Solutions (DRS) of UNHCR, in particular for its Livelihoods and Energy programs.

In 2018, DRS undertook a comprehensive revision of the framework for monitoring the UNHCR Energy and Livelihoods programs on a global level. DRS developed mobile data collection tools which are scalable and a monitoring system that helps implement both Livelihoods and Energy activities across operations. The monitoring system is a system that allows data flow integration linking the data collected by UNHCR operations on KoboToolbox to a centralized online interactive spreadsheet for analysis and data validation before finally publishing to the program’s Livelihoods and Energy Open data platforms. In 2018, CartONG provided timely technical guidance and support to the UNHCR DRS field operations through the following activities:

• Technical guidance and training: remote training through webinars and personalized follow-up calls were provided to 34 operations for Livelihood and 9 operations for Energy. In-country support was provided in both Cameroon and Sudan.
• Technical review of Smartphones for local procurement
• Review of existing procedures and tools, updating of training materials and surveys
• Support on data quality check, analysis and reporting: a total of 31 Livelihoods and 6 Energy Country Analysis Notes were uploaded to their respective Open Data platform.
• Administration of the Livelihoods and Energy Open Data platforms
• Data quality assessment of the open data platform
• Evaluation of system robustness and scaling capacity

You may learn more about checking our 2018 Annual Report.

In 2019, CartONG continued to provide technical guidance and support to the UNHCR DRS field operations through the continuation of 2018 activities and the development of new ones:

• Technical guidance and training: technical support and remote training to the field operations have been made. 40 operations for Livelihood and 11 operations for Energy were trained on the use of the Livelihood and Energy monitoring tools respectively.
• Review of existing procedures and tools & update of training materials and surveys: update of the existing training materials and tools with new instructions to reflect the transition of the mobile data collection tool from Kobo Collect to ODK Collect. A total of 7 languages are now supported, PDF survey versions were also made accessible through both the Livelihoods and Energy Open Data platforms.
• Support on data quality check, analysis and reporting: a thorough evaluation and data quality verification of the summary reports referred to as "Country Analysis Notes" (a report summarizing each operations project background and results of key impact indicators) was conducted. CartONG helped redesign the new UNHCR monitoring template, tested the problem statement automation system and provided support to focal points in 40 Livelihoods and 11 Energy operations to refill the new templates.
• Administration of open data platform: administration and maintenance of both Livelihoods and Energy open data platforms to ensure real-time information on global indicators, and country profiles and training resources are up to date and easily accessible.
• System support, maintenance, documentation and bug tracking: finalization of the monitoring system’s technical documentation which documents the entire monitoring system scripts.
• Integration of data protection practices: CartONG carried out a risk analysis and developed a Risk Analysis Report of Energy and Livelihoods Monitoring Tools which mapped out the risk related to data, processes, and tools within the DRS project.

Learn more by reading our 2019 Annual Report.

In 2020, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, CartONG supported a total of 38 countries on the use of mobile data collection tools. 32 countries monitored Livelihoods programs and 14 countries monitored Energy programs. CartOnG's support in 2020 included:

• Technical support and remote training to the field operations focal points on the usage of the Livelihoods and Energy monitoring tools, setting up mobile data collection and verifying data submissions
• The review of existing procedures and tools, updating of training materials and surveys to reflect the changes implemented on both the Livelihoods and Energy programs
• The launch of a new automated process to draft the narratives that are integrated in the Country Analysis Notes
• The administration of the open data platforms and data quality assessments to verify the accuracy of the values calculated and displayed, allowing to provide recommendations to the platform’s developers to fix discrepancies
• The finalization of the monitoring system’s technical documentation
• The suggestion to the UNHCR HQ of a more robust system back-end architecture to enhance overall performance, simplify the architecture, improve data security and allow the easy scalability of the system

To know more about the support CartONG provided in 2020, please read our 2020 Annual Report.