English 
Do you feel that finding reliable information in your organization on which to base decisions is becoming increasingly difficult in an ever-changing humanitarian context? Do you find it difficult to develop an information management strategy as it deals with so many different aspects of your teams’ work and so many different internal entities? And whilst information can be harvested from the web, are you unsure about how to make best use of this data and complement your own operational data? Do you find it difficult to explain what information management is and how it can be used?
Information management (IM) is one of the keys to identifying needs and assisting affected populations in a more efficient manner. It ensures that information gaps are identified, and that data from different sources is linked and analysed, and becomes actionable information within an organization and for its partners. An information management strategy allows you to define standard procedures that optimize workflow and ensure that the right information reaches the right people. Efficient information management is necessary for all sectors, be it WASH, education or CCCM, since you will conduct needs assessments, track distributions, carry out household surveys and generally monitor and evaluate your implementation for all programme activities. Information management involves collecting reliable and timely information, coordinating, planning and implementing assessments, analysing and storing information, as well as disseminating and presenting information in a format that is easy to understand and use, such as maps or graphs. Ultimately, these information products will inform planning and decision-making. CartONG assists humanitarian organizations in their IM work with any or all of these steps.
Learn more about how CartONG can help you with your Information Management projects below:
Information management is also strongly related to Mobile Data Collection, Geographical Information Systems and Capacity building so don't hesitate to visit those pages also.
CartONG and Action contre la Faim have signed a 3-year partnership agreement to further their collaboration. The partnership agreement that will run from 2020 to 2023 details the general principles of collaboration between our two organizations around common goals and mutual commitments as well as more operational aspects.
In particular, it aims to develop the use of cartographic products within Action Contre la Faim by making CartONG’s mapping service available to ACF’s operations. In particular, our team of cartographers will be able to provide emergency support to ACF in the event of a humanitarian crisis, in what is called “rush mode format” as we can already do for other partners such as MSF or ACAPS.
More generally, this partnership also aims to provide ACF's teams with better support in the area of program data management (or Information Management), either through capacity building for their teams or strategic advice and support.
The "Strengthening CSOs' Information Management" project aims to professionalize French-speaking Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in the use and implementation of methods, tools and processes related to the different stages of the data analysis chain.
Co-financed by AFD for 3 years (early 2020 - late 2022) and implemented with the support of 10 partners, this project will make it possible for CartONG to continue its work in support of the sector by promoting the pooling and dissemination of new resources, both practical (tools, tutorials, training modules, etc.) and strategic (studies, etc.) to all humanitarian and development actors.
In alphabetical order, the 10 partners of the project are:
Learn more about this initiative by reading our introductory article to the project.
After ten years of ad hoc collaborations between CartONGand Solidarites International (SI), the two organizations decided to sign a Partnership Agreement to facilitate future activities in the next three years.
The agreement concerns the capacity building of SI teams on Information Management (IM), the running of studies, the provision of strategic advice and technical field support related to Information Management, as well as the development, configuration and deployment of IM tools.
In that vein, work has started at the very end of 2019 to support the Myanmar and Bangladesh field operations in the improvement of their IM practices and processes, that will continue for most of 2020 (learn more here and here).
The RESILAC (Inclusive Economic and Social Recovery of Lake Chad) project and consortium identified during its start-up phase the need to improve the management of its information (also called Information Management or IM). CartONG is supporting Groupe URD in charge of the operational M&E system (système de suivi et d'évaluation des réalisations) on the information management component.
In 2019, CartONG conducted a diagnostic in information management (all combined technologies) in order to formalize the needs of stakeholders, identify existing constraints and opportunities and propose solution scenarios.
Following this diagnosis, CartONG continues to support the RESILAC project teams in 2020 and 2021 in the implementation of certain recommendations: design of a dashboard to help monitor and manage the project, design of a database at the level of individual beneficiaries to centralize the support provided by the project through these various activities, distance training to the teams in data management etc.
As part of an approach facilitated by F3E, Groupe URD and CartONG are supporting Asmae to implement a M&E system for its international operations. The objective of the M&E is to Improve and strengthen Asmae's intervention strategy, to facilitate programme management and to improve the visibility of Asmae's project achievements and results externally. While Groupe URD will provide the methodological support, particularly in the definition of indicators, CartONG's work will be to design and implement a data collection, data consolidation and data visualisation system.
This project aims at supporting the humanitarian aid and international development sector in adapting its Information Management and Monitoring & Evaluation response to the Covid-19 crisis.
As part of this initiative, CartONG is to provide direct support to NGOs - hotline or coaching - addressing specific data-related requests at headquarters or in the field, as well as a more global support to the sector through the release of technical and methodological guidance (technical briefs, tutorials and tech watch findings) and feedback resources (case studies and lessons learned).
Requests for support or for guidance are to cover a wide range of IM topics - such as quantitative and qualitative data collections, data visualization and analysis, as well as responsible data management and data ethics - and will be tackled by CartONG's tech teams.
This project is run with the support of Groupe URD for the M&E component. We are also coordinating our action with MapAction, HOT and Translators without Borders in particular, as well as other H2H organizations to avoid duplicating our efforts.
A short recap of this project
In May 2020, we thus set up the IM Covid-19 Help Center on CartONG’s website to centralize the requests of local and international NGOs (which is now closed).
By the end of the project, we had provided support to 19 local and international actors, we had organized 6 capacity-building events and released 14 resources (7 in French & English, and 7 in English only).
The IM Covid-19 Help Center was supported by the H2H Network’s H2H Fund, which is supported by UK aid from the UK government. It was also implemented as part of the "Strengthening Information Management within CSOs" project co-financed by the French Development Agency (AFD).
Two series of webinars for beginners and advanced profiles were organised to support the ongoing capacity building of Terre des hommes' field teams in terms of Mobile Data Collection and analysis.
In 2020, convinced by the FACET tools developed by Tdh, EAWAG and CartONG since 2016 (available here), the SWSC decided to adapt them for use by all consortium member NGOs for their WASH risk evaluations in health facilities & schools. CartONG therefore supported the adaptation of the tools to the SWSC needs, as well as a series of webinars to help the NGOs discover the tools and also - for those that were not big users of Mobile Data Collection - to learn how to apply it to their field data collections for FACET. Beyond this, a hotline was also offered to the consortium members to support them in their implementation, as well as to cover the local adaptations that were necessary of the global forms.
As part of a Bioforce project aiming at strengthen local capacities to work for the resilience of populations and crisis response in Central African Republic (CAR), CartONG is supporting Bioforce to provide structural strengthening of the Permanent Secretariat of NGOs (SPONG) in CAR.
This support-advice mission, carried out following an information management assessment that took place in 2019, and initially planned via a field mission (canceled due to the Covid 19 crisis), was carried out completely remotely. Its objective was to provide technical support for the operationalization of the Excel databases of the SPONG as well as to support the SPONG teams in the use of the mapping tool QGIS to establish 3W maps.
In 2020, CartONG was solicited by the Voute Nubienne Association for an assessment of the data component of their Monitoring and Evaluation system. A workshop at HQ and different field interviews were therefore run to produce such a document, describing the needs of AVN, a description of the features they wanted in the system in place (as well as the associated constraints, capture modalities, types of users, and data model), and some elements concerning the possible technical scenarios.
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