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.
Learn more by reading our news on the topic.
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.
Read more »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.
To learn more about the support provided by our team, check our this article or read our 2020 Annual Report.
In 2020, CartONG started to support the AFD Africa Department to strengthen their bottom-up accountability systems. Indeed, AFD is looking to consolidate indicators using data reported directly by their partners in the field. On this project, CartONG is working jointly with Groupe URD to propose a series of indicators as well as a scenario for their Information Management system to ensure the reporting of the said indicators. The work will continue in 2021.
To know more about the support we're providing, please check out our 2020 Annual Report.
Thanks to funding from the H2H Network's Get Ready Fund, the latter supported by UK aid from the UK government, CartONG and Groupe URD have developed a combined MEAL and Information Management training offer targeted at humanitarian staff operating in emergency settings. This online training aims at providing the participants needs of field teams to be relevant to the widest audience possible - especially given the COVID-19 pandemic context. The development of the training offer started in late 2020 and was finalized bin June 2021.
To know more about this endeavor, please check out our 2020 Annual Report.
CartONG, in consortium with MapAction, was selected by UNICEF via a Long Term Agreement for Services (LTA-S) to provide support to different UNICEF country operations and HQ over the period 2019-2022. For our first activation, CartONG and MapAction will provide support to the Mexican Ministry of Education in monitoring school attendance rates after the gradual lifting of the Covid-19 restrictions in Mexico from May 17th, 2020 onwards. To do so, we will build an interactive dashboard displaying:
1) school attendance/absence rates at the federation, state and municipality levels
2) reported reasons behind school absences
3) state of WASH and hygiene facilities at school premises
We will connect our server to the data from the Ministry of Education source, develop the dashboard, document it and train UNICEF Mexico staff to support it long-term.
To know more about this project, please read our 2020 Annual Report.
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.
Lastly, a project began to help set up the SWSC tools associated with their reporting needs on WASH, on health facilities and schools, but also communities. A process is therefore being Health facility dashboard built for consortium members to capture their reporting information and also to compile these in online PowerBI dashboards. Further support will be provided in 2021 to the consortium.
To know more about the support provided, please check out our 2020 Annual Report.
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 aim of the project is to improve and strengthen Asmae's intervention strategy, to facilitate program management and to improve the visibility of Asmae's project achievements and results externally. While Groupe URD is providing the methodological support, particularly in the definition of indicators, CartONG has designed a data collection, data consolidation and data visualisation mechanism based on Excel Online. The support provided also included the design of a detailed user manual as well as several training sessions for Asmae to take ownership of the system, conducted between the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021. After a test phase carried out at the end of 2020 the M&E system will be finalized in the spring 2021.
To learn more about this project, please check out our 2020 Annual Report.
CartONG worked with Expertise France to create a French and English dashboard to visualize the Monitoring & Evaluation data of one of their project entitled “Support for the fight against human trafficking in the Gulf of Guinea countries”, which is being implemented in five countries of the Gulf of Guinea. After reviewing the existing data visualization tools and assessing the needs of Expertise France for this request, CartONG opted to use PowerBI to build the dashboard.
The project included an important preparation phase in order to select the indicators that would be displayed on the final product and reorganized the data model of the project, before being able to develop the dashboard.
To learn more about this project, please check out our 2020 Annual Report.
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