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.
This project aimed 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 provided 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).
Read more »Two series of webinars for beginners and advanced profiles were organized to support the ongoing capacity building of Terre des hommes' field teams in terms of Mobile Data Collection and analysis:
To know more about this support, please check out our 2020 Annual Report.
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.
To know more about the support provided by our team, please check out our 2020 Annual Report.
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.
To learn more about the support provided by our team, please check out our 2020 Annual Report.
In late 2019, CartONG and Max Havelaar France signed their first one-year partnership agreeement. This agreement is automatically renewed from one year to another.
In 2020, the support to Max Havelaar France consisted of coaching and training the Côte d’Ivoire team on their adoption of the ONA tool for Mobile Data Collection following the 2019 pilot mission by CartONG. We also produced a video to present their use of MDC, and also supported Max Havelaar France and FairTrade International on the reflection on their approach and capacity building in relation to data.
To know more, please check out our 2020 Annual Report.
This activity aimed at supporting the operation in terms of data management, by analyzing their needs, determining recommendations, and helping them build the information management system needed by the operation.
It is being conducted as part of the 3-year partnership agreement concluded between CartONG and Solidarités International.
To know more about our support, please check out our 2020 Annual Report.
This project aimed at supporting the operation in terms of data management, by analyzing their needs, determining recommendations, and helping them build the information management system needed by the operation.
It is being conducted as part of the 3-year partnership agreement concluded between CartONG and Solidarités International.
To know more about our support, please check out our 2020 Annual Report.
When the pandemic started to spread in 2020, UNHCR saw the need of assessing the preparedness of the respective countries at country, site and urban situation level and displaying the results together with the People of Concern figures and the overall Country Case figures on a single dashboard. Additionally, the Public Health section wanted to pull in data from the Balance Score Card health Facility Assessments it had been supporting for several years. In order to pull it off quickly, we opted for developing an ESRI-based dashboard to display the additional requested data. The health facility coordinates collected through the Facility Assessments were turned into a GIS feature service in order to make them ready for display in other systems too. The dashboard also came with documentation on how to update certain fields, on how to make use of the scripts and also read in the data in other systems.
To know more about the dashboard developed by our team, please check out our 2020 Annual Report.
CartONG, through the request of Max Havelaar France, is supporting FairTrade Africa in their implementation of Mobile Data Collection for the follow up of their cocoa cooperatives in Cote d'Ivoire. The project started by a small assessment of the situation and comparison of tools that could best cater to these needs, followed by a preparation of the digitization of the process through mobile data collection that was then tested, piloted and improved accordingly with the FairTrade teams in Cote d’Ivoire in preparation for a full deployment. The whole approach was seen very positively by the teams, who have already started sharing the work with other countries and also using MDC for other projects.
CartONG developed a large part of the mobile and analysis components of FACET, a facility monitoring tool for Water Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services in schools (WINS) and in health facilities (WIH).
The tools are based on Kobo/ODK for mobile data collection and on a Power BI dashboard for online visualisation of indicators and an Excel offline dashboard for more advanced analysis.
The WASH in Health Facility Evaluation Tool (FACET), jointly developed by Terre des hommes, Eawag and CartONG with support from the UNICEF/WHO Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP), is based on globally recognised indicators and is suitable across the continuum of humanitarian and development interventions.
In 2017, CartONG also designed an online dashboard with Power BI linked to the FACET WASH Health Facility (see an example with test data) and School evaluation mobile data collection tools (here).
In 2018, CartONG helped build the new version of the FACET mobile data collection and analysis tools, based on a review of the needs and also an update of the key JMP indicators on which the tools are based.
In 2019, the work on the new version of FACET for both schools and health facilities continued, with the realigning of the mobile and analysis tools with updates to the current dashboards and the development of new dashboards. This was done for Terre des hommes in direct partnership with EAWAG, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology.
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