New HR package for program data management

CartONG is pleased to announce the release of the “HR Pack – Program data management for Humanitarian Aid and International Development CSOs”.

This new resource is the continuation of the first study published by CartONG in September 2020 and entitled: “Program data: the silver bullet of the humanitarian and development sectors? Panorama of the practices and needs of francophone CSOs”. Both guidance have been produced as part of the capacity-building project in program data management for French-speaking Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) that CartONG has been implementing since late 2019 and which is supported by the French Development Agency (AFD).

 

Why did an HR pack appear to be necessary?

The need for clearer leadership and better defined responsibilities in program data management and the need to design robust and coherent program data management strategies were both identified among the six main stakes highlighted in the first study (see left). The intertwining of these two key issues outlines how much humanitarian and development CSOs need support in developing program data management HR strategies.

The HR pack was thus designed to provide methodological support to humanitarian aid and international development CSOs in order to help them better structure their human resources in program data management.

This main objective is achieved through a dual approach. Firstly, a formal identification of existing HR skills in program data management and, secondly, the provision of practical tools to facilitate the organisation of program data management skills, the recruitment of such skills as well as capacity-building actions on the topic.

The HR pack can be used at every step of the HR cycle from facilitating the identification of the HR need to structuring program data management skills, but also helping with the recruitment and training of the appropriate person or persons within a work organisation itself adapted to the type of the CSO in question.

 

Who is the HR pack for?

While these tools are intended to be primarily accessible to human resources specialists, they have also been designed for “technical advisor” type profiles specialised in program data management or monitoring and evaluation, with a view to facilitating the organisation of program data management teams, recruitment work and the development of skills on the topic.

This set of documents will also be useful for humanitarian and development training institutes, enabling them to develop or integrate a program data management component to their training portfolios.

 

What is the HR pack made of?

The HR pack is composed of a short study entitled “Framing the key issues and getting familiar with the toolbox”, designed as an introduction, and of four practical tools as follows:

Tool n°1 – The professional frame of reference: which skills are needed in program data management? It is a synthetic overview of program data management skills at first glance.

Tool n°2 – The professional frame of reference put into practice: a detailed overview of program data management skills to help frame your HR needs. It is an in-depth look at program data management skills, highlighting associated technical and methodological know-how for each skill, classified per level of proficiency.

Tool n°3 – Structuring program data management responsibilities within your organisation: 5 “typical case” scenarios. It aims at helping the reader think about the most favourable structure for program data management skills based on the specific needs, means and constraints of a given organisation.

Tool n°4 – A tool to implement the most suitable scenario for your organisation: which skills are needed for which positions? It is an Excel document which synthesizes the various elements developed in the previous documents allowing to match adequate skills with a specific position. The tool can therefore be used during recruitment, for the framing of a position or for choosing a specific training course to build capacity in program data management internally.

 

How to use the HR pack?

The aim of the HR pack is to allow for a silo-based approach, starting with the most general aspects linked to the main skills blocks in program data management, then moving down to the organisational aspects and finally to the job description level.

Although the pack has been designed as a continuum, each tool can also be used separately, mainly as a resource to guide and widen the reflection on the way to structure program data management within an organisation, to launch the recruitment for a program data management position or to frame program data management training needs.

 

What’s next?

The HR pack is intended to provide a basis for a relatively wide range of actors, so that they can more easily initiate a reflection on the internal HR structure of program data management.

The diversity of issues highlighted during the various workshops and interviews conducted as part of this endeavour underlines the need to keep exploring such topics, which CartONG will certainly do in subsequent publications. These will aim to answer more technical questions or will target specific audiences.

We invite any user of the pack to send us comments or feedback by email so that we can continue to improve and develop this toolbox in potential future editions.