3 Ways Big Data is making NGOs More Accountable
Originally posted on datapolicywonk
There is a chain of accountability in providing humanitarian assistance:
NGOs are most importantly accountable to vulnerable populations that are in need of relief(refugees, IDPs and others) 2) NGOs are accountable to donors and 3) Donors are accountable to the general public to provide resources to NGOs.
Vulnerable people (refugees, internally displaced people, others) want comfort in knowing help is allocated and is being provided.
Donors need to be assured that resources they have fundraised for and awarded to NGOs are used in best possible way to implement projects are really are reaching number of people that were claimed in the project proposals.
In this chain of accountability largest pressure is on NGOs. They have to be devoted and capable intermediary between those in need and those who are willing to provide assistance. To avoid potential reputation risk, NGOs have to demonstrate they are compliant with donor requests as well as being responsive to them.
Being More Accountable to Beneficiaries
Beneficiaries are vulnerable and in dire need of responsive high quality services. But to be accountable to beneficiaries NGOs providing relief need to be able hear their concerns and suggestions in types of services and means by which ongoing projects and even more importantly react based those concerns and suggestions.
Beneficiary feedback through digital data collection can be collected in getting structured feedback on quality of service – for example on a Likert scale, and that compile data for a month or a different period, and track how overall, during project implementation targeted population is satisfied with the quality of services delivered.
Other way is to ask for beneficiaries for their unstructured feedback – open ended questions that are there to receive comments, both positive and constructive on what they feel their needs are and how are they being addressed.
How does big data help? It can provide this data from the field to a program manager, or NGO manager in real time! It works only if organizations are committed to learning and allocate time to into data and see what beneficiaries are telling them.
It is up to staff to use expediency and insight to collect and react based on data and be more accountable to people in need.
Being Accountable to Donors
To do so, NGOs have to be diligent in monitoring and evaluation of the project. However, providing data in log frame might not be enough. Next to financial audits, institutional donors could require NGOs to be able to vouch for data on overall progress of the project as well.
For instance, if a training was organized, there should be a sign up sheet for that workshop. But most of the efforts are related to providing services to beneficiaries in the field in humanitarian context and it is logical to have all data on provided food packages, information disseminated, funds allocated for medicines or clothing (vulnerability fund) in one place, so anyone who needs to go through the data can see time, place, and person who entered data in the data set.
So it doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, but data audits are more and more a thing in service delivery in humanitarian relief.
How does big data help? Data audit might be performed by project or M&E managers to determine is there a consistency in reporting from mobile teams: do they report regularly, is it being done on time, is it being done by all members of the mobile teams who oversee reporting, are there any inconsistencies in terms of numbers of beneficiaries served by each of the teams.
There might be human errors or gaps in data collection and using metadata, available through digital data collection can help a to determine quality of data collected.
Being Accountable to the Public
Big data provides transparency.
How does big data help? Having big data sets, with all personal data deleted of course is a great way to be transparent in any field. Including humanitarian setting. Data sets can be published, merged, broken down by anybody with some skill in big data setting.
Data should be shared, crowd sourced for any interested party, other NGO staff, civic hackers (especially civic hackers) to be analyzed visualized, researched