Evaluation
In essence, NRC wanted to know how timely, relevant, effective and accountable its response had been, and what influence preparedness, coordination and other factors had on its response. It was also keen to know how its performance differed over the duration of the crisis. For this purpose its response was divided into three phases: 16 December 2013 to 31 March 2014 (Phase 1); 1 April 2014 to 21 December 2014 (Phase 2); and 1 January 2015 – 31 December 2015 (Phase 3).
The following recommendations were made to NRC to improve its emergency response management in the future to improve its relevance, coverage, timeliness and effectiveness.
Country office recommendations:
- Prioritizing hard-to-reach locations in the three most affected states (requiring exit from easier-to-access, better-served areas) and instigating coordinated planning and programme delivery between NRC’s different technical teams.
- Budgeting for preparedness planning, including contingency planning, contingency stock, a national ‘surge’ roster, and capacity-building (see below) • Creating a Humanitarian Coordinator position, responsible for preparedness, response and quality of the interventions, and as a step-in manager when necessary.
- Establishing complementary standard operating procedures (SOPs) where needed, and ensuring they are fully known by all programme and support areas.
- Assessing the emergency response experience, skills and knowledge of all staff and designing a tailored capacity building plan (including humanitarian standards, and principles, SOPs, sector-focused refreshers, and security drills)
- Developing an overarching Theory of Change or Logframe, an M&E toolkit and indicators suited to the operational context and staff capacity, and an M&E plan with a schedule and responsibilities for data collection, analysis and documentation.
Recommendations to enhance its global and regional preparedness capacity:
- Identifying countries where substantial emergency response and security experience is essential for all senior managers, and recruiting accordingly; include ‘temporary redeployment as surge capacity’ clause in contracts of all senior managers and advisors.
- Establishing a mandatory requirement for a Security Advisor position in the CO structures in high risk contexts; embedding a security culture within teams through mandatory training/refresher courses for staff and drills for crisis management structures.
- Introducing requirements for knowledge and application of emergency procedures, principles and standards in performance management processes.
- Ensuring staff awareness about current procedures and responsibility for contingency planning at HO, RO and CO levels • Guaranteeing funding allocations for emergency preparedness planning and emergency capacity building at all levels in annual budgeting process, possibly by incorporating a % of funding for emergency preparedness in global framework agreements.
- Ensuring and reinforcing that the ToRs for Global ERTs include capacity-building activities for COs and exit/handover planning.
- Introducing requirements/guidelines to carry out after Emergency Response Reviews within the first 6-8 weeks of any start of response, and regular After Action Reviews.
- Develop guidelines and tools for M&E and accountability mechanisms in hard-to-reach areas; introducing/enforcing requirements for key M&E-related documentation.
- Promoting experience and knowledge sharing in emergency response between COs by including ‘peer learning’ sessions (e.g. on assisting hard-to-access people) in regional/global events and meetings.
- Promoting certain adaptations of logistics policies and protocols to each country context without compromising global compliance issues and standards.