question
Q. How does UNHCR track and report on the use of its funds?
The funds are managed through the Country Operational Planning Process.
Country Operation Planning is the coordinated review of the implementation of the planned response by the country offices to measure planned activities and whether they deliver the expected outputs and outcomes, and their impact, both positive and negative. It makes causal linkages, looking at intended and unintended results with periodic and targeted evaluation of UNHCR's yearly budget.
UNHCR raises humanitarian money by making appeals to the public and governments to fund its activities. All UNHCR country operations then coordinate to produce evidence on existing capacities, risks, and progress based on the actual annual budget and expenditures to inform and adapt the planning of action and response for the upcoming year through this "Country Operation Planning Process" with its partner agencies and organizations. By the end of March each year, all country operations report the progress they achieved with the activities implemented during the previous year in a results-based management platform based on an output-impact matrix, update their protection and solutions strategy for the upcoming year, and plan their activities. Pursuant to that, states that are members of UNHCR's Executive Committee (ExCOM) provide almost all of the voluntary contributions and approve the programs and budget of the organization. By and large, COP is essentially the key process whereby UNHCR officiates its narrative on the impact of its work, along with data to declare the gap between the needs and priorities of the affected communities on the ground and the available humanitarian funding.
UNHCR Global Trends Report, which quantifies the populations the organization serves through the latest key trends with figures, feeds into the Global Report, which quantifies UNHCR's work through the budget and expenditures collected through the COP process. Some of this country-level financial data is accessible on the Global Focus Website.
Tags
gap minder
Human & Technical Biases in Data-Driven Humanitarian Efforts
- The public facing COP narrative that quantifies the problem by outlining all protection risks and/or assistance gaps with reference to the baseline data (starting point) on the identified protection risks and gaps affecting each population type that the organisation is mandated to serve (refugees, stateless persons, returnees, and internally displaced persons). It further describes the consequences of the problems, the applicable standards, and the findings of participatory engagement with the communities. The staff working in various different sections pull the baseline data from various UNHCR and partner agency sources, that are not connected to each other e.g., registration and case management data, mission reports, direct field observation, and technical surveys of UNHCR. In other words, the organization, through its expert staff, evaluates itself against the standards put forth in the legal and administrative framework with data and narrative text to explain its expenditures and ask for more funding.
- UNHCR's data management is hindered by disjointed storage systems with limited capabilities for efficient organisation and analysis, impacting the quality of services for forcibly displaced populations.
- The lack of a standardised data collection and aggregation method as well as data quality framework across different sources can result in inaccuracies and discrepancies, potentially affecting decision-making processes.
- UNHCR's global data systems are devoid of minimal Age, Gender, Diversity (AGD) typologies, hampering regional, global, and temporal data aggregation and comparability.
- The realities of UNHCR's operational processes are often not adequately captured in the data, resulting in an oversimplified view of the organization's work and challenges. • The timeliness of data is affected by complex processes of collection, validation, and aggregation, potentially leading to outdated information being used for decision-making.
- Information is missing on how data is processed and simplified for presentation.
- The flow of funds from donors to UNHCR and onwards to refugees is not transparent, potentially impacting decision-making and refugees' lives.
- Information regarding the division of responsibilities between UNHCR and national governments is absent, complicating the assessment of host governments' involvement or interference in relief work.
- Revisions and updates may lead to the erasure of previous data, introducing inconsistencies and potentially losing crucial historical context.
Questions:
- What are the sources of error and bias in the process of collecting information on persons with specific needs and reporting funding requirements across all UNHCR databases and systems, including partner agencies' data?
- What strategies does UNHCR employ to address data gaps, and how effective are they?
- How does UNHCR ensure the quality of the data used for monitoring its expenditures?
- What methods are used to estimate missing values in operational data, and how are they validated?
- What steps does UNHCR take to ensure the reliability and comparability of operational data from different sources?
- How does UNHCR handle discrepancies between different data sources?
- What are UNHCR's criteria for a data source to be deemed reliable?
- What funding is allocated to operating costs, contractual arrangements, software licenses, configuration and development costs, enhancement and requests from application vendors, rollout missions, training development and support teams for all the systems used at HQs, regional and country level?
- How does UNHCR report on incomplete or failed data and digital innovation projects?
- What is the cost of attempts to improve the data environment, e.g., consultant firms and staff hired for projects and development activities to consolidate UNHCR's data?
- How does UNHCR ensure that simplification of data does not compromise its validity?
- How does UNHCR's data presentation consider the needs of different stakeholders?
- How does UNHCR handle potential misinterpretation of simplified data by various stakeholders?
- How does UNHCR manage the trade-off between data timeliness and accuracy?
- What measures does UNHCR take to ensure that decisions are based on the most current data?
- How does UNHCR validate the timeliness of the data it uses for decision-making?
- How does UNHCR maintain data consistency over time and across different providers?
- How does UNHCR handle revisions and updates to ensure that historical data on right violations is not lost or compromised?
- How does UNHCR harmonize varying methodologies and definitions to ensure comparability of data over time and across providers?
- To what extent does UNHCR include challenges related to systemic biases, infrastructure, and failed projects in its public narratives?
- What steps is UNHCR taking to increase transparency in the flow of funds from donors to refugees?
- How does UNHCR plan to share information about the division of responsibilities between itself and national governments?
- How is UNHCR working to preserve historical data while managing revisions and updates?
- How does UNHCR plan to standardize methodologies, definitions, and measurement techniques to ensure comparability and reliability of data over time and across providers?
- How does UNHCR handle issues of missing or incomplete information in its datasets, especially regarding systemic biases, infrastructures, and failed projects?
- What are the protocols and measures in place to rectify such instances of missing or incomplete data?
- What strategies does UNHCR have in place to identify and mitigate acts of omission, whether they are committed directly by UNHCR or indirectly through their partners?
- How does UNHCR address its own internal challenges, such as systemic biases and infrastructural issues in its data and reports?
