McRAM Pakistan

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McRAM Pakistan

• A Lesson in Assessment Preparedness

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McRAM Pakistan Floods August 2010
Provinces 4
Interviewers 107(m) 95(f)
Districts 27
Settlements/Villages 383
Households 2,442
Total days 24 (4 collecting data in the field)
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McRAM timeline
Date (August) Event Date Event
13 First AWG 26 Field
14 27 Field
15 Sandie Arrives 28 Field/ Herbert arrives/ Richard arrives
16 Cluster inputs 29 Data entry, cleaning, IM product design with clusters
17 AWG 30 Data entry, cleaning, IM product design with clusters
18 Bilateral meetings with clusters Alice arrives 31 Data entry, cleaning, IM product design with clusters
19 Bilateral meetings with clusters Alice arrives 1 (September) Preliminary findings
20 Bilateral meetings with clusters Alice arrives 2
21 Bilateral meetings with clusters Alice arrives 3 Full HH data shared
22 Bilateral meetings with clusters Alice arrives 4
23 Training 5 Full Com data shared
24 Training 6
25 Field 7 Report uploaded
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The Multi-cluster Rapid Assessment Mechanism
(McRAM) project commenced in Pakistan in March
2008 with the aim of designing a post-emergency
assessment that
Assessment Preparedness

• was collaborative (i.e. a multi-cluster
  assessment)
• utilized Personal Digital Assistant (PDA)
  technology

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McRAM Project Objective

• ..to have a well designed, multi-cluster
  assessment mechanism in place and a system
  prepared to implement this mechanism at very
  short notice in order to improve the quality and
  timeliness of joint assessments.

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McRAM Preparedness Within Contingency Planning
PREPAREDNESS
RESPONSE
Contingency Planning
Rapid Onset Emergency
Pre-crisis Vulnerability
Impact ..Recovery
Vulnerability Baseline
Early Warning
Scenario Mapping
Phase 1 Information gathering
Phase 3 Sector Assessments
Phase 2 Multi-cluster Assessment
Phase 4 Multi-cluster Assessment
Assess Response
Preparedness Arrangements for Multi-Cluster
Assessments
NB, phase 4 multi-cluster assessments could be
deployed to assess the effectiveness of
humanitarian response.
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Key Features of the McRAM

•  Preparedness
• Community needs assessment
•  Joint Ownership and Commitment
• Collaboration
•  Technology
•  Out-sourcing of data collection

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Challenges in McRAM Preparedness

• Galvanizing commitment
• Establishing coordination and management
  structures
• Identifying roles and responsibilities for
  carrying out an emergency assessment
• Defining key initial information needs
• Ensuring gender was mainstreamed
• A multi-cluster assessment is complex
• All emergencies are not the same
• Funding preparedness and actual assessments.

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1. Galvanizing commitment

• For the agencies and organizations involved a
  common needs assessment should represent more
  efficient deployment of resources
• For the population affected a common needs
  assessment to get the information required by
  multiple clusters reduces assessment fatigue.
• Without genuine commitment to a joint assessment,
  agencies will continue with their own agency or
  sector specific assessments

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Key features in Pakistan that contributed to
galvanising joint commitment to the McRAM

• The Government of Pakistan accepted the need for
  a community based needs assessment.
• The Pakistan Humanitarian Forum (PHF) committed
  that they would ask members to hold off on
  initial assessments and use McRAM data.
• A functioning cluster system already existed in
  Pakistan.
• The Pakistan HCT was already engaged in
  inter-agency contingency planning.

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2. Identifying coordination and management
structures

• Formation of a McRAM Steering Committee
  consisting of the cluster coordinators, the PHF
  representative, the ICRC, the IFRC, and the NDMA,
  chaired by OCHA.
• During ongoing contingency planning, this groups
  became the IASC Operations Group.

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3. Identifying roles and responsibilities for
carrying out an emergency assessment

• A core McRAM team comprising of a Project
  Coordinator, programmers and a Social Scientist.
• In Pakistan linguistic and cultural differences,
  difficult terrain and vast distances make
  information gathering difficult with implications
  for timeliness, logistics and cost.
• The solution to this in the Pakistan context was
  to have stand-by arrangements with local partners.

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4. Identifying key initial information needs

• A country sector specialist may not necessarily
  be able to design a good set of questions!
• Improved access to global guidance such as IASC
  tools would be an advantage for this part of the
  process, but these need to be embedded in country
  level ownership.

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5. Ensuring gender was mainstreamed

• Gender poses particular challenges in the
  Pakistan context.
• Ensuring female field researchers was a challenge
  in Pakistan but, through good local partners, not
  impossible.
• A separate report on Mainstreaming Gender in the
  McRAM was compiled.

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6. A multi-cluster assessment is complex

• Having field teams pre-trained as part of
  assessment preparedness.
• Dedicate sufficient time to this.
• Ensure cluster input.

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7. All emergencies are not the same

• Be ready with a set of different options e.g.
  Household, community, camp management, health
  facility.

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8. Ensuring information is timely

• Use available technology
• Prioritise information management from the outset
  in the assessment design.

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9. Funding

• Preparedness requires commitment and resources.
• The level of commitment and resources in
  preparedness impacts the quality, timeliness and
  usefulness of an actual assessment.

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Involvement in McRAM Preparedness
Responsibility Over-arching support Ensure Govt
support
RC/HC Humanitarian Country Team
Funding?? UNICEF
Oversight Direction for Assessment Ensure Cluster
Involvement Approve design and SOPs
IASC Operations Group
Management Execution Liaison with clusters
partners Finalization of questionnaires Document
SOPs for Assessment Training of Survey
Teams Programming of questions / database /
reporting formats

• Assessment Team
• Coordinator
• Technical / MIS / GIS

Execution Support Deploy teams logistics
Partner Organization
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Revisiting McRAM Preparedness...

• A neutral home for the McRAM
• After 2 years, what was left
• Ownership
• Tool
• Consensus on the concept
• Some data expertise
• Equipment
• Assessment Maintenance