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Organisation Profile:
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affiars
OCHA's starts its own history from General Assembly Resolution 46/182, when the position of Emergency relief coodinator was created and UNDRO strengthened to support that position. However it wasn't until 1998 that The Department of Humanitarian Affiars (DHA) became OCHA and its mandate strengthened.
They now have their name on many successful projects, which I have listed on OCHA's wikipedia page.
There is an opinion that OCHA is too small to coordinate and that it has no authority over larger UN agencies who are not mandated to be coordinated, but in information management, OCHA has been supporting coordination since its inception. All the projects in the wikipedia list have a heavy online component; they all request and disseminate information amongst a whole community of humanitarian actors.
The clusters have been in existence for since Summer 2005. They are grappling with new ideas about coordinating within themselves, and all the implications of that, while OCHA wants to impose a coordination mechanism on top of that. The cluster leads will inevitably opt for a more decentralised approach because it enables them to specialise more, while OCHA are mandated to do meta-coordination, inter-cluster coordination which implies putting the power at the centre.
From a systemic perspective it would surely be preferable to build a single system for ease of sharing data, and to customise aspects of it for each cluster. Then instead of building nine systems, you might think of it as building one core and nine half systems, so, very roughly 5/9ths the effort for 2 levels of coordination, instead of 1.
From a political perspective it may be hard to imagine all those organisations ever compromising to such an extent. It might be more pragmatic for each cluster to work it out for themselves, and for the coordination to fall upon them gently from above.
This is how OCHA's Field Information Services division, which supports and manages the HICs, has this to say on the FIS home page:
Key challenges for FIS in 2007 will relate to providing leadership to the humanitarian community in adapting its information management practices in light of humanitarian reform. Ensuring a system wide approach to allow for managing information across clusters will require building consensus among cluster leads and their implementing partners to standardize and adapt IM processes and tools. Their willingness, participation and agreement to implement and follow up will be critical.
So far OCHA is suporting the cluster process by providing each cluster with an editable space on the Humanitarian Reform web site, for sharing documents and organising meetings. The ultimate purpose of this web site is not well defined, but considering the number of actors who have to be consulted before any content is changed, that is hardly surprising.
Posted October 4th, 2007 by matslats
Comments
modernising?
OCHA are in the middle of an IM review using own resources and outside consultants. Want to get to a position where existing IM products are more clearly rationalised and thought through.
cluster coordination
Speaking at the Symposium + 5, Humanitarian Relief Coordinator John Holmes came down squarely in the middle of the question of whether OCHA would coordinate clusters from above. He said both that the clusters would be providing information management, but that compromises would have to be made, and said he looked towards the strengthening of OCHA's mandate to enable it to coordinate more effectively.