This document discusses the role of data in evidence-based decision making for humanitarian aid. It outlines Development Initiatives' mission to empower people to make data-informed decisions to effectively allocate resources for poverty eradication. It also discusses a case study of humanitarian needs and actors in Northern Uganda, and activities that could improve humanitarian decision making, such as establishing community-based information systems and ensuring feedback loops. Key obstacles to evidence-based decision making are the low demand for data from local decision makers and low investment in information systems.

1. Data, Evidence & Access to Information
Judith Randel
Development Initiatives
www.devinit.org
Evidence Based Decision Making in
Uganda
Annette Were Munabi
Development and Research Training
www.drt-ug.org

2. Development Initiatives –
the Role of Data in Decision Making
Development Initiatives:
• An independent organisation working for the eradication of absolute poverty
• Our mission is to empower and enable people to make evidence-based and data-informed decisions to
deliver more effective use of resources for poverty eradication
• Produce accessible data, analysis and infographics
• Offices in Bristol (UK), Nairobi (Kenya) and through our partnership with Development Research and
Training in Kampala (Uganda)

3. Funding According to Need
GHD 6: Allocate humanitarian funding in
proportion to needs and on the basis of
needs assessments. As a minimum, to
meet those principles
you have to be able
to assess needs in a
comparable way and
you have to know
what resources are
available – not just
GHD 11: Strive to ensure that funding of humanitarian
action in new crises does not adversely affect the from your own
meeting of needs in ongoing crises. budget, but from
other sources too

4. Drivers of Humanitarian Funding Decisions
1. What we did last year plus or minus 10%
2. The bottom line – how much does the donor have to spend
Good News: quality and availability of information on risk,
vulnerability and humanitarian needs is improving (DO WE
WANT TO PUT IN SOME EGs or REFERENCES here???)
Good News: some donors are using this information to
systematically inform decision making
Sweden, the CHF, the EC, OFDA
Issue of Concern: strongly held beliefs demonstrably drive
resource allocation, which in turn influences the way that
needs are articulated.

5. A Case Study: Northern Uganda
What are the humanitarian needs? Who are the key actors? What role do
they play?
In 2010:
 Uganda was the 23rd recipient of official The Government has played a major role:
humanitarian aid  in providing security
 Only 4.8% of total aid ($1.7bn) to Uganda was  creating a conducive environment for socio-
for humanitarian response economic activity
 coordinating humanitarian actors
The most frequent disasters:  as a channel of aid
 Displacement of people
 Famine Partners – NGOs, donors, CBOs, FBOs, private and
 Earthquakes charity organisations – have:
 Epidemics  Provided financial and technical support
 Livestock and crop diseases  Delivered services
 Floods
 Landslides The role of affected communities is to:
 Participate in the delivery (& design????) of the
response
 Build confidence and trust

6. The flow of information to and from affected
communities in Northern Uganda

7. How can we achieve better outcomes?
Activities to improve the decision making of
humanitarian actors
 Establish and strengthen community based
information systems
 Ensure the feedback loop is closed
 Assist key actors to adopt the open data
initiative Obstacles/Barriers
 Training and capacity building on using data  Though evidence from affected
incorporating evidence communities is increasingly
demanded at the global level,
 Involve beneficiaries in the design, delivery demand from national and local
and monitoring of responses will help identify level decision makers remains low
root causes/problems
 Investment in data, evidence and
 Link community based information systems information systems is currently
(CBIS) to sectoral and national level MIS low
 Volunteer sector based community groups
 Require the Government to
should be utilised to gather on-site evidence provide a basic minimum package
of information to be shared by all

8. Discussion Topics
• Given the poor quality of much information and the range of legitimate
and other influences on decisions, are our expectations of ‘evidence-
based’ decision making too high? Should we just aim for transparent
‘data-informed’ decisions?
• Can we make more use of technologies to gather, publish and aggregate
information?
• How much priority should be given to strengthening management
information systems starting with community based systems for
improved humanitarian and development outcomes?
• Human intelligence, judgement and experience play a critical role in
decision-making: is this sufficiently recognised in the context of the drive
for evidence-based decisions?