Organizational Context

The IFRC Geneva Information Management team sits within the DREF, Information Management and Quality unit under USG NSDOC.

The role of the Information Management Team at IFRC headquarters is to provide high-quality critical technical support for coordination, systems, evidence and analysis – with a goal to ensure that the IFRC secretariat and National Societies systematically use and share quality information and analysis in programmes and operations before, during and after crises.

IFRC has established a multi-year Accelerating Information Management programme, with the primary objective to accelerate Information Management to strengthen the humanitarian data ecosystem within and beyond the IFRC network, linking local action to global systems. The main focus of this program is to support National Societies in developing more robust systems in terms of Information Management across the globe.

Some of this funding will be expended by the IFRC at global or regional level to deliver outcomes under the People, Process and Technology strands – while a significant portion of these funds is to be channeled directly to selected National Societies in all 5 regions, to accelerate localised adoption of information management approaches through sustained workforce investment and enable them to improve their IM capacity through hiring a dedicated IM staff for the NS, linked with associated technical/learning support as required.

The People pillar has a strong focus on learning and development and capacity strengthening, whilst the Process and Technologies pillars are enablers to improve decision-making capabilities, and the technology support required.

Historically IFRC Information Management has been solely for Emergency Operations and focused on surge capability for IFRC-supported responses. The AIM programme enables IFRC to rapidly up-scale capacity-strengthening opportunities for National Society IM for local programmes and operations in addition to large scale international responses.

Job Purpose

Desired outcomes

The main objective of the consultancy is to contribute to building the evidence base of the availability and applicability of analytical outputs to inform key IFRC milestones in disaster management design and planning.

Specifically, this will entail a review of the relevance, process and overall impact/use of Crisis Categorisation, Disaster Briefs, Emergency Needs Assessments, Multi-hazards Risk Analysis, and Scenarios on emergency readiness and response processes (or equivalent), with the following overall guidance questions:

• What types of planning and decision-making processes did analysis outputs inform versus what they were expected to inform?
• Did they contribute to filling key information gaps required for evidence-based humanitarian planning? If not to their full extent, why not and what were the key obstacles?
• What are the other key evidence gaps that should be addressed to support IFRC decision-making workflow? How could these gaps be addressed?
• Can the current analytical outputs provide a model for predictable decision-making workflow? How can they be mainstreamed in the IFRC?

Job Duties and Responsibilities

Key activities

The consultancy will include, but not be limited to, the following activities:

• Develop and document a methodology for diagnosing decision-making information needs against their supply, for testing and review throughout the consultation period, to include steps described below
  • Review existing documentation and draft a IFRC hypothetical emergency readiness and response decision-making workflow, and match it against IFRC analytical outputs.
  • Consult with key stakeholders in the IFRC to test and validate the emergency readiness and response decision-making workflow and availability vs actual use of evidence (internal and/or external).
  • Evaluate the role of judgement in the decision-making process, and critically assess the level of ‘noise’ (ref: Kahneman, Daniel, et al. Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment) creating variability in outcomes
  • Propose a revised decision-making workflow, identifying key decision-making nodes, availability and relevance of existing analytical outputs and data sources, and eventual gaps.
  • Draft a final documentation, including recommendations, about the IFRC decision-making workflow.
• Finalize the documentation, including guidance for application of the methodology to be potentially used by IFRC National Societies to critically appraise their own decision-making processes, based on comments provided by key consultancy stakeholders. *

*Please note that the final outputs are subject to the consultancy stakeholders’ approval before they are considered as final deliverables. All comments from the IFRC should be addressed before the report is considered completed.

Methodology

The consultancy outputs will be based on the findings and factual statements identified from review of relevant documents and discussions with key interlocutors. It is anticipated the consultant(s) may be required to physically travel to IFRC headquarters in Geneva (Switzerland) for face-to-face meetings and/or to present findings.

Document review. Documents to be reviewed include, but not limited to i) Existing IFRC documentation on emergency response framework and other relevant processes, ii) IFRC internal documentation on IM, Emergency Needs Assessment and Humanitarian Analysis (Policies, SOPs, guidance notes, handbooks, and iii) Other relevant documents, when available.

Discussions with key interlocutors. The consultant is expected to facilitate discussions with IFRC team members at the global and regional level. This may include DREF, IM and Quality team, Operations Coordinators, and National Society Response Capacity Strengthening staff.

Job Duties and Responsibilities (continued)

Support to be provided to the consultant

The primary contact for the consultant will be Vincent Annoni, Sr Officer IM & Data Analysis, [email protected] and Luke Caley, IM team lead, [email protected]

Timeframe

The duration of the consultancy will be for a maximum of 44 days for the period from November 15, 2024. The exact start date to be collectively agreed with IFRC, and duration adapted according to final list of outputs.

If additional time is required to meet the overall objective of this assignment, IFRC will endeavour to extend the assignment for an additional period to be determined and subject to the availability of resources.

Experience

Required:

• Experience in implementing and/or coordinating humanitarian response in sudden-onset and protracted crisis at senior level.
• Previous experience in similar evaluations with multiple stakeholders.

Knowledge, Skills and Languages

Required:

• Strong knowledge of the IFRC coordination and funding mechanisms is desirable
• Strong knowledge of global guidance and humanitarian standards on evidence-based decision-making.
• Strong analytical skills and ability to clearly synthesize and present findings.
• Good written and oral English essential. Knowledge of a second IFRC language is desirable.

Desired:

• Knowledge of a second IFRC language.