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Standing team members will be available to train field teams on using the Good Enough Guide approach together with other critical sector standards.

Published on 6 October 2011

Formed in Phase I of the ECB Project, the inter-agency accountability and impact measurement (AIM) Standing Team supports improved accountability practices across ECB agencies, through field deployments to build capacity, collaboration and learning.

Improving accountability and impact measurement is a multi-faceted task, so the six ECB agencies found that addressing these issues collectively provided a powerful approach. The Standing Team comprises members from all six ECB agencies, who are experienced humanitarian staff with the necessary accountability, monitoring, evaluation, and assessment experience.

Members of the Standing Team are available for deployment to country offices to work on aspects of accountability, needs assessment, monitoring, or evaluation, as requested by the country. Their objectives are to:

• Champion accountability and impact measurement in their agencies
• Undertake joint deployments
• Practice accountability to one another and to their agencies by feeding back learning and sharing experiences.

What are AIM Standing Team deployments?

A typical deployment will last two to four weeks with an inter-agency team of three Standing Team members. Possibilities for deployments include:

• Joint evaluations of emergency programs
• Reviews to assess and document current practice of accountability and impact measurement and advise and assist field staff in making improvements
• Training, induction and coaching on accountability and impact measurement practices in emergencies, including on the Good Enough Guide
• Promote the implementation of lessons learnt from previous deployments and evaluations
• Documentation of field practice on accountability and impact measurement to share widely across agencies and encourage institutional change

Thanks to funding from the Directorate General for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (ECHO)
in Spring 2011, ECB AIM Advisers have now started the second phase of the Standing Team’s work. First, an open recruitment process to identify highly qualified staff was coordinated across country offices from all six agencies. Thirty staff from 20 countries were selected in this competitive process.

The ECB Project is hoping that this global level team will lead to a permanent Standing Team of deployable agency-specific AIM experts. This has been the case for CARE, which started its team in Phase I and is currently the only agency with an active team.

Learning workshops

At the end of September, the Standing Team’s first AIM learning workshop was held in Jakarta, Indonesia, hosted by CRS Indonesia , the lead member of the ECB consortium.

The workshop:

• Allowed participants to share learning and experiences of AIM methodologies and tools in their local contexts
• Built understanding about a variety of agency, ECB, and sector approaches that the team has available to use in deployments.
• Enabled participants to outline deployment and communication protocols, and provided time to build the team to ensure deployments are effective.

In early November, another learning workshop will be held, specifically on joint evaluations. The ECB Project has much experience in this area, and building a deployable cadre of staff to conduct these evaluations will improve their quality.

What next?

After the workshops, deployments, as requested by the ECB Project’s five consortia, will begin. The deployments will be held in the coming 9 months, and are likely to include the contextualizing of sector tools like the Good Enough Guide, joint evaluations, and support in establishing complaints and feedback mechanisms.

The project plans to learn from each multi-agency deployment by capturing experiences and ideas generated during each deployment. Case studies and newsletter articles will be written to feature this learning and share it with the wider humanitarian sector.

Simultaneously, tools are being updated to support the team with its work. For instance, the Good Enough Guide Training of Trainers module is currently being updated with feedback from AIM Advisers as well as sector partners, including Sphere, HAP, People in Aid, ALNAP, and Group URD. These modules will be translated into Spanish and French and will be available on the ECB website towards the end of 2011.

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