20th ALNAP Meeting (December 2006)
The TEC was designed to provide a system wide analysis, that is, to look at how the whole system responded to the tsunami, rather than an analysis of individual parts of the system or of the quality of individual programmes.
It did this in each of its five thematic reports, and in the Synthesis report. How are we going to respond to what this report tells us? In this Workshop we will use the findings and the recommendations of the Synthesis report to discuss how we can pick up and proactively respond to what the report is telling us about the performance of the humanitarian system and the challenges facing us. As the Joint Evaluation of the Emergency Assistance to Rwanda provided an opportunity to push forward some real changes in the humanitarian system, can we also make the publication of the TEC such a renewed opportunity?
Currently, performance issues identified by the TEC are being addressed by a collection of loosely aligned initiatives operating largely in an independent way. There is currently no oversight facility to monitor and report on systemic progress and a lack of evidence-based material to be able to make informed judgements. Who is doing what, what progress is being made, and how performance might be monitored, are among the issues that will be raised. The big question here is does a systemic analysis requires a systemic response by the humanitarian community? And if so, what would it look like?