The GO team welcomed over 200 members of the RCRC Movement to a quarterly briefing on the GO platform. The session included analysis of user trends on the platform, introduction of some new tools, and demo of some features which are near completion. We were also joined by the Malawi Red Cross and Yemen Red Crescent, who described how they use GO. Finally, we described our workplan for 2022 and shared our plans to continue learning more about what our member National Societies and other key stakeholders want from the platform. Read on for a summary, the slides and an edited recording from the two sessions.
User trends in 2021
GO is used by almost all our National Societies, and is accessed across the globe. The platform also continues to steadily grow its user base, with high profile emergencies and new services attracting ever more users. Analysing 2021 as a whole, we saw site traffic peak during the early weeks of the high profile Haiti earthquake response in August 2021, as well as with the introduction of an analytical dashboard and overhaul of the COVID global page.
There was also a general increase in users in the second half of the year, potentially due to the introduction of real time data on rapid response deployments across the IFRC through the launch and integration with GO of the Rapid Response Management System, or Molnix.
Operational Timeline Toolbox
A major challenge in the early stages of any emergency operation is finding key documents and having a shared sense of the minimum requirements, given the fast-changing nature of humanitarian response. The Operational Timeline Toolbox addresses this challenge by providing a central repository of key documents for operational leaders managing IFRC operations, as well as IFRC Rapid Response personnel deployed in support of a National Society.
The toolbox provides links to guidelines, templates and example documents. These documents are displayed in an intuitive timeline, depicting some of the minimum expected documents to be accessed by various functions in preparedness for, as well as the first four months of an operation. The front-end visual graphic on GO is attractive and easy to navigate, guiding users to hyperlinks to docs and folders on IFRC’s Sharepoint, where content can be easily managed.
User stories from across the IFRC network
Patrick Phiri from the Malawian Red Cross Society took time out of his busy schedule responding to emergencies across the country to describe how GO provides a way for the MRCS to share disaster alerts and field assessment information across the IFRC network. Patrick described GO as user friendly and recommended all National Societies to continue using the site to share information directly from the field.
The Yemeni Red Crescent use GO to share data on situations, operations and projects. Majed Al Sabri described the supporting role GO plays to organise and display operational data from across the country, talking us through a number of examples, including an impressive operational dashboard, embedded on the Yemen country page. When asked for how GO could be improved, Majed shared his desire for a lighter version of GO, enabling easier access in low bandwidth environments.
Demo of risk and DREF modules
Since its launch, GO has been used to channel alerts across the IFRC network, whether from National Societies’ field reporting or from the Global Disaster Alerting System. Over recent months, we have been working on a new module which will take this early warning system much further. As described in a recent post, the GO risk module intends to provide intelligence on potential impacts for National Societies to act early, and access support from the IFRC network if required.
One of the main ways in which National Societies request support for medium or small-scale disasters and crises is through the Disaster Relief Emergency Fund (DREF). The IFRC is scaling up the DREF and is committed to working with donors to reach up to 300 million Swiss francs over the next three years, with the aim for 25 per cent of this funding to be directed to anticipatory action. The integration of the DREF request process on GO has emphasised the benefits of linking to GO data to ease the process for our National Societies —through a simplified overall process, pre-population of data, analysis of past crises, and automated creation of graphics and mapping.
2022 Workplan and GO Study
The GO 2022 workplan can be found here. We will update this every quarter. Please get in touch if you are interested to learn more — im@ifrc.org.
This quarter, we will launch a detailed study with our users to understand their likely requirements for the platform over the next 2–3 years. The GO study has evolved from the originally more limited scope of a National Society consultation to also encompass interviews with senior management, a survey and usability tests. IFRC Regional Offices will remain in the driving seat to enable us to reach National Societies better but we want to cast the net wider to better understand the desire for GO to do more to improve data collection for annual planning and ensuring a Federation-wide view of emergencies.
We also want to take stock of the site, given that the last 2–3 years have introduced a lot of additional features. An output of the GO Study will be a matrix which will compile all the collected information and preferences to help us prioritise future work on the platform. Design of the study reaffirms our commitment to user-centred design, more details found here.
We want to take this opportunity to thank all our supporters. 90% of GO development is funded directly by our National Societies, and we depend on your continued support to deliver on the plans we shared here. If you would like to hear more about our work, or offer financial or material support, please contact im@ifrc.org
And finally, at the start and end of each session we listen to GO themed songs. This briefing we played Wham! and The Clash. Let us know if you have a suggestion!
