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Aiming for Quality

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2010-07-05    Training of Trainers course « Quality Management in Humanitarian Action » (Quality COMPAS© and Dynamic COMPAS®) (27 September - 1 October 2010, Plaisi
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2010-02-18    Training course: Quality Management in Humanitarian Action (Quality COMPAS & Dynamic COMPAS) (Plaisians en Provence, 14 to 18 June 2010)
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2010-02-17    Training course
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Dynamic COMPAS
 Quality Assurance software for humanitarian projects
Presentation

The Dynamic COMPAS® is an electronic system for managing the quality of humanitarian projects, based on the principles of Project Cycle Management and Quality Assurance.
The Dynamic COMPAS® is the COMPAS Method in its operational form. It allows project memory to be created in real time as key elements are recorded step-by-step.

The Dynamic COMPAS® helps organisations to:

•  Strengthen transparency in decision-making thus promoting personal and collective accountability
•  Improve team communication by establishing a common language to be used throughout an organisation and across all sectors
•  Learn from past experience by allowing users to access information from other projects
•  Make decisions using a single analytical framework – the COMPAS Board – which gives a systemic view of the project
•  Improve monitoring and evaluation processes by means of quality indicators
•  Streamline reporting processes

The Dynamic COMPAS® aims to contribute to improving the quality of service brought to crisis-affected populations by:

•  Providing actors with a tool for improving the quality of humanitarian practices and operations using a single reference system common to every phase in the project cycle
•  Improving diagnosis, design, planning, monitoring, evaluation and reporting processes of humanitarian projects
•  Improving the quality of evaluations

Where does the Dynamic COMPAS® come from?


The Dynamic COMPAS® is being developed in response to a need expressed by aid agencies at the launch of the Quality COMPAS, and on the basis of feedback gathered during events and workshops. The specifications of the Dynamic COMPAS® were drawn up taking into account these expectations and the constraints inherent to the management of humanitarian projects.


Why is Dynamic COMPAS® necessary?

Traceability and recording decisions have an important role to play in quality assurance. This is particularly true for the humanitarian sector where information is often dispersed, unused or unusable, or is lost because there is no practical means of passing it on, or sharing it.
The difficulties experienced by aid agencies in processing data are linked to the following factors:
•  Project management. High staff turnover leads to the loss of information, especially where there is no “memory system” for collecting, processing, and organising information.
•  Institutional operating procedures. Institutions often accumulate large quantities of data. This data may be highly varied (due to the number of different contexts and their complexity, the number of different professions involved, etc.) making it difficult to organise and make use of this wealth of information.

An inefficient system for collecting, storing and using data may result in weak institutional memories and cause errors in project implementation. To date, the humanitarian sector has experienced difficulties in capitalising on data which means that little benefit is drawn from its past and ongoing interventions.

The Dynamic COMPAS® is a knowledge management system which allows data to be recorded, stored, organised, shared and reused while taking into account the pressures and time-constraints that aid agencies have to face (as these constraints are already considerable, any system which increased work-load is unlikely to succeed).
 
 
 
Updated  03-09-2010