1. Building Crisis Monitoring Systems
FFF Crises Practice Group
East Asia and Pacific Region
The World Bank
June 11, 2009

2. What is the Problem?
Real-time analysis of the social impacts of crisis requires high frequency data on consumption/income, employment, wages, education, health, safety nets, etc.
Yet, relatively little real-time data exist on most of these variables
The first round of policy responses are ahead of social impact monitoring; policy makers have acted on intuition, hunches, and existing knowledge of the country
There is a sense that more scientific monitoring is needed, and countries/donors have started to put mechanisms in place to monitor the social impact of crisis
This raises second-round issues about links between monitoring response systems, i.e. how do the results of monitoring efforts feed back into policy responses?

3. “Where you stand depends on where you sit!”
Why a Crisis monitoring System (CMS)?
“Where you stand depends on where you sit!”
Country-level objectives
Regional objectives
Need for information/ analysis to inform
Government policy responses
WB/ donor support
Strategic responses of Bank, donors at the regional level
Need for public information

4. Simulated impacts of the crisis on poverty in Cambodia
Data Sources 1. Surveys
Objectives: Ex ante simulations; ex post impact assessment
Pros
Detailed data
Generally reliable
Statistically representative
Simulated impacts of the crisis on poverty in Cambodia
Percentage of population under national poverty line
34.7
30.1
32.9
30.6
36.2
36.9
33.9
28.1
28.2
29.1
36.0
36.4
33.1
35.3 25 30 35 40
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
Cons
Low frequency
Lag in data and analysis
Standard vs. crisis- related variables

5. Data Sources 2. Rapid Qualitative Assessment
Objectives: Quick snapshot; texture; granularity
Pros
Rich information
Quick turnaround
Focused on vulnerable groups
Cons
Not statistically representative
May miss unexpected impacts

6. Data Sources 3. Administrative Data
Objective: Monitoring outcomes with “authorative” data
Pros
Complete inventory count
Official data
Collected regularly
Public sources (Ministries, NSO etc.):
Education: Student enrollment, no. of schools, no. of teachers
Health: no. of outpatients, no. of cases submitted to health insurance
Labor: no. of social security registrants, no. of unemployment beneficiaries
Private sources (CoC, Associations etc):
Labor: no. Lay-offs, no. of firms active in a sector
Cons
Mostly low frequency
Often substantial lag
Often partial picture
Quality of data questionable

7. Data Sources 4. Additional quantitative data collection
Objective: Quick, high frequency assessment based on quantitative surveys/ data
Pros
Often based on existing surveys
Relatively cheap
Quick
Examples:
1. Rapid quantitative questionnaires/rider questions
2. Rapid response firm survey (Biz sentiment Laos)
Firms’ perspective over the next 6 months
3. Sentinel Sites Approach (UNICEF)
Collect some crucial indicators in a quick and easy manner
4. Social Weather Station (Philippines)
5. Track proxy variables
Cons
Not representative
May lack baseline
Capacity building vs. speed

8. Data Sources 5. “Creative” data collection
Objective: Quick, high frequency assessment based on non-standard data sources
Pros
Could provide a nice punchline
Cheap
Quick
Factiva search for "unemployment" with "unrest" in the same paragraph in E. Asia publications (Sept 08-May 09)
Cons
Not representative
Difficult to interpret
Context dependent
09/08
05/09

9. Challenges to building a country/regional CMS
Data gaps abound ...
but face differing objectives at the country and regional levels
Country level
Regional level
Having data/ monitoring
inform policy (detailed data/ analysis)
Action often precedes
analysis
Working with/strengthening country capacity
Resource limitations, gov’t/ donor budget constraints
Building a coherent regional
monitoring system (cross-country comparability, less detail)
Data gaps vary significantly
across countries
Economic realities vary considerably across countries
Data definitions vary across countries
(Country capacity and resource constraint issues still apply)

10. Our Approach Existing data Minding the Gaps LM and HH surveys
Administrative data
Firm surveys
LM and HH surveys
Administrative data
Firm surveys
Quantitative:
Rapid assessments
Sentinel sites approach
Quantitative:
Rapid assessments
Sentinel sites approach
Qualitative:
Focus group interviews
Country reports
Qualitative:
Focus group interviews
Country reports
We are using multiple existing data sources opportunistically and supplementing these by fielding quick and cheap quantitative and qualitative surveys to fill data gaps
Key trade-off:
Need to build statistical capacity (long-run) vs. creating crisis-specific data to fill gaps quickly (short-run)

11. Thanks very much!