1. Last Mile Mobile Solutions: Innovations in Humanitarian Interventions
Presented By:
Richard Lankas
World Vision International - FPMG
Now I am pleased to share about Last Mile Mobile Solutions (LMMS) which is a technology application for humanitarian interventions developed by World Vision Canada together with private sector partnerships.

2. Introduction
Food aid: the most dominant form of humanitarian action in emergencies
Greater pressure for accountability: official public donors, private donors and beneficiaries
Efforts to introduce innovative practices (ie: cash programming) are limited by lack of suitable systems (ie: cash delivery systems)
As some of you will know: food aid is becoming the dominant form of humanitarian action in terms of funding, activities, personnel
In accountability, our challenge is to help align donor needs with beneficiary needs. There must be greater transparency on where aid goes even down to the household level. Accuracy and timeliness are increasingly key to being accountable to our donors.
Equally important is being accountable to beneficiaries. Information should shared on what and where aid is distributed to ensure fair allocation of aid to communities – this is just good humanitarian programming.
There are many opportunities for innovative food programming, but these innovations can be stifled by inadequate support systems.
For example, food assistance through cash programming which supports local markets, and provides quicker access to aid, often struggles with ineffective cash delivery systems.

3. Field Realities
As you can see, the reality on the ground, in the field, shows a different story:
Processes are heavily paper-based.
And there is generally poor service delivery, with long queues during registration and distribution
As well as limited accountability
Verifying a beneficiary stops merely at getting thumbprint (hopefully we have correct individual, but in reality, it could be anyone)

4. Current Practices Field operations: manually intensive
Challenges in capturing data (missing data, legibility, validity)
Reporting: Failure/limits to leverage data for timely & detailed analysis
Difficulties in sharing & integrating data (within and between organizations)
As well:
There are challenges in identifying, capturing and transcribing field-based data as well as maintaining and updating the data to ensure validity. Data is easily missed or just illegible.
Also, there is redundant data collection (in duplicate and triplicate) and even repeat registrations of families both unknowingly or fraudulently.
Because of the manual data entry process, reporting and analysis is very slow.
Data collection is localized within project, and within organizations. Also, the field data is often collected using different methods and formats causing difficulties in sharing.

5. The Case For Change
Significant delays verifying & processing beneficiaries and in distributing assets
Reliance on paper-based system: slow & error- prone
Improve on accountability
Automated processes do not extend to the “Last Mile”
Leveraging greater interagency collaboration
So Why LMMS:
We must reduce the delays in the delivery of humanitarian aid caused by paper-based systems. This also addresses the basic dignity of the beneficiaries.
Paper-based system leads to miscalculations in targeting and distribution, slow responsiveness to donors and complications in adapting aid programmes.
We are missing opportunities to leverage time-sensitive data analysis such as population movements, health trends, outbreaks, etc
Currently, field accountability is able to track shipments and assets to the warehouses and district-level distribution centres. But there is an information gap between these centres and the end beneficiary making it difficult to reconcile data, which leads to potential theft and fraud.
Finally, we need to begin sharing beneficiary data between organizations to reduce the repeat registrations and to increase our aid reach and effectiveness.

6. What is LMMS? Mobile technology solution
At the “last mile” of humanitarian programming: between NGOs and end-beneficiaries
Increases the effectiveness, efficiency and accountability in:
Beneficiary data management
Commodity distribution
Reporting processes
LMMS is a technology solution using mobile devices that bridges the last mile between NGOs and beneficiaries.
The LMMS solution that World Vision has developed will increase the effectiveness, efficiency and accountability in beneficiary data management, commodity distribution and the reporting process

7. What’s Changed?
All data is collected once in digital format on mobile devices
Handle new data types - pictures, geo-data, SMS
Photo verification
Automated processes - calculations of rations due, tracking incoming/outgoing stock
Real/Near-real time updates
Capacity to run queries and generate reports immediately
Data is collected ONLY once in digital format including pictures, geo-data (GPS locations of villages, distribution centres) with SMS capabilities in the near future
We can use photo verification on the device matched to ID cards instead of thumb-prints
And LMMS greatly assists field staff through automated processes such as calculating rations due and tracking inventory during a distribution
And finally, reports and analysis can be perform during a humanitarian intervention instead of after everyone has gone home.

8. LMMS Deployments
Here are past, current and upcoming deployments of LMMS
We piloted the project in Lesotho & Kenya in 2008
And we are now deployed:
In Haiti extensively (WFP, USAID) for General distributions, aid for work, cash for work
For the new fiscal year: Kenya, Zimbabwe, Uganda, South Sudan

9. LMMS Delivers Aid + Results
Mobile technology solutions can work in humanitarian contexts and can deliver significant benefits to business units and clients alike
Reduced time and cost
Improved data quality
Enhanced service delivery
In the first few years of this project we’ve discovered that:
Mobile technology solutions such as LMMS do work in humanitarian contexts and can deliver significant benefits to organizations and beneficiaries through:
Reduced administration
Improved data quality
And better service delivery

10. Thanks!
Questions?
Clarifications?

11. Contact Information
Jay Narhan LMMS Program Coordinator, WVC
Thabani Maphosa
Global Director – FPMG
Otto Farkas Director, HEA-RDCI, WVC
Richard Lankas
Field Support & Developer, FPMG
Ben Tshin LMMS Program Officer, WVC