Since 2016, ESUPS has worked to support and enhance stock prepositioning within the humanitarian sector. To track the success and limitations of these efforts, ESUPS has collaborated with the Center for Humanitarian Logistics and Regional Development, Kühne Logistics University, and HELP Logistics to complete a scientific evaluation of its activities.
The ‘Evaluation of the Emergency Supply Prepositioning Strategy (ESUPS)’ operational research report is now available. The report highlights how ESUPS and the STOCKHOLM platform have begun to shift the paradigm towards more coordinated, data-driven preparedness activities. The evaluation also made clear the many challenges faced by ESUPS in fully realising this goal.
Overall the evaluation underscores the potential for ESUPS tokeep leading the process of continuous improvement in the humanitarian sector to ensure more effective and efficient responses in the future. To support the achievement of this, the report recommends ten main areas where ESUPS can maximise its outcomes and add further value to the sector. The comprehensive review assessed ESUPS’ performance across three key areas:
- Relevance: ESUPS’ contribution to the prepositioning needs of humanitarian actors.
- Effectiveness: The technical base that allows ESUPS to meet those needs.
- Sustainability: The ability to provide long-term value for preparedness initiatives.
Methodology: Who participated in the evaluation?
The evaluation involved 31 participants from 21 different organisations, including both users and non-users of the STOCKHOLM platform. Participants contributed their feedback through interviews and workshops, offering a comprehensive overview of ESUPS’ performance to date and areas for improvement.
Successes
The report highlights a number of achievements reached by ESUPS to date:
- Visibility: Through data collection and visualisation, ESUPS gives organisations a better awareness of stock availability at national and sub-national levels.
- Decision making: STOCKHOLM is a useful tool for informing prepositioning strategies to optimise resource allocation. It also puts greater decision-making power into the hands of local actors.
- User experience: The design of STOCKHOLM is considered intuitive and user-friendly, making it accessible for a broad range of users.
Challenges
The evaluation also outlined challenges that need to be addressed for ESUPS to achieve its aims:
- Trust: Reducing competitiveness and distrust between organisations, which reduce collaboration and hinder effective data-sharing.
- User base: Growing the number of users and agencies actively and regularly adding their stock data on STOCKHOLM, and therefore enhancing the reliability of the data available within the platform.
- Functionalities: Improving the awareness and utilisation of STOCKHOLM’s features, to unlock the capacity to generate data-driven prepositioning strategies.
Next steps
In response to the findings of the evaluation, ESUPS will work to implement all recommendations. This will allow ESUPS to reinforce its achievements, address the challenges, and strengthen its role in driving change in humanitarian logistics in a way that is relevant, effective and sustainable.
This evaluation was made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
Download a copy of the report and read the full list of recommendations. Contact ESUPS if you have any further questions about the evaluation.