Redefining Site Management & Humanitarian Operations
What is Zite Manager?
Zite Manager is a programme run by IOM’s Global CCCM unit that aims to improve humanitarian responses to displacement crises through the combination of innovative technology, good programming practice, and scalable and contextualizable tools. The overall aim of the programme is to ensure the operational accountability of humanitarian actors to affected populations, by channelling community feedback, monitoring data, and service mapping data into humanitarian coordination & decision-making structures, utilizing CCCM’s coordination mandate to facilitate multi-sector programming and producing robust analytical and advocacy products. Zite Manager is able to refer & manage operational data to ensure communities needs are heard and responded to, while also identifying emerging trends regarding services, monitor standards in displacement settings and hold humanitarian aid actors accountable for the services they provide – ensuring that vulnerable populations are not falling through the cracks of siloed humanitarian responses.
Zite Manager is built off open source technology, and deployed in conjunction with standards developed from years of learning and good practice developed and operationally proven by IOM’s Site Management teams globally, and is easily adaptable and contextualizable to any humanitarian setting. This scalable solution to data inefficiency, ineffective community feedback mechanisms, and lack of coherent global standards is now the go-to programme for IOM Site Management teams around the world.
Today, Zite Manager has become a global, collaborative initiative between Site Management agencies to rethink and better utilize our activities to fulfil our mandate as a coordination stakeholder uniquely positioned to bring the voice of affected population into conversation with the wider humanitarian apparatus, improving accountability, aid effectiveness and ensuring people-centred approaches to displacement.
A Solution at Scale
In 2023, Zite Manager supported 10 Site Management programs and 17 organizations to
Collect over 379,000 forms.
218,000 were feedback from the affected population.
151,000 were referred to humanitarian partners.
Over 51,000 were reported as resolved.
Combining Best Practice with New Technology
Zite Manager is a combination of new technology and programmatic best practices to help rethink how humanitarian operations are coordinated and implemented.
Since 2022, IOM has worked closely with our private sector partner, Zite, to develop a comprehensive information management solution to humanitarian operations. Zite is an open source platform built on ODK/Kobo data collection tools that is designed to be configurable to address a wide range of the challenges and problems we face as front line humanitarians in difficult settings where technology is often limited.
Drawing on private sector experience & best operational practice, Zite Manager is equally about the standardization of work with respect to quality and tested solutions. Many challenges related to the coordination and delivery of services across large operational teams & departments have been addressed within the private sector to improve efficiency, transparency and overall performance.
Zite Manager continue to work to build Core Services that include guidance documents, SOPs, templates, trainings, analytical outputs and a range of other resources to easily implement Zite Manager designed activities at scale, effectively and easily.
Proven Impact
Zite’s Impact is something that is seen by humanitarian frontline workers but ultimately felt by the affected population in the form of better service delivery, efficient communication, and stream-lined operations.
“Before Zite Manager, complaints were collected through a kobo form and on hard copy on a daily basis and referred each week. The response took weeks and sometimes more than a month. But now it takes only 1 or two days to record, referred and get back with response/feedback.”
~ Site Management staff working with IDPs in Ethiopia
“Since we started working with Zite Manager, we have improved our relationships with the community and established more trust—which helps us a lot in our daily work. It is easy for us to find complaints in our system so that we can easily check the status using the mobile app on our phones. Based on this status, we can communicate regularly with beneficiaries when they come back to us. We also don’t have duplicate complaints anymore. But my favorite function is the complaint filtering option because it allows me to view all of the complaints I have collected myself and work on them.”
~ Site Management Rohingya Volunteer in Cox’s Bazar