Purpose
The purpose of this activity is to understand monitoring efforts and the impact they have on future planning.
Why?
Achievement of successful and sustainable recovery outcomes requires collecting and analyzing data that helps planners to understand whether projects are meeting their intended goals and objectives. Planners also need to understand whether community stakeholders’ needs are being adequately addressed and that recovery is fair and equitable. The outcomes of recovery efforts are likely to influence existing local plans, programs, and policies, and local planning committees will need to adjust throughout recovery and after recovery has been declared a success. On the flipside, neglecting to identify and implement such measures can leave a recovery effort highly vulnerable to operational inefficiencies, unintended or inequitable outcomes, and program failure.
When?
Monitoring of long-term recovery projects begins with approval of the long-term recovery plan. (Days 31 - Ongoing)
Tips
- Establish a Recovery Definition: There is no single definition of recovery success that all communities would consider to be acceptable. A clear definition and description of recovery across multiple dimensions must therefore be established in the community context before any measures of success can be made. Possible dimensions of success might include the extent of environmental restoration, the physical reconstruction of damaged or destroyed buildings and infrastructure, resumption of the community’s economic drivers and/or sources of livelihood, or the reestablishment of social and institutional well-being.
- Prioritize Monitoring: Ongoing monitoring of recovery efforts helps recovery planners to address common operational uncertainties that are linked to planning complexities, resource dependencies, and a general lack of information required for effective decision-making. By taking an iterative and incremental approach to monitoring where planning leads to monitoring, and monitoring informs planning, a positive feedback loop is introduced.
How does my community do this?
- Ensure that recovery organization policies and bylaws and community long-term recovery plans comply with local, State, and Federal laws and regulations. Community finance experts need to be active in the procurement and contracting process to ensure that the allocation of community funds and funds received through insurance, grants, or donations are used appropriately. After action reviews must be conducted to ensure that recovery best practices and lessons learned are captured so the community is more prepared to manage any future disaster recovery needs. Begin by asking three key questions:
- Who is accountable?
- What are they accountable for?
- To whom are they accountable?
- Develop a monitoring strategy and assign responsibility. Communities should understand and monitor legal considerations associated with the recovery operations. Accountability needs to ensure that: 1) individual projects are legally compliant and aligned with the community recovery strategy or plan, and that 2) recovery resources (human, financial, and in-kind) are allocated across all projects in a manner that ensures a fair and equitable recovery, and which is likewise aligned with identified recovery vision and goals. Accountability systems should be developed in conjunction with the implementation approach, and address three separate but interrelated strategies: Timelines, Spatial Strategies, and Systematic Strategies. See the Additional Guidance section below for more information.
- Establish recovery metrics and indicators that reflect the community’s long-term recovery vision and goals and allow for meaningful measurement of recovery progress and success. Recovery plans are living documents that help community stakeholders understand the work that has been completed, and the work that remains. It is important that the monitoring process itself is standardized, developed with wide stakeholder input, and includes a representative cadre of stakeholders tasked with monitoring. Framing of a monitoring methodology may include the following questions:
- At what scale will recovery success be measured (i.e., the individual or household level, by census tract, by neighborhood, or some other measure)?
- Over what length of time, and in what increments of time, will recovery success be measured?
- Who evaluates recovery success?
- How will evaluations consider the perspective of different community stakeholders, including recovery assistance recipients?