The following products although not mandatory are strongly recommended in specific contexts. 

Planning tools 

A key role of the IMO is to analyse and understand future scenarios based on the evidence and data available (from partners, CLAs, secondary sources etc). This can inform planning, support operational coordination in the field, and help prepare for any shortfalls and potential gaps in the response.

On a quarterly basis during the HRP (depending on context) it is recommended to request partners to provide their (monthly/ quarterly etc., depending on reporting frequency) plans. This can be combined with the cluster targets to identify potential gaps in the response.  If we know the scale of the gaps (people planned to reach + quality of assistance), what activity is affected, and where this may occur, we can work with the partners, donors and stakeholders to address the projected challenges. 

Planning tool template: in addition to a standard 5W which tracks the implemented response (i.e., what has happened), several countries have developed a planning tool template which captures the intended (planned) activities of organisations which when consolidated in a database can help us understand and respond to projected duplications in activities and future GAPs etc (see FSC Somalia example here). The planning tool template is comprised of a succinct 5W which is adapted to forecast and includes specific mandatory fields. The frequency can be ad-hoc, monthly, quarterly, bi yearly or aligned to the agricultural season.

An IM Coffee corner webinar was dedicated to present this approach – find here the recording.

Pipeline Planning: 

Tracking the pipeline (supply) for partners is an important task of the IMO, it enables for instance, identification of pipeline GAPs which can be flagged early in order to avert potential shortfalls. OCHA may require Clusters to track pipelines on a similar frequency to the 5Ws, nevertheless, the Cluster should make sure its tracking pipelines and aware of any projected shortfalls.  

In the Ethiopia Food Cluster, the IMOs work extensively with analysis and compilation of partners pipelines in order to understand how much food is available in country. This is done on a regular basis through the Round Systems to keep track of shortfalls and flag accordingly. The Cluster plays a pivotal role in combining the respective pipelines and ensuring that a complete picture of the projected future is provided. Similarly, in the FSC Ukraine response, during the scale up, the Cluster was tasked with compiling the scale up capacity of the partners. This was required to gauge which partners were able to respond to new caseloads and also understand if the metric tons in country was sufficient to meet the demand. In the case of FSC Ukraine the pipelines of partners were coordinated by OCHA, using Activity Info. The cluster worked with partners to enter their data and provided OCHA with the totals. Pipeline planning is also common ahead of forecasted natural disasters (e.g., cyclones), to map response capacities of partners across sectors. Usually, clusters compile the information from their partners and submit to OCHA.

Financial Tracking 

Humanitarian appeals are tracked financially through the HPC Tool called FTS platform. This is the most summative information available and the information extracted from FTS is usually used by FSC teams to feed the response or gap analysis dashboards.

Compared to other HPC Tools such as Project Module and RPM, the FSC IMO has less of a role in relation to FTS, as it is the responsibility of donors and recipient organizations to report funding disbursed / received directly in the platform. However, the FSC IMO can monitor FTS and compare financial reporting with the implementation reporting (through the 5W), and based on that encourage cluster partners to complete reporting – financial or activity-wise. 

While FTS remains the primary source of information for FSC funding figures, it has to be noted that FTS faces some challenges in relation to completeness and timeliness of reported information. While the FSC can advocate for partners to complete FTS on time, sometimes this may not lead to the desired results due to organizational procedures and complexities. Hence, in some circumstances, the FSC teams may decide to track more closely financial information by putting in place a data collection system beyond FTS. A guidance note is available providing elements and example to monitoring financial resources for the cluster.