Informing humanitarians worldwide 24/7 — a service provided by UN OCHA

Philippines

Philippines: Inter-agency and Multi-sectoral Interoperability, Collaboration and Cooperation: Empowering Communities for Resilience and Centering on their Agenda

Attachments

Executive Summary

The 2023 EU Needs and Gaps Analysis of the Philippines' Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) Mission report highlighted challenges in effective coordination and collaboration across multiple organizations working across different disaster pillars and at the development-humanitarian-climate change/resilience nexus. The report found that the country's fragmented approach to DRRM hinders the reduction of risk to future hazards for communities affected by previous disasters. The lack of effective interagency coordination across preparedness, response, and recovery stages is attributed to the narrow mandates of individual actors and a general lack of systems thinking.

The EU-ERC Flagship TA Project "SO 2: Enhance response-recovery interventions by improving multiagency interoperability planning and collaboration across preparedness, response, and recovery phases for more coherence working in response to major incidents" aims to deal with these issues.

This review involved field learning and reflection praxis, engagement, validation sessions with communities and stakeholders, and in-depth interviews with other government agencies and local officials, UN organizations, INGOs, faith-based organizations, private sector/business groups, academic groups, and research groups.

Inter-agency and multi-sectoral collaboration and coordination are tools used by various organizations to achieve common objectives, maximize resources, and expand coverage, scope, or delivery of services. Examples of interagency, multi-sectoral collaboration and coordination mechanisms include the Allay Valley Development Landscape Alliance, Illana Bay Regional Development Alliance, and the UNOCHA Regional Coordination Platform in Region 5 and Region XIII.

The Philippines has a long history of interagency, multi-sectoral collaboration and coordination for disaster risk reduction (DRR) and resilience. The National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (NDRMMC) is the highest policy-making body for disaster management, with four DRR thematic areas: preparedness, prevention and mitigation, response, recovery, and rehabilitation. The Office of the Presidential Assistant for Rehabilitation and Recovery (OPARR) oversees post-Haiyan recovery and reconstruction, while the Special National Public Reconstruction Commission spearheads effective reconstruction measures. The Philippine Disaster Resilience Foundation (PDRF) and the National Resilience Council (NRC) are leading private-sector-led platforms for DRR in the business sector. Philippine NGOs and CSOs have successfully used collaboration, coordination, cooperative, co-development, and partnership strategies to build networks and convergence strategies. Local NGOs/CSO networks, such as the Philippine Disaster Risk Reduction Network (DRRNetPhils), Philippine Partnership for Emergency Response and Resilience (PPERR), and Balik Lokal, also demonstrate inter-agency, multi-sectoral, and stakeholder collaboration in disaster risk reduction.

Inter-agency and multisectoral collaboration and coordination face challenges due to limited authority and control over other agencies, members, and partners. These issues are unique due to the diverse character of these arrangements, including their respective mandates, leadership, decision- and policy-making processes, priorities, and timetables. For example, the Office of the President's Reconstruction and Recovery Commission (OPARR) had no authority to compel different national agencies to implement its Cabinet-approved Comprehensive Recovery and Rehabilitation Plan (CRRP) despite its mandate as the main body responsible for the post-Typhoon Haiyan early recovery and reconstruction plan. A 2017 WB Policy Note on Lessons Learnt from Typhoon Yolanda highlighted the need for a National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (NDRRM) agency with a stronger mandate to coordinate, plan, finance, implement, and monitor all DRRM interventions.

All inter-agency and multi-stakeholder collaboration and coordination mechanisms, by its nature and composition, face challenges due to the diversity of stakeholders involved in all aspects of the body’s work – decision and policymaking, planning and implementation, resource mobilization and funding, operating tools and procedures/processes, technical competencies and capabilities, information sharing, monitoring and reporting systems because of the wide variety of interests and perspectives and internal mandates, systems and processes of member agencies and organizations. Working in ‘silos’ is often seen as a key challenge for effective interagency collaboration and coordination but persists because collaborating or partner members are bound by their mandates and established process and practices. Political influences and self-serving priorities or ‘color-coding’ are key challenges for effective inter-agency or multi-sectoral collaboration, cooperation, or coordination in inter-local or LGU alliances, local health zones, protected area management and conservation bodies, and even national emergency bodies.

Interagency collaboration and coordination are mechanisms established to address common issues that a single agency, body, or organization cannot address through its own mandate, jurisdiction, resources, or agency. However, most partners enter into partnerships or alliances primarily to fulfill their individual and self-serving interests or “what’s in it for me?

More often, the banding or joining of forces among diverse and different levels of groups, sectors, agencies and organizations is simpler and practical to address limited resources and funding, physical facilities and infrastructures, weak technical capacity and competence, territorial scope and coverage, restrictive mandates and functions, among others. Others join these groups for acknowledgement, prestige, credibility, network building and funding opportunities. Most partners or members of collaborative or coordinating bodies find that the risks of their participation in these mechanisms are greater than what they have intended, then their commitment and participation is diminished, if not reduced.

Active members of interagency, interlocal, or multi-sectoral bodies often have to spend and share more resources than other members to support and implement policies, plans, and actions. Participating agencies and organizations, especially local NGOs/CSOs and non-profit groups, may see their co-members as 'competitors' for limited resources, services, and facilities being provided by inter-agency bodies. Political imperatives, lack of consistency at the national level, and policy coherence issues often hinder these arrangements. The cost of collaboration and "collaboration risks" are significant challenges, with limited evidence of gains in efficiency as a result of higher degrees of collaboration or formalization. The sustainability and continuity of local collaboration and cooperation arrangements in the Philippines remain a challenge.

The Philippines has a long history of successful inter-agency and multi-sectoral partnerships, which are essential for ensuring interoperability, effectiveness, and sustainability. Key components of these partnerships include legal, institutional, financial, technical, operational, and structural elements. Financial stability is crucial for the success of collaborative arrangements among diverse organizations and agencies. Key elements for financial stability include commitment to share resources, formulas for contributions, timely collection or remittance of contributions, sharing of expenses, capacity to generate and mobilize resources, capacity to tap external sources of funds, matching resources with goals and programs, proper fund management, transparency in financial transactions and disbursement, and regular and consistent transparent auditing and reporting systems.

The EU Study on the Needs and Gaps Study of Disaster Risk Reduction in the Philippines identified a number of ways to improve institutional arrangements and partnerships in DRR. These included making it easier for different government agencies to work together across different DRRM themes, making sure that local governments and the Department of the Interior and Local Government had better technical skills, and encouraging everyone to work together to create an interagency framework for community resilience. A key takeaway was the need for sharing common baseline information, consolidating and curating existing and real-time local and community information generated by different partner agencies, groups, and organizations, and centralizing them into local hubs. The 2004 Asian Tsunamic disaster in Aceh and Java taught the World Bank Group that, given the right resources, communities are capable of leading their own recovery.

The valuable insights or takeaways from the EU TAT community discussion and stakeholder learning sessions and experiences in the ERC FI pilot areas on interoperability and community resilience centers, particularly for external agents and non-community actors, of ensuring that the community’s self-determined risk-informed resilience agenda is the ‘central focus’ any internal or external form of intervention or assistance program implemented in the community. before, during, or after a disaster or emergency. Absence of such, the role and responsibility of external agencies and organizations is to facilitate and support the completion of their agenda.

Communities should be treated as a whole, not in parts, and contextualized within the enabling socio-economic and structural ecosystem they live in. And that working with the community building a long-term relationship with them and aligning objectives and results with their timeline and not within a short-term project life. The core of resilience and development programs and interagency collaboration is the community's self-determined and risk-informed resilience agenda.

The EU-TAT has identified several emerging guiding principles for inter-agency and multi-sectoral interoperability for disaster risk reduction (DRR) and building community resilience. These principles are for internal reflection and review by partnering and assisting external and non-community agencies, organizations, and groups working to build local and community resilience.

The community plays a crucial role in determining the type of engagement, projects, priorities, targets, and implementation of resilience and development programs in their areas. External agencies and groups can determine their contribution through local inter-agency/sectoral coordinating mechanisms of the Local Government Unit (LGU). To effectively work in a community, non-community and external agencies must align their systems with the community's needs, operate within the community's time frame, participate in community-determined roles, and support a community-determined agenda. Building and strengthening the organizational resilience of local interagency collaboration and coordinating mechanisms for disaster risk reduction and community resilience is essential for building resilient communities.

Finally, to build and work with resilient communities, external and non-community agencies, organizations and groups, including inter-agency and multi-sectoral collaborative and cooperative bodies, MUST be ‘resilient’ and ‘sustained’ in their own engagement and commitment with local communities, which involves the following MUSTs:

  • willingness to subsume or embrace the community’s agenda and interest before their own;
  • work and facilitate the formulation and development of such agenda by them for as long as needed;
  • undergo and strengthen their own processes and systems in their pace and time table;
  • enhance and improve their access, generation, use and sharing of information and baselines;
  • place them in a position of strength to engage with others and yourself; and,
  • adjust and realign your own priorities, programs and processes with their own.