This 142-page report shares the details of an independent evaluation of ReliefWeb, a website launched by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in 2006 in an effort to provide disaster-related information to humanitarian relief organisations around the world. Conducted from February to July 2006, this evaluation sought to assess whether, in line with its mandate, the web-based project meets the needs of those for whom it is intended. The mandate of ReliefWeb is: "to strengthen the response capacity of the humanitarian relief community through the timely dissemination of reliable information on response, preparedness, and disaster prevention. This is accomplished by providing guaranteed access to time critical reports, maps and financial contributions to both decision makers at headquarters and to relief teams in the field."

As detailed here, the content on ReliefWeb can be accessed on the website and via email alerts according to specific issues, countries and regions. ReliefWeb is run by a team of 23 individuals located in offices in 3 different time zones - New York (USA), Geneva (Switzerland), and Kobe (Japan) - a strategy for enabling ReliefWeb to track and post new information on a 24-hour cycle. In 2005, ReliefWeb staff posted an average of about 160 documents each weekday for a total of 39,000 documents for that year; of those, some 80% were collected by ReliefWeb staff scanning the web, and the other 20% were submitted to ReliefWeb by "content partners". In the past 5 years, the use of ReliefWeb has grown from about 50,000 "page views" per average weekday to about 200,000. The number of subscribers to ReliefWeb's email alert services grew from about 45,000 in 2003 to about 130,000 in 2006. ReliefWeb has regularly enhanced its services over the past 10 years, including a major site redesign in 2005 (with the addition of Really Simple Syndication, or RSS, feeds that same year).

To assess the efficiency and effectiveness of these efforts, the evaluation team used a combination of broad audience surveys, detailed in-person interviews, and its own expert review and judgment. In brief, the team found that ReliefWeb is generally fulfilling its mandate and mission, doing well at disseminating timely information on humanitarian issues, serving decision-makers at headquarters, and strengthening the humanitarian community response capacity. ReliefWeb is highly regarded by users in terms of credibility and reliability of its sources, and the neutrality and independence of its perceived views and information. However, ReliefWeb is not viewed as favourably with regard to its "representativeness" in publishing content from smaller non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

Here is a more detailed summary of the major findings:

• Users and Usage: ReliefWeb is generally reaching its intended audience of humanitarian workers, and in particular decision makers, at United Nations (UN) agencies, NGOs, and other international organisations, and governments. The usage of ReliefWeb has grown strongly over the past 10 years and shows good user loyalty. For instance, users described this as a "one-stop shop" for humanitarian information that enabled them to stay on top of developments. They felt that it went beyond typical media sources by exploring and explaining the humanitarian implications of events such as natural disasters. They found ReliefWeb's "complete repository and archive of background information" useful for their research and writing. They also suggested that the website provides visibility to relief organisations.
• Products and Services: Job Vacancies is the most popular service on ReliefWeb, receiving 35% of all ReliefWeb site traffic and a large share of all email subscribers. ReliefWeb users are generally satisfied that they can find what they are looking for on the site (60%), but there are some problems that hinder them (e.g., the homepage layout does not provide enough timely information, and its primarily English-language-focus reduces its usage by regional audiences).
• User Perceptions of ReliefWeb Quality: 80% of users surveyed gave ReliefWeb a positive score for credibility and reliability. They appreciate the quality of the
  information posted and the fact that sources are very clearly cited. ReliefWeb is also viewed highly for its neutrality and independence. Most respondents stated that ReliefWeb was timely in providing the humanitarian dimension of issues. However, only 42%
  of survey respondents rated ReliefWeb as positive for being representative of the "whole humanitarian community."
• Partnerships: In 2005, one-third of all content came from 4 news media sources, and 50% came from the top 16 sources. The "content partner" relationship with ReliefWeb is largely passive, perhaps because the majority of partners are not aware of the
  process and standards for publishing content to ReliefWeb, and ReliefWeb outreach to partners has been limited. ReliefWeb content partners report strong value from having their materials on ReliefWeb, and indicated that they would be more proactive in sharing content with ReliefWeb if they could see data on the level of user traffic to
  ReliefWeb and to their own content on ReliefWeb.
• OCHA, ReliefWeb and Other Online Services: There is some sharing of content between ReliefWeb and other OCHA projects, but the evaluation team sees scope for more.
• Management: Over the past 6 years of ReliefWeb's operations the output of the site has expanded and its operations have become more efficient, but its ongoing performance and growth are hindered by staffing, the content collection process, and the site technology.

Based on these findings, the evaluation makes specific recommendations under the following 5 areas: Increase Value to Information Shared on ReliefWeb; Partnership Growth; Audience Growth; Products and Services Improvement; and Management Strengthening. "An important theme over all the recommendations is that to increase the value of ReliefWeb it must
become a more essential tool for decision-making at both headquarters and field levels. To do this ReliefWeb must build on top of its core content foundation to provide a layer of insights and analyses....[D]ecisionmakers, in particular, express a need for insights to help them understand what is most relevant, what is most important, and what is most critical on an issue. This 'framing of the issues' should be done by highlighting information from across the body of content on ReliefWeb to provide key insights for these
decision-makers..."

Editor's note: ReliefWeb indicates that the feedback from this evaluation helped to form a 3-year strategic plan for the project.