IMPACT: managing all activities in one place

How to simplify the management of activities and projects we support?

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs supports countless activities, large and small. These range from the reception of refugees in Lebanon and Jordan to addressing food security in Burundi and Ethiopia. And from a project aimed at stopping violence against women and girls in Albania to a cultural partnership between Tokyo and Amsterdam.

While all of these projects are worthy and valuable, managing the activity cycle has proven quite a complex process for the responsible parties – hence the need for a more user-friendly solution. Michiel van der Pompe is the Product Owner of FEZ’s Activity Cycle Modernisation project, which developed the IMPACT application. He explains how complex the activity cycle used to be. ‘We were working with more than ten applications, and the information about an activity had to be recorded and updated multiple times. As well as not being very efficient, it also increased the likelihood of someone making a mistake.’

All steps in a single application

‘The primary goal of this project was to make this work simpler and easier to manage,’ Michiel explains. They did this by combining all the cycle’s steps into a single application: identification, assessment, signing of the contract, following the progress of the activity, and that activity’s completion, including the results and lessons learned. ‘Everything has now been streamlined into one process.’

Broadly speaking, staff members all register an activity in IMPACT in the same way. ‘An activity is an activity, whether it concerns a cultural project or development cooperation. The most important components are the result, budget and risks. In IMPACT, the users generally need to answer the same questions about an activity, though large projects might include some extra questions.’ IMPACT will also be linked to BZ’s accounting team.

Input by the pilot group

The application was developed and tested by a team from the Ministry itself. ‘The major advantage of this is that we were able to develop and set up the best possible product for our users.’ The input and feedback of the pilot group was an essential part of the process. The pilot group comprised 16 budget holders of departments and embassies, including policy officers and financial officers. One of these policy officers was Senne Ebbing, who works for the Cyber Policy Task Force of the Security Policy Department (DVB).

To Senne, the end result is proof that the developers listened to his feedback. According to him, IMPACT is ‘manageable, user-friendly and logical’. ‘There’s less likelihood of miscommunication since everyone can now collaborate in one place and take immediate action if needed. Sending Word documents back and forth is no longer necessary.’

Senne thinks that IMPACT is simple enough for people who don’t have extensive experience with activity cycles to be able to use it fairly easily too. He experienced the benefits of IMPACT himself during a project involving regional workshops on cybercrime: ‘A project proposal like this must be assessed, accounted for and monitored from various angles, and lots of different people are involved. Being able to work together in the same place saves a lot of time.’

Michiel explains that, based on the feedback from the pilot group, the application has been made a little more flexible. ‘Each budget holder can now determine for each activity how many people need to give approval.’ A notebook function has also been added to allow everyone involved in an activity cycle to communicate with each other.

Made to measure

Another advantage is that all information about a cycle is stored in IMPACT. If you move to another mission, your successor will know where to find the information they need, including any lessons learned from the activity. All activities can be viewed (unless you block access to them). But in order to make changes you need to have user rights. Michiel emphasises that this doesn’t mean that policy officers will now have to do everything. ’IMPACT doesn’t specify who has to register what information: you can decide this together with your colleagues.’ Before being given access to IMPACT you must follow an online training course on the activity cycle. ‘This course covers the relevant roles, and the progress of a cycle, as not all staff are equally experienced in this area.’

1800 users

The application is being expanded on a step-by-step basis. Michiel’s team has not rolled out the final product in one go, because they still want to tinker with IMPACT on the basis of the feedback they get from users. This approach also allows users time to get used to the new system. IMPACT is expected to include the full activity cycle by next year.

At the time of writing, a thousand staff members are already using the system. ‘Our intended target group comprises 1,800 people. The initial feedback we’ve had is that their experience of the application has been pretty positive. They find it user-friendly, attractive and manageable. This is very important, as we want people to enjoy working on the activity cycle. Before, people weren’t so keen to manage an activity because it was such a complicated process. So making it simpler also means making it more enjoyable.’

From Mozambique to IT

For Michiel this has been quite a transition: from head of development cooperation in Mozambique to being responsible for IMPACT. Looking back on the process, he is satisfied. ‘It’s something very concrete, and it involves many elements. At times I found it quite complex, because I’m not an IT professional. But by working together with the external development team and a large number of BZ staff, we’ve managed to get IMPACT up and running worldwide. Now it’s time to refine the system further.’