RESPONDING EFFECTIVELY TO THE COVID-19 CRISIS
Like many organisations around the world, in 2020 the GICHD had to make some substantial changes to its plans due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The outlook report for 2020, which was developed in September 2019, made the assumption that international travelling would be possible during 2020 – an assumption that very much changed in the beginning of 2020 as COVID was announced a pandemic and the aftermath that followed. Throughout 2020, the GICHD and its staff showed great resilience and adaptability to adjust to the realities presented by the situation. In the initial weeks of the lockdown, the GICHD pivoted to remote work and adjusted 2020 plans to continue to deliver on its life-saving work, intensified its work on online delivery of services and actively worked with its partners to ensure explosive risk reduction remained a priority.
Much of our work needed to migrate to remote delivery (principally online) to enable us to maintain operational continuity. Building on the successful work done to develop and launch the online e-learning course on Gender, Diversity and Inclusion in 2019, the GICHD relied on similar tools and platforms to migrate other areas of its work. Over the course of 2020, some of our traditional training courses such as Technical Survey and Quality Management migrated fully or partially online. These courses were then delivered remotely to our partners. The feedback received was generally very positive. With the evolution of our working modalities, it was important that the in-house capabilities and infrastructure evolved, too. Equally important was the recognition that both the quantity and the quality of our work had to go through a period of adjustment due to new delivery methods. On the whole the new methods have proven to work satisfactorily and have allowed the GICHD to deliver on most of its 2020 objectives. Still, not all of our work with external partners lent itself to be executed remotely. As a result, the GICHD staff travelled to several places in 2020, where this was safe and possible to do so.
For the GICHD to continue with its operations in 2020, it was crucial to look at the methods it uses to conduct its work. It became apparent that our traditional model of work, which heavily relies on our staff’s ability to travel and operate safely, needed to evolve to take account of the new realities presented by the pandemic. This alone had a consequential effect on our ability to deliver on our objectives and the partners’ needs.
In its efforts to evolve its delivery methods, the GICHD considered three key areas:
i. Delivery of services online
ii. Delivery of services via a hybrid method (partly online and partly in-person)
iii. Delivery of services in-person (where possible)
6 GICHD PERFORMANCE REPORT 2020 |
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