DEC Accountability Self-Assessment Validation 2013/14

The member agencies of the Disasters Emergency Committee represent a group of the largest
Humanitarian INGOs in the U.K. During times of extreme humanitarian crisis the DEC member agencies
work together to raise and distribute funds. In order to provide the British public with assurance that
funds raised through the DEC are used to conduct high quality and accountable work, all member
agencies report on their activities against the DEC Accountability Framework. A key component of the
Accountability Framework is member agencies’ annual self-assessment against 21 Ways of Working.
These Ways of Working set out how member agencies use resources, how their programmes meet
agreed standards, how they are accountable to disaster affected populations and how they learn from
their experiences.
In order to determine whether member agencies’ self-assessed ratings are an accurate representation of
their performance the DEC annually commissions an external consultant to validate their ratings. For the
fourth year, a team from the One World Trust has undertaken this validation process by reviewing the
evidence in support of a sample of five Ways of Working for each member agency. In addition, this year
the consultants reviewed each member agency’s progress against two Improvement Commitments
made in 2012/13.