NGOs Collecting and Using Information
The National Mental Health Information Strategy (2005) its Implementation Plan (2006) along with Te Tahuhu the Mental Health and Addiction Plan 2006-2015 are all clearly signalling the intention of the Government to use the information they need to collect from services. After major investment of time and financial resources into the District Health Board provider the attention is now turning to the NGO sector.
NGOs experience of collecting and then providing information to the funder has been fraught. Since 2000 there has been a number of hugely unsucessful attempts by the Ministry of Health to engage NGOs with the national mental heatlh information collection. (MHINC). At the moment about 33 of the 350 (?) contracted NGOs are providing information and therefore when the Government report about activity in Mental Health it misses out about a third of the whole sector.
At Platform we see our role behalf of the sector as translating between the Governments desire to have more information and the sectors urgent need to be better resourced to provide it.
Some of our thoughts and ideas are contained in the following papers.
NGOs in the world of Information Collection - A Platform Background Paper