The IPC Global Support Unit (GSU) has developed a Quality Assurance, Compliance and Learning Strategy to respond to the decision makers and users’ call for a mechanism to assess and improve the confidence, compliance level, and overall quality of the IPC food insecurity analysis across countries and regions.

The strategy is a core element of Outcome 3 of the IPC Global Strategic Programme 2014-2018: Technical Development, Quality and Compliance, which aims at strengthening the relevance and rigour of IPC as its use and application grow throughout the world. The strategy is conceived as an add-on the several quality assurance mechanisms that have been developed and are implemented by countries as integral part of the IPC core functions and protocols launched with the IPC Version 2.0.

Such strategy lies on four pillars:

Pillar I – Training: lays the groundwork for capacity strengthening of IPC Analysts and other stakeholders through the IPC Certification Programme, which includes trainings, cross-country learning exchange, and development of academic course curricula on IPC tools and procedures.

Pillar II – Real-Time Support and Quality Reviews: focuses on real-time technical support to countries as well as real-time quality reviews of IPC products in order to strengthen the quality and confidence level of IPC acute and chronic analyses, prior to the validation and release of IPC final products. Real-time IPC Quality Reviews can be also conducted on special circumstances such as in response to contentious results, which may especially occur in situations of extreme acute food insecurity, or in case of severe emergency situations where there is a break-down in the technical consensus process. In these particular cases and upon demand, the IPC GSU may activate an IPC Global Emergency Review Committee with the task of providing guidance and recommendations to the Country IPC Technical Working Group.

Pillar III – Retroactive Quality and Compliance Reviews: foresees the implementation of reviews of IPC products already developed, in order to provide recommendations and guidance to the countries for future improvements of technical, process and institutional aspects. In particular, Retroactive IPC Quality Reviews are conducted to evaluate the overall quality of IPC analyses  that have been already released with the purpose of identifying potential areas for improvement and suggest actions for future acute analysis exercises. On the other hand, the IPC Compliance Review aims at identifying whether stakeholders fully apply the IPC standards when generating food security analyses. The IPC Compliance Review strives to create some flexibility in the use of IPC standards for those countries that face particular circumstances, while ensuring that the core IPC principles are not lost.

Pillar IV – Technical Developments and Updates: foresees ongoing technical development and updates of IPC tools, procedures, training material and guidance notes, based on feedback provided by countries and other stakeholders involved in IPC implementation and ongoing learning.

• IPC Quality Assurance webpage
• Quality Assurance, Compliance and Learning Strategy Pillars