The Myanmar Information Management Unit / MIMU is a service to the UN Country Team and Humanitarian Country Team, under the management of the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator. Its purpose is to improve the capacity for analysis and decision making by a wide variety of stakeholders - including the United Nations, the Humanitarian Country Team, non-governmental organizations, donors and other actors, both inside and outside of Myanmar, through strengthening the coordination, collection, processing, analysis and dissemination of information.
The direction and priorities of the MIMU are determined by the MIMU Advisory Board. This comprises representatives of the main users of the MIMU services, namely international and Myanmar NGOs, the UN and donors. This unique position - as a common but broadly owned service - has allowed the MIMU to develop extensive information management tools and datasets on the general context and agencies’ activities across Myanmar.
Underlying Principles:
- The MIMU seeks to ensure a robust and independent mechanism for creative and innovative approaches to information management, and to lay the foundations for sustainable information management capacity among Myanmar-focused humanitarian and development actors.
- The MIMU is a resource for the entire humanitarian and development community in Myanmar and does not primarily service the needs of any single individual or agency.
- Activities of the MIMU span all sectors and provide data on the whole of the country while also including a focus on priority areas identified by the UNCT/HCT under the guidance of the MIMU Advisory Board.
- All data and information products provided to and created by the MIMU are the collective property of the UNCT/HCT humanitarian and development communities. The MIMU will restrict access and/or dissemination of sensitive information or draft versions of data and products according to requests by data providers and/or the Advisory Board
In terms of activities, the MIMU safeguards the common data and information repository for development and humanitarian actors in the Myanmar context, compiling data from various sources at the lowest administrative unit for which it is available, and making this data accessible to the wider group of stakeholders in forms which support planning, response and resource allocation. It also plays a key role in promoting standards related to data, geo-referencing and information management among UN agencies and NGOs, including defining principles around how data will be stored, working with technical working groups to bring together available information from various sources and promoting use of the standards set by these technical groups, and supporting wider development monitoring processes.
The MIMU also convenes two inter-agency technical working groups:
-The GIS Working Group brings together GIS focal points from agencies with activities related to geographic/spatial information. It provides a technical platform to coordinate, support and share information on GIS activities, and to define spatial data standards.
-The Information Management Network brings together IM focal points from across a wide variety of agencies to strengthen the quality of information for evidence-based and effective development and humanitarian policy, planning and managerial decisions through a coordinated approach that builds on relevant existing information systems.
This section contains core MIMU documents,
- The MIMU Terms of Reference which describe the strategic direction of the MIMU, its governance and reporting arrangements.
- The MIMU Advisory Board Terms of Reference
- Terms of Reference for the Information Network and the GIS Working Group.
