Choosing Vocational Training for Refugees in Local NGOs

Lebanese International University School of Business Department of Management Information Systems BMIS470 Decision Support System
Submitted to: Decision Support System's instructor and coordinator Dr. Adeeb Ait

Submitted by: Decision Support System's students Wafa AL-Attas Bahia AL-Nator Samer Ismail

Fall 2013-2014

Choosing vocational training for refugees in Local NGOs

Table of Contents
1. Introduction....................................................................................1 2. Problem Description......................................................................2 3. Model Description..........................................................................3
3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 Input to the system .3 Refugees information database ...3 Vocational training and budget database3 Work market needs 4 Output from the system .4

4. Model..............................................................................................4
4.1 Budget value..5 4.2 Work market Value5 4.3 Refugees' information value..5

5. Quantification of Preferences........................................................6 6. Quantification of Uncertainties.....................................................7

6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Refugees' questionnaire....8 Organizations' reviews8 NGOs Needs ..9 Activities..9

7. How to calculate the probability of those two uncertainties? ....8 8. Evaluation of the model...............................................................11 9. External Interface Requirements...............................................12
9.1 User Interface.12

10. Recommendations........................................................................13
10.1 Development regarding the model..13 10.2 Development regarding the system13

II

1. Introduction
This project report is made for the Decision support system class (MIS470) in order to describe the complete Choosing vocational training for refugees in local NGOs project. Since the members of the project mat an local NGO named Amel association and had realized that choosing a suitable vocational training for refugees according to ones needs is a hard decision, we thought it would be benefit for many local NGOs if we could create a system that can support Managers' decision. The objective of this project is to develop a decision support system which is able to help Managers in Local NGOs to decide which vocational training models they supposed to choose according to the priorities, needs, and budget. The final result of the system would consist of a short list of suitable vocational trainings selected from the vocational trainings database that we create from the available vocational trainings that needs in Lebanese work market. The list of vocational trainings in the database can be updated as often as needed to make the system to be extensible and flexible since the vocational trainings is rapidly developed according to the market needs. Normally, when NGOs want to do this kind of training, they will do what they think it is the best thing within their budget. To decide what the best training is, we will consider the highest benefit the refugees expect to get. For making vocational training, we have to consider both tangible and intangible benefit. In this project, we also include the refugees information and work market needs as one of the important inputs of this system because it is a dominant reason that impacts the NGOs' decision. We try to make the model that close to the real expert decision. This report consists of the description of problem and models that base on the real world situation, the decision under expert suggestion and related influence. Also, the quantification of uncertainties and priorities exist in our model, and the result analysis of the option available in the system. It describes the reason of our result design. All the members of the choosing a vocational training for refugees project hope that the system will help NGOs to find and decide the appropriate training that matches to refugees requirements and needs. Also, we hope this project will bring the benefits for regular system users and will be applied to similar types of project in the future.

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Choosing vocational training for refugees in Local NGOs

2. Problem Description
Choosing vocational trainings that matches refugees' needs is a difficult decision since it requires a decision maker to carefully consider the information from many factors such as the work market needs, refugees' information, needs and skills, budget, etc. Moreover, most NGOs gives support with various choices of vocational trainings which sometimes not suit the real needs of refugees or work market, especially that every country's work market different from other, what local NGOs should choose. It is due to the limitation of knowledge, studies, researches and budget that makes most NGOs unable to identify the suitable vocational trainings. Because of these reasons, NGOs always face the complexity whenever they attempt to make a good decision about it or a failure when they do copy/past vocational trainings from each other. However, this problem would be easier if decision makers had enough time to inspect each of the decision aspect meticulously and systematically. From our observation, the decision aspects in choosing any vocational training always consist of the following factors: refugees' needs, information and their skills, work market's needs and opportunities, and budget. Specifically, some NGOs might consider the budget for the trainings firstly while the others may more focus on the refugees and work market's needs. Anyhow, one of the decision aspects would be motivation that affects the NGO decision in choosing trainings but, in most cases, some criteria are more dominant than the others. Although to consider each decision aspect separately will probably increase a chance of choosing training that exactly matches refugee's needs, it is still necessary to ask refugees about their invisible needs with a set of questions in order to find out all the hidden requirements. With this strategy, the decision maker (the system) will be able to choose vocational training for those refugees better and closer to their actual needs. In order to make a rational solution for solving this problem, we can use these decision aspects to create the system model to help NGOs making a better decision. Each of the decision aspects will be explained in detail in the following section (the model of the system) for better understand the core model of the system. By interpreting the refugee requirements, evaluating refugee activities and information, estimating the trend of the work market and getting feedbacks from refugees' reviews or experiences of humanitarian organization, the model will be able to give more reliable and accurate result to any kind of users.

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Choosing vocational training for refugees in Local NGOs

3. Model Description
In the end, the vocational training that best matches the refugee is the one that is the most suitable with their needs and work market, all this must fits with the NGO's budget. As the result in the previous topic suggest that there are generally three aspects to choose the training. The model will represent all these aspects and find which training is the best for refugees. 3.1 Input to the system There are therefore three set of input to the system. One is refugees' information database, the second is vocational trainings and budget database, and last is the work market needs information. Refugees' information database and vocational trainings database will be kept on DBMS in a way that the new model can be added to the system and managed easily. However, the budget always changes depending on the funds. To solve this problem, using the DBMS allows to simply change the budget for each period of time and training through the DBMS software. 3.2 Refugees' information database There are several kinds of questions for refugee to enter in order to detect which kind of vocational training s/he need. Then all value will be translated to work market needs and budget available based on NGO's knowledge in this area and from other reliable source. For example, suppose refugee's gender is male, his age is 25, he finished high school and has experience work as cashier then the program would assume that the best suit vocational training should be English courses and accounting courses to develop his English language skills specially in Lebanon anyone want to be involve in work market he needs to know at least basic English language, and accounting to develop his skills in this field. To make this information more reliable, NGO needs to create a model in excel before applying the information into system. 3.3 Vocational training and budget database Vocational training and budget data will need to be entered in the system in detail. However, scoring the intangible thing such as is such VT will give a chance for a refugee to get a job or not? Or he really needs this training and not because it's free he will take it. All this is not easy task. There is no standard measurement for this type of information so we gathered data from different sources and convert them into one standard. For the vocational training types,
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Choosing vocational training for refugees in Local NGOs

we try to get all information directly from work market need and from opportunities which available to make the data more reliable as much as possible. Also to standardize the budget, we decided to use the previous budget plan rather than the estimation of new budget plan. Although we try to use as much data as possible as a decision criteria, but it is impossible to use all previous data as criteria so that we consider only the key data related to refugee's information and budget available. 3.4 Work Market needs Work market is differing from country to other. In our paper we discuss the work market in Lebanon, and looking for opportunities which suit refugees, these job opportunities which Lebanese citizens doesn't like to have or work in it. But we have to take in our consideration that although strong vocational programs increase refugees' opportunities to get job, many vocational programs currently: Fail to meet labor market needs Do not adequately prepare refugees for jobs Are separated from the fast-changing world of modern economies

NGOs with strong initial VET systems have been relatively successful in tackling refugees' unemployment, even during the recent economic crisis, but they need to gather enough information about work market needs. 3.5 Output from the system Output from this system is a list of up to three vocational trainings with their benefits and budget and a group of refugees which this VT seems suits them. The result will be ordered by the level of correspondence to the provided refugee's information (from input page). The decision maker can find more feature information, detailed budget information, vocational training type, and how to choice the suitable one. All of the data in our output is from the database, so how updated the information depends on how often the database is updated.

4. Model
As we describe earlier, to choose the vocational training, we have three main aspects to consider, which are the refugee's information, vocational training and budget database, and work market. This decision can be shown as the following model:

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Choosing vocational training for refugees in Local NGOs

Choose Vocational Training

Budget Value

Work market need Value

Refugee's information Value

Overall expected value of VT 4.1 Budget value The information of budget can be obtained by comparing the maximum budget that NGO input into the vocational training and budget database form with VT cost. The cost of VT models in result list must not exceed the specified maximum budget. That means the refugee can afford to by the VT shown in list. 4.2 Work market need value To get the work market need, we rely on two kinds of information sources which are the market studies and researches, and the refugee's needs we get from the input form. We get the market studies and researches information from various sources, for example, outreach workers whose work for the organization or special team work in researches and reporting For the refugee's needs, as a decision maker, he can select to consider some specific factor, for example the previous experience of refugee or the education background (more detail will be explained in refugees' information EV sub model.) For instance, if decision maker selects to prefer any of these factors, we will give more score to the VT that offering continuously education service or having office work. 4.3 Refugees' information value This value is obtained by the refugee skill, education background, age and gender that the refugee fills in the input form. This information is interpret into value and will be used to refer to the type of vocational training. For example, if the refugee mentions that he has

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Choosing vocational training for refugees in Local NGOs

experience in particular field, it implies that the VT which most likely match his needs must have continues education or training in same field to develop his skills. More information regarding work market need value and refugees' information value will be explained later in quantification of uncertainties section.

5. Quantification of Preferences
We can say that make decision about this problem is a kind of conflicting objective. It mainly relies on subjective judgment to trade-off the value of each aspect which is the refugee's information, vocational training and budget database, and work market. Among three main aspects, we set the default worth of consideration equally, 33.33% each. However, for each decision maker, the level of consideration of each factor possibly is different. So, we assess the weight of each aspect according to the information that the decision maker or user input. If the decision maker considers the budget as the important factor, budget weight will be higher than other factor. We can represent the decision as the following utility equation: Before adjustment Evaluation (vocational training) = b (budget) + q(Work market need V) + r (Refugee's information V) , where b = q = r and b + q + r = 1 After adjustment Evaluation (vocational training) = b (budget) + q(Work market need V) + r (Refugee's information V) , where b + q + r = 1 There is certainly a conflict between the "Work market need and Refugee's information" priorities, and budget. Therefore, the assessment relies on the decision maker input. Yet, finally, the budget is the key consideration. The system cannot recommend the suitable vocational training that match with the refugees need with a vocational training cost exceeding the specified budget. We can say that the decision in this case is based on the refugees benefits, so that the most important part of our system is the interpretation of the refugees needs. We have studied; the refugees with different age and sex have the different training skills. We use the age and sex to imply the default value for each refugees activity.
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Choosing vocational training for refugees in Local NGOs

However, we give more consideration to what decision maker input. This is because, for some NGOs, the refugees previous work experience is the most important thing to consider. If the previous work experience is not conflict with other consideration such as budget and market needs, the system will be able to match the right refugee to the suitable vocational training. If there are no work experiences, the system will not consider this point when selecting the vocational training, and will consider other aspects.

6. Quantification of Uncertainties
Our model contains four main uncertainties which consist of refugees questionnaire providing facts about the uncertainty of the refugees needs for a suitable vocational training getting from refugees themselves., organizations' reviews indicating the uncertainty of the vocational training reliability getting from the third party trustworthy sources such as the market where other refugees work in or feedbacks or experiences from humanitarian organizations, NGO needs telling the uncertainty of NGO desires and aim. These three refer to the tangible value. The first one is Activities indicating the uncertainty of refugees activities relating to the skills they are using in their previous jobs which refer to the tangible value.

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Choosing vocational training for refugees in Local NGOs

6.1 Refugees Questionnaire As a suitable vocational training becomes one of the important factors that most refugees concern, inputting refugee's questionnaire is one way in which the decision maker can gain knowledge as well as useful information about the refugees needs and skills in order to choose a suitable vocational training for a suitable refugee. However, since many questionnaires have different standard for evaluating the refugees needs for a suitable vocational training, one decision maker can obtain different score levels. As a consequence, the refugees needs for a suitable vocational training level become uncertain. From this reason, we have collected the refugees needs for a suitable vocational training level from many reliable organizations and refugees themselves whose already have jobs after VT to enhance the accuracy of the refugees needs assessment. 6.2 Organizations' Reviews Another important issue that decision makers is concern about vocational training reliability (how does this VT will give benefit to the refugees to work in the market). Like the refugees needs, we obtained information about the vocational training reliability from various sources. Since every VT has advantages, it is hard to collect each feature of a VT. Thus, we only analyze reliability reports in the decision maker level instead of vocational training level. From this point, we are able to assess the reliability of each vocational training by using its decision maker s reliability score.

7. How to calculate the probability of those two uncertainties?

As both refugees questionnaire and organizations' reviews obtain their probability values from many reviews and questionnaires, it will be more flexible to make the system able to add new analysis results into it. As a result, we created a database used for calculating the probability of refugees service and reliability for a suitable vocational training. Managers can add more analysis results in order to enhance the accuracy of the refugees' needs and reliability assessment by add more records in the database. For probability calculation, we used all the results from the questionnaires and reviews to calculate the probability of each grade level. Refugees needs have three grade levels (high priorities, middle and low) while reliability has four grades level (outstanding, good, fair and poor).

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Choosing vocational training for refugees in Local NGOs

6.3 NGOs needs Sometimes even refugees themselves may not know what they really want or need. As a consequence, it is one of uncertainties happening during the refugee requirements interpretation processes which the system obtains from the refugee registration form. The probability of the uncertainty is calculated from the proportion among NGOs desires. 6.4 Activities Like NGOs needs, the uncertainty Activities happens during the refugee information "from the registration form" interpretation processes. The values that we get from the activities are not certainly indicate the vocational training type, though it can implies some possibility. Once the refugee fills the refugee registration form, the uncertainty happens. The probability of the uncertainty is calculated from refugees answers. The system calcu lates the proportion of the refugees activities in order to analyze refugees characteristics which will allows system to choose a vocational training that matches their needs. Generally refugees do not know the detailed details of the vocational training they wanted. However, they do know what they are going to work with their new skills from those vocational training. In short, their skills are based on activities rather than the vocational trainings type. This system captures this idea and so based the decision of choosing the vocational training on activities. We then translate these activities to each information on the registration form (e.g. work experience, age, gender). By brainstorming with heads in Amel association, consult other organizations, searching in market studies and refugees information, we strongly believe that our translation very accurate. We not only based our translation barely on the decision makers input, but also adjust the value that seems incorrect; for example, if one has age of 55, he certainly does not want to work as hair dresser or graphic designer so we will reasonably shape down this value.

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Choosing vocational training for refugees in Local NGOs

Based on this diagram, we reflect our thought by modeling the system in a way that we get the information from refugees' activities, and then estimate the value of each information. For example, if the activities require responsible character, the vocational training with accounting field should get higher score. All characteristics have an arc to Refugees' information node to compute the final face value for each single vocational training. To reduce complexity on our system, we do not calculate all vocational training at once. We instead compute face value for each VT at a time. After all vocational trainings have been evaluated; we get a list of vocational trainings along with its face value. The higher face value means the higher match with a group of refugees.

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Choosing vocational training for refugees in Local NGOs

8. Evaluation of the model

In order to evaluate sensitivity of our model, we have defined based (estimated) value and reasonable upper and lower bounds. By setting all nodes at based value and varying one node at a time from lower bound to upper bound, we came up with the following tornado diagrams.

From the diagram above, we can see that the most sensitive variable the longest bar at the top of diagram is Budget Satisfaction. This indicates that choosing vocational training depends mostly on NGO budget rather than other input variable. This is obvious because NGOs usually implement the projects depends on their budget. In this case, overall vocational training is insensitive to UNHCR registration, hobbies, marital status and No. of children, so in further analyzing this decision we simply can leave these variables at their base values. Above all, the information shown in this diagram may vary based on each NGOs priority. If the NGO do not care about the budget (having unlimited funds or the budget is very high), the budget may not be the most sensitivity variable like in the above figure.

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Choosing vocational training for refugees in Local NGOs

9. External Interface Requirements

9.1 User Interfaces The User Interface Process In the user interface process, the user interacts with the computer via an action language processed by the UIMS. It enables the user to interact with the model management and data management subsystem. In advanced systems, the user interface component includes a natural language processor or can use standard objects (pull down menus, buttons) through a graphical user interface.

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Choosing vocational training for refugees in Local NGOs

10. Recommendations
For further research and development in this project, we recommend the following feature: 10.1 Development regarding the model

In intangible aspect "work market needs", more uncertainties from various sources can increase more reliability of data. The additional uncertainties should include more information from refugees feedback, and more reviews from trustworthy source such as international organizations.

The number of questions that the refugees need to input into the system must increase. To get the budget satisfaction, we may consider another important factor which is the current fund opportunity. The wage is probably the key factor for most of refugees when working in the market.

In our model, we interpret the information the refugee input to be a numerical value. Sometime the score is not perfectly true. 10.2 Development regarding the system

To make the refugees information, budget and market needs database more up-todate, the GUI should be developed to allow easier vocational training information addition and modification.

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