A tool intended to make it easier for aid organisations to electronically exchange proposals and reports with the European Union's Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO) was published as open source in February 2010 at the OSOR, the EU's Open Source Observatory and Repository.

The tool, called 'ECHO Offline eSingleForm', allows users to encode their proposals and reports in a predefined format. This document format, the eSingle Form, is one of the requirements for submitting aid project proposals to ECHO. "The tool offers a rich user interface and helps users to produce a document that can be uploaded online", the developers write in their introduction to the tool.

The use of these electronic forms is meant to reduce errors and mistakes and speed up ECHO's workflow. The documents allow automatic and uniform archiving and offer easy access to all users concerned with a certain project.

Managing the documents in electronic form is also meant to enable automatic registration of proposals, amendments and reports. It should provide aid workers with more up-to-date information on the status of projects.

The European Commission is one of the biggest sources of humanitarian aid in the world. In 2008, ECHO provided €937 million for humanitarian programmes. The past few years, ECHO funded projects were carried out by around 150  Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs).

ECHO Offline eSingleForm is published using the European Union Public Licence (EUPL).

Further Information:

• Original article - OSOR.EU website
• ECHO Offline eSingleForm
• Humanitarian Aid Department of the European Commission
• OSOR eID Community