I promised Lorant Czaran1 that I would post something about ReliefWeb‘s job vacancies mash-up – and then realised that it would fit perfectly with this discussion about innovation. I’ve written about ReliefWeb before, but it’s not exactly noted for cutting edge web 2.0 efforts. However, no matter what its faults, it’s the single most important website for the humanitarian community, which is why it’s good to see them trying some new approaches.
I’m not claiming that searching for jobs on ReliefWeb is an especially humanitarian activity, but it is an activity that a lot of humanitarians do. One of the things that I completely failed to understand about their redesign a a couple of years ago is why they relegated the Vacancies section to the bottom of the “Professional Resources” part of the site, rather than foregrounding it. The reason for foregrounding? Simply that vacancies are one of the main reasons that people go to the site in the first place.
Vacancies shouldn’t be the focus of the entire site, but they should be a focus of the user experience. Lorant and his team took a strong step forward here, introducing a new way of interacting with the site – a Google Maps mash-up which can also be downloaded as a Google Earth KML file. This is a great idea, and well executed, given ReliefWeb’s disturbingly 90s website design – but why does this fit with the innovation theme? AFter all, Google Map mash-ups aren’t exactly new, even in the humanitarian sector.
What’s innovative about it is that it shows the way forward not just for job searches but for the entire ReliefWeb site. There’s no reason why the enitire site couldn’t be organised in this way, with navigation based entirely on geography – after all, that’s the way the humanitarian community itself works. I’d love to see this approach extended to become the front page of the website, offering a way into the main Countries and Emergencies section. There’s very few parts of the site that don’t offer themselves up to a geospatial interface.
So what about those few parts that don’t – Policy and Issues, for example? Well you couldn’t do a Google Maps mash-up for those things – but why couldn’t you do a policy map instead, showing the different links between sectors and institutions? Or a tag cloud approach, showing which issues are the ones that are generating the most publications and discussion? Either of these would offer a better user experience that would make ReliefWeb not just important but innovative as well….
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Paul,
Having been part of two giant bureaucracies – the UN (1996-2001) and since 2002, the US Government State Department, I have become convinced that bureaucracies like these are counter-productive to innovation.
I appreciate your comments about ReliefWeb – both “it’s the single most important website for the humanitarian community” and “it’s not exactly noted for cutting edge web 2.0 efforts” I agree with both. Of course, it was a one of the first applications of Web 1.0 technology when we developed it back in 1996 and believe me, we were able to do it the way we wanted with very little interference. oversight, red tape, resistance, when it was considered new and innovative and most of our superiors didn’t know what the Web was in the mid-1990s.
I agree, if ReliefWeb is going to remain important it is going to have to become more innovative. Lorant’s efforts were a excellent start at a mash-up interface.
Having tried to introduce some new concepts (VISTA, Conflicts/Emergencies Without Borders, Collaboration Tools) since I joined the State Department, I realize that innovation is not easily supported in large bureaucracies, which is why I have become more interested in collaborating with others outside the government that are more innovative. That said, I did get an award this year from State Department – the Civil Service State-of-the-Art Information technology Award for some of the things I have tried to promote.
Anyway, thought I would weigh in, as one of the sell-out public bureaucrats, I appreciate the chiding and new ideas advocated by people like you and Patrick Meier…you remember being in the UN bureaucracy and know how difficult and risk-averse it became. I know some very inovative people who have worked for these bureauracies, but they tend to get disillusioned and burn out and leave before their ideas can come to fruition.
Keep the faith…change we can believe in.
Dennis
PS. Is it better to try to implement change within the system or give up on the system and work from outside? Or, do we need both?
Fascinating stuff about bureaucracies vs innovation, Dennis. Perhaps one of the problems is that bureaucracies generally don’t like networks that involve external actors – something which I argue is essential for successful innovation.
I’m not in a position to talk about working within the system, because I always work as a consultant and I always work on a project basis – it’s frustrating, but it’s the only way I can work. I don’t think, however, that the big bureaucracies = “the system” – they just think that they do…
Hello Friends,
Bravo, is all I can say to ReliefWeb! It is the single most dedicated website to creating a bridge between the supply for humanitarians and the demand for humanitarians. I am not exactly new to this entity, and it’s an enterprise I am proud of.
I would like to encourage even more innovations in your operations, suiting the customized needs of the recruiters and the personnel they seek to recruit.
Maybe, this is one of the greatest humanitarianism of its nature!!
So, Bravo ReliefWeb!!
Dennis Martins OKWIR
Programme Coordinator
Empowering Hands – Uganda
+256 (0) 777 488 377