The trip went very well indeed – every meeting we had was overwhelmingly positive, and it clarified what people are expecting from any system that’s set up. There were no surprises about the requirements that people were asking for, which fell into the usual three categories:

1. Data – accurate and reliable data available before a disaster, and rapid and usable data collection following a disaster.
2. Documents – improved document sharing on an interagency basis, with a particular focus on sharing lessons learned.
3. Discussion – more capability to communicate with other agency staff that goes beyond organisational and geographic boundaries.

In order to provide this, I’ll be working with ECB and Microsoft to provide the following:

1. Support to CONRED, the government body responsible for disaster management activities, to finalise the data management system that they’ve developed since Hurricane Stan. They were painfully honest about their shortcomings in the last response, and have taken concrete steps to improve their capability, including the creation of an Information Unit within CONRED. Their biggest problem right now is lack of resources, so I’m hoping that Microsoft will be able to help with some software licenses and programmer time. This will start to address the Data problem, although there will still be problems extending the system into more remote locations since it’s web-based.
2. Creation of a new platform for collaboration, starting with the ECB agencies, later extending to other agencies in Guatemala, and if successful expanded further on a regional basis. The decision still has to be made about what the platform will be – there are a number of options out there – but from an organisational point of view, we already have both interest amongst staff and support from senior management. Of course, that’s all contingent on the project delivering in a reasonable amount of time, and support being available to get staff using the platform.

So the project proposals are under development for next week, and then we’ll see how things go. For what it’s worth, everything is in place for success: genuine field interest, a finite and coherent community of actors, a clear objective to meet, and so on. The major problems I see are: getting distracted by hurricane season (which will throw the timeline off considerably), and continued lack of resources on the government side. Yet maybe this project can help: demonstrating outside support for these initiatives might have a multiplier effect for further funding (from UN reconstruction funds, for example).

For those who are interested, the soundtrack for this trip was provided by Razones de Cambio – if you’re in Guatemala, get their CD or check them out live.

Related posts:

1. Oh! Guatemala
2. Technology on Disaster’s Frontlines
3. Open Source Disaster Recovery

Back to the information system stuff. As well as meeting with the member agencies of the ECB, we had an excellent meeting with CONRED, the government office responsible for coordinating disaster reduction measures. They’ve already established a beta system for disaster data management – you know the sort of thing, demographics, epidemiology, shelter management and so on – and I’m going to see if I can get them the funds they need to finish it.

Unfortunately ECB funding doesn’t extend to governments, but all the members (and the UN, and the donors, and probably my mother as well) agree that whatever we set up needs to support governments efforts. The NGOs have a variety of needs that go beyond data management, and resolving some (if not all) of those will need a lot of changes in organisational thinking. The good news is that everybody we’ve spoken to is committed to doing exactly that.

Oxfam-GB has offered to be the host agency, and their information department back in Oxford has developed an open source platform that they’d like to test in the field. For the rest of my trip I’ll be talking to the agencies as a group to see if that platform will meet their requirements, and meeting with a few donors to see what other funds are available for capacity building in Guatemala.

Some interesting links can be found at my Del.icio.us feed; photos, as ever, can be found in my Flickr account.

Related posts:

1. Information just wants to be free!
2. 5 Years of Information Management for Humanitarian Operations
3. Sudan takeaways