humanitarian.info

For the World Summit on the Information Society, I worked on a report that was eventually published by the UN ICT Task Force: Information and Communication Technologies for Peace: the Role of ICT in preventing, responding to and recovering from conflict. I didn’t have great expectations – I just wanted to see if we could provide an overview of the wide range of technology-related activities that have been happening in the humanitarian / human rights / peace-building / peace operations / post-conflict reconstruction space.

Did we succeed? Yes, I think we did – but of course it was out of date as soon as it was published! Nonetheless, I think it was a worthwhile project and I’ve had plenty of feedback that people have found it a useful primer. After WSIS, my involvement with ICT4Peace petered out, but Daniel Stauffacher kept the discussions going and has since launched the ICT4Peace Foundation, focusing on the high-level discussions that are needed to effect policy change. This is a relatively long post that has some criticism of their direction – but I should emphasise that I support 100% what ICT4Peace are trying to do, and any criticism should be seen as part of the dialogue, rather than an attempt to shut dialogue down. Read on!

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That’s right, a two month break doesn’t faze me. There’s been so much happening this year, it’s scary.

To get started, congratulations to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (the hosts for BrightEarth) on launching the Crisis in Darfur collaboration with Google Earth. This is a fascinating project that’s been building for a while now, and I’ve been very pleased to be a part of it. The real credit goes to Michael Graham, who’s really been the driving force behind this.

The best news is that it’s been all over the media. Ogle Earth has a round-up of the coverage, but also makes a very relevant point: “What’s interesting is that there is no consensus among news editors as to where such a story belongs.” Is it a current affairs story, a business story or a technology story? As Ogler concludes, “putting the story in the technology section relegates it to a spot not followed by the people that the technology is most aiming to reach,” which raises questions about how to best bring this type of project to the public.

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This morning I recorded my first podcast, as part of a series of dialogues hosted by Sanjana Hattotuwa. We had a wide-ranging discussion, mainly thanks to Sanjana – I tend to repeat the same three things over and over again.

There was one topic I wanted to discuss here: the role of the private sector. I’ve worked with some amazing people from some incredible companies, and I’m convinced that there’s an untapped wealth of knowledge and expertise that is having a real impact in improving people’s lives.

At the same time, I also believe that there are serious problems. Private companies are subject to different pressures than public organisations, and have very different practices and processes. This is not to say that we close the discussion off – we need to discuss this openly if we’re going to get anywhere.

You can read the relevant post on Sanjana’s blog or listen to the podcast on VOR. Go listen to it and let me know if I’ve accidentally libelled anybody. My anti-OLPC bias is loud and clear, but I’d be interested to read comments from people who have a more positive view of the OLPC.

Thanks for arranging the podcast, Sanjana – and I’m looking forward to the next one!

I am sinking to new depths in my quest for publicity. I figure I deserve it – my blog fell over yesterday and it took me all morning to get it back on its feet. I still need to tweak this easy to use wordpress theme, though.

Last week a friend pointed out that the ICT4Peace report is available on Amazon. That means that I am (cough cough) a published author. Why not pick up a copy from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk?

What a marathon.  Although we actually released the report at the time of the Seattle workshop earlier this year, it was always the plan that we would launch a nicely-formatted final package – it just took a bit longer than planned – and you can now download the complete five-part Report at the ECB website Publications page.

I won’t go into detail about the contents, but as far as I know, this is the first in-depth examination of the information and technology requirements of international NGOs in emergency response.  It’s comprehensive but not exhaustive, and I hope that people will pick up the threads from this report to address specific areas such as security and staff capacity.

We’re now developing projects based on the findings of the report, all of which will be well underway (and some nearly finished) by the end of the year.  Although the projects begin with the ECB member agencies, we hope to have an impact on the entire sector.  So let’s begin!

The Crisis Management Initiative, who I’ve worked with in the past on their IT for Crisis Management project, have just released their first online journal, Peace IT! (pdf).  It’s short but engaging, with articles on SMS for political action, coverage of TSF in Lebanon, the Fahamu Learning for Change programme in Africa, and an interview with Sanjana.  Congratulations to the team on the first issue!

Sanjana has posted his thoughts about ICT4Peace in a post that takes a slightly different angle. He appreciates that the report was written at all; but laments the fact that is has such a bias towards website-based, northern initiatives. Unfortunately, we’re guilty as charged, particularly because most of the research was carried out via the web. However the charge of northern bias doesn’t stick that well, for two reasons.

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Rik Panganiban posted some interesting thoughts about our ICT4Peace report – worth reading if you can’t be bothered to go through the entire report. His final point is particularly relevant:

“I hope that this important area of ICT4Peace doesn’t get left by the wayside. But without a specific policy arena for those issue areas to be addressed, that seems to be a likely future.”

We discussed this a lot while I was editing the report. It was clear that, although there was a lot of interest in the subject, there wasn’t anybody jumping at the opportunity to pick up the baton. We’re now looking at how to take the findings of the report forward, but that’s going to be difficult without a specific forum for those discussions.

The knowledgeable Nancy White takes a different tack, from a Web 2.0 perspective:

“For those of you who are big Web2.0 thinkers, how do you imagine the changing web tools and environments might help? How do our grand ideas jive with the electricity, phone and bandwidth scarcity not just in disaster areas, but in 2/3rds world where this is the norm?”

It’s clear that these discussions shouldn’t just be happening at the policy level, but at our level as well – and at the level of affected communities, where possible. In the former case, we can start those discussions right here; in the latter case, we need more imagination if we’re going to reach those affected by disaster. The revolution starts here…

Finally, a decent wireless connection at WSIS. This means I can take my first steps in the wonderful world of blogging live, from the ICT4Peace session. I’ve just descended from the stage, having presented the ICT4Peace report, in order to allow our range of guest speakers to take their seats. From left to right, we have Chamindra de Silva (Lanka Software Foundation), Dag Nielsen (Ericsson Response Team), Linton Wells (US Department of Defense), President Marti Ahtisaari of Finland (who’s speaking as I type), Jose Antonio Ocampo (Under-Secretary General of the UN), Raymond Johansen (Secretary of State of Norway) and Ambassador Daniel Stauffacher of Switzerland.

To be honest, I can’t believe that we managed to put this panel together. If we’re not careful, they’ll reach critical mass and form a diplomatic black hole. (Except for Chamindra and Dag, who we’ll have to rescue, otherwise I won’t be able to continue working with them on Sahana and NGO communications.) All of them are interesting speakers, with very different perspectives – the only thing standing between us and that diplomatic black hole is our moderator, Hilary Bowker.

For the last year, I’ve been working with the Swiss Executive Secretariat on their contribution to a little thing called the World Summit on the Information Society. The fruits of that labour are in the Report on Information and Communications Technology for Peace [PDF] (ICT4Peace), which you can find on the ICT4Peace website. The subtitle of the report is “The Role of ICT in Preventing, Responding to and Recovering from Conflict”, which is a big clue as to what the report covers. It offers an overview of some of the major initiatives and organisations that have been using technology on the international stage to work on humanitarian and peace interventions. The Report will be officially launched at WSIS in Tunisia, with all the bells and whistles – see you there!