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ICT4Peace in the news

Paul Currion — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:02:09 +0000

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 Yes, I think we did – but of course it was out of date as soon as it was published!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!

One of the reasons I stepped away from the project is because I felt my strengths are more in the middle and lower levels of organisations – and possibly because that’s where I think the greatest potential for change is. The other reason was that I was never entirely convinced by the concept; “ICT4Peace” is both too vague and too specific. It’s a handy catch-all, but anybody who thinks there’s much common ground between the five categories I mentioned above is living in a fantasy world. Some people would even argue that there shouldn’t be common ground between them, although that depends on your perspective – effective human rights advocacy might actually preclude you from providing effective humanitarian relief, for example. CNN Money magazine has an article based on an interview with Daniel that Sanjana (who’s an advisor to the ICT4Peace Foundation) pointed me towards, and that article highlights exactly what I mean.

Daniel is entirely correct that technology isn’t being used as effectively as it could be in our work, and correct that the issue isn’t the technology itself. He believes the problem is one of leadership – I believe that the problem is one of management, but I’m willing to believe that we’re talking about roughly the same thing. Then we get into an area where Daniel’s quoted words and the journalist’s text become difficult to separate, so bear with me.

The bigger challenge is making relief and peace groups want to use them to better collaborate in the field.

You can’t make people want to use technology, or make them want to collaborate. People will use technology if they find it useful (e.g. if it makes their work easier) and they’ll collaborate if they get value from it (e.g. if it makes their work easier). The trick is to make the technology useful and the collaboration valuable – the “if you build it, they will come” principle (which has its limits, but is a good starting point). However then the article goes into areas which I really, really disagree with.

“The IT person has been telling the head of an operation what they could and couldn’t know: ‘We don’t have that information,’ or, ‘There are no standards for sharing information.’ But that’s baloney!” [Stauffacher] pronounced during a recent breakfast in New York. “This is a question of leadership – of the leader of a relief group determining what they need to know in a crisis situation. What are the human needs and who has what resources?”

The part I disagree with here is that it’s not the IT people who are telling their directors what information they have or don’t have, since IT people in general have no involvement with the information that goes through their systems. It’s the programmes and operations people who are responsible for this, and also for determining what they need to know. The thing is, we already know what we need to know – it’s just that we’re not very good at a) getting it and b) sharing it.

In a crisis the UN, NGOs, and often military and business groups need to be able to communicate quickly about needs and how best to collaborate. Chaos typically reigns after a disaster or in a war zone. Relief often goes to the wrong places, and groups resist sharing information. Turf battles are common.

It bothers me slightly that governments aren’t mentioned here, but again I’m willing to assume that it’s just an oversight on the part of the journalist. I’m not sure that relief “often” goes to the wrong places, it’s just that when it does go wrong, it’s more visible. I’m not sure that groups “resist” sharing information, because that suggests that they’re actively hoarding it – and my experience is that they’re usually quite happy to share it, but they’re a) busy responding to a disaster and b) the mechanisms aren’t in place to share.

In the Web 2.0 age it’s easy to imagine new ways for recipients and aid groups to better communicate, using cellphones, wikis, social networks, and other simple free tools. “Maybe you can have a feedback system for the recipients,” says Stauffacher. “A kid in Darfur with a cellphone camera can go into a hospital and show that the supplies have not arrived, or that they sent outdated yogurt. And the old lady in the village who was supposed to get food or shelter should be able to say if what she got was valuable or useless.”

The problem isn’t the lack of communication, it’s the power relationships behind that communication. I’m all for creating feedback mechanisms for the beneficiaries using technology, but this is the real issue behind our accountability crisis rather than a technology concern. How will we persuade agencies to adopt these tools if it’s just going to create more headaches for them?

And the problem isn’t the lack of tools, it’s how you integrate these informal tools into the formal response. Where you can’t rely on internet access or cell networks, you can’t make these tools the backbone of the response, so they remain supplementary (or at best complementary) technologies. You also run the risk of creating a digital divide – as Kouchner said (possibly), “where there is no camera, there is no humanitarian intervention” and if you’re led by where the mobile phone cameras are, then those without mobile phones are going to lose out.

If I had to sum up how I feel about this article and about ICT4Peace – I’m glad that Daniel is raising the visibility at the diplomatic level, but I’m not convinced that those levels are where the change will take place. After a couple of years where my focus has been more at the headquarters level, I feel like I achieved more in Bangladesh in 3 weeks in terms of just getting things done and demonstrating the value of information management in practice. That’s partly because I was in the field, where it’s easier to see progress, but it’s also because those discussions at headquarters do take a long, long time to get anywhere….

Ever have one of those years? And Darfur, mapped.

Paul Currion — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 11:34:15 +0000

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.

My colleague Conor Foley, writing in the Guardian’s Comment Is Free space, says that “some questions do need to be asked about the politics of this activism… The problem with reducing conflicts to the type of bite-sized items that can hold people’s attention is that this suggests equally simplistic solutions.”

Now you might believe (as Conor clearly does) that the political narrative which frames this project is not the right one. Not everybody believes that the situation in Darfur constitutes genocide (I personally am not convinced), but everybody can agree that there is widespread and systematic abuse of human rights there.

Conor goes on to say that we need political engagement, and that’s where this project comes in; it’s a means of generating more political engagement on this issue. Although there is always a risk of undermining the concept of genocide through overuse, the risk of inaction to the people of Darfur is far greater.

Some of the coverage of the project comes at it from the perspective of citizen journalism, but I don’t think that’s very useful. You can see this project as a natural extension of human rights monitoring, simply using new technology to make the results both more accessible and more meaningful to a wider audience – so the real question is, who is that wider audience?

Satellite and other remote sensing imagery has been used in relief efforts for a while now; every deployment of the UN Humanitarian Information Centres has used remote sensing images. However there are serious problems in using GIS and remote sensing in relief efforts, particularly in complex political emergencies like Darfur, and we haven’t yet realised its full potential. However this isn’t necessarily a tool for operational UN agencies or NGOs working on the ground (although individuals might use it), as they have a different set of concerns and constraints to human rights organisations.

We clearly intended this to reach a human rights audience, with the possibility of analysts and researchers making use of the tool as well. In that regard, it’s also possible to argue that these tools might just be distractions. Sanjana at ICT4Peace writes “Although this technology through eye-candy (disturbing as it may be) tries to galvanise global political and policy to act urgently against a further deterioration of conditions in Darfur, itâ€™s unclear how earlier attempts at using technology have succeeded in raising and sustaining the level of awareness and compassion necessary to address such crises.”

He’s right – just because data is available doesn’t mean anyone will use it. Much of the data behind this project was available previously, but that kind of data is difficult to handle and interpret for a general audience. The project takes the data and presents it as a call to action, but the target audience is not necessarily going to “use” the visualised data for anything other than the cause they are already engaged in – raising awareness of the situation in Darfur and calling for policy changes to relieve the suffering there.

The reason I was happy to be involved is because I think this is a really significant step in human rights advocacy in the information revolution. Only time will tell whether we’ll see more of these types of initiative, whether they’ll make a significant impact in our political dialogue, and whether that will contribute to a more peaceful world.

ICT4Peace, OLPC and Technology for Social Change – A conversation with Sanjana Hattotuwa

Paul Currion — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:35:23 +0000

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!

Publication’s what you need!

Paul Currion — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 18:14:42 +0000

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?

ECB4 Report Launch: Information and Technology Requirements

Paul Currion — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 12:34:04 +0000

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!

peace.it newsletter

Paul Currion — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 17:09:55 +0000

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!

Further thoughts on ICT4Peace

Paul Currion — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 16:51:29 +0000

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.

First, as Sanjana points out:

“It is however interesting how a single report of this calibre – well written and relatively well researched – can overwhelm the work of a smaller organisation, such as InfoShare in Sri Lanka. Though we receive brief mention in the report, I know not of any other organisation that pioneers the use of ICT in Peacebuilding in the fashion that we?ve engineered in Sri Lanka over the past 3 years.”

There’s the problem in a nutshell; although our resources were limited, we certainly looked for other organisations in southern countries working with technology in this arena – but we couldn’t find them. That doesn’t mean that they’re not there – but the digital divide just makes it very difficult to get away from a northern bias.

Second, the report was targeted at a very specific audience. As Sanjana says,

“This failure to engage with the South, and the top-down approach of research, is never more explicit than in the recommendations of the report – which though good are somewhat mundane to those of us who have gone beyond them in our work. It is perhaps a question of audience as well – the report necessarily addresses those unfamiliar with the concept of ICT for Peacebuilding and thereby needs to capture what to us may be obvious and passe.”

The report was indeed targeted at an audience unfamiliar with the concept – or indeed, unfamiliar with conflict issues in general. The recommendations were targeted more at international organisations than those working at the grassroots, for several reasons. The most important reason was that institutions such as national governments and the United Nations are in a position to allocate funding and other resources to create an environment that would make the work of grassroots organisations easier.

One of the problems we faced with the report was exactly this: how does one bridge the gap between high-level policy institutions and grassroots operations? In the spirit of the chicken and the egg, which comes first? Hopefully the next iteration of ICT4Peace will start to address that issue, by opening up the text for wider contributions, and focusing more on building communities and networks around these issues. I don’t pretend to have all the answers, though – if anybody does, please feel free to send them to me on a postcard (or in the comments box below).

ICT4Peace – thoughts from other bloggers

Paul Currion — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 17:53:27 +0000

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…

My first liveblog!

Paul Currion — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 12:39:28 +0000

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.

ICT for Peace Report – job done.

Paul Currion — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 21:18:24 +0000

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!

Accidents waiting to happen…