It’s embarrassing, but in my youth I could often be heard telling people “Information just wants to be free!” I can’t even remember what I meant now. I was probably crazed with power at the time. But I was on a phone conference with Microsoft earlier today, and at one point somebody started to talk about how we would have to discuss how to deal with proprietary data collected during a humanitarian response. Suddenly, the years rolled back and information just wanted to be free again…
One of the problems that I’ve faced repeatedly is that UN or NGOs in the field just aren’t very good at sharing their information, either with their peers or with the beneficiaries. Most often, the objection is raised that, if we share information (particularly from assessments), our “competitors” might take that information, use it to develop a project proposal, and take all the cash from our donors’ pockets.
Please. Donors don’t give us money because our assessments are amazing, or because our project proposals are dazzling. Trust me, I’ve seen a lot of assessments and proposals in my time, and generally they’re crap (especially in a sudden-onset emergency, when everybody’s losing their marbles). The donors give us money because we already have a contract with them, or we know them from that bar in Kabul, or because we happened to drive past their office and they desperately need to spend a $500,000 budget by lunchtime.
If we’re talking about a public entity (a non-governmental organisation) using public funds (either from a government or from the general public) to carry out public service (providing relief to communities) in a foreign country where the government has a clear stake in responding to and recovering from a disaster?
All the data collected by that NGO should be made freely available as quickly as possible, with the only possible exceptions made for privacy or security issues.
Discuss.
