humanitarian.info » Pakistan

On the benefits of redundant telecoms in Pakistan

Paul Currion — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 08:55:32 +0000

Sequence of events:

Although Masud’s post isn’t clear about what specifically brought the internet went down, or how they brought it back up again, he does have a good point about why these things happen, and what urban planners / architects / anybody who’s listening might do about it:

PTCL Telephone exchanges stand out among buildings. Banks, Telephone Exchanges, Shops and the like are the first target of an unruly mob. TWA1 or other small operators are not that evident. No one knows the whereabout of their landing stations,Points-of-Presence etc. So, during rioting, they do not make identifiable targets.

So a) small is beautiful as far as internet providers are concerned, and b) make sure you have redundant connectivity.Â I’m glad that the internet was back on after 30-odd hours, but I’m sure that it won’t be the last time this happens in Pakistan.

Flood, famine and mobile phones in the Economist

Paul Currion — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 09:55:56 +0000

Quite a long time ago, I posted the story of a starving tribesman who emailed a bunch of people to try and get assistance. The Economist has finally caught up, as it opens this article on technology in humanitarian relief with a similar story.

“MY NAME is Mohammed Sokor, writing to you from Dagahaley refugee camp in Dadaab. Dear Sir, there is an alarming issue here. People are given too few kilograms of food. You must help.”

A crumpled note, delivered to a passing rock star-turned-philanthropist? No, Mr Sokor is a much sharper communicator than that. He texted this appeal from his own mobile phone to the mobiles of two United Nations officials, in London and Nairobi. He got the numbers by surfing at an internet cafÃ© at the north Kenyan camp.

The rest of the article then pretty much re-treads my blog (ahem) in an overview of some of the big issues in the sector. Unsurprisingly it focuses on the easy stuff – hardware, particularly telecoms – and misses the more interesting issues. In a single paragraph the article does identify some ways in which improved telecommunications have improved relief operations:

Now, when an emergency occurs, the first people on the ground are often computer geeks, setting up telephone networks so other aid agencies can do their stuff. Donors keep track of supplies on spreadsheets and send each other SMS messages: this road has been attacked by bandits, that village cut off by floods. Transport agencies announce helicopter flights by e-mail. Aid providers can find out where exactly on an incoming ship their medical supplies are, saving hours hanging round the docks. Aid donors find it easier to locate the victims of disaster; and victims queue as eagerly for mobile-phone access as they do for food.

As a result, the organisation of aid is changing.

Well, quite – except that the changes started ten years ago, there’s a whole new set of changes on the way, and we still haven’t solved the problems created by the last set. So what does the article say about all this?

There’s a lot of blanket assertions in the article, such as “Better communications also favour information-sharing and co-ordination between agencies… Things like e-mail service and satellite links help to herd the cats.” That doesn’t tally with the experience of the Humanitarian Information Centres, for whom capturing and sharing data from the agencies is like pulling teeth, and it doesn’t tally with the findings of the ECB assessment, which painted a picture of NGO staff flooded with email, still attending too many “co-ordination” meetings, and limited improvements in information-sharing of any substance.

And as Hugo Slim of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue points out, technology increases the flow of information not just to workers in the field, but to offices in New York or London; this may tempt bosses to micro-manage from afar – which can be disastrous.

Headquarters appear to be largely uninterested in micromanagement, so unless there’s some evidence to back that up, I find it difficult to take a serious concern. Headquarters offices have an extractive relationship with their staff working in the field – so although those staff have access to more information, it’s not thanks to headquarters.

In addition, the overwhelming focus on vertical information flow – e.g. between field and headquarters – is at the expense of horizontal flow – e.g. between different field offices, organisations working in the same response, or colleagues in neighbouring countries, all of whom may have valuable experience to share. The technology is actually cementing in place the hierarchical structures that need to be demolished if aid agencies are to survive in the 21st-century.

The article then moves onto the role of “Those Ingenious Victims”, acknowledging that local people and communities affected by disasters usually provide almost all their own immediate assistance and suggesting that “Their ingenuity is likely to change disaster response by rich-world donors in unexpected ways”. I tend to agree, but the article then describes the least expected way you could choose – the extensively-documented spread of mobile telephones.

There are no actual examples of how mobile telephony has affected disaster victims (as opposed to anybody else), but it then moves on to mention cash distributions – an issue which I think is critical to the sector right now, but has almost nothing to do with technology. There’s a brief paragraph mention of family location, citing the Red Cross’ fairly average familylinks site (a missed opportunity to discuss the PeopleFinder development that came out of Hurricane Katrina), and then it moves on to an interesting Zimbabewan diaspora project called mukuru, through which Zimbabweans can “order and pay for goods such as petrol online – and have them delivered to family members back home.”

This is fascinating, but it’s got nothing to do with humanitarian relief. Basically, the article struggles to find any examples of technology use by the victims of disaster changing the aid paradigm – as do most of us. I have no doubt that something will be changing, although I’m not as optimistic as Toby Porter at Save the Children (who I know is a very smart guy), who’s quoted as saying

In the humanitarian operation of the future… beneficiaries of emergency aid will use technology to tell us what they need – cash, food, or education – find out from us what to expect, and track its arrival, just as we can track an order from Amazon.com now.

This is based on the assumption that if only we had more technology, we’d be able to do these things; in fact this isn’t true (as anybody who has read the Social Life of Information can tell you) and we could do these things right now with the available technology – if we really wanted to. Questions about political will, absorptive capacity, organisational change and the cultural location of technology are completely missing. Let’s be clear, things will change – but what Toby is describing is just an improved version of business as usual, rather than a fundamental re-organisation of how the aid community works.

The Economist believes that the story of Mohammed Sokor texting UN officials is “a sign that technology need not create a digital divide” – although it doesn’t tell us if the UN officials bothered to text him back. The story notes that “the WFP did boost rations in the Dagahaley refugee camp, albeit citing other reasons” – not surprising, since a text message really isn’t a good enough reason to revise a distribution plan. I imagine that the rations were increased on the basis of WFP staff on the ground re-assessing the situation, rather than technology empowering beneficiaries. But the Economist buys into the classic technotopian vision:

The age-old scourge of famine in the Horn of Africa had found a 21st-century response; and a familiar flow of authority, from rich donor to grateful recipient, had been reversed.

No it hadn’t, and no it hadn’t. The response to famine was exactly the same as it has always been – send more food. Mohammed Sokor is in exactly the same position of supplication as he would have been ten years ago, only now his begging letter is a text message that can be quickly deleted, rather than the “crumpled note” passed on by hand. The aid world is about power relations, with beneficiaries at the bottom of the pile, and there are limits to how much technology can change that. The “familiar flow of authority” is still intact, except now it comes with a customised ringtone.

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!

The Stockholm Challenge 2006

Paul Currion — Wed, 17 May 2006 04:41:00 +0000

The winners in the Stockholm Challenge 2006 were announced last week, an event which I singularly failed to attend. Congratulations are due to RisePak, which won the Public Administration category, while Sahana received a Special Mention in the Health category. It’s nice to see recognition for all of our efforts, although I’m not sure how much it means. Stockholm seems very far away right now.

5 Years of Information Management for Humanitarian Operations

Paul Currion — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 16:23:35 +0000

Five years ago, I wrote an article for Humanitarian Exchange, published by the ODI Humanitarian Practice Network, entitled “Learning from Kosovo: the HCIC Year One.” It was the first thing I’d written about information management, and it was right at the start of my learning curve in this field.

I thought it would be interesting to update that article, and revisit some of the issues that it raised. So in the latest issue of Humanitarian Exchange, you’ll find another article, this time entitled “A Little Learning is a Dangerous Thing: five years of information management for humanitarian operations.”

I packed in more points than I probably should have, so it’s quite a dense piece, but it’s probably summed up by these two sentences:

Five years ago, I believed that better information management would enable better management overall. Yet it is hard to determine whether all this activity has actually improved the provision of humanitarian assistance, since there are no clear criteria for measuring their impact.

The good news includes more partnerships, sometimes between agencies, but also with the private sector; the bad news includes a lack of leadership in this area, particularly given the recent implementation of the cluster approach by the UN. The most important point I wanted to make, however, is one that I’ve mentioned before. I’m going to repeat it now, because it seems to me to be important enough:

We are public organisations, funded by public money, working for the public good. In the interests of accountability, all information that we gather in the course of our work should also be public. The only qualification that should be made to this is if that information might in any way endanger the safety or security of beneficiaries or staff. Without the free flow of information, the process of coordination is crippled, and we all must take responsibility for this.

So I guess that’s my new mantra.

Also interesting this month is an article by Jeremy Shoham of the Emergency Nutrition Network and NutritionWorks. The article, “Information is a prerequisite, not a luxury“ expands on the importance of information management in the context of Food Security. Although he makes the case for what I would say is an overly ambitious system, the article is an excellent overview of some current thoughts in food security (along with a jab at the bias towards food aid, which thankfully is starting to diminish).

Pakistan Six Months On

Paul Currion — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 10:56:06 +0000

Six months ago, Pakistan and India suffered a massive earthquake that devastated a large area along their mutual border; Kashmir and the surrounding areas in Pakistan were worst hit. As is the way of things, news of the humanitarian situation has all but disappeared from the mainstream media, so spare a thought for the thousands of families whose homes were destroyed in the disaster and who are trying to rebuild their lives. Now that the winter is over, hopefully the humanitarian situation will improve, but the reconstruction process will take a long time and will be fraught with difficulty.

I’m posting to draw attention to some of the work that has been happening on the ground in those six months, specifically related to information and coordination issues. In particular, I never got around to pointing to RisePak, a “collaboration between academics, researchers, and policy makers at US and Pakistani universities, multilateral organizations, various government departments, and individuals dedicated towards helping in relief efforts.”

I met with Jishnu Das, one of the leads for RisePak, while I was in Pakistan last year, and I was very impressed with his explanation of how RisePak worked. These are the kind of initiatives that we need to collect the necessary humanitarian information to ensure that assistance reaches the right people; the only outstanding question is how these initiatives can be integrated with the humanitarian relief community for maximum leverage.

RisePak’s work continues, and to me their team represents the best of Pakistan. This year they started to post documentation on both their findings and their methodology for survey work. In particular their Technical Assessment of District Level Data is a fascinating insight into the difficulties of data collection in a post-disaster environment, as well as many of the specifics of the environment in Pakistan. The team also used Flickr to post photos from the assessment, which are worth a look.
Unsurprisingly (well, it didn’t surprise me), one of their main conclusions was that:

the largest issue is the management of information and a lack of process regarding data flow. It is nearly five months after the earthquake, and despite the millions of rupees that have been given out in compensation there is still no idea as to how many persons have received funds and what proportion of the population still remain to be compensated.

This is a common problem, and completely understandable in the aftermath of a disaster on the scale of the earthquake. The RisePak conclusion confirms that many of the problems relating to humanitarian information in the Pakistan earthquake have already been encountered in other places – but that nobody has yet managed to create and replicate a solution to those problems.

In this spirit, I’m also posting a note by Neil Bauman, who was working for the IFRC during the response, specifically supporting the Shelter Cluster – probably the most important of all the clusters in the response. Neil correctly identifies the critical issues in the humanitarian community when it comes to information sharing – again, issues that have been the same for the last six years.

I remain hopeful that we’ll deal with these issues. The past two years have seen a significant improvement in our capacity to manage information in emergency response, and more and more people are now coming into the discussion. Go over to RisePak and see how new ideas can make a difference.

[A more informal explanation from Jishnu can be found at Kathryn Cramer's blog.]

The Stockholm Challenge Award

Paul Currion — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 15:50:04 +0000

The Stockholm Challenge is a well established global networking program for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) entrepreneurs for over ten years. It continues to be a leader in demonstrating how information technology can improve living conditions and increase economic growth in all parts of the world. One of the main features of the Stockholm Challenge is the ICT prize, the Stockholm Challenge Award, which has attracted over 3000 projects over the years.

This year, Sahana is a finalist for the Award. They don’t have a Disasters category, so we’re in the Health category, which is a little bizarre. But it’s a great recognition of all the work that the Sahana team has put into the project over the last year.

Also nominated from the humanitarian sector are a couple of familiar names. The Fritz Institute has been nominated for their Humanitarian Logistics Software, and the guys at RisePak have also been nominated for their earthquake response work last year.

Congratulations to everybody, although I probably won’t be able to make it to the awards ceremony in Stockholm on 11 May….

I dream of the ECB4 Assessment

Paul Currion — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 22:39:32 +0000

For the last six months I’ve been working with the ECB Project, carrying out an assessment of ICT and information requirements in emergencies. It’s been fascinating, taking me to the headquarters of all the member agencies, as well as the field visits to Pakistan and Sudan, and into the heart of the way these organisations do business. The assessment is almost finished now, all the research is done, and now I’m just writing the final report package. On 24 and 25 April, we’ll have a workshop hosted by the University of Washington (thanks to Mark Haselkorn and his team). For a sneak preview, the Pakistan report is already out, albeit with very basic formatting.

The workshop is just the starting point, however, because then the agencies participating in ECB4 will have to actually implement their recommendations. Some of the things we’re going to suggest are fairly simple (such as strategic planning for security communications); but some of them aren’t so simple (such as pursuing a standardised inter-agency assessment format). Most of them require some amount of organisational change, which inevitably will be painful, and will test our commitment to truly building capacity.

I’ve been a bit sneaky with the assessment; I’ve tried as much as possible to make the reports accessible and relevant to a wider audience than just the 7 participating agencies. Since one of the ECB Project’s aims is to identify good practice for the entire NGO community, I feel fairly comfortable with that. The reason is that there are a lot of other players out there – other international and national NGOs, the UN and other international organisations, the private sector, academic and research institutions – who might want to pick up on some of these issues.

Hopefully the reports – which as far as I know are the first to really look at these issues from an international NGO perspective – will be useful for anybody who wants to understand the real constraints in building information systems that will really support our emergency response.

Well, I can dream.

Mapping Disaster Zones (Nature magazine)

Paul Currion — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 15:03:36 +0000

More map madness in Nature magazine, whose 16 February issue has a commentary piece on Mapping Disaster Zones, covering work done by the Global Connection Project in response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the Pakistan earthquake. The entire article is worth reading, but I’d like to focus on some of the lessons they learned:

We learned many other lessons from Pakistan, not least the need to develop tools that can adapt to local conditions on the ground. Internet connections in Pakistan were often slow and patchy, making downloads difficult. Post-disaster feedback highlighted difficulties with printing out maps and locating specific settlements among tens of thousands.

That part just brings back too many bad memories, especially the time that all the ink cartridges in our map plotter cracked in transit. It made a very big mess and we had to clean it by hand. Everybody was very unhappy.

Another obstacle was the mismatch between the local situation and the way existing geographic data is organized and represented. For example, Pakistani villages do not have a single position, but exist along a right-of-way extending from the valley to a ridge top, migrating up and down based on the changing seasons. Thus assigning a fixed position to a village is wrong most of the time.

This is an interesting problem, and one that we come up against frequently in the field. (Jishnu Das has written some more about this, using Flickr to tag his photos from his field work, based on his work with RisePak and LUMS in the Pakistan response.) Not only are settlement positions changeable in some countries but they can move or disappear, whether due to earthquake or war. So what’s the solution? The article suggests that

All mapping efforts, whether community based or UN supported, would benefit from a stronger feedback mechanism, such as a community filtering system that enables authenticated individuals to update shared geographical data online.

That would be nice, but I don’t think it will ever work. Ground truthing is absolutely indispensable for any remote sensing, and that means feet on the ground. People actually working on relief don’t have time to log on to update data – even if they have access to the internet – they just wave the map in your face, shrieking “Your map is wrong!” Which means grabbing the map, making them mark the wrongness clearly, and updating the files accordingly.

As a result, a ‘community filtering system’ isn’t likely to work; you need an authoritative reference point, preferably in the field, a focal point for maintaining and disseminating spatial data. In the absence of government capacity to do this, a Humanitarian Information Centre usually does this, with UNJLC or UNMAC handling logistics and mines respectively; in the absence of any of those, we’re a bit stuffed, so any offers would be welcome.

The full article is at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7078/full/439787a.html.

[Update: More from Jishnu on Kathryn Cramer’s blog at http://www.kathryncramer.com/kathryn_cramer/2006/01/a_long_interest.html; Kathryn is also one of the authors of the Nature article, and her blog is worth checking out as well.

Trust an Afghan

Paul Currion — Sat, 10 Dec 2005 05:10:03 +0000

Nothing to do with information management or technology, but still quite amusing:

Many of the aid agencies have temporarily re-assigned their national staff from Afghanistan to the earthquake response (it’s all Pashtun, all the time up there). So these Afghan staff are going up into the mountains of NWFP to carry out assessments, and coming back down shaking their heads, saying “Boy, they’re really conservative up there!”

Note to self: don’t visit the mosque this weekend in shorts.