Chris Albon leads us to UNOSAT’s latest and frankly greatest production – a map of Somali pirate activity. Pirates are no laughing matter, but all this map lacks is a big X to show where they buried all the WFP food shipments they’ve been hijacking. I have no idea how this post provides any insight into how technology can support the humanitarian community, but hey – pirates.
Category Archives: United Nations
InSTEDD publishes!
Well, not yet, but they will [pdf]. Janet Ginsburg explains the development of the idea of the Humanitarian Technology Review, while Bruno Giussani covers the recent TED breakfast, where Eric Rasmussen gave an update on InSTEDD.
Initially the idea of a Humanitarian Technology Review sounds like a good idea – if it’s done right. The first two questions – remember the first two questions, everybody! – are: who is the target audience, and what do you want them to do with the information you’re providing? The briefing paper I linked to above says
The Review’s readers, like the Review itself, span many niches: medical researchers, software developers, policy-makers, funders, doctors, veterinarians, communities trying to prepare for or reeling from disasters – even other media.
The one group that is noticeable by its absence is – well, me. People like me, anyway, who seem to fall under the catch-all term “practitioner”. I see doctors and veterinarians in there, but which doctors and veterinarians, exactly? I think it’s likely that I’ve misunderstood – the briefing is explicit that this is about building connections between disciplines, and it’s clearly aiming at a wider audience than the humanitarian community.
If we look at the disciplines that they’re talking about, it’s a wide selection, so it’s probably easier for me to focus on the technology examples given in the review:
- lightweight fabric + satellite technology = a cheaper portable satellite dish
- software + cell phones = real-time surveillance for bird flu
- GIS + interactive mapping = real time tracking of fires and floods
- solar panels + refrigerator = reliable field transport for vaccines
- filter + straw = a mobile water purification device
- open source water tech + microfinance = funding for small water projects
- genetic sampling + fast data analysis = identifying a pathogen in hours
I’m going to think about those examples over the next few days, but I’m struggling to see how a publication can cover all of these and still appeal to a coherent audience. That’s why communities of practice exist around epidemiology, water and sanitation, and the like – because they’re focused enough to hold peoples’ attention.
The success or failure of the HTR will be in the delivery, and on that front I’m very positive about their proposal to combine different delivery streams. At the very least, InSTEDD’s deep pockets will enable them to experiment and see what works, although I’d warn them not to expect collaboration to magically appear – two years on ECB teaches you that for nothing.
(NOTE: Full disclosure – I thought about a similar idea a few years ago, but gave it up because I didn’t think it was viable. Two attempts have been made to develop this sort of thing previously – ReliefWeb’s HIN and CMI’s PeaceIT [pdf] – but the InSTEDD concept is much wider.)
Disaster Risk Reduction and Social Bookmarking
Marla Petal at RiskRED emailed me following my recent post on PreventionWeb. RiskRed is concerned with promoting education about disaster risk reduction, but its most interesting project from my perspective is the DRRlibrary, a DRR resource site with a social bookmarking approach, using tags to classify useful websites and documents.
When you visit the DRRlibrary, what you see looks almost identical to del.icio.us, the mother of all social bookmarking sites, with a few extra functions. Searching through the tags is quite simple – as well as being able to sort by date, title or URL of each link, there’s also a tag cloud on the main page and a browser (which works fine but is a little confusing). It’s great to see this approach being used, and I assume that Ian O’Donnell at ProVention had something to do with it – I’ve had too many discussions with him about just this approach for it to be a coincidence!
Any downsides? Well, tagging can get very unwieldy very quickly, and tags like “seismic-resistant construction” are a little too specific to make for simple searches. (I blow hot and cold on this – when I look at my own del.icio.us links, I have problems understanding my own tags, which is a bad sign.) However this isn’t a show-stopper, and it’s the sort of thing that will sort itself out as the project grows. From a technical point of view, the only potential spanner in the works is that the DRRlibrary is based on Scuttle (open source, hooray!). Scuttle is only at release 0.72, and the lead developer has announced that although the project isn’t dead, it is dead slow.
The big questions aren’t about the site itself, but about how it relates to other sites. How, for example, can we ensure that the DRRlibrary is interoperable with PreventionWeb, particularly if the latter starts to offer more social networking features? At the moment there’s no tagging on PreventionWeb, but it’s the sort of thing that could appear; and even if it doesn’t, there’s a danger of duplicating resources and creating confusion amongst users.
It’s early days, though, and there’s plenty of time to address these issues. DRRlibrary is a welcome addition to the range of resources out there – not just for DRR, but for anybody who’s interested in how the web can be used more creatively to share knowledge in this sector.
Posted in DRR, Knowledge Management, NGO, Open Source, United Nations, Web
PreventionWeb launches
It’s fair to say that Craig Duncan was largely responsible for ReliefWeb, the site which has become the primary hub for the humanitarian community on the web. It’s not perfect, but there’s a number of good reasons for that, particularly the problem of addressing legacy systems in the age of Web2.0. He’s now moved from OCHA to UNISDR, and is the Senior Co-ordinator of PreventionWeb, a new website which hopefully will become similarly indispensible for the disaster prevention / risk reduction / preparedness community.
This demo gives you a good idea of what PreventionWeb is about, and it looks like Craig and his team at UNISDR have taken the opportunities presented in building a website from scratch. The layout is clean and the site is easy to navigate, and things like RSS feeds are clearly flagged, but the site doesn’t really take advantage of the full range of Web2.0 type interactive functions. This last point may become a problem, as UNISDR has correctly identified that they need to rely on contributions from practitioners, rather than generating all their own content; and engaging users more actively in the site is one of the best ways of doing that.Like the blurb says,
PreventionWeb is a new information service to increase knowledge on disaster risk reduction (DRR). For the first time, a website will provide a common tool for both specialists and non-specialists interested or working in the area of disaster risk reduction to connect, exchange experiences and share information.
There are two questions that will impact on the success of PreventionWeb. First, will people adopt it as a resource in the way that they have with ReliefWeb? Second, will ISDR be able to get beyond ReliefWeb’s relatively passive model and generate a sense of community around DRR? This is just the beta version, however, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the site develops.
Posted in United Nations, Web
OCHA +5 Symposium fallout shelter
Unlike me, Sanjana did attend the +5 Symposium, but he wasn’t too impressed. He’s posted some thoughts on why exactly that was, including a post entitled “Where was the innovation?” where his perspective can be summed up best by a single line:
There was not a single point that came up during the discussions that I had not covered in this blog, sometimes over a year ago.
If we put it in those terms, I’d guess that not a single point came up at the Symposium that hasn’t been discussed in the field within the last 2-3 years. There’s always going to be a lag between innovation as it happens in the field and mainstreaming that innovation into the agencies – for example, GIS is still not part of the basic kit a decade after it was first introduced to the sector – but the way our organisations are set up actually prevents that from happening.
Sanjana has an interesting perspective on the event, which I would characterise as being an informed external, and – while in general terms I can’t disagree with his overall frustration – I find myself simultaneously agreeing and disagreeing with him on several points. Continue reading
Posted in Humanitarian, NGO, United Nations
I’m not liveblogging the Global Symposium +5 in Geneva
… for one very good reason, and that’s because I’m not at the Global Sympsium +5 in Geneva. However it would be remiss of me not to blog about it, since it’s a pretty big deal. I’m also not liveblogging the NetHope Bi-Annual Summit in Panama, and that’s because I’m not there either. I’m sure that there are good explanations for my otherwise inexplicable absences, but that’s not important right now.
The Symposium +5 is being held five years after the Symposium on Best Practices in Humanitarian Information Exchange (hence the +5 title – do keep up). That first symposium was a very mixed bag – it was the first time that the various actors in the sector had come together, so it was a very big deal. Because it was the first time, however, it was a little unfocused – nobody was really sure where the sector was going, although we weren’t short of ideas.
The Final Statement [pdf] that came out of that meeting wasn’t a bad one, but I had a lot of concerns about whether any progress would be made on the key points. This was partly because the wording was quite vague, as always with consensus documents, but mainly because there was (and remains) a lack of leadership in the perenially fragmented humanitarian sector. So where are we, five years later?
Beware of Geeks bearing Gifts
In the run-up to the OCHA +5 Symposium (which apparently I’m not going to), Dennis King asks:
How do we get more “Non-geeks” to use information technology and tools on a consistent basis?
This has been the central problem with most of our work over the last decade. It’s particularly obvious in the field, where staff do not have the time to learn how to use new tools. There seem to be a range of considerations if we want any of our projects to succeed:
- Embed new tools into existing processes where possible. New processes are even harder to introduce into an organisation than new technologies, so enhance existing processes first. This builds the credibility of the technology and familiarises people with it, strengthening your position within the organisation for future developments.
- Build on existing and familiar technologies (mobile phones) rather than introducing new and unfamiliar ones (standalone PDAs). If you want staff to use a tool, it will be easier for them to accept and adopt if they are comfortably with it. This is why Sahana is browser-based, for example, since most people are now comfortable using services on the web.
- Invest in preparedness by a) training key staff in tools that we want them to use, and b) getting management support for their implementation. The first one may rely on the second, since you’ll need budgets to pay for training, but as I said above – don’t ever try to introduce something new in the middle of an emergency response.
- Make them useful. This might seem really really obvious but it feels like a lot of us forget it. We might think our project is the best thing since sliced bread, but if the rest of the organisation doesn’t agree, then we may as well not bother. Let’s start by helping staff to articulate how technology can help them in their work, and then move on to designing what they really need.
- It’s not just “non-geeks” that we need to persuade. IT departments in many of our organisations are seldom enthusiastic about new ideas, since they have the tough job of making sure that the old ideas keep working. We need a) to make sure that our IT strategies have room for innovation and b) our IT staff are aware that it’s acceptable for them to innovate. This will get ideas flowing.
- The final issue is our very own digital divide question. None of the above can be accomplished if we do not build better working (and personal) relationships between tech staff and non-tech staff. In nearly every organisation I’ve worked with, the links between the IT department and the Emergencies department has been very poor (if it exists at all). This has to change, otherwise we’ll never get anywhere.
These points were off the top of my head – any other thoughts are welcome.
Posted in Humanitarian, Knowledge Management, NGO, United Nations
The UN Says
The UN says many things, although unfortunately not many of them are comprehensible. Sam Smith has taken it upon himself to rectify this. Brave man.
Brave, but not stupid. Sam has form, particularly through his involvement with MySociety. Applying the lessons that MySociety has learnt through its projects, Sam has come up with two gems.
First, The UN Says is an “Unofficial blog of briefings by the Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General”, i.e. steal the feed and make it easy to read. Great idea – makes it possible to see what the “official” line of the UN is on critical issues.
Second, UNdemocracy is perhaps the more useful (and disruptive) of the two. It has documents from the last 13 years of UN meetings, all organised and laid out in an easy-to-use form, scraping every last drop of goodness from the damn organisation.
Projects like these make the workings of the UN more accessible, and therefore more transparent. Frankly, the UN itself could learn from what Sam has managed to achieve (although the UN is not legendary for being a learning organisation of any kind). The question is, how can we leverage this type of information in our day-to-day work? What does it mean if we expose the workings of the organisation to more scrutiny? After all, this isn’t like normal government – although this makes them more transparent, it doesn’t make them any more accountable…
I need to think about that one. Go to the sites and see for yourself.
UPDATE: Sam corrects me: “UNdemocracy.com isn’t my project – it belongs to Julian Todd, one of the people behind publicwhip.org.uk. While I’m involved in a small way, I can take no credit for any of it. “Â All my comments above should be taken to include Julian as well.
Posted in United Nations, Web
The World Bank is monitoring your buzz
A pleasant break from all this GIS-related blogging, the World Bank Private Sector Development Blog has tipped me to a new Open Source application that the World Bank has just released. I know, I know – when I read that last sentence it doesn’t make sense to me either, but I imagine that project lead Pierre-Guillaume Wielezynski pushed quite hard to get this out there.
Given that it’s the World Bank, the app is not what you might imagine. In the words of the site,
We developed the BuzzMonitor, an open source application that “listens” to what people are saying about the World Bank across blogs and other sites in order to help the organization understand and engage in social media.
So it’s full speed ahead on the Web2.0 bus at the World Bank! The jury seems to be out on whether this is a really awesome new approach or a bit of a hog on your server, but it looks interesting enough to try – a super-aggregator with some nice features, particularly eliminating dupes, attributes sources, and allows users to collaborate on tracking and tagging. Apparently they open-sourced it in response to requests from other organisations, so there must be some demand – but you’ll need your own server to set up.
There’s been discussion around the application on Britt Bravo’s blog, the Net-Savvy Executive blog and (gasp) an article at Salon. Plus Pierre seems to be taking an active role in any discussions, so I’m sure if you email him he’ll be happy to give you a guided tour!
Posted in Development, Media, Open Source, United Nations, Web
Ugandan Displaced join Somali Refugees in Google Earth
Maybe they could form a support group? I know, I know, that’s not the sort of thing we’re supposed to joke about.
Yan Rebois of CartONG has written to let me know that their displaced mapping project with UNHCR is now public, an interesting application based on Google Maps, for general use by humanitarian organisations. Although it requires a log-in to edit anything, you can view the information without any authorisation.
The application maps the locations and background information on the displaced communities that UNHCR and partner agencies are working with in
Posted in Conflict, Databases, GIS, Humanitarian, M&E, NGO, Uganda, United Nations, Web