Aldo Benini was writing about and developing humanitarian information management before I even started my professional career. I’ve always respected his work and was always saddened that we didn’t have more chances to work together. I’ve just discovered that his website makes nearly all of his research is available, including his latest work on Linking [...]...
For many people, visits to the field represent a chance to meet the beneficiaries of our programs and really get a feel for the difference which we’re making. Unfortunately I’ve chosen the wrong sector for this. Working in supply chain management means that a field trip only involves going to another office, in a remote [...]...
The Humanitarian Futures Programme is one of the most interesting initiatives out there, taking a longer-term view of the sector than most other policy and research groups. Originally I thought that they were going to be developing the humanitarian equivalent of the Singularity, but it’s more about building dialogue with key partners and getting people [...]...
So it all kicked off in Myanmar this week, except that it didn’t, because the military regime has managed to bungle the response to Cyclone Nargis. We could get into a long discussion about the whys and wherefores, and there’s some frightening talk about the “right to respond” over-riding sovereignty, but let’s stay focused on [...]...
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The word "crisis" is much abused. But the current food price crisis constitutes a genuine emergency. Urgency in tackling it is essential....(read more)...
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Katrin Verclas at MobileActive and Sheila Kinkade (of ShareIdeas.org) have finished Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in Mobile Use by NGOs [pdf]. The report covers a wide range of uses, including public health, advocacy and disaster response, with some interesting case studies (including the recent post-election riots in Kenya). You can read more about...
What’s interesting about the ReliefWeb Client Outreach statistics?
Quite a lot. ReliefWeb is the single most information portal for the humanitarian community, so it’s worth paying attention to how that community uses online services, what sorts of information it values, and so on. It’s also interesting because ReliefWeb went through a huge overhaul a couple of [...]...
Stuff I should have blogged at the time:
What if? - New York emergency housing competition results: Last September, New York City launched “What if? “, an open competition to find innovative designs for high-density emergency provisional housing for 38,000 households in the aftermath of a hurricane and flood disaster in afictional, one [...]...
So UNHCR releases a Google Earth layer to great fanfare:
Unveiling a new UNHCR layer in Google Earth before invited guests at UNHCR’s Geneva headquarters, Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees L. Craig Johnstone hailed the project as means to educate people worldwide on the plight of refugees and on the humanitarians who help them.
“Google Earth is [...]...
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....
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The O’Reilly Emerging Technology conference is another one of these confabs that I watch from a distance, filled with a mixture of awe and dread. (Awe at the sheer brainpower that you can see in the many presentations, and dread at what might happen next.) This year, Jesse Robbins and Mikel Maron gave a presentation on DisasterTech to the poor and huddled masses that attended, updating some of their earlier thoughts on areas such as SMS, open source and distributed approaches.
Now I like Jesse and Mikel, and I agree with the lines along which they’re thinking, but when I see slides that say “225,000 deaths preventable with existing technology”, I start to worry about whether the expectations of those poor and huddled masses from the technology world are being...
The government are very keen on amassing statistics. They collect them, add them, raise them to the nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But you must never forget that every one of these figures comes in the first instance from the village watchman, who just puts down what he damn pleases.
Josiah Charles Stamp was many things during his lifetime, including President of the Royal Statistical Society between 1930-32, and his view on government statistics is well worth bearing in mind whenever we look at the sort of statistics that tend to crop up in humanitarian and development work. International organisations tend to act in much the same way as governments when it comes to statistics, which we usually refer to as indicators.
Until very recently, all the...
Outside of humanitarian work, I have a passing interest in complexity theory, particularly around ideas of emergence. As a result, I’m deeply envious of Ben Ramalingam at ODI, who shares this interest but has actually found the time to write something substantial about it. The Working Paper that he has written with Harry Jones, Toussaint Reba and John Young - Exploring the science of complexity: Ideas and implications for development and humanitarian efforts has just been published by the ODI RAPID programme.
This line of research is one of the most important developments in humanitarian and development studies in many years, a potentially critical addition to the ideological foundations of our work (such as the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership), the technocratic scaffolding...
An email from CEO Eric Rasmussen tells me that INSTEDD is finally flying in radar (and apparently I’m mixing metaphors, unsure of whether INSTEDD is a whale or a plane). In his words,
InSTEDD has been invisible, a rumor and a ghost, for the few past months, but we surfaced today in a media call with Google.org in the launch of their first-ever Initiatives.
I’ve known Eric virtually for a couple of years, although we’ve never managed to actually meet in person. He’s a very solid choice for CEO - his thinking on civil-military affairs was always more lateral than I expected for somebody in his position, and I think that it reflected his willingness to listen and learn from others. That open attitude will be the single most important tool in INSTEDD’s box, at...
I started off with lofty ambitions to “save the world” by revolutionizing the way NGOs use technology. I have traveled to 3 different countries, worked in 15 different offices for 2 different NGOs, run countless trainings for over 80 participants. But I certainly haven’t revolutionized anything, and on the bad days I worry if I’ve [...]...
The November issue of Scientific American carries an article by Sheri Fink entitled “The Science of Doing Good” [purchase required, unfortunately]. Full disclosure: I was interviewed for the article. Initially I wasn’t convinced that this was going to be much good (sorry, Sheri!) but I was wrong. It moves between different areas - refugee registration, GIS, human rights, and so on - quite smoothly, while communicating the main obstacles that we face without making excuses. As an overview, it hits most of the initiatives in the sector that are accessible to general readers, so it should engage a wide audience and give them a pointer towards the area that might interest them the most. This is A Good Thing.
“Mapping for Better Accountability in Service...
I have definitely suffered from the blogger’s paradox – when times are interesting, there’s no time to blog. And times have been very interesting, which explains why this post is almost a month late.
It actually all started with this blog of mine, through which I managed to attract the attention of Paul Currion, someone who [...]...
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...
… 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,...
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...
This Wednesday was the day before the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. This makes a huge difference in an Islamic area such as Banda Aceh. From the hours of sunrise to sunset, Muslims must abstain from food, drink, smoking and sex. Typically people will wake up around 4am, before the morning prayers, and take a [...]...
I’ve been struggling to find time to update my blog in the aftermath of my trip to China, but I’ve finally got a spare moment. This will be the first post of hopefully many.
The main reason/excuse for this trip was to attend the ISCRAM (Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management) – China Workshop, where [...]...
There is some debate between the merits of Web based “Online” databases verse stand alone “Offline” databases for International NGOs. Online databases store all their information on a central server, while Offline databases store all of their information on the computer of the person using the database. I agree that online databases have a number [...]...
I’m posting a paper which I prepared for a ISCRAM (Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management) Workshop in China which I am going to this week.
Feedback is welcome.
ABSTRACT
Databases are an important tool for International Non Government Organizations (INGOs) to use for disaster management. However they are only a component of a larger information system, [...]...
I’ve corresponded with Mikel Maron for a while now, interested particularly by the work that he’s been involved with introducing Wikis into the UN. However his first love is geospatial and his favourite project is OpenStreetMap, which is a free editable map of the whole world that can be viewed, edited and used in a collaborative way from by anybody, anywhere.
Mikel has been thinking about how this type of approach might be used in disaster response, and he recently gave a presentation at the State of the Map event in Manchester in which he outlined his thoughts so far - you can hear a podcast of his talk, view the slides that accompanied it and read the notes from it. Mikel acknowledges that he’s not an expert, and while there’s a lot of things that I agree...
I did promise a couple of people that I would blog about Mikel’s talk about OpenStreetMap and Disaster Response at State of the Map, but it’s taken me a bit longer than planned. However there was a follow up on “people to people aid” that I wanted to post on following some comments from Louiqa in my previous post.
There’s been a lot of talk about how this might work, specifically in the wake of the Indian Ocean Tsunami and the Hurricane Katrina Debacle, with a couple of projects starting to work on the specifics. The principle of P2P Aid is to connect donors directly with beneficiaries, using the power of the web to cut out the middleman - person to person, without the need for all that cumbersome bureaucracy.
There are already huge remittance flows which...
The past month has gone too fast, although I’ve prefer it to the previous month where I was stuck in a rut, constantly behind my computer, programming.
A month ago I started the roll out for the warehousing module of the supply chain management database I have been developing. My life went from a monotonous routine [...]...
I would like to take some of the principles of Web 2.0 and apply them to International Aid, to look at how technology can flatten the hierarchical systems, engage people and bring them close together.
First of all I would share my idea of how Aid works (or doesn’t work, as some may argue). I wouldn’t [...]...
Wired have just published their article on the Crisis in Darfur layers. It’s nice coverage (a little late, maybe), obviously focused on the technical aspect, but it also contains an update about Google’s involvement in this area. They’ve just announced a new nonprofit initiative called Google Earth Outreach, designed to provide more resources for these kinds of projects. There’s a showcase of a range of projects which I didn’t know about, and some nifty tutorials. The really appealling part is the Pro License Grant, which will make the full version of Google Earth more accessible to the sector, so it’s a pretty nice package overall.
However I need to make a correction, which I’ve also added to the Wired site. The article refers to me as the...
With Gordon Brown about to take office, ODI asked representatives of the three main political parties in the UK to speak on the theme ‘What’s Next in International Development?’. These three speeches tell us something about the issues that will shape political debate in the months to come.
Gareth Thomas, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at DFID, and Hilary Benn’s Deputy, spoke first, on 5 June. The meeting report is here. He discussed five topics: a) the ‘narrative’ on international development; (b) working with Governments; (c) the challenge of population growth; (d) the UN and Europe; and (e) some partisan thoughts. It was notable that he stressed emerging issues beyond the current emphasis on the Millennium Development Goals; these included the...