Reaching out to the tech community...

Glancing through bios, I noticed that a good chunk of the members here are software and technology folk. I also sadly noticed there aren't a whole lot of humanitarian practitioners in the group, at least on the international side. I’m a responder and I apologize for the less than stellar participation here of folks like me.

Some of us though, have gotten together to form Humanitarian Accoord--an initiative to develop technology to improve what perhaps may be the most challenging elements of the humanitarian response—accountability and coordination. We’re approaching it from our perspectives as fieldworkers and coordinators with an eye on the critical information that we need to know, when we need to know it as well as who (other than us on the ground) needs to know what, in order to maintain some order in the chaos during crises. We’ve been inspired by both the bottom-up approach of Ushahidi and crowdsourcing as well as the mapping technology that helps those above us at our headquarters to better understand the work undertaken.

I know the humanitarian community hasn't done a great job of reaching out to the tech community. I think some of us will claim that we've been busy. There was the Tsunami, Pakistan earthquake, Katrina, and the cyclone in Myanmar. There’s also the seemingly never ending situation in Afghanistan and Iraq and the even more never ending work in the West Bank and Gaza. There was the war to its end in Sri Lanka and the continuing heartbreak of Darfur. And you can add to the list, South Sudan, DRC, Pakistan, Chile as well as numerous places that unfortunately many don’t get to know about. And of course, there’s Haiti.

While we responders come from all over the world there’s really not a whole lot of us especially in relation to all the disasters, displacements and war that exist. This means that we do quite a bit of jumping around from one place to another which also means we really haven't had time to fully understand how the tech community could really help. And anyway, we're still in the process of getting used to the cluster system.

But the truth is, busy isn't really the primary reason. The humanitarian community hasn't reached out because although we work in what amounts to news, we're generally not up to speed about what IS new. Especially in the realm of technology which seems to make advances on the hour. Some of us have to live in tents, bucket-bathe and squat for months and for those ones, innovation may just mean being able to sit on a toilet again or live in a place that isn’t shared. Sometimes its so basic that tomorrow looks like the 90s. So of course we don't understand technology. And anyway, the majority of us are completely content and familiar with the 'Nokia with the flashlight' standard cell phone issue which I think must be their model number 2 or 3. The people we're there to help always 'make do' so it’s not out of the realm for us to 'make do' too. And for those of us fascinated by emerging technology, well, it sometimes just isn't available or affordable in the places we go anyway. No matter, excel seemed to work just fine.

The problem now, however, is that it seems like the scale and size of emergencies have grown exponentially. Sure, every now and again, there was always the sudden large-scale disaster or a few others that were deemed large because they’ve lingered for decades. But since the Tsunami, whether its because of wider media coverage and technology, the number of large scale emergencies appears to be increasing and the ones that linger also continue to do so but affect greater and greater numbers of people. When the rate and size of emergencies increase, the numbers of agencies and responders grow correspondingly. To a few of us, this situation means that the international humanitarian response system needs to dramatically change to keep up. And we believe that technology is at the heart of that change.

Unlike the current efforts, our approach to the technology we're developing is ‘middle-out’. And it’s ‘middle out’ based on the reality that responders in the field move in the middle between the affected population and those in a far-off place deciding resources. And yes, we are implying that there is a significant gap in understanding between the field and headquarters levels, both within a country as well as between several. Our approach also recognizes that really, it’s the oft-overlooked operational environment and communication between ourselves on the ground, more than anything else, that affects our ability to timely meet needs. And while we see the huge potential of crowdsourcing and other mapping work, we feel we can't maximize it until the flow, not just the availability, of information (including between us) is addressed.

For the conference in October, I hope (depending on work and time commitments) to provide an ‘ignite’ presentation on a fieldworker/ coordinator’s perspective on the flow of information. And that what we really see as the biggest gap is not the availability of information or its flow up but rather in getting information back down and sharing it at the field level. And that improvements to the relief response rest on empowering with information those mostly local staff who work directly and daily with affected people.

In the meantime, those of us at Humanitarian Accoord are reaching out to the tech community. Within our group, we have some practitioners who in another life would probably make really good tech folk. But, we're still 'in the field' with our other jobs and lack the tech experience that many of you have so it's taking a bit longer to finish what we're working on. But we're close enough to hopefully demo an element of it at the conference tech fair. If you want to hear about what we envision or even help us out in our work, please do email us. We'd like to hear what you think.