Answer to Matthew Levinger

This blog post has been edited after clarification on the role of TechChange and on their position expressed in the comment below. 

On Wednesday, October 26, 2011 Matthew Levinger posted a blog post titled “Risk Management and Ethics in Conflict Mapping” on the TechChange website. I have been reading that blog post for 2 days now, and I would like to share with mister Levinger and some comments that that blog post raised into my mind. I apologize in advance if this blog post will not sound nice, but I know a lot of the people that work at TechChange and some of their Advisory Board members, and I know that they all appreciate honesty and a open dialogue on such sensitive topics like Ethics and Crisis Mapping.

Mr. Levinger raised in his blog post some very interesting and thoughtful thoughts about what are the main issue in the crisis mapping field, but let’s proceed with order.

The second paragraph of Mr. Levinger said:

“Two years ago this month, the first International Conference of Crisis Mappers (ICCM) was held at John Carroll University in Cleveland. Next month, the third ICCM will convene in Geneva, Switzerland, as the annual gathering of a volunteer network with 2,900 members from 137 countries. TechChange, which was established just last year, has over 3,000 members on its listserv.”

I apologize with Mr. Levinger if I am misunderstanding, but if I didn’t know that Mr. Levinger was an adult, I would imagine that he is playing the part of “TechChange got more subscriber than you guys have in a third of the time”. Unfortunately Mr. Levinger does not realized that having people subscribing to receive weekly updates on the courses or news offered by TechChange is not exactly the same thing than having 2900 PROFESSIONALS having an open forum to exchange information, sharing content and discuss actual issues, including in the imediate aftermath of an emergency. It is called two ways communication system, or interactive system. The Crisis Mappers Network is not a listserv, dear Mr. Levinger, it is a forum, a network for interaction, and it is a place that is not about how many people interact or receive the emails, it about the quality of the interaction in between those people. I personally think it is super cool that you have 3000 people on your listserv Mr. Levinger, but I think you do not need to compare TechChange to the Crisis Mappers Network, since they are not a two way communication system, they are advertising their products. It is just a bit different.

To continue on Mr. Levinger blog post:

“As GIS and other place-based technologies continue their exponential rate of advance, the need for sustained dialogue between the producers and the consumers of data from volunteer GIS-based and other participatory mapping projects becomes ever more urgent. The producers of this data are predominantly experts in information and communication technologies, whereas the consumers of the data include international humanitarian responders, officials from governments and international organizations, members of advocacy groups, and residents of communities afflicted by natural disasters or political crises. Miscommunication and cultural disconnects can easily arise among these diverse stakeholder groups, with negative effects on the outcomes of participatory mapping projects.”

There are 2 big mistakes in this paragraph:

1. Producers and consumers of crisis mapping systems are already having a dialogue Mr. Levinger. In fact, since Haiti, lots of things have been happening in this field, and this dialogue is getting bigger and broader. One of the place where this dialogue is happening is, in fact, the Crisis Mapper list (remember?–> 2 ways-communication system?). The Standby Task Force for example, a producer of information, even have in its pool of volunteers people from OCHA, the Red Cross, NGOs, military, crisis managers, emergency response professionals. For shocking as this may sound, the dialogue is already happening Mr. Levinger. You are a bit late.

2. The producers of the data Mr. Levinger, are absolutely NOT predominantly experts in information and communication technologies. You are clearly not getting this very straight, to be honest: there are also experts in information and communication technologies in the pool of volunteers that have been working on crisis mapping projects, but the majority of them are coming from completely different fields. Actually they are not at all experts, they are housewives, engineers, mothers, students, journalists, teachers. I invite you to look at the 600 and more volunteers that the Standby Task Force has deployed in the last year and you will see that probably 10% is actually an expert in experts in information and communication technologies.

And now let’s go the most interesting part of this blog post, the questions rised about Ethics of Crisis Mapping. Let me try to give some answers to those questions.

• Are the producers or recipients of data from these projects exposed to security risks or other potential adverse consequences, including threats to privacy.

Security has been The topic, for the past 8 months, since the Arab spring and even before, and to be honest, we are vomiting constantly security blog posts, advices, guides, briefs and so on about it. Lots need to be done, but for example, the Standby Task Force have been designing security protocols for each emergency, including when supporting Sudanese activists in demonstrating against the regime. I have personally worked in Egypt under Mubarak and done a crisis mapping project there. So the answer to your question is YES, we are all expose and we all know what the potential consequences are.

The problem that you are trying to generalize here is in fact very much linked to something else. The problem is not the body of volunteers that networks like the Crisis Mapping one or the Standby Task Force are deploying in crisis situation, the problems are people that have not been trained and that do not know what and how to deal with certain issues. And you know how do you solve this problem Mr. Levinger? By providing FREE training material and information, by sharing lessons learned (like the Libya and Colombia report) , by engaging people in discussion about this and offering them free support when they set up a crisis map. Because to tell you something shocking: we may keep discussing about problems and what needs to be known to do a crisis mapping project, but people will keep doing it anyway. We cannot prevent people from doing it, so if we want to solve the problem we have to share the knowledge and make sure people understand what they are doing. Of course, if only people that have 895$ can have acces to this knowledge, then we will always have to deal with people that do not know what they are doing.

• What negative effects may result from false or distorted reporting? For example, after the Haiti earthquake, many reports of victims trapped inside collapsed buildings were posted by people seeking help for digging out the corpses of family members who had been buried in the rubble.

This is way, Mr. Levinger, the Standby Task Force has been setting up verification protocols and teams to deal with this (see the verification protocols for Libya and a simple verification slide presentation for the volunteers to use) . Now, again, this discussion have been happening for at least one year, and to make a long story short: there are multiple negative effects that can arose from this. Now that we know it, what? I tell you what: we stop wasting time in telling to each other that “O MY GODDDD…what is going to happen?????” and we start discussing about what are things that can be done to prevent this from happening, how do we implement use more robust protocols, what is working on the ground and what didn’t. To show an example of how this can be done here.

• Does the establishment of a crowdsourcing platform for crisis mapping create unwarranted expectations that there will be a timely response to reports by people in need? Some observers have suggested that creating an Ushahidi platform for a disaster zone is akin to establishing a 911 telephone line without giving the dispatchers any emergency response capability.

Mr. Levinger, I would suggest that you sit down if you are reading this, since I may just be about to give you a VERY SHOCKING news. U ready? Have some water close to you in case you faint? Ok then: in humanitarian response YOU ARE ALWAYS CREATING EXPECTATIONS THAT YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO MEET. Now, to explain what I am saying here I invite you to go to any refugee camp on the world and ask to any of the refugees there if their expectation have been met when they get there. I have been visiting quite a lot of refugee camps, and working in emergencies, and I can tell you, the answer will always be, that the entire humanitarian world is creating expectations that they are not able to meet. And this is because most of the times the expectations that affected communities have are way over the actual capacity of the humanitarians responding. This is what the reality is today and how it will most likely be for some time.

But to come back to the crisis mapping projects: to be honest, the only place where I have seen the risk of this happening was Haiti, 2 years ago, Again, that was one of the first situation where crowdsourcing methodology was applied to a crisis mapping experiment in a massive humanitarian emergency, and to be honest, a lot was done to prevent affected population to think that an immediate response was going to come – for example by doing radio programs that were explaining how the system was working.

The issue of managing expectation have been dealt since then in a lot of different ways, like for example in the PakReport instance where people were informed via SMS about what the project was about; or in the Libya platform were the goal of the platform was clearly stated in the home page, or in the Alabama deployment. The Standby Task Force is using banners in each of its deployment to tell people what they can expect or not, and other crisis mapping projects are using banners in an increasing way.

Now again, to cut a long story short: there will always be expectations that are not met and this is valid more on the ground that it is on a virtual crisis mapping project. The difference is that crisis mapping project engage actually in communicating with disaster affected communities, which most humanitarian do not do. See this interesting report about Dadaab to know more about it.

The first issue here is not that any crisis mapping project is creating expectations of immediate delivery of aid, the issue here is that that aid is not arriving anyway, but if there is a way to display it in a clear way, then the humanitarians working on the ground are held accountable of what they are actually not providing – despite the millions of dollars invested in humanitarian aid.

The second issue is that, we should stop considering affected communities as a bunch of retarded idiots. If you tell them, they understand: they do not become immediately retarded because they are affected by a war or a disaster. The real way to solve issues with expectation is to have clear and broad communications channels with affected communities, not to avoid doing any crisis mapping project.

• What are the ethical implications of creating universal surveillance systems that compile streams of data from diverse sources?

This is a good question Mr. Levinger. But why is Crisis Mapping a “universal surveillance systems that compile streams of data from diverse sources”?? Who has ever talked about a universal surveillance system? I mean, we do not need crisis Mapping to do this this is already existing, it is called intelligence and you should know better one of the most universal one, that HAS TONS of ethical component is the US one, where you serve as Intelligence Analyst.

• In the context of violent conflicts and other political crises, how can parties to the conflict be prevented from using crowd-sourcing platforms to spread disinformation or incite violence, e.g. by exaggerating the number of victims or falsely accusing their opponents of war crimes or mass atrocities?

Mr. Levinger I would like to write the answer to this to you here, but this blog post is becoming very long, so I will just give you some blog post links that you can read to get some answers to your questions. But to give you a hint: WE DON’T. We can set up good security and verification systems, and we build trusted networks on the ground. But the bad people will always have access to those information, as everyone else does. Anyway, read some good info from my good friend Patrick Meier:

Why Dictators love the web

Information Forensics

Wag the Dog

“These ethical and logistical questions need to be effectively addressed as part of an operational plan prior to an intervention. While getting the hard data is important, we also have to remember that our goal is providing aid and support to the people affected by conflict.”

U are right, and since you are sooo concerned, you are offering courses to teach people how to do this for only 895$..of course in the interest of affected popultions!!

Mr. Levinger. I know this blog is snappy, but now I will be let you understand something that I consider very important and I am not doing it in the interest of making a mess or trash you. Please, next time you write about those topics keep in mind:

- You need to know very well what you are talking about. You have been mentioning very interesting issues in your blogpost, but you have been addressing them poorly, and mainly because you have never done a Crisis Mapping project before, and you are not involved in the field since long time.

- CrisisMapping it is actually about doing things, not reading/writing papers. As far as I know, you do not have ANY experience in managing any Crisis Mapping project or a crowdsourcing system to communicate with disaster affected communities. It is scarring that you are giving trainings to others on something that you have never done. Installing a Ushahidi platform in a computer or volunteer a couple of hours a week on a Crisis Mapping project it is not enough to give lessons on how to manage, set up and create a Crisis Mapping project.

I really hope you will be at ICCM, since I would like to continue this conversation and maybe start discussing actual answers and not repeating questions that have been asked too many times.

Now, since this was almost a Crisis Mapping class, I will be sitting here waiting for you to send me my 895$ check. Of course, for the sake of affected populations!!!

Internet Governance Forum: real time open data vs security and privacy

I was invited to speak to a panel in the Internet Governance Forum on the 27th – 30th of September by AccessNow, on Privacy and security in an open/realtime/linked data world.

The goal of this workshop was to discuss open, realtime, and linked data generated, gathered, and organized online, which are proving vital to understanding local communities and the world we live in, ensuring more informed decisions are made at all levels of society. While online data is proving immensely useful, the dramatically increasing trend towards moving data online — whether knowingly, carelessly, or without consent — has led to unprecedented challenges to user privacy and security. At this juncture, Internet Governance is needed to clarify and codify the rights and responsibilities of various actors as regards online data.

The workshop featured short presentations from representatives of civil society, government, academia, and corporations, to facilitate discussion about theses issues amongst the panelists, the audience, and international remote participants, including members of Access’ network (now in 184 countries).

Topics for discussion included:
• How open/realtime/linked online data can aid development
• The use of crowd-sourced, geolocation, and mobile data
• Existing and emerging privacy and security threats of and to online data and ways to mitigate these risks
• How various stakeholders can assist the public in protecting their data and rights online
• Maintaining the balance between privacy, security, inclusivity, transparency, and accountability in legislation, regulation, and terms of service.

I was invited to speak as Innovation Media Advisor for the Africa Region for Internews Network on the use of real time data and the risks associated with that. In my talk I decided to use as example the project we are funding in Ghana, which is implemented by EPAWA – Enslavement Prevention Alliance for West Africa in collaboration with Survivors Connect. Both organizations work on human trafficking, and while EPAWA is a 4-years-old organization working in Ghana with civil society, governamental organizations and agencies and media, Survivors Connect has been working on this in Nepal and Haiti before, and it works as technical implementer for the project.

The pilot project is in fact a sort of experimentation of the use of mobile technology to support the creation of a local network of local monitors, civil society groups and governamental agencies to track the movements of children and women from the rural areas to the capital, and the case of domestic violences inside the communities themselves. The network will exchange real time information via mobile technology and with the support of a password protected Ushahidi platform.

I think this is a good example of the use of real time data but it also highlights some of the main issues I think can come out in other projects. This is the reason why I used this project as example.

The following are my main points of conversation at the workshop.

TECH IS NOT THE SOLUTION TO EVERYTHING – ESPECIALLY TO SECURITY 

My point here is that when working with real time data related to sensitive issues, like for example human trafficking, the main key factor to secure data does not rely in the technical security measures, being it encryption or other means, but it lies in the social network, and I am not referring to social online networks, but to social – real people – networks. I have notices many time in  my work that the safety of the information exchanged in any networks does rely heavily on the ability to create trusted networks on the ground that are able to secure information because of their deep knowledge of risks, dangers and sources of potential security threats. Those social networks are the ones that can still work when the technology is not there and are the true base of a secure system.

YOU CAN BUILD THE BEST TECHNICAL SYSTEM WHEN YOU START BY THINKING WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN TECHNOLOGY IS NOT THERE

Apart from the issue of security, what I think it is extremely important, especially if you work in Africa, is to be able to design information systems that always have a PLAN B. If you system does not have any way to work without electricity, or without internet, or without a phone, then you are building something that most likely is extremely vulnerable and that can be blocked by something as simple as a storm. Technology is always supposed to make things easier and faster, but if technology is the only criteria for the functioning of your system, then it is a limit and not a facilitator.

EDUCATION TO SECURITY MEASURES, THREATS AND VULNERABILITIES IS KEY

Another interesting thing that I notice when I was working in highly unsafe environments like Sudan and Egypt (under Mubarak regime), is that a lot of people underestimate or do not know at all the risks and the vulnerabilities of their real time information systems. Especially in those two cases, where I was working directly with activists, which were well aware of the potential risks of someone hacking or tracing their information, the level of awareness of the actual vulnerabilities of their systems was very low. If we go to less specilaized groups and especially into the world of small NGOs, the ignorance of the issue is even bigger. In this regard I have to say that 2 factors are the underlying casues of this situation:

1) Language. Cyber-security information are still written and explain in a way that it is too complicated and technical for a normal audience. If a small NGO, that does not necessarily have a cyber-security expert in its team, wants to find out information about how to protect their data, how to secure their servers and their emails and so on, most of times gets stopped by the complication and difficulties in understanding a language that it is not familiar with and instructions that will require too much espertise to be followed. (a very well done “Practical Guide to Protecting Your Identity and Security Online” edited by Access Now is available here)

2) Awareness. Too often software companies are not explaining in an open way what are the vulnerabilities of their systems, and too often technical equipment is sold without people having a real understanding of how this equipment really works.  We are seeing this with mobile phones: the majority of “normal people”, meaning not expert or part of the cyber-security world, do not know that their mobile phone is always traceable, do not know that their SIM card is traceable, do not know what an IP address is and what information it carries and so on.  The same thing is to be said about people using software without fully understanding what are its vulnerabilities.

WHERE DOES PRIVACY END AND OPEN DATA START?

One of the main challenges that I found when working with real time information systems is finding the limit in between Open Data and privacy and security. Let’s take again our Ghana project. The system built will be exchanging information related to children and women, to trafficking, abuses, and violence. For obvious reasons, a lot of the information exchanged cannot be public and needs to be handle in a very careful way. On the other side, if available publicly this information can be extremely useful and can lead to more preparedness and awareness of the problems faced by the communities on the ground, if not to more prompt response in urgent issues. of course there are ways that this information can be filtered and made available but even in this case, the more you “open” the more you are increasingly the possible risks and vulnerabilities of your system.  This tension is always there when dealing with open data real time information systems, and it needs to be carefully dealt with on a case by case level.

Crisis Mapping Simulation – Zambia June 2011

In June 2011 I organized a simulation of an emergency in occasion of the Random Hack of Kindness I was helping to organize in Lusaka, Zambia.

The purpose of the simulation was to wrap up a Crowdsourcing workshop series that had been carried out over the course of 6 months with the purpose of supporting the Pilot Project for Climate Change and Resilience in the country. As a consequence of that series, the crowdsourcing component has been added to the annual plan of the country inside the PPCR.

I decided that after a very broad overview of the crowdsourcing concept and methodology, an explanation of some examples and tools to be used and a general discussion about the possible applications of crowdsourcing to the PPCR and the Zambian context, there was a need of some more practical examples on what a crowdsourcing projects applied to a natural disaster would look like.

The participants to the simulation were of various backgrounds: there were ministry of health officials, ICT people and web developers, meteorologic department officials, members of the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit, members of the Climate Change Network, members of the Youth Environmental network and members of Zabuntu, a local NGO working on application of new technologies in Zambia.

This was the description of the background and the definition of the roles.

BACKGROUND**
Flood simulation in Kazangula, Zambia
On the night of the 4th of June a massive flood has invested the Kazangula area. One village, Marguni, is very close to the river and there is no information about what may have happened there.

The weather prevision said that in the incoming hours heavy rains is supposed to come in that area, and other two villages around Marguni are at risk to be flooded. Unfortunately the flood has cut down all communication so it is not possible to call the chiefs and let them know that they have to evacuate.

All the NGOs are based in Lusaka and only the Zambian Red Cross has volunteers in Marguni and has immediately get in contact with them to alert them and to gather information. The Red Cross also have a FLSMS system that gathers this information and that they can use to send information back to the field.

DMMU has set up an Ushahidi platform to gather information from SMS but they do not have anyone that report to them since DMMU does not have people on the ground in the village and by the time they can mobilize their staff it will be too late.

The Ministry of Urban Planning has a team of mappers there that were sent to one of the not yet flooded villages and that could easily be relocate. In fact, the big problem in that area is that there are no accurate maps of the villages and some of the streets and building are completely missing from any official map. Another team of mappers are in the HQ in Lusaka and they start immediately trying to locate the area and the main buildings in the village.

At the ministerial level the Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Finance get immediately together under the call of the president and the Prime Minister ask them to follow the issue and to allocate resource to respond to the emergency. The Prime Ministry is really angry since this is not the first time that this happens, and he order to the 2 Ministries to come out with a good preparedness plan for the next year.

DMMU contacts the Red Cross and ask them to have their volunteers reporting to DMMU so that they can organize the relief aid and keep the government informed. The Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Information ask DMMU to report every 2 hours and to fill a request for funding according to how much the need to respond to the emergency.

ROLES

Ministry of Urban Planning – Mappers:
- Find the satellite images of the village and create a map for the rescue teams
- find location of missing places
- come back to the HQ and map them
- mark the place found with a sign so that others can use it

Zambian Red Cross:
- go around and report to HQ via SMS what is going on
- when they find an event they report it via SMS or email
- they get requests from the HQ about verification of information
- they go and verify and report to HQ

Rescue teams:
- Receive communications from the HQ and go to solve problems
- They need to have exact location and know what to bring to be able to help

DMMU HQ + tech team:
- they use the flsms software to receive messages
- they receive messages from their people but also from the crowd
- they send messages back to RC teams to ask for verification
- they map events on the Ushahidi platform and mark them as verified
- they ask for resources to the Ministry

Ministry of Information and Communication and Ministry of Finance:
- they look at the platform and decide how to allocate resources
- the design policies for the emergency response
- they give money to the DMMU HQ to send teams on the ground

See here for the description of the specific roles.

THE SIMULATION OUTCOMES
The simulation was carries out over the course of 2 hours and every 20 minutes I was inserting a change in the situation by providing instructions to 4 key actors in the simulation: the 2 ministries, the President of the Red Cross and the Director of DMMU.

The inceptions in the simulation over the course of the 2 hours were also provided via SMS to the FLSMS system, and via mail to the Ushahidi platform, and via The Prime Minister (me) communication to the Ministries.

The simulation as incredibly useful and after it we had a 1 hour briefing abut problems and issues faced that were presented at the final event in the RHoK.

Those are the problems faced by each of the team in details:

1. The Mappers: the mappers ground had not seen a satellite image before in their life. Once I provided them the initial satellite image (on a printed format) they had to try to find it using Google Earth. The process took to them 1 hour after which I decided that UNOSAT was able to find the complete satellite imagery of the flooded area and sent it to them.

Once they had the satellite images, they had to draw it on a piece of paper – there was no electricity on the area and no printer available – the actual map of the area for the rescue teams. To do this they used Google Maps and start modifying it on line by adding all the streets and location. The fact that they could not create a map for the initial hour made it impossible for the rescue teams to find the locations of cases reported by the RD volunteers. In addition to this, it took to the mappers almost 30 minutes to figure out how to read a satellite image and how to relate it to the Google Map – Open Street Map.

2. Zambian Red Cross. The Red Cross was the first one to activate and was also the one that set up the SMS system to gather information from their local volunteers on the ground. The volunteers were going around looking for cases and they had to text in to the HQ the cased found and verified. They also were receiving from the HQ the communication received via SMS from the short code and they had to go and find the place to verify the information and report back to the HQ.

The absence of maps made it impossible for them to let the HQ and the rescue teams know where they were funding people or situation that needed an immediate response and at one point volunteers from the RC were trying to talk directly to the Mappers to let them know where things were and how to plot them on the map.

The volunteers on the other side had to deal with an incredible amount of information coming in via SMS: more than 20 messages every 10 minutes were coming in and some of them were blandly false and were making them lose time in trying to reach very far areas and find out what was going on. In addition to this some of the report were not entirely false but sligly unprecise, which leaded to some discussions in the team about how to confirm them with HQ. The volunteer teams were on the other side very good, and decided due to the volume of communications to split into smaller teams of 2 each.

3. Rescue Teams. The rescue teams where the ones that had to use the maps created by the Mappers and to decide priorities according to the RD communication. For this reason their actions were highly depending on the good job of the other two teams. Interaction at the beginning was a crazy mess, the rescue teams wanted to reach out to the volunteers on the ground but the RC headquarter didn’t give to them their contacts, and they also had several issue with streets that had double names or that were mapped too roughly.

In addition to this this team needed a lot of equipment, which was not available de to the lack of investment from part of the Government. For this reason he team has to hare GPS units and only had one helicopter to rescue people from the roofs in flooded areas.

4. Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit. DMMU is the responsible for coordination of disaster response operations in Zambia. The first problem they had was to convince NGOs to work with them, and specifically the Red Cross. Due to long standing friction in bw the two organization, mainly because of funding and also because the DMMU is directly depending from the Vice President office which make it is highly political body, at the beginning the RD refused to provide information and to sync their SMS system with the Ushahidi platform managed by the DMMU.

Once they got the collaboration set up – which took almost 4 hours, simulation time – they had the problem of having to coordinate an incredible amount of information coming, in, technical problems with the two platforms, lack of funding, incredibly pressure rom the Ministry which forces them to spend more time in creating reports and providing statistics then in actually coordinate the relief effort.

The teach team that was supporting them was also looking for the first time at both the Ushahidi platform and FLSMS. The majority of them were – in real life – web developer just out of university that had never really worked on building something for immediate application and with a time constraint and pressure to deliver. It took to them almost 1 hour – real time – to figure out how to sync the two software, how to customize the Ushahidi platform and how to fix and explain to non tech savvy people how to use the tools.

5. The two ministries were the once that had the most pressure on their shoulder during all the simulation. They had to convince the prime minister about the gravity of the situation, they had to fight over allocation of money – more information to people or more money for food and recovery? – they had to understand the situation form DMMU and take the responsibility for any misleading or wrong information communicated to the Prime Minister.

Both the Ministry of Information and Communication and the Ministry of Finance had also to protect their own portfolio and perform well since re elections were only 6 months away. They were also held responsible for delays and lack of support to the rescue teams and the aid organizations while accused by the parliament of not using at their best the resources available.

CONCLUSIONS
The simulation was one of the best way for all the actors involved to learn what a crowdsourcing project applied to a humanitarian emergency can end up being: a crazy mess but also a good way to save lives.

At the end of he simulation we all spent 2 hours talking about the simulation and what happened, what things went wrong and what went well and those are the lessons learned we came out with:

- Collaboration in between different actors is crucial and needs to be build on a long standing trusting relationship
- During an emergency all is always about correlations and ability to understand who does what
- Satellite Images, maps and geographical information can truly help in saving lives
- Never use a new technical tool during an emergency
- Knowing how to do something does not necessarily means knowing how to apply it in a practical case
- During an emergency, a mistake committed by one, can lead to many mistakes and start a chain of wrong actions that can endanger lives
- Protocols, collaboration systems and communication channels needs to be in place well before an emergency, as well as to be tested and customized according to different situations
- During an emergency nothing of what you normally count is there, so you always need to have a plan B, and a plan C and a plan D..and maybe some other plans.

Some of those conclusions may sounds very obvious and banal to a lot of people that work in emergencies, but the point of this simulation was not to find something new, but to let people that do not work in emergencies every day what a real emergency looks like. In addition to this, I wanted all the people in the room to see how depended they are from other actors and bodies and how little ability they have to make a difference if they are not able to collaborate.

After the simulation one of the things that came out was the instead of focusing on emergency response everybody agree that each single organization and body present at the simulation should focus on preparedness and start thinking about what they will need to do and how in case of a real emergency in the country.

As a consultant, this was my first simulation entirely organized and managed by myself. I have to say, it was a lot of work, especially going around the simulation location for 2 hours before the simulation started, to hide little pieces of papers with written on it locations or facts, but it was worth it. I realized that with over 30 trainings that I have done in my life on the use of Crowdsourcing for disaster management and related tools, nothing worked as good as the simulation. Nothing gave both me and the people participating in it a deeper sense of what really needs to be done and how things can get screwed up easily in a situation where tension, stress and urgency are the basic status of everyone for hours if not days.

** all the information contained in this document has been arbitrarily invented and the way existing organizations in Zambia have been described here, and their relationships, is completely invented by the author of the simulation.

eTransform Africa

On the last week of June in Johannesburg I attended a workshop as an external reviewer for the eTransform report on Climate change.  The World Bank Group and the African Development Bank, with the support of the African Union, intend to produce a new flagship report (“eTransform Africa Flagship”) on how information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially mobile phones, have the potential to change fundamental business and government models in key sectors for Africa.

The overall goal is to raise awareness and stimulate action, especially among African governments and development practitioners, on how ICTs can contribute to the improvement and transformation of traditional and new economic and social activities.

Furthermore, the studies should recommend ways in which to scale up the successful application of ICTs and to further operationalize their use within a number of strategic sectors, while paying appropriate attention to associated risks.

In order to provide analytical background for the study, the Partners have awarded a series of contracts to consultant firms to conduct sectorial studies of the actual and potential use of ICTs in the African economy.

The aim is to identify specific sectorial opportunities and challenges in Africa that can possibly be addressed through an increased or more efficient use of ICT, benefitting from a best practice analysis of applications around the world. Each study typically contains a scan of ICT applications in a particular sector followed by a more detailed study of two or three countries case studies, on a representative basis, chosen in conjunction with the partners. On the basis of this analysis, it should be possible to form a clearer understanding of the barriers to wider adoption and the factors for success.

These studies will then be used to assist the partners in formulating options for strategic interventions in these fields and to making appropriate recommendations.

The sector studies have been awarded as follows:

• Agriculture (Deloitte);

• Climate Change Adaptation (IISD);

• Education (ICT Development Associates);

• Financial Services (VitalWave);

• Health (VitalWave);

• Delivery of Public Services (Deloitte).

In addition, two closely related cross-cutting studies will look at:

• The contribution of ICTs to regional trade and integration (ICT Development Associates);

• The local ICT sector as a platform for regional trade and integration (TNO/Excelsior).

It has been incredibly interesting to participate in this workshop for several reasons and I have to say I was quite impressed by the approach that the World Bank and the African Development Bank have taken with regard to those studies.

1. The crowdsourcing methodology that has been used to gather feedback and to publicize the reports before the release of the final versions. The eTransform website in fact is an open platform that allows anyone that is interested to download the reports from the website (the drafts of the report for now) and to add comments or suggestions to the authors. This approach is incredibly useful and will allow, if there will be participation, to anyone that work in the field to influence the content of the reports and to add their expertise and their experiences. This participatory approach is a win to win according to me as it guarantee the possibility for practitioners but also for policy makers to participate remotely on the drafting of the reports and in this way make the reports themselves a more comprehensive overview of the field.
2. The use of external reviewers before the release of the final reports. I was called to do an independent evaluation of the report on Climate Change since I have been working as crowdsourcing consultant for the World Bank in the Pilot Project for Climate Change and Resilience in Zambia. The bank has decided to use the reviewer not at the end of the process but in the middle, which, which all its limitations, is a very smart approach. For three days the consultants had the possibility to discuss with both the partners and the external reviewers and experts in the field about their work, and to gather feedbacks, comments and suggestions on how to move forward.
3. The use of social media to gather feedback on the report and the integration with blogs and multimedia. The eTransform website is definitely not the classical World Bank or AfDB website: twitter feeds, blogs and comment sections allow anyone, with any means, to participate in the process and everything is open and displayed in the website as it comes through. As the reports are on the use of ICTs in Africa, this approach underlines a deep understanding of the background necessary to make those reports a serious benchmark in the WB and AfDB approach to ICTs, not only in words but also with facts.

But what do those reports means in practical terms? And why are they important?

In the past year I have been working on application of ICTs for different organizations, from small NGOs to big international organizations, and what I noticed is that the main problems on ICT4D come from the policy makers side more than from the practical implementation. Where the overall background relative to regulations, infrastructures and policies is not there to allow a broader use and implementation of ICTs, e sub-category of cheap and low cost solutions are developed and created on the ground by local organizations and groups to use and apply ICTs in the present constraints.  At the local level I would say there is more understanding of the necessary use of those tools and of their possible applications. What is missing is the high level understanding of what this means and how this affect governance and national policies.

In this regard there is a missing study in the eTransform project, which is the one that goes deeper in analyzing the impact on governance: what ICT is doing in terms of political impact on balance of powers in African countries?  – Granted, both the World bank and the AfDB are probably not the right body to conduct a study on this topic -.

What I hope is that from those studies, policy makers around Africa will have a better understanding of the necessary actions to move forward in the definition of effective policies that can, if implemented, give to their own countries a better chance to take advantage of ICTs applications.

After those 3 days of discussions, I came out with a list of issue that according to me are the main important to keep in mind in any of the fields analyzed in the reports:

1. The importance to look for locally created and implemented technologies that are born from local needs and developed inside the local existing national conditions.
2. The pivotal importance of a political will to lower barriers in the market for the commercialization of mobile technology, satellite technology, Internet and general ICT infrastructure.
3. The need for Africa Countries to look more at their neighbors than at the Western World in terms of possible application of ICTs
4. The importance in all of this of the educational and research component, which can alone increase the market, the interest, the availability and the use of ICTs.
5. The incredible important to look at the unexpected effects of the application of technology in Africa (as in all the rest of the world). ICT4D is not just about technology or about development; it is also about politics, social behaviors, sociological equilibrium, anthropology and communities.

I urge everyone that is interested in any of the topic mentioned above to visit the eTransform website and add their comments on the reports. Since it is the first time that this kind of process is being conduct in such an open way (according to my knowledge, but happy to know if there are other cases), I think it is important to participate and to contribute to the drafting or useful recommendations for  policymakers in Africa.

Integrated information systems: Einstein and the relativity theory

Einstein said with his relativity theory that: “The laws of physics are the same for all inertial reference frames.”

When I look at information systems I think we are in front of the antithesis of the relativity theory. In my work I find often myself in the situation in which people think that technology will solve everything or that technology cannot solve nothing, independently form the starting point. My theory is that everything is relative and that what we really need when we work on information system is the ability to integrate systems as to be able to have an holistic approach that will allow to face all the different part so the same universe.

I am particularly interested in humanitarian affairs and early warning systems, so I will use that as an example. When I was working a month ago in Central African Republic to design an information system that would feed information from the local population up to the UN and the international organizations in Bangui the first problem I was facing was that in the area where we wanted to work there was no electricity and no mobile network. As to say: technology has no power if there is no infrastructure. Solution: use what does not need infrastructure. So we came out with two solutions: one was VHF radio, and I have to give credit to the church for this idea.

When visiting the church in Obo I discovered that the priest was keeping contact with other dioceses by talking to them via radio, the only means that allowed him to communicate with them on a daily basis.

Second solution: motorbikes and letters box. Again, not my ideas. I discovered that journalists where already using motorbikes to go around and being able to get information from other areas around Obo. Then I remembered of an IOM project that is still going on in Haiti: questions box in the IDPs camps to ask the Haitians to report on their needs, their stories and in this way to give them voice that they have but that we have not been hearing for a while.

So the solution is right there: letters box that will allow local population to report their ideas, and then motorcycle for the journalists to go and collect the letters. But where to put the letters boxes? Solutions found very easily: where is that people need and where they go every day? Well they need food and water, and they will find it on the water pumps and to the market. Here is where we should put the letters boxes.

Now we got the system from the areas around Obo to the village of Obo. We need to work out the system from Obo to Bangui. Well this is kind of easier. Obo has a terrible Internet connection but somehow a better phone network. Piece of cake: let’s use Internet when it is there and if not, let’s use phones (SMS and phone calls).

Now that we get to Bangui then, we have another problem to solve. How will the information arriving there from the local population and from the radio station become relevant to what the different organizations do. This is tricky issue, and this is why: decision-making processes are complex and, again relative. According to what the goal of an organization is and what their role is in a specific context they will find certain information relevant and other not relevant. For instance ICRC will be more interested in first hand information on lack of water and food and protection of civilians, UNHCR more on the situation of the refugees, OCHA more on the overall situation, demobilization and disarmament and protection of civilians.

But there is also another issue to be solved here, which is, what is the degree of complexity that they need this information in? Again ICRC and UNHCR will be more interested in single cases to be able to provide specific aid. OCHA will be more interested in seeing the big picture and understand the trends and the hot spots.

This leads us to another important point: data is nothing if it is not communicated, which lead us to information. Information is nothing if it cannot be connected which leads us to intelligence. The way from information to intelligence is analysis.

But what does analysis means in the context of crowdsourcing? Analysis is basically the ability to let information telling us a story, so that we know the beginning and we know the end. In this context the typology of analysis is different from context to context and different analysis applied to different goals.

So now we know what needs to happen: each organization need to be able to receive information in  away that they can digest and understand and that is specifically designed for what they do. This can be done by breaking down the information into “clusters” and send to each humanitarian cluster their relevant information.

In this context the role of media become not only relevant but necessary, and we go to our last step. If we collect information from the local population and then send it to the relevant responders, who will guarantee that an action is taken? No one. But media can make sure that if no action is taken the responsible of this will be hold accountable in front of everyone. This is the lesson we learned from Rwanda: no one cannot say anymore: “We didn’t know”.

What s this example showing then? Well several lessons learned and point of thoughts for me:

1. Information system will work only if they are designed and specifically built on what is already there.

2. Integrated information systems are the key of effective systems: boxes – motorbikes – phones – Internet are a good example. Think simple and connect the dots.

3. The holy grail in those situations is to be able to drawn links and associations between different events, in a way that tells a story. Analysis of information will lead you to intelligence.

Why communication with disaster affected communities matters!

I am in Bangui. Central African Republic. Another African country affected by war, hunger, poverty and corruption. Not quite. This is one of the worst I have even seen, even if I cannot say I have seen that many. But let’s look at it a bit closer.

Since its independence, the Central African Republic (CAR) has been plagued by crises associated with poor governance and conflict. It is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranking 159th out of 169 in the 2010 United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Human Development Index and scoring 3/3 on the Vulnerability Index of DG ECHO. Poverty is rife and exacerbated by corrupt and predatory state institutions. A culture of political patronage and corruption undermines leaders’ accountability, and the exceptionally fragile government has almost no institutional capacity to deliver services; most especially for the 84% of the population living outside the capital.  Almost half of the country is out of control of the government and in the hands of rebel groups. Almost no one knows what is going on there.

For instance since September 2008 the east of the country has been a region heavily destabilized by the arrival of the rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army, fleeing apparent military defeat in Northern Uganda. In CAR, the LRA has replicated the killing and terror of the local population witnessed for two decades in Uganda. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), LRA rebels have killed at least 2,385 civilians and abducted another 3,054 in CAR since their arrival.

The LRA is now believed to be made up of approximately 250 separate elements which are highly mobile and moving around in small groups in a large geographical area.  The army of CAR, deployed in the worst affected area with 250 troops, is often aware of the LRA attacks through basic word of mouth but often fails to take any action.  The LRA is therefore able to continue its campaign of terror because it often attacks by surprise. When national or international agencies intervene, the rebels have long since fled, often leaving hundreds of victims behind.

Is there anything in here that sounds strange?

I will tell you what sounds strange to me: 250 people, the LRA movement, is able to kill in one year 2385 people and kidnap 3,054. How is that possible? Well some explanation can be that the United Nations and international agencies evidentially suffer from a lack of information on LRA activities at a local level. Research confirms that international actors are yet to fully utilize the knowledge of local people. Sometimes it takes a couple of weeks for the UN and the army to get to know that there has been an attack in a village. In the est-south of the country there is little phone coverage, one radio station and zero Internet coverage. Communication is sorely based on word of mouth or on the ability of the people to walk for hours to get to the next village to spread the word.

But there is something that is even more surprising to me.

In CAR, society leaders, local self defense groups, traders, hunters, and Mbororo herdsman live and travel in these remote areas where they have extensive knowledge of LRA whereabouts.  This information, so vital to stemming the flow of LRA atrocities, should and could be shared with international organizations, military forces and international intelligence agents. Yet, there is far little done to make this connection.

This is one of the reasons why I am here and why the work that organizations like Internews is absolutely key in this context.

Internews piloted a project in CAR in early 2011 with a network of community radio stations. The nascent project is managed through a coordination center supported by The Association for Journalists on Human Rights, founded during a series of trainings of Internews on human rights between July and December 2010. The network works with mobile phones using a phone tree to query, on a daily basis, participating humanitarian agencies and community radio stations.

The network exchanges information directly from radio station to radio station or between the radio stations and the coordination center. Ultimately, all the stations are connected through an internet modem and receive content and bulletins via this round up. The network connects the stations with each other, and enables humanitarian agencies to quickly exchange information with communities throughout the country. Although just a month young, the concept has already garnered an enthusiastic response from OCHA, UNDP, and BINUCA (Integrated Office United Nations in Central Africa).

Now what needs to be done more? According to me, a lot, but the IN project is a good start and can be used a baseline.

So let’s state some points that are essential to understand the situation here:

- Information save lives. This is not just a motto, this is the reality. Until international organization will not understand this, they will waste lives. Let me make an example: the LRA normally starts by attacking a village by surprise. Then what they do, is that they simply follow the route and on their way north, or west, attacking all the villages on their way and killing, kidnapping and raping. If there was a way to connect all those villages, then there is a way to save lives, because you can create an early warning system that will allow all the villages around to know, in advance that the LRA is coming. (this has been already done in DRC by the Invisible Children initiative)

- If international organization and the 3 different armies (Ugandan army, CAR army, and French Army) here want to do something, they need to get information, Quickly: meaning yesterday! They need to get the information from the local population and there is a very simple way they can do this. Crowdsourcing. They don’t even have to do it with the entire populations: they can choose a couple of families or trusted people in the villages along the border and provide them with a long distance radio transmitter. When there is an attack those people can easily communicate with the army and let them know what is going on. Even better, they can built mobile phones towers, and create an infrastructure that can be used by everyone! (and maybe also go into the development phase, trying to step out form the long standing Emergency phase that CAR is experiencing since more than 20 years which has a consequences that very little is invested in long term development projects and all goes into short term emergency projects).

- The system needs to be a real time system. Everyone operating in the area should be part of it, meaning all the NGOs, UN agencies and different organizations should be part of the system, which needs to be build around the central role of the local population and local media. There has to be a system that connects all these actors in real time via long frequency radios or mobile phones and that allow for information about LRA attacks to be shared and the response to be coordinate in real time.

Ok, I know. Not an easy thing to do. But seriously??? 250 people against 3 armies, 20 NGOs and 4 million people? I don’t believe this is only a problem of resources and poverty.

Let’s get our shit together and do something. And I would start with something that may sound revolutionary: listen to the people, communicate with disaster affected communities, saving lives by providing people with information that can empower them in making decisions by themselves.

Announcing the Ushahidi Manual

[Cross-posted on the Ushahidi Blog]

Exactly a year ago, I started to work on my first Ushahidi platform. I knew little about the platform and in the course of the six months that followed the deployment of Ushahidi Chile I learned everything I could just by doing. I explored every single feature of the platform day by day, discovering what every single tab was, what I could do with it, how to modify the platform and how to use it. I would like to say I did it all by myself, but the truth is that my team and I had a the great support from the Ushahidi Haiti team that allowed us to work on the platform more than to learn the platform.

In the course of this past year I have been working on more than 20 Ushahidi platforms, sometimes just by getting on a call and advising some NGO on what they could do with it, how to set up the map, how to set up the sync with FrontlineSMS. Sometimes it was just by tweeting suggestions and tips to random people that I have never known in person.

Now, one year from my first step into the Ushahidi community, I feel it is the right time to condense all the knowledge collected in the course of this year by myself and my colleagues and share it with whoever wants to start their adventure into using the Ushahidi platform. For this reason, I am quite proud to announce the release of the Ushahidi Manual, a 90+ pages guide on everything you need to know to understand how to use the Ushahidi platform.

In the Manual you will find:

1. Introduction and installation guide

2. How to customize your platform (choosing a map, adding categories, etc.)

3. How to manage the incoming information (create and approve reports, register your reports, etc.)

4. How to look for information as a user of the platform

5. How to ask for help

I would love to see this as a work in progress: the Ushahidi platform is never the same, it keeps changing as the community growth with it, and so will this manual. For this reason, I will be particularly grateful to anyone who sends me their  feedback on this manual at anahi@crisismappers.net. This will allow me to update the Manual and make it more useful for the users of the platform.

Of course, I could have never done this without a bunch of crazy people on my side:

1. Patrick Meier, who edited the guide page by page

2. Rob Baker, who co-edited the guide and wrote all the techy stuff I could have never done by myself, like the installation section

3. The Ushahidi Dev. Team, who in the past year patiently answered to all my questions, doubts, requests, crazy e-mails and bugs reports, and in particular to Brian Herbert and David Kobia for being always responsive and ready to help

In closing, I just wanted to remind you that this is only a technical guide: as for the planning, organization, outreach and the other 90% of a Ushahidi project you still need to refer to the new Ushahidi Community Site, the Ushahidi community and of course to Ushahidi nerds like myself.

The search for neutrality in Open data and Crisis Mapping

The definition of Neutrality is the following: “the state of not supporting either side in a disagreement, competition or war” or “the state or position of being impartial or not allied with or committed to either party or viewpoint in a conflict, especially a war or armed conflict”. An example that everyone knows is Switzerland which during World War II, adhered to its neutral status by never officially becoming involved in the war.

The Red Cross is neutral, by its own status, “In order to continue to enjoy the confidence of all, the Movement may not take sides in hostilities or engage at any time in controversies of a political, racial, religious or ideological nature.”

According to Michael Meyer “The word ” neutral ” comes from the Latin ne-uter and means: neither one thing nor the other. An institution or a movement is neutral when it refrains from participating in a conflict and abstains from any interference. Refraining from participation and abstaining from interference can be for various reasons: it may be a question of self-preservation and self-assertion, of the judgement that good and bad, true and false are to be found on both sides, of holding back in the interests of a higher purpose or a special task. Neutrality may however have its origin in indifference, fear and cowardice. Neutrality in itself is therefore not a virtue.”

What is Open Data? “Open data is a philosophy and practice requiring that certain data be freely available to everyone, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control. It has a similar ethos to a number of other “Open” movements and communities such as open source and open access.

In the last months everyone, including in the field of Crisis Mapping, is looking at what is happening in Tunisia, and Egypt (and lately in Sudan, Berhain, Iran and so on). One of the issues that is coming out of these debate is: can open data be neutral? If I make information available to everyone to see, maybe on a map, am I participating in the conflict in a way? And in this, if I set up a Ushahidi platform in a conflict setting, am I being neutral? And if not, how can I be neutral?

I have been thinking about this for a while now, and here there my answers. I am not expecting everyone to agree with this, but this is my personal view and as such I will state it.

Question 1: Can open data be neutral?

No. Open data is not and cannot be neutral, unless you decide to open only certain data and not others, in which case it is not really open data. Information is and will always be power, and I think that the events in Egypt and Tunisia showed this very clearly. If you are sharing data you are sharing power and as such you are compromising the establishment that hide himself behind that power. Freedom of information comes from this, and it is considered one of the pillar of democracy.  So, if you are releasing open data in a restricted environment, or under a repressive regime, you are not being neutral, you actively acting against that regime. Let’s take the example of Wikileaks: the released data regarding US diplomatic relations with foreign countries, in the spirit of open data. Is this neutral? Of course it is not, in fact people start jumping all over the place including the US that tried desperately to find a law that would allow them to jail Assange.

Unfortunately they forget that they are (sometimes) the first one to have in their constitution the freedom of speech and of information (and how they manage to combine this with censorship on the media, it is still unknown to me).  But the point here is that there is a very clear reason of why the US get so pissed at Wikileaks: not because of the data released (c’mon my grandma knew more than 90% of the stuff contained in those documents) but because the idea of releasing data that belong to a one of the world superpower is in itself a declaration of war.

Hence, open data is not and cannot be neutral. Open data is a very clear declaration of which side you are supporting, which in the case of repressive regime or not-so-free-as-they-would-like-to-be country, is the side of the people in general, the side of who wants open data because it is their right, and because this will give them power to decide and not only to know or to obey.

If I set up a Ushahidi platform/or similar in a conflict setting, am I being neutral? And if not, how can I be neutral?

You are not and you cannot be. My good friend told me when we were talking about Egypt: “Data as it is, it’s only data, but the moment you put it on a map it become intelligence and it is a completely different thing”. I have to say, I had never thought about this in this way, but she is right. Platforms like the Ushahidi platforms transform data into intelligence and in this way add a level of sophistication to the information: they add time, location and insert them into paths and trends. What it comes out is the same thing that defines the difference between massive violations of human rights and genocide: if you commit violations of human rights randomly or with a purpose but not systematically, you cannot be accused of genocide. If it is possible to identify a path or a strategy behind it, you are. So if you map a conflict, whatever is the reason you do it, you are participating actively in the conflict by providing intelligence. Now, this is definitely not neutral!

Could it be? No. Why? Because in the very moment you are setting it up and you are transforming data into intelligence and use the data or sharing it, you are messing up with the equilibrium (or disequilibrium) on the ground by providing additional information to whom may not have them and so you are in a way participating in the conflict. The only way you could do it and remain neutral is to create a map and be the only one using it, and not share any insight or information that you will learn from it.  But then what it the purpose?

I am not saying this to state that all the Crisis Mappers working in repressive regime are bad people because they are not neutral. I am stating this because being neutral is not always something that you want to do. How many of us wanted to be neutral in the Egyptian revolution? How many of us want to be neutral in the Sudan conflict? How many of us would like to be neutral if something like the Second World war happen again?

The real issue here is not how to remain neutral, the real issue here is to choose which side are you supporting and how you will try to help them more than others.

Organizations like the Red Cross and OCHA needs to be neutral and for a good reason: they are there to help everyone in the same way and their mandate is precise and specific. The Red Cross is an organization that worked with Prisoners of War and civilians and needs to be able to protect them physically. OCHA delivers humanitarian aid to affected populations, which in a conflict normally are on both sides. They act on information; they don’t divulgate information. And even in this regard, there are serious doubts about what neutral means when you are providing food and shelters to a population that the government of that country wants to eliminate.

Neutrality is a serious concept and a very difficult to prove as valid sometimes. But sometimes I just don’t want to be neutral. And sometimes you cannot be neutral unless you are able to compromise other values: the Red Cross and OCHA are not Open Data organizations, actually they don’t release almost any of their data. There is a reason: they are neutral, open data is not.

Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI): where are we now and where are we going

I have just been presenting the Standby Task Force at the ESRI Redlands GIS Week in California. The three day workshop on Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) and Humanitarian Emergency has been simply wonderful. Lots of practitioners, lot’s of academics, students and geeky nerds.

Some of the main points that came out of this discussion I think are very interesting also in the field or crisis mapping and can be a good compass for future reflections on the problems and issues that are faced in the case of volunteers geographical information or user generated geographical information.

Some of them are:

1. Geographical information are generated in two different ways: one is voluntary. I go to OSM and voluntary update the map, or I send my geo-location to someone by using my phone. Some of other are on the other side not voluntary, like if I use Twitter automatic location with my phone which will update my status automatically, or if I use Google Longitude on Google maps. How much do we know about the geographical information we involuntary generate?

2. We are in the generation of geo-tagging systems: we geo-tag pictures on Flicker, video on You Tube, Twitter messages, Facebook status. We continuously generate geographical information but most of the time what is missing is the accuracy. How do we increase accuracy of geo-tagged information?

3. Use is the most effective verification system: wiki-maps like OSM are increasingly growing their ability to detect mistakes and variations thanks to the fact that users use the map continuously as to find very quickly mistakes. The creation of a network of trusted sources is strictly related to the opening of the system to anyone, to allow for the crowd to become the vetting system.

4. Geographical information without analysis are as useless as a camera without the film, or a phone without the SIM card. There is no way that we can make a sense out of user generated geographical content without being able to analyze correlations, overlap layers of content, identify trends and path. The ability to do this unfortunately is still related to the technical ability to use software like QuantumGIS or ArcGIS, which can be either to expensive of too difficult to use.

5. Professional GIS and user generated geographical information are not two competing fields: they are two complementary parts of the same field and as such should be treated. Free Open Source systems like Open Street Maps, or Geo Commons are incredibly valuable because they allow non-experts to contribute to the creation of geographical information in an easy way, increasing the possibility to create accurate content in a fast way when needed (see the creation of the Map of Port-o-Prince after the earthquake). Systems like QGIS and ArcGIS take the geographical information to the next level, going as far as to provide with the analysis that policy making bodies needs to take decisions based on the geographical information (like a hot spot map for example).

6. There is a gap between the professional GIS world and the field of Volunteered Geographical Information, especially in terms of knowledge of what is out there and who is doing what. Organizations, governments and even academics in the field of GIS go for the high level tech (and expensive) solutions and have no clue of what can be done with FOSS. On the other side people working with FOSS have a lot of preconceptions about the fact that Private Companies like ESRI are evil because they don’t share their codes. The world is changing, and as more people get access to knowledge and to free software this dynamic has to change too.

In conclusion I think that this is the right time to start talking about this, and that I would love to see a growing VGI community incorporating private companies, governmental bodies, volunteers and academics with the purpose of bringing VGI to the level where Crisis Mapping is now for example (even if VGI is a branch on Crisis Mapping, but extend far beyond Crisis). One of the idea at the GIS Week was to create a Ning and start from there. Watch out people, you may see some exciting things moving this year!

Can technology be used to create a new political system? (or simply: what are we afraid of?)

I intentionally titled this blog post “can technology be used to create a new political system” because I will not discuss here about the ongoing debate over the issue if technology and internet is helping the democratization of certain countries or not, or the power of the internet in repressive regime. I want to discuss here if someone can intentionally decide to use technology and the Internet with the explicit purpose of creating a new political system, taking here as example Direct Democracy.

Some time ago I read a Direct Democracy manifesto written by Akiva Orr, called Politics without Politicians, (you can find it here) which according to me is an amazing piece on the power of technologies when it comes to democracy and people’s power.

When Aki wrote that piece it was in 2003, when some of the most important social networks and free open source software for crowdsourcing where still not there. Actually, the crowdsourcing concept was not there, being mentioned by Howe for the first time in 2006.

What I found particularly interesting is how what Orr talks about in his Manifesto looks a lot like the application of the concept of crowdsourcing to the political structure of actual democratic representative governments, and that results is the concept of Direct Democracy.

According to Orr:

“What people call “Democracy” today is a system where representatives of citizens – not all citizens themselves – decide all policies. This is Rule by Representatives (RR) not democracy.  Calling such a system “Democracy” is false and misleading. In a Democracy all citizens decide all policies, and no one decides for others.

Politics means deciding what an entire society should do. Today only a few politicians do it. A few Representatives – not the citizens themselves – decide all policies. People accept policy-making by representatives because they do not see how all citizens can decide policy themselves. This seems impossible. Finding out what millions of citizens want seems complicated. Today it can be done by electronic means, mobile phones, magnetic cards. In Direct Democracy every citizen can propose, discuss and vote on every policy.”

Here is interesting to notice that Aki doesn’t know anything about social media: at the time I visited him in 2006 in his house in Netanya, Facebook was just coming out and Twitter was a very remote US based tool, that very few in the Middle East or Europe knew about. Aki here talked about magnetic card cause those were the new big thing at the moment and for the first timer people were talking about using them to vote.

Orr base the entire idea of creating a direct democracy on the possibility to use new technology to sustain the new system:

“All citizens vote directly on all policies. There are no elections, no Parliament and no Government.   Each domain of the society, such as health, education, finance, agriculture, transport etc is allocated a TV channel open 24 hours every day all the year round. Panels drawn by lottery from pools of people with expertise in each particular domain debate the pros and cons of various proposals phoned in by citizens. A proposal becomes subject to panel discussion if 1% of all citizens support it. Proposals are listed on TV and citizens can phone in to establish the 1% support required for further discussion. Each proposal is discussed for a fixed length of time, after which all citizens vote on it. Proposals are numbered and citizens can vote on each by mobile phone, touch-screen, magnetic cards, or the Internet. A proposal gaining a majority is submitted to a second round of discussion and voting, and – if required – to a third one.”

The same system can be applied according to Aki to the executive power:

“When a policy has been decided a panel will be set up to carry it out. Panel members will be drawn by lottery from a pool of all those with experience and knowledge of the specific task. They will be changed at regular intervals.  Complaints about panel members’ inefficiency or corruption will be investigated immediately – and punished if it was the case..”

Aki is well aware of the problems that this system will face and list them as two: Technical problems and Inherent problems. I will focus on the first one:

“Technical problems of DD stem from all citizens’ right to propose, debate and decide every law and policy. Electronic communications provide the means to do this but procedures must be devised to protect the public from abuse of this right. Committees to decide such matters can do it, but they must be drawn by lottery and serve one term only. This will prevent the formation of elites controlling everything. This applies also to the Executive Committees that decide how to carry out policies. Carrying out a policy often requires expertise which most citizens lack, but Committee members must be changed regularly to prevent the formation of ‘expert elites’ influencing all decisions in that field.”

“Today electronic communications enable people to make political decisions privately, separate from any crowd. Today (for the first time in history) anyone can address millions (on TV) from their own home without joining any crowd.

Mobile phones and interactive television enable people to see and hear privately anyone who wants to address them, and to vote on policies from their home in the same way as people already choose films in cable TV networks, by pressing a key on a remote control.”

Now, let’s throw in the middle of this Facebook, Twitter, crowdsourcing platforms like Ushahidi and similar. Let think about how laws are already discussed on Twitter and Facebook, how people decide to self tax themselves for a good cause, or the fact that in certain US state people already vote from home via computer. Why if I can vote my representative via computer I should not vote directly the law? Why would we need someone to represent us if we could represent ourselves?

The real question here is: what are we afraid of? If an SMS can save a life, if social media can be used to do demonstrations and mobilize entire populations, if we have means to collectively decide to assist populations on the other side of the planet and if we can now work together with hundreds of other people without have ever meet them, why we cannot use the same means to take decisions about ourselves?

I think that soon or later we will find ourselves in front of those dilemmas: Can technology be used to create a new political system? Can we crowdsource the legislative and executive power?