[CrisisCommons Projects] Fw: [PR] ICT4Peace Foundation enters into new agreement with Ushahidi to develop Crisis Information Management Demonstrator (CIMD)

[Sara Farmer]

There has been a lot of discussion of late about how CrisisCommons gets its tools built, how difficult it is to get help with tool building outside a CrisisCamp 'surge' period, and how things like RHOK, the VirtualCrisisCamp, other communities and companies could help us with this.  It appears from the ICT4Peace statement below that there is yet another option available to us. 

 

On a personal note, I'm currently on annual leave, spending a sunny day inside finishing up a CrisisCommons delivery because despite repeated calls for development help, there appears to be nobody out there who can. That's not for lack of people who might help if they could, but we appear to be concentrating so much on frameworks that we've forgotten why we're here and stopped working to put developers in contact with needs; there are roughly a dozen active contributers to CrisisCommons worldwide at the moment, and many of them appear to be reaching exhaustion trying to create a working model that fits both their idea of what CrisisCommons should be, and what it appears to be at the moment, when that energy might be better spent on crisis projects and preparation.  I am in CrisisCommons because I believe in building a fairer society with people in all countries prepared and preparing to help each other in times of crisis, and because I believe that the people we support (the UN, CDAC, the NGOs, the affected communities) deserve a decent quality and timeliness of help in those areas where our skills are greater than theirs.  But it's bloody difficult trying to do this from an organisation whose core is not not supporting the work that it implies it exists to do.

 

So I still want to support our partners, but I don't want the stress of doing this with no technical support.  I'm considering moving all the London tools activities into somewhere like IT4Communities (if they'll have us) or another community that's set up for long-term IT development; I've even wondered whether RHOK could be developed into a sustainable tool development model. I'd still be around for surge activities, but CrisisCommons as it exists at the moment is neither ready nor able to support the sort of preparation work that still needs to be done worldwide, and I'm getting tired and stressed trying to deal with this mismatch.

 

Comments please?

 

 

 

 

Sj.

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Daniel Stauffacher

To: Sara Farmer

Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2010 12:00 PM

Subject: [PR] ICT4Peace Foundation enters into new agreement with Ushahidi to develop Crisis Information Management Demonstrator (CIMD)

ICT4Peace Foundation enters into new agreement with Ushahidi to develop Crisis Information Management Demonstrator (CIMD) 25 May 2010, Geneva, Switzerland: During the high-level debate on 'ICTs for Disaster Management' and the workshop on 'Getting it Right in Crisis Management: Going beyond the hype on ICTs' at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) FORUM 2010 held in May, the ICT4Peace Foundation was pleased to announce a new phase of support for the Ushahidi crisis information management platform. Ushahidi is a prime example of a new generation of crowd-sourced crisis information management tools that have demonstrated significant progress in relaying vital information to decision makers in crises. The ICT4Peace Foundation recognises that these platforms need to further strengthen information validation by assessing in a timely manner, inter alia, the reliability of the source and the probability of the occurrences reported from the field. In 2009, the ICT4Peace Foundation supported the development of Ushahidi’s Goma release through financing and intellectual input towards features to assess information inflows as well as proximity related SMS alerting functionality. The new agreement with Ushahidi, signed in May 2010, will build on this platform and incorporate innovative information qualification routines to improve information assurance during a crisis, aiding efficient and effective aid planning and delivery. This new functionality to the Ushahidi platform will also be used by the ICT4Peace Foundation for crisis simulation exercises, disaster prepardness and risk reduction planning as well as for other crisis information management training purposes and field pilots. The development of a Crisis Information Management Demonstrator (CIMD) based on Ushahidi is part of the ICT4Peace Foundation's on-going partnership and work with the United Nations and the Crisis Information Management (CiM) strategy, led by UN CITO and ASG Dr. Soon-hong Choi. The contribution of the ICT4Peace Foundation is financed by the Swiss Government and also supports the technology development work of the CiM strategy. ### ICT4Peace aims to enhance the performance of the international community in crisis management through the application of information Communications Technology (ICT) – technologies that can facilitate effective and sustained communication between peoples, communities and stakeholders involved in crisis management, humanitarian aid and peacebuilding. Crisis management is defined, for the purposes of this process, as civilian and/or military intervention in a crisis that may be a violent or non-violent with the intention of preventing a further escalation of the crisis and facilitating its resolution. This definition covers peace mediation, peace-keeping and peace-building activities of the international community. In bridging the fragmentation between various organisations and activities during different crisis phases, ICT4Peace aims to facilitate a holistic, cohesive and collaborative mechanisms directly in line with Paragraph 36 of the WSIS Tunis Commitment: “36. We value the potential of ICTs to promote peace and to prevent conflict which, inter alia, negatively affects achieving development goals. ICTs can be used for identifying conflict situations through early-warning systems preventing conflicts, promoting their peaceful resolution, supporting humanitarian action, including protection of civilians in armed conflicts, facilitating peacekeeping missions, and assisting post conflict peace-building and reconstruction.” Follow ICT4Peace on Twitter here - http://www.twitter.com/ict4peace Follow ICT4Peace on Facebook here - http://facebook.com/ict4peace ### ICT4Peace (Technologies de l’Information et de la Communication pour la paix) a pour objectif de relever le niveau de performance de la communauté internationale dans la gestion de crise en s’appuyant sur l’utilisation des technologies de l’information et de la communication (TIC). Celles-ci peuvent, en effet, contribuer à rendre plus efficace, dans la durée, la communication entre individus, communautés et autres acteurs impliqués dans la gestion de crise, l’assistance humanitaire et le rétablissement de la paix. Dans ce contexte, il faut comprendre la gestion de crise comme une intervention civile et/ou militaire dans une situation de violence ou de non-violence aux fins de prévenir une aggravation de la crise et de faciliter sa résolution. Cette définition recouvre toute activité de la communauté internationale déployée dans le cadre d’une médiation pour la paix, d’opérations de maintien de la paix et de rétablissement de la paix. En établissant pendant les différentes phases de la crise des passerelles entre organisations et activités, ICT4Peace cherche à mettre en place des mécanismes permettant une approche qui soit globale et cohésive et qui favorise la collaboration. Par son action, ICT4Peace est en ligne directe avec le paragraphe 36. de l’Engagement de Tunis adopté par le Sommet mondial sur la Société de l’information (SMSI) : "36. Nous apprécions le rôle que peuvent jouer les TIC pour promouvoir la paix et prévenir les conflits qui ont notamment des incidences négatives sur la réalisation des objectifs de développement. Les TIC peuvent être utilisées pour repérer les situations de conflit grâce à des systèmes d'alerte avancée, pour prévenir les conflits, promouvoir leur règlement pacifique, appuyer les actions d'aide humanitaire, notamment en ce qui concerne la protection des civils dans les conflits armés, faciliter les opérations de maintien de la paix et contribuer au rétablissement de la paix et à la reconstruction après des conflits. " ### La Fundación ICT4Peace se estableció en 2005 a fin de promover la toma de conciencia y llevar a la práctica los términos del Párrafo 36 del Compromiso de Túnez de la Cumbre Mundial de la Sociedad de la Información (WSIS), en todas las etapas de la gestión de crisis, a saber: “ 36. Valorizamos el potencial de las TICs en la promoción de la paz y la prevención de conflictos que afectan negativamente los objetivos de desarrollo. Las TICs pueden ser utilizadas para identificar situaciones conflictivas por medio de sistemas de alerta avanzada para la prevención de conflictos, promoviendo su resolución pacífica al apoyar la acción humanitaria, incluyendo la protección de civiles en conflictos armados, facilitando la actividad de las misiones de mantenimiento de la paz y la reconstrucción en la fase posterior al conflicto.” En ese sentido, la Fundación contempla la función de las TICs como herramientas para cubrir los aspectos de alerta temprana y prevención de conflictos, mediación de paz, mantenimiento y construcción de la paz, así como la gestión de desastres de todo tipo y operaciones humanitarias requeridas por la comunidad internacional.

[Heatherleson]

Hi Sara, indeed you are right about being tired and focusing on governance. 

I firmly believe that we will only be successful at delivering projects and full member activity only after we solidify our core purpose and structure.  While I understand your anxiety, I think that only time, effort and patience can build CrisisCommons. 

I read every single one of your emails. I wish I had more time to work on projects too, but I have a day job to keep too. 

You and your work are very much appreciated. As is your drive and attention to the big picture.

Heather 

Sent from my Steve Jobs Device

On 2010-05-25, at 7:36, "Sara Farmer" <sara....@btinternet.com> wrote:

There has been a lot of discussion of late about how CrisisCommons gets its tools built, how difficult it is to get help with tool building outside a CrisisCamp 'surge' period, and how things like RHOK, the VirtualCrisisCamp, other communities and companies could help us with this.  It appears from the ICT4Peace statement below that there is yet another option available to us. 

 

On a personal note, I'm currently on annual leave, spending a sunny day inside finishing up a CrisisCommons delivery because despite repeated calls for development help, there appears to be nobody out there who can. That's not for lack of people who might help if they could, but we appear to be concentrating so much on frameworks that we've forgotten why we're here and stopped working to put developers in contact with needs; there are roughly a dozen active contributers to CrisisCommons worldwide at the moment, and many of them appear to be reaching exhaustion trying to create a working model that fits both their idea of what CrisisCommons should be, and what it appears to be at the moment, when that energy might be better spent on crisis projects and preparation.  I am in CrisisCommons because I believe in building a fairer society with people in all countries prepared and preparing to help each other in times of crisis, and because I believe that the people we support (the UN, CDAC, the NGOs, the affected communities) deserve a decent quality and timeliness of help in those areas where our skills are greater than theirs.  But it's bloody difficult trying to do this from an organisation whose core is not not supporting the work that it implies it exists to do.

 

So I still want to support our partners, but I don't want the stress of doing this with no technical support.  I'm considering moving all the London tools activities into somewhere like IT4Communities (if they'll have us) or another community that's set up for long-term IT development; I've even wondered whether RHOK could be developed into a sustainable tool development model. I'd still be around for surge activities, but CrisisCommons as it exists at the moment is neither ready nor able to support the sort of preparation work that still needs to be done worldwide, and I'm getting tired and stressed trying to deal with this mismatch.

 

Comments please?

 

 

 

 

Sj.

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Daniel Stauffacher

To: Sara Farmer

Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 2010 12:00 PM

Subject: [PR] ICT4Peace Foundation enters into new agreement with Ushahidi to develop Crisis Information Management Demonstrator (CIMD)

<Email version.jpg>

ICT4Peace Foundation enters into new agreement with Ushahidi to develop Crisis Information Management Demonstrator (CIMD)

[Andrew Turner]

Sara Farmer wrote:

There has been a lot of discussion of late about how CrisisCommons gets its tools built, how difficult it is to get help with tool building outside a CrisisCamp 'surge' period, and how things like RHOK, the VirtualCrisisCamp, other communities and companies could help us with this.  It appears from the ICT4Peace statement below that there is yet another option available to us. 

 

On a personal note, I'm currently on annual leave, spending a sunny day inside finishing up a CrisisCommons delivery because despite repeated calls for development help, there appears to be nobody out there who can. That's not for lack of people who might help if they could, but we appear to be concentrating so much on frameworks that we've forgotten why we're here and stopped working to put developers in contact with needs; there are roughly a dozen active contributers to CrisisCommons worldwide at the moment, and many of them appear to be reaching exhaustion trying to create a working model that fits both their idea of what CrisisCommons should be, and what it appears to be at the moment, when that energy might be better spent on crisis projects and preparation.  I am in CrisisCommons because I believe in building a fairer society with people in all countries prepared and preparing to help each other in times of crisis, and because I believe that the people we support (the UN, CDAC, the NGOs, the affected communities) deserve a decent quality and timeliness of help in those areas where our skills are greater than theirs.  But it's bloody difficult trying to do this from an organisation whose core is not not supporting the work that it implies it exists to do.

 

So I still want to support our partners, but I don't want the stress of doing this with no technical support.  I'm considering moving all the London tools activities into somewhere like IT4Communities (if they'll have us) or another community that's set up for long-term IT development; I've even wondered whether RHOK could be developed into a sustainable tool development model. I'd still be around for surge activities, but CrisisCommons as it exists at the moment is neither ready nor able to support the sort of preparation work that still needs to be done worldwide, and I'm getting tired and stressed trying to deal with this mismatch.

 

Comments please?

 

Very Good points. From my perspective, it's about what the level of friction is for a volunteer to enter and exit CrisisCommons efforts & projects and have a beneficial impact and personal perception of value.

For the surges in the various CrisisCamps it is easy - show up for however many hours you have available, get started with a large group of people, and put your information into the Wiki/Repository/Mailing list.

However, in between the ease of camps how does someone who identifies "I have 5 hours, what can I do?" For them to determine where to help, engage, have benefit, and leave for the day with their benefit remaining is not currently easy (or possible?) Therefore, what we have a is a highly engaged, but very small set of members that read almost all the emails, conference calls, etc. It's too high of a volume for a casual (or new) volunteer, and too non-project and high volume for this same small core to do both organizational activities and project specific ones (and day jobs)

One way I'm working on dealing with this is to engage others on very small tasks to get their help. For example, setting up Nagios/Monit on some servers. Really only about a 3-4 hr task that someone otherwise new can come in and help. Along the way they get a little more involved, interested, and feeling useful. All necessary for them to engage.

There are perhaps some missing pieces: an easy way to identify how to participate (what projects are there that need help, how can I help in the next 2 hours), a way to stay casually engaged (at most 1-2 emails per day except during code sprints), and someone(s) to oversee *projects* and partnerships.

Andrew

--
Andrew Turner
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