Workshop on Humanitarian Information Management in Latin America and the Caribbean

keywords:

regional

Event:

Workshop on Humanitarian Information Management in Latin America and the Caribbean

Organiser	UN/OCHA
Location	Panama City
Year	2005

Summary

We are especially encouraged by the degree of informal cooperation and regionally based information sharing initiatives that currently guide humanitarian information practitioners in Latin America and the Caribbean. Like the 2002 Symposium on Best Practices in Humanitarian Information Exchange, this gathering of participants is about discussion; looking at what works well and what needs further attention to optimize our information sharing efforts; encouraging new ideas and creating new partnerships; finding a greater role for technology in order to facilitate regional efforts; and using the underlying information management principles to guide our strategies for future collaboration and cooperation.

Conclusions

The actual conclusions document is indexed in the library, but here is a brief summary of the conclusions:

What are the common challenges to effectively manage and share humanitarian information?
Turf wars. When organisations are competing for funding, they are reluctant to give their peers anything for free. Donors should be made aware of this situation
Who are the principle users of emergency response information? What decisions must be taken by whom and what information is needed to take these decisions?
It is very important when developing a system, to do user profiling to understand the users. Data preparedness is as important as other kinds of preparedness
Information Usability: How can organizations effectively classify and structure information to facilitate logical user access?
Start the design with the users and do lots of paper prototyping and user consulting.
How can we coordinate our efforts, share our best practices and unify our approaches for humanitarian information management and exchange?
This region is advanced when it comes to CoPs. The IASC should keep an inventory of such groups so it knows who to consult.
What are the challenge to the effective use, management and exchange of geographic information for humanitarian response?
High costs are reducing, but there is still a lack of awareness about the usefulness of GIS. There are few standards or conventions to make data interoperable, and then there would be a need for meta-data catalogues as well.
What role does public information play in strengthening emergency response and how can it be best leveraged
Media needs to be educated and then given cordinated packages of information at crisis-time. Media officers should understand and distinguish between different types of media and the messages they should receive.

All of these were then packaged as a series of recommendations at the international, regional, and national levels. Agreement on a regional strategy was expected by 12 December 2005.