Symposium on Best Practices in Humanitarian Information Exchange

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Event:

Symposium on Best Practices in Humanitarian Information Exchange

Organiser	UN/OCHA
Location	Geneva
Year	2002

Summary

This report comes at a time when the field of humanitarian information has come of age.

Just five years ago, humanitarian information projects were new and unproven; time-critical documents, such as situation reports, press releases and flash appeals were still distributed by fax, telex and cable, while the potential uses of Internet technologies and the World Wide Web were little understood by the humanitarian community.

Conclusions

Operational Principles for Humanitarian Information Management and Exchange.

Accessibility: Humanitarian information and data should be made accessible to all humanitarian actors by applying easy-to-use formats and by translating information into common or local languages when necessary. Information and data for humanitarian purposes should be made widely available through a variety of online and offline distribution channels, including the media.
Inclusiveness: Information management and exchange should be based on a system of collaboration, partnership and sharing with a high degree of participation and ownership by multiple stakeholders, especially representatives of the affected population.
Inter-operability: All sharable data and information should be made available in formats that can be easily retrieved, shared and used by humanitarian organizations.
Accountability: Users must be able to evaluate the reliability and credibility of data and information by knowing its source. Information providers should be responsible to their partners and stakeholders for the content they publish and disseminate.
Verifiability: Information should be accurate, consistent and based on sound methodologies, validated by external sources and analysed within the proper contextual framework.
Relevance: Information should be practical, flexible, responsive, and driven by operational and decision-making needs throughout all phases of a crisis.
Objectivity: Information managers should consult a variety of sources when collecting and analysing information so as to provide varied and balanced perspectives for addressing problems and recommending solutions.
Humanity: Information should never be used to distort, to mislead or cause harm to affected or at-risk populations and should respect the dignity of victims.
Timeliness: Humanitarian information must be kept current and should be collected, analysed and disseminated efficiently.
Sustainability: Humanitarian information and data should be preserved, catalogued and archived so that it can be retrieved for future use, such as for preparedness, analysis, lessons learned and evaluation.

The use of flawed or disorganised data leads to faulty decision-making, potentially at the expense of lives. Because of these operational risks, it is important to develop common approaches to data collection and information exchange. On a procedural level, this includes establishing defined terminology and standard operating procedures for activities, such as needs assessments and surveys, so that similar information can be easily compared across organizations. Applying technical standards means everything from using standard units of measure, to developing common identifiers for places and events, to employing common design elements and navigation schemes on related Web sites.

Adherence to such standards makes it easier to handle large volumes of information, avoids the need to re-invent the wheel with each new emergency, and preserves quality control and institutional memory, even with frequent turnover.

At the core of emergency information preparation is the collection of baseline data, particularly for high-risk areas. Because some data sets are common to all emergencies information managers can collect most of this data, such as population figures, location and condition of roads and emergency contact lists, as part of preparedness procedures.

It is also important that information managers focus on forming institutional relationships, at national and local levels, before a crisis erupts. In this way, both national and international actors can collaborate on collecting and sharing key indicators, and support national and regional coordination initiatives. Preparation also includes planning for sustainability; therefore, information managers should also define an exit strategy.

Best Practices for Preparedness

Maintain preparedness "toolboxes" for online and offline distribution.: These toolboxes provide guidelines and reference tools for the rapid-deployment of HICs or the establishment of Web sites, intranets and databases under a variety of field conditions. Toolboxes should include data standards, operating procedures, training materials, database templates and manuals.
Develop surge capacities for rapid deployment.: Maintain rosters of experienced information professionals, equipment caches and training programmes.
Preserve institutional operational memory.: Define and adhere to sound data and information management policies and techniques for handling large volumes of information. Document data sets with metadata. Maintain quality control and preserve organizational learning to avoid starting from scratch with each new emergency.
Define an exit strategy.: Develop a clear, phase-out strategy, including transitioning to development activities and creating archiving systems to maintain access by current and future stakeholders after the project is closed.