Future assessments for the humanitarian sector : who will be the providers and

what should be outsourced?

Marc van den Homberg

Lisa Daoud

Nathalie Lauriac

Lars Peter Nissen

Panel

Nowadays, humanitarian action has gotten more articulated and complex, exploring many useful new ways and tools to improve and optimize their operations. More and more actors, including specialized NGOs (H2H) and private companies, are getting involved in order to provide services of information management and data collection to humanitarian organisations, sometimes not only by providing new tools and methods but also implementing them directly in the field. However, it is worth asking what the limits are of this emerging culture of “outsourcing” in the sector: are these actors as efficient as the aid organizations themselves in collecting and managing their data? Are private actors substitutes for humanitarian specialists?

Future assessments for the humanitarian sector : who will be the providers and

what should be outsourced?

Marc van den Homberg (marcjchr@gmail.com)

Objective of roundtable

“Old” information environment <> “New” information environment

NGO

The new digital

NGO

Data/Tools/

GIS/IM

partner

IM/GIS

Department

Information management

Information

Needs

Information

Products

Sensemaking

Decisions

Matching

Data

Sources

The “new” information environment

Digital technology trends: SMAC(IT)

Big data

User

generated

Social media Captured Business

systems

Email Facebook Internet

searches

School records

Messaging Twitter Banner ads Transportation

logs

Transactional Sensors Biological Public

Records

Mobile banking Satellites DNA testing Census data

E-commerce Mobile phones Dental records Land

certificates

Satellite and Twitter Signals for flood early detection

The “old” information environment

Majority still “old” data!

Source: UN OCHA , Humanitarianism in the network age, 2013, Nethope report 2010

Data collection in Bangladesh

• Administrative divisions

Aggregation

Aggregation

Aggregation

Data loss

Data loss

Data loss

Aggregation

Data loss Aggregation

Granularity

Loss

Digital transformation to adapt to the combination of the new and old information environment

New players and initiatives

• International organizations

• World Bank (Geonode), UN OCHA (Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX)), UN Global Pulse

• NGOs:

• International NGOs: Red Cross: Surge Information Management Support, Humanitarian Data Analytics team, MSF, Terre des Hommes, Solidarité Internationale…

• H2H/Data-NGOs: ACAPS, MapAction, Humanity Road, Nethope Crisis Informatics, ….

• Digital volunteers

• (Bounded) crowdsourcing

• Partly formalized

• Social and private enterprises

• First Mile Geo, Premise, TTC, Akvo, Ushahidi, Google Crisis Response, Microsoft Disaster Response….

Digital Strategy required for the new information environment

• The private sector uses Social Mobility Analytics Cloud (SMAC) to describe digital technology trends. SMAC is disruptive and requires significant changes.

• Transforming the organization, digitizing currently not digitized processes, increasing data literacy and tech savviness

• Digital Strategy = business strategy informed by the capabilities of readily accessible digital technology

What kind of Digital Strategy?

• An integrated Digital Strategy across different functions in an organization with two main axes: Customer Engagement & Digitized solutions

• Inspired by capabilities of powerful, readily accessible technologies and responsive to changing “market” conditions

• Designed for agility instead of efficiency

SMAC drives multiple digital strategies

• Often siloed.

• But multiple technologies should serve the same strategic objective.

• Divide and conquer versus Combine and conquer

MIT Center for Information Systems Research, Jeanne Ross

Towards an integrated Digital Strategy

MIT Center for Information Systems Research, Jeanne Ross

Still far away and too advanced for most NGOs?

• Penetration of smartphones and internet access in developing

countries goes fast, SMAC will become a reality there as well

• Smart use of big data will help towards faster and more (cost)

effective humanitarian aid. Big data might be a way to get the last

mile and vulnerable groups “on the map” quicker than through usual

data collection methodologies (digital inclusion).

• If cash transfer programming becomes an essential part of

humanitarian aid, it will require a far-fetched digital transformation of

the implementing agencies

What kind of Digital Strategy works for the humanitarian sector?

• Humanitarian sector is running behind in comparison with the

private sector in terms of digital innovation (up to five years?).

• If the sector does not transform itself, more and more has to be

outsourced? But can this be done in a humanitarian principled

way?

• Towards a Digital NGO? Or towards NGOs that work with H2H

Data NGO’s?

• Lisa Daoud - MEAL Advisor

• Nathalie Lauriac - Head of Quality and Accountability

• Lars Peter Nissen - Project Director

Questions up for discussion

• Does your organization have a digital strategy?• Do you outsource data collection? Which part? • Are you trained and supported by your organization in new data and digital tools?

• Does your IT department allow you to use new tools or do you have to create workarounds?

• Does your organization create specific information management related roles or even surge pools of data experts ?

• What works in creating greater digital literacy in your organization?

Statements up for discussion

• Instead of transforming themselves too many NGOs think outsourcing is the solution.

• There are too many scattered initiatives on humanitarian data.

• Too much data is collected. • The private sector can not be as principled in data collection as humanitarian actors.

• NGOs can never keep up with the fast moving tech industry.

• Data scientists should become humanitarians; the other way around will not work.