System support for IM in humanitarian operations (manuscrip 18 mars)

Department of Applied IT : University of Gothenburg & Chalmers 1 System Support for Information Management in Humanitarian operations Unpublished manuscript, version -‐ 18 Mars 2011 By Glenn F. Eriksson (glenn.f.eriksson@gmail.com) Crisis Response Lab, Department of Applied IT, University of Gothenburg & Chalmers Abstract This paper aims to uncover some of the problems of gathering consolidated data in humanitarian aid projects and crises. The focus is on routines and tools used in information management. Based on the insights from four professional information managers, key problems of information management in fieldwork has been identified and analysed. The paper outlines implications for design for future tools striving to better support information management. These implications are based on the need for improved standardisation on information exchange and better interoperability between tools and applications. Introduction Humanitarian operations triggered by the immediate need of a sudden crisis pose significant operational and management challenges on the involved aid organizations (Muhren, Eede, & Walle, 2008). During the last few years, aid effectiveness in the perspective of fact based results and accountability has emerged as an important topic. It has been addressed by high level forums like the OECD Paris declaration (2005) and the Accra agenda for action forum (OECD, 2010). Media (The Sydney Morning Herald, 2010) is also reporting on how tax payer’s money is used in aid programs and the need for better accountability and fact based results. The debate concerns also the audit process and that aid should be audited as any other governmental spending. On top of that, several major disasters have occurred in the last years underlining the importance of aid effectiveness. One important key area to come to terms with measuring result and accountability, is the access to reliable and accurate information. The process of inquiring qualitative information has never been an easy task, since there are many actors and organisations that are loosely coupled together in humanitarian operations. A good starting point is to investigate how the current information system1 support the process of gathering reliable information for fact based results. It is also important to examine how well the information system facilitates coordination between the different actors in the humanitarian community, in order to avoid duplication of work and the ability to more efficiently collaborate and learn. A symposium on information exchange (UN, 2002), reported a set of high level problems and recommendations 2002, and was revised 2007 (UN, 2007). Many of these problems still persist 1 In broad terms and accross organisational boundaries 1

Department of Applied IT : University of Gothenburg & Chalmers 2 today. Scientific articles, field reports and experience have shown that the humanitarian community have not taken full advantage of the information technology shift2 and its collaborative capabilities. The objective of the study is to examine how well the current system support is in the field of information management (IM). The study has the perspective of professional information managers3, and what challenges they experience with the current information system and routines. The study continues with a discussion on the consequences with the current design and concludes with a set of implications, necessary to address when designing future information system support for IM. The overall research question guiding the work for this study is: How can information systems better support operative information management in humanitarian aid work? Information Management in an humanitarian context Information management is the act of collecting and managing information around a specific topic. This is done in humanitarian aid programs and projects, where the collected information feeds the reporting process of the organisation. IM in humanitarian context is often integrated into the reporting process to produce statistics, graphs and to present information in tabular format. There is normally a one to one relation between the data collection process and the reporting standard for the specific organisation. The reporting process is the tool that normally drives the project. So they can report back to the project stakeholders. When coordination is needed amongst organisations working in the same line of work, they normally share their existing reports (that follows a organisational format). If more granular information needs to be shared, they do so by exchanging spreadsheets documents with data. Often the problem with the spreadsheets, are that they have data organised in different ways and are not in the same format. This results in a tedious harmonisation process when trying to cross-‐reference data between organisations. The IM routines consist of three primary tasks, forming a cycle that is repeated; collecting, analysing, and disseminating information. The application normally used, are general applications that everybody has access and knowledge about (office applications). During crisis there are different coordination’s cells, depending on size and magnitude. Organisations (NGOs) are normally grouped into different sectors, depending what the organisations are specialised in (health, food distribution, shelter & protection, etc). These are called clusters in the humanitarian community, and inside each cluster there is a coordinating body. A cluster coordinator has the responsibility that the cluster is operational and chairs the cluster. IM is part of the cluster coordinators responsibilities. The cluster lays out the objectives and priorities. It is not compulsory for organisations to participate in the cluster and its coordination, but it is seen as a good practice. Related studies In a study on Open Source Software (Currion, Silva, & Walle, 2007), it is suggested that the humanitarian community has not taken full advantage of the potential in the information revolution, 2 Cloud computing, web 2.0 and other technologies that forms a collaborative online experience 3 Personell working with IM 2

Department of Applied IT : University of Gothenburg & Chalmers 3 due to different constraint (human resources, financial resources, etc). Further, the study also points out that the business processes around information system for the humanitarian community is not unique, but probably more challenging. A paper on information frameworks for the humanitarian community (Bui, Cho, Sankaran, & Sovereign, 2000), articulate the need of better information exchange, through standardise information to ensure interoperability. It is also suggested that new media (web-‐based application and tools) can provide quick information, but falls short on providing analysis and manage relevant information to execute decision. Another approach for gathering information and predicative analysis, is through data mining. Taha (Taha & Kass-‐Hout, 2008) presents a platform that automatically scans several data sources and classifies the information to predict diseases. The earthquake in Haiti January 2010 resulted in a substantial need for information products such as, graphs, information matrixes and maps covering the damages and aid requests. The first couple of days into the crisis, were characterized by limited access to reliable data and lack of standards on how information exchange should be supported between the clusters. A draft was presented 3-‐4 week into the crisis (UN, 2010) on how to make a geographic comparison of locations (grid system). Some clusters had by that time produced their own standard of camp-‐sites with geographic position and basic information related to the camps. Because there were no promoted standard, there were multiple names for the same camp sites and geographical positions where often referring to fatly positions. Some sites where already registered, with different names and position. The figures amongst the clusters of the number of people living in each camp site (changed constantly, since people moved around) varied. So a harmonisation process had to be conducted, to clean and align the different cluster data. This could have been avoided if there was a clear directive and standards on information sharing from the beginning. This is also one of the conclusions from the report from the Humanitarian Information Unit (HIU, July 2010) in Haiti. The Disaster Accountability Project (DAP) issued a report on organisation transparency for the aid response in Haiti (Disaster Accountability Project, 2011). The report express a concerning lake of transparency amongst the actor involved. Only 1 of 196 organisations solicited for Haiti relief funds, provide acceptable information for public scrutiny online, and only 20 percent of the 196 organisation in total completed the transparency survey issued by DAP, showing a significant lack of transparency. The report also articulates the need for improved daily information updates that are made available to the public concerning the activities and programs in order to achieve better transparency. Method This paper is based on interviews with IM-‐professional within the area of humanitarian response work. Structured interviews have been conducted via e-‐mail with four respondents. The collected data has been analysed through a thematic study, to find commonality amongst the respondents. The participants in study have a background and education in computer science, informatics and geographic information system (GIS). Most of them are working for Swedish organisations and companies (private and governmental) when not working for Swedish Contingencies Agency Service 3

Department of Applied IT : University of Gothenburg & Chalmers 4 (MSB) internationally. They are recruited through a selection process, where also the international partners to Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) have approved their profiles (through interview and matching against terms of references). The four persons all have background in working with information management, and are named as following thought the study. The persons interviewed in the study, were selected from the MSB international roster. Respondent 1 4 long term missions as Information manager officer Respondent 2 2 long term missions as Information manager officer Respondent 3 3 long term missions as Information manager officer Respondent 4 Shorter missions during 2009, working with Geographic Information System (GIS) The respondents have significant knowledge and experience of the IM routines and the objectives of their specific roles. They are normally working beside the cluster coordinator to gather and analyse information from the cluster. Some of the respondents work on collecting information from multiple clusters (depending on the assignment), to facilitate the coordination of several cluster, and to create an overall picture of the humanitarian situation. Analysis and results The analysis of the interview data resulted in two key areas of concern; Lack of IM routines and Fragmented toolbox. The term “standardised toolbox” is used in this study, and is equivalent to information system. The standardised toolbox refers to a collection of tools and applications where data seamlessly move between the tool boundaries, and resembles an information system. Lack of IM routines The respondents express that the awareness of the IM routines is not always clear amongst the organisations and persons connected to the cluster. What requirements that are needed to setup and maintain a reliable information system. This can lead to that proper IM routines are not prioritised in the onset of a crisis and are established at a later stage. The uncertainty of what the IM routines are, leads to that people that are not trained in IM, do ad-‐ hoc solution in the beginning of a crisis, since there are no dedicated or trained IM person available. The first information is often retrieved by e-‐mails, posting note on the walls, and word of mouth. Normally in this stage there are no thoughts about the structure and traceable of the information gathered. People share what information they have to create a picture of the situation, and most of that information is unstructured and exist in peoples minds. When this solution is no longer viable due to the amount of information from the increasing of people and organisations, another ad-‐hoc solution is often put in place. Where the information is put into a spreadsheet, without thinking through how to structure the data for traceability and decision support. 4

Department of Applied IT : University of Gothenburg & Chalmers 5 "My experience in Indonesia was that data that had been collected before I arrived was difficult to use, the excel document used was not thought through and there was no tracking of the data sources." -‐ Respondent 2 "As I am often coming out as 3rd wave (after 3-‐6 weeks), some tools have often been introduced as emergency masseurs with less emphasis on quality and detailed data (needed for efficient coordination). As introducing new tools, still in simple format -‐ often excel -‐ I am always met with the question -‐ why wasnt this introduced earlier?" -‐ Respondent 1 In many cases there is misconceived idea of what is needed to establish proper IM routines, and to often there seems to be a synonym between IM and the use of Excel. Because this is what people has access to on their computers and are commonly known (explained more in detail later). Even amongst cluster coordinators there is sometimes a vague idea how to establish working IM routines. This will lead to missed opportunities to set up working IM routines early in the crisis. "... her view on IM, was someone that wrote protocols and copied papers. To analyse data and how we collected it, was not of importance to her." -‐Respondent 2 The organisations (NGOs) working in the field (implementing the humanitarian response) are asked by the cluster to report their whereabouts and activities. This is information that the organisations already have and updates continuously, for their internal reporting. But this information is not likely in the format that the cluster is requiring. When share this information, they have to reproduce this information into a cluster specific format (probably one for every cluster that the organisation is participating in). "One big problem us getting the information. Agencies are very busy with limited capacity to provide the information. Also, they may not be used to using structured formats and misunderstand what is needed." -‐ Respondent 3 All this requests of information from various cluster and partner organisations leads to reporting fatigueness and increased workload, when asked to repeat the same information several times. Most of the time information is flowing in one direction (bottom-‐up), and organisations have no easy access to all the gathered information online. That could facilitate the process for organisations to collaborate together and organise themselves. Fragmented toolbox There are variety of system and applications used to perform the task related to IM. The interviewed persons have answered what applications they use and what they used it for. The graph presented below, represent the most used applications. 5

Department of Applied IT : University of Gothenburg & Chalmers 6 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Disseminaion 1 Analysis 0 Collecion Excel ArcGIS Misc Websites E-‐mail Handouts PowerPoint Word Google Groups Google Doc CMS GPS Camera InDesign Photoshop Applicaons and thier main use Figure: Use of different application Data Collection All respondents use Microsoft Excel for collecting data. They use Excel to design a report format with fixed fields and tables for the organisations (NGOs) to fill. This is done quickly by the IM-‐person, when he or she knows what information is need. The span of information normally increases when the crisis unfolds, and when the complexity of the situation is escalated. So the report tools (the spreadsheet) that are used, often undergoes changes and different versions are created over a short time. Normally the collected reports are also stored in a spreadsheet document, which rapidly increases in size (depending on the number of organisations reporting). This leads to problems sooner or later, when using spreadsheet applications for collecting, analysing, storing and reporting information. Some of these problems are; • multiple version of the spreadsheet file, when the document is shared, and more than one person is working on the data at once • inconsistency of data units and quantity (no programmatic constraints for input) • submission of outdated reporting formats (early version of the reporting tool are submitted) • data is not normalised and persisted in a database4 • copy and paste errors • faulty geographic position or format, numerous names for the same place or town (no automatic error checking) • organisation send their own spreadsheets formats, instead of following the promoted format • data is lost when computers break or when the person who collected all data is not present Excel is a powerful tool for analysing information where real-‐time or online collaboration is not needed. But when more than one organisation and one person needs to access to the data at the same time, problem like the above are likely to happen. When trying to use general office application, to address the functionality of a wider information system. 4 Server base, with DBMS 6

Department of Applied IT : University of Gothenburg & Chalmers 7 "For collection of data of response activities, a standardised on-‐line database with distributed user rights would be needed that is tracking cluster-‐specific activities (not projects -‐as the OCHAs 3W standard product) ..." -‐ Respondent 1 Amongst the respondents there is an expressed need for an online, collaborative information system that can support the business process of the IM routines. One person is referring to an OCHA 3W (who is doing what, where) tool, but none of the respondents are reported to use it. When creating reporting formats for the cluster, the knowledge amongst the organisations on how to fill these cluster reports seems to be problematic. Since the nature of office applications and spreadsheets does not restricts the users on double reporting the same data twice or mixing units and formats. This leads to inconsistency and tedious harmonisation process of the collected data for the persons working with IM. "Also better training in data collection routines, who a correct collection of data should be preformed (standardisations needed) to get usable data." -‐ Respondent 4 What is expressed by the IM persons interviewed, is there seems to be a better understanding on what kind of information products the cluster coordinator wants to be produced (maps, statistics, graphs, etc). But less so on what is needed to obtain a reliable information systems, which can support the making of these products. "Standardising will facilitate the process handover between IM persons, and too explain for those we collaborate with, what we do and dont do." -‐ Respondent 2 A standardisation for information exchange would not only enable tools to be interoperable, but also facilitate the hand-‐over process of information. Hand-‐over is an important aspect, since turnover and replacement of personal are frequent in crisis. There is also an expressed need for training and raising awareness around information systems (in broad terms) and explaining the routines that is required for qualitative data gathering. Not only to the people already working with IM, but to all personnel in the organisations that are not specialised in IM and GIS. This is also articulated in the report by HIU (HIU, July 2010). "Better trained staff, i.e. that doesnt work with GIS, can get a understanding for how the system works and what products, analysis, etc, that can be produced. Even training in how to perform an accurate data gathering process (standards needed) to retrieve usable information." -‐ Respondent 4 Analysis and dissemination The respondents in the study all use geographic information systems (GIS) to analyse data and producing maps to facilitate the decision making process. GIS was adopted quickly by the humanitarian community for its ability to visualise data, and graphically present a snapshoot over the situation. "I use Google groups to administrate contacts lists and to distribute documents" – Respondent 2 7

Department of Applied IT : University of Gothenburg & Chalmers 8 Since the data collection phase takes a lot of time and effort for the IM person. There is less time over for analysing and produce information products. These information products are distributed widely (via print-‐outs, webpages and email), and often they present a several days old picture of the situation. This can be a problem if timely information is needed. A collaborative tool would on-‐ demand produce this maps for each user, depending on what he or she is interested to look at. Building an interoperable toolbox that can support and automate parts of the business processes in IM, would be desirable amongst the respondents. Together with the need to move away from the significant use of office applications. That does not promote interoperability and sound meta-‐data standards. Below one respondent is referring to the need for a standardised toolbox. "The lack of standardised tools that are used in all emergencies and that the humanitarian actors will recognise and improve the usage of them." -‐ Respondent 1 Standardisation and accessible information networks was reported as important (UN, 2005), to improve the effectiveness in response and planning. The respondents in this study express unmistakably that the standardisation of information, is still the major concern for the personnel working in the field with IM. Implication for design These implications are based on the previous analysis, and server as guidance for some of the requirements that need to be considered. When designing an information system that supports the IM routines. First is to define a meta-‐data standard that is used by all organisations and actors. So all data that is collected or exchange in one way or the other contains meta-‐data, and it is important to see the meta-‐data as an integrated part of the information. The same is required for the information gathered in early stages of the crisis. Classify information in the same way all over the humanitarian community is also important, i.e. to use the same terminology. "Standardised tools for collecting data. Optimal is an online based tool, with good possibility to capture forms that has been filled online." -‐Respondent 2 The over represented tool used by the interviewed persons are Excel, as explained earlier. This is not seen as an optimal solution amongst the interview person. But a solution to the problem, that there is no sufficient system support for the IM processes (i.e. a fragmented toolbox). There are several concrete requirements in the interview material for functions that would be desired, of a standardised toolbox that can support the IM routines. "During the emergency there is no time to invent new tools, and certain basic tools should be easily available to the field staff (who should receive training before the mission). For example, there should be an easily configurable online 3W, assessment tools, etc that filed staff can use, rather than spending time on excel sheets, etc." -‐ Respondent 3 "Possibility to generate reports." -‐ Respondent 2 8

Department of Applied IT : University of Gothenburg & Chalmers 9 ”Possibility to export-‐import from excel and other formats" -‐ Respondent 2 There are plenty of online tools and applications that can be used to cover a number of the requirements that are needed for IM in humanitarian context. The design of a standardised toolbox should take benefit of the variety of the mesh-‐up services already excising in the cloud, together with specific tools that supports the core IM routines. The boundaries between the different tools must be seamlessly for the user, although the user is working with several different tools when performing tasks in the IM process cycle. This will create a homogeneous system environment for the user. Today the toolbox is fragmented and the user has to manually move data between the tools, and the user environment (interface) can be very different. I am not talking about an all-‐encompassing information system for whole humanitarian community, but tools that can support the core IM routines. The meta-‐data standard will facilitate that data and information can move more easily between tools and systems. Without the need for harmonising data every time the user wants to use functionality in other tools. Tools that support the standard should apply constraints and automatic error checking on gathered data. Even data that are exchanged between tools, should apply error checking to maintain and improve the data quality. The toolbox also needs to provide the possibility to analyse more granular information (explained in the discussion section), together with the meta-‐data standards. So cross-‐reference of data can be done between different tools (that are part of a standard toolbox), without the need for manual labour of harmonising data. It is also necessary to define what tools that are included in the standardised toolbox and what tools that are considered as optional. It is a paramount that the tools that are included in the standard toolbox, are interoperable and promote the meta-‐data standard. System science and informatics are academic disciplines and forms the theoretic framework, from which an information system is designed. There seems to be a need to raise awareness around these theories, amongst the humanitarian community. On how these theories conveys into practice, when gathering information and what requirements they impose on a sound information system. These theories needs to be considered when drafting a new toolbox that better support the IM and a wider information system for the humanitarian community. Many of the tools used today are likely to be part of the next generation of toolbox, and other tools need to be replaced by new tools that better support the business processes. In the section analysing the IM routines, the respondents explains the need to promote sound IM routines to the community. These routines go hand in hand with the system or tools that support these routines. So before training the humanitarian actors in these routines, there needs to be standardised processes for IM related work, and tools that support those processes. Discussion There are several organisation working in one cluster (there were 267 organisations in the health cluster in Haiti alone, Dec 2010 (UN, 2010)), where most of these organisations are reporting activities to the cluster. On top of that, there could be several clusters (12 in Haiti (UN, 2010)) active in the country at the same time. Then the functionality and the intended use for an office application, is probably exceeded. To be able to move away from such tools that does not promote 9

Department of Applied IT : University of Gothenburg & Chalmers 10 interoperability and collaboration. There has to be a framework in-‐place that describes the minimum of requirements for tools intended to be included in a future standardised toolbox. Few people in the humanitarian community (expressed earlier about the awareness on IM routines) know what effort and knowledge it takes to maintain a sound information system. Especially when all the IM phases today, need to be preformed manually by the IM person. On top of the manual labour, there are no promoted standards on information gathering. This makes the work even more time consuming, when trying to understand the ambiguous collected data. "No sufficient standards for colleting, storing, processing, symbolise, etc. exist. This convey to insufficiency metadata when different nations/persons follows different standards/rules. And lead to that no reliable analysis can be made, and that the interoperability between the system and formats are insufficient" -‐ Respondent 4 This appears to be symptomatic in many crises and is stressed by all of the interviewed persons. Currion (Currion, Silva, & Walle, 2007) points out that the humanitarian community has not taking full advantages of the technology shift and what it can provide. It is a crucial that data within the community follows a minimum of standards and is gathered for mutual collaboration. Today data is captured for the purpose of making a report by one person or organisation. That gets communicated via email or websites. It is important to start capture data for the whole community that everyone can collaborate on simultaneously. But for that become a reality, there has to be standards on collected data. Today, most of the information is distributed through a flora of PDF reports and excel matrices via email, CMS and internet sites. There is a great risk that all these reports hide some important pieces of information that could be a conclusive part that could improve the sense making, or have an impact on decision making. It is important to realise that data and information trapped inside PDF reports, does not promote collaboration and a continual revaluation of a situation. There is no time to sit down and skim trough a mountain of PDF reports before understand the current situation, it is not part of a sound sense making or promptly decision making environment. Instead it can become a tsunami of information that is more or less impossible to navigate trough. If you Google “haiti earthquake pdf”, you will get more that 1 220 000 (23 Jan 2011) references to PDF documents. This is an achievement on its own, but where do you start to read, if you intended to start up an aid mission in Haiti (if you add “water” to the search string, you will only get a reference to 596 000 documents)? The information systems5 used today is more of one-‐way directional, feeding information from a bottom-‐up perspective. I.e. the current systems gathering information intended for management and coordination. Where NGOs send-‐in requested data in excel reports or other reporting formats, to someone that aggregate this data on his or her personal computer. From this "one man" information system, they create a standard set of information products like excel matrices, maps, and textual documents. These information products are often in PDF format and summarise what has happen over the last weeks, depending on the cluster reporting cycle. These reports functioning more as communiqués or bulletins and describes the past situation instead of the current. To better support the IM routine providing a information system6 that all concerned parties can collaborate on 5 The fragmented toolbox that is a mixture of excel, e-‐mail, group webpages 6 Several interoperable systems and application, forming a wider information system 10

Department of Applied IT : University of Gothenburg & Chalmers 11 together, on-‐line, and from different locations. So they can coordinate themselves in their local surroundings, with their local partners. Because the problem with standardisation and addressing the need of a standardised toolbox (explained earlier). There will probably be actors (private corporations, volunteers, research institutions, open-‐source community) outside the humanitarian community that will stepping in and solve some of the problems addressed in this study. Especially the open-‐source community that already started to take-‐on this opportunity (more on this topic later). But the technology itself will not solve the problem of a fragmented toolbox. There have been several attempts to tackle the problems with a standardised information system (like CRM, project management system, etc), or adopting general application (office application) that you can buy of the shelf. Most lately the open-‐source community (such as (Sahana, 2010), (Ushahidi, 2010), (SwiftRiver, 2010), etc), has seen the opportunity to aid the humanitarian community. They have an outside perspective, and bring experience in the field of computer science, system science and informatics. They are not restricted to organisational structures and internal politics, and they should continue to be agile and not incorporated into the humanitarian community. But the open-‐ source community can only aid, if the humanitarian community engage in transparency and a willingness to undergo introspection (revise internal processes and organisational structure, etc) themselves. The open-‐source community (research institutes, private corporations) have the experience and knowledge to design the next generation of information system7. But they need the in-‐depth knowledge of routines and practise that the humanitarian community has. Recent studies has shown that crowdsourcing is one way to gather information that can assist on triangulate (HIU, July 2010) the sense making of the situation, but it will not replace the need for structured information, enquired by professionals. The interview material for this study indicates, that structured data is still the base to make reliable predictions, planning and sound decision making. Since crisis sometimes restricts movement of people and impose constraints to logistics capacity, the significant amount of time is it take to attend to different coordination meetings should be reduced. An important paradigm for aid effectiveness would be to provide these interoperable tools, to let organisations at different levels (filed offices, regional offices, headquarters) to coordinate themselves. Since local organisations and actors properly know and understand their surroundings better than outside experts. Therefore it is important to design the next generation of information system to empower the local organisations and community to make self-‐governance possible. So to understand why there is no standardisation on information and tools yet, lies outside the scope of this paper. But the interview material and experience gives some clues about some of the problems. Maitland (Maitland, Tchouakeu, & Tapia, 2009) debate how hierarchical organisational structures can hamper coordination. Other reasons for the slow implementation of standardisations could be political dimensions, unregulated market, ownership of problem, no real transparency. The DAP (Disaster Accountability Project, 2011) report on transparency amongst the organisations in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, shows significant deficiency of detailed information over field work for public scrutiny on-‐ 7 Standardised toolbox 11

Department of Applied IT : University of Gothenburg & Chalmers 12 line. The lack of transparency that the DAP project reports together with the findings in this paper, suggest that there is problems on more levels and not only on the art of capturing consolidate data itself. The DAP report hints that there seems to be a discomfort for outside scrutiny and insight to actual performance. This suggests that even if the humanitarian community comes to terms with the problem of a fragmented toolbox and lack of standardisations. There are other problem areas that need to be aligned before an open and mutual trustful information exchange can be established. Conclusion The study presents some suggestions to align a toolbox of systems and applications that can support the IM routines. The first suggestion that this study propose is to implement a meta-‐data standard that is part of every data-‐containers that is exchanged. There could be sub-‐sets of meta-‐data standards, for more specific use, for sectors that needs more granular and detailed data. Like analysing of spatial data, geology and other high data intensity sectors. The study indicates that the need for structured data to make elaborate analysis and decision making is still important. The second suggestion is to define a standard toolbox of application and systems that support the IM routines, and that these tools endorse the meta-‐data standard. The last suggestion is to promote good IM practise to the whole humanitarian community, not only the professional information managers. The interview material points out that this could have direct impact on data quality, but even more so, when there are standards and policies on information exchange. This study is an introduction to field related problems that professional information managers encounter. There is a need for further studies, to formalise more direct implications for system design and information standardisation. References Bui, T., Cho, S., Sankaran, S., & Sovereign, M. (2000). A framework for designing a global information network for multinational disaster relief. Kluwer Academic Publisher. Currion, P., Silva, C., & Walle, B. V. (2007). Open Source Software for Disaster Managment. Disaster Accountability Project. (2011). One year follow up on the transparency of relief organizations responding to the 2010 Haiti earthquake. HIU. (July 2010). Haiti Earthquake: Breaking New Ground in the Humanitarian Information Landscape. US Department of State, Humanitarian Information Unit. Maitland, C., Tchouakeu, L. N., & Tapia, A. H. (2009). Information Management and Technology Issues Addressed by Humanitarian Relief Coordination Bodies. 6th International ISCRAM Conference. Muhren, W., Eede, G. V., & Walle, B. V. (2008). Sensemaking and implications for information systems design: Findings from the Democratic Republic of Congos ongoing crisis. Wiley. OECD. (2010). The Paris Declaration and Accra Agenda for Action. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/document/18/0,3746,en_2649_3236398_35401554_1_1_1_1,00.html 12

Department of Applied IT : University of Gothenburg & Chalmers 13 Sahana. (2010, December). The Sahana Free and Open Source Disaster Management System. Retrieved from Sahana: http://www.sahanafoundation.org/ SwiftRiver. (2010, December). Retrieved from SwiftRiver: http://swiftly.org/ Taha, & Kass-‐Hout. (2008). International System for Total Early Disease Detection (InSTEDD) Platform. The Sydney Morning Herald. (2010, May). Effectiveness matters in aid debate. Retrieved from http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/blogs/the-‐bishops-‐gambit/effectiveness-‐matters-‐in-‐aid-‐ debate/20100526-‐wbc4.html UN. (2010, Feb 28). Retrieved from OneResponse: http://oneresponse.info/Disasters/Haiti/MapCenter/Pages/GIS.aspx UN. (2010). Retrieved December 6, 2010, from ReliefWeb: http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/doc214?OpenForm&rc=2&cc=hti&query=2#show UN. (2007). Global Symposium +5, on Information for Humanitarian Action. Geneva: United Nations. UN. (2002). Symposium on best practice in humanitarian information exchange. Geneva. UN. (2005). Workshop on Humanitarian Information Management in Latin America and the Caribbean. Panama City: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Ushahidi. (2010, December). Ushahidi. Retrieved from http://www.ushahidi.com/ 13

System support for IM in humanitarian operations (manuscrip 18 mars)

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System support for IM in humanitarian operations (manuscrip 18 mars) — Document Transcript