An interview with Daniel Stauffacher by www.unimondo.org (OneWorld Italy)

Available also here.

Mappe interattive che segnalano focolai di violenza elaborate a partire da segnalazioni via sms e internet. Video educativi per prevenire l’insorgere di epidemie in territori dilaniati dalla guerra. Database aggiornati dagli utenti e combinati con sistemi informativi geografici (GIS) che consentono di identificare le mine da rimuovere. Monitoraggi di elezioni attraverso la condivisione di informazioni su piattaforme digitali. Sistemi di allerta (early-warning) che permettono di prevedere l’insorgere di conflitti. Sono solo alcuni esempi dei tanti possibili modi per utilizzare le Tecnologie per l’Informazione e la Comunicazione (TIC) nella promozione della pace e della ricostruzione post-bellica. A questo tema, il World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), che proprio in questi giorni si sta tenendo a Ginevra, dedicherà una discussione di alto livello presieduta da Daniel Stauffacher, Presidente della ICT for Peace Foundation ed ex Ambasciatore della Svizzera presso le Nazioni Unite.

Il nome della fondazione di cui è presidente unisce due termini, TIC e pace, che, a prima vista, possono apparire estranei. Potrebbe spiegare il loro legame con tre esempi pratici?

Bisogna innanzitutto sottolineare che le TIC sono strumenti che permettono a tutti noi, cittadini della società dell’informazione, di lavorare meglio, qualsiasi sia la nostra occupazione: questo principio vale per un contadino, un banchiere, un funzionario pubblico, un cooperante o, appunto, un operatore di pace che si occupa della prevenzione e allerta dei conflitti, mediazione, peacekeeping, ricostruzione, protezione dei civili o gestione delle informazioni in situazioni di crisi. Tre situazioni concrete mi vengono in mente : un progetto di sminamento umanitario supportato da piattaforme informatiche, i tentativi di riconciliazione tra le fazioni belligeranti in Congo e la piattaforma di allerta dell’UNDP che, aggiornata costantemente attraverso l’incrocio di indicatori e rapporti, permette di prevedere l’insorgere di una crisi.

Il Vertice di Tunisi sulla Società dell’Informazione (WSIS) nel 2005 ha riconosciuto il potenziale delle TIC nella promozione della pace, nella prevenzione dei conflitti e nella ricostruzione post-conflitto. Quali innovazioni si sono affacciate in questo campo dal 2005 a oggi?

Sicuramente oggi disponiamo di strumenti di gran lunga più sofisticati, come le piattaforme per gestire la raccolta e l’elaborazione degli sms, i social media, il crowdsourcing (progetto realizzato da un insieme di persone non definito) e il crowdmapping (mappatura interattiva via internet). Questi strumenti sono venuti alla ribalta per la prima volta in Kenya per localizzare le violenze che si sono scatenate in seguito alle controverse elezioni del 2007. In seguito, nel 2010, in occasione del terremoto a Haiti, sono stati utilizzati per affrontare la crisi umanitaria. Più recentemente, le TIC hanno avuto un ruolo di rilievo durante la primavera araba, in particolare a supporto dell’attivismo per i diritti umani e nel monitoraggio delle elezioni in Egitto e Tunisia.

In che modo le TIC possono fare la differenza nel prevenire un conflitto o ristabilire la pace?

Ci sono sempre molteplici fattori che portano alla guerra o alla pace. Possono essere di natura politica, economica, culturale o etnica, per nominarne alcuni. Non sarebbe intellettualmente onesto affermare una causalità diretta tra l’uso di TIC e la prevenzione o la risoluzione di un conflitto. È vero però che le persone che combattono per la libertà e per i diritti umani, gli operatori umanitari e i mediatori hanno la possibilità di svolgere il proprio lavoro in modo più efficace grazie alle tecnologie digitali perché queste permettono di condividere informazioni vitali in tempo reale con soggetti chiave come decisori, vittime, popolazioni colpite, mezzi di informazione internazionali e così via.

Sulla condivisione rapida e allargata di informazioni via web si basano le piattaforme di crowdsourcing e crowdmapping come Ushaidi (testimone in swahili). Qual è la loro funzione in una situazioni di crisi?

In breve, queste piattaforme permettono a chiunque sia connesso a internet o disponga di un telefono cellulare di comunicare la propria posizione, i bisogni sul campo e coordinare gli interventi di risposta.

In che modo le TIC possono rappresentare un rischio per la pace?

I fomentatori di guerre hanno sempre usato le TIC, e in primo luogo i media tradizionali. La vera novità è che oggi anche chi lavora per prevenire, mediare e gestire un conflitto, ristabilire e mantenere la pace e portare soccorso dispone di una vasta gamma di strumenti tecnologici, diventati più facilmente accessibili a un costo relativamente basso. Tra le possibili minacce, dopo il cyber-crimine e il cyber-terrorismo, ci sono una guerra tra nazioni e la militarizzazione del cyberspazio, in cui potremmo perdere la libertà di accesso e di utilizzo. Per prevenire tale pericolo, c’è bisogno di promuovere dialogo e accordi internazionali.

Il 16 maggio presiederà il dibattito di alto livello del WSIS dedicato alle TIC per la ricostruzione post-conflitto. Quali saranno i principali punti di discussione?

L’utilità delle TIC nella promozione della pace e la ricostruzione, affermata durante il WSIS di Tunisi, è stata testata solo qualche anno dopo, quando un gruppo di cittadini tunisini si sono uniti per rovesciare il governo e protestare contro la mancanza di opportunità economiche e sociali. Le TIC, e sin particolar modo i social media, hanno giocato un importante ruolo nel coordinamento della rivoluzione, nella relativamente pacifica transizione e nel monitoraggio delle elezioni. La Tunisia è uno dei casi, sempre più numerosi, in cui le TIC assumono un ruolo determinante nella ricostruzione post-rivoluzione e post-conflitto. Il programma di partnership internazionale promosso dalla Banca Mondiale infoDev, insieme alla ICT for Peace Foundation e con finanziamenti dell’agenzia inglese per lo sviluppo DfID, ha commissionato una serie di casi studio che analizzano il contributo delle TIC in paesi che si trovano in diverse fasi del processo di ricostruzione: Afghanistan, Liberia, Ruanda, Sri Lanka, Timor Est e Tunisia. Il panel di esperti, basandosi in parte su queste ricerche, discuterà di come i decisori e il settore privato dovrebbero dare priorità all’utilizzo delle TIC in situazioni post-belliche e approfondirà come questi strumenti possano migliorare la fornitura di servizi e la costruzione della nazione (nation building). Si potrà così comprendere meglio il ruolo dell’informazione nello sviluppo post-conflitto e nella promozione della coesione sociale.

Daniela Bandelli

George Sadowsky, the editor, along with Najeeb Al-Shorbaj, WHO, Torbjörn Fredriksson, UNCTAD, two of the fourteen authors and ICT4Peace’s Daniel Stauffacher, member of the Board of the World Wide Web Foundation, released at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva  on 15 May the  Web Foundation’s first major publication: Accelerating Development Using the Web: Empowering Poor and Marginalized Populations, available for download today.

Generously supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and in partnership with the United Nations Development Program, the book is a compendium of articles by recognized experts describing the real and potential effects of the World Wide Web in all major aspects of economic and social development. It provides overviews of the major macro issues – access, capacity, and standards, among others – while also detailing insights into specific business and public policy domains.

The book unites themes of technological innovation, international development, economic growth, gender equality, linguistic and cultural diversity and community action, with special attention paid to the circumstances surrounding the poor and vulnerable members of the Global Information Society. Its findings will be of particular value to policy makers, NGO staff members, foundations, private donors, and regional experts and will also enrich the discourse among academics and members of civil society who are interested in progress in the least developed countries in the world.

Our research fills a gap in the current store of knowledge by taking a broad holistic approach, offering detailed commentary from fourteen experts who are deeply engaged in the field of ICTs for development, many with extensive experience in developing countries, and each able to emphasize the key questions, challenges, and successes unique to their field. While these authors speak of the fields with which they are most familiar, much of the commentary is structured in a way that enables the reader to draw parallels across the fields and identify where there are similarities and divergences in the deployment of ICTs for development.

Browse the Table of Contents and view or download a copy today.

The ICT4Peace Foundation is pleased to inform you about its most recent paper entitled The potential and challenges of open data for crisis information management and aid efficiency: A preliminary assessment.

The authors, Daniel Stauffacher, Sanjana Hattotuwa and Barbara Weekes of the ICT4Peace Foundation, aim to explore both the strengths and potential challenges of open data for crisis information management, crisis response and aid efficiency.

Access to data or information translates into empowerment; power to make informed decisions, to solve problems, to generate economic activity, to improve living standards and, in the case of humanitarian emergencies, to protect and save lives. The integral value and many positive spin-off benefits, in particular for the work of the humanitarian response community, emerging from this flattening of the global information hierarchy, need to be reinforced for those who would prefer to keep data in silos, locked away through licenses, patents and proprietary technology. At the same time, the negative use of collated or triangulated open data for destructive purposes against populations or individuals at risk should not be underestimated.

The paper raises issues for further study and exploration including the impact of the ever-increasing number of organizations and governments both opening their data, and integrating data from sources outside traditional channels; the creation of new open data sources such as the Core and Fundamental Datasets of the UN Crisis Information Strategy (CiMS); the risk of open data for vulnerable populations and IDPs; the need to uphold the “do no harm” principle of humanitarian work in this newly emerging environment; the potential benefits of combining open data with crowd-sourced information and feedback to increase quality and veracity of information; the role of crowd-sourced information in a fragile state context; and the need to increase technical know-how and capacity building, particularly in countries at risk.

Despite the explosion of open data and information sharing, there is still quite a long road to go before all the necessary actors are convinced of the benefits of openness and transparency. There are still serious challenges in terms of licensing, proprietary technologies and commercial interests, which need to be addressed. But, through the initiatives and expertise of governments, NGOs and transnational corporations, information is being unlocked and published. Citizens with new tools and devices are producing their own information. We are at the dawn of a new age of empowerment and perhaps the biggest democratic process in the history of mankind. This fast-moving process requires detailed further study, both of the issues raised in this paper and also building on the important work being done by a myriad of NGOs and international organizations.

Read online here. Download the report as a PDF here.

In this latest paper by the ICT4Peace Foundation, the authors have called for a non-binding code of conduct to strengthen cyber-security and mitigate the threat of growing cyber-security threats. The paper is a substantive basis for the call issued by the authors in an op-ed in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung on 6 July 2011, for such a non-binding code of conduct.

The paper describes also some recent developments in 2011 that took place at the policy-making level at the United Nations and important conferences in London and Berlin in the Fall of 2011.

Download the report as a PDF here or view it online here.

I am pleased to send you the ICT4Peace Foundation’s 2011 Year End Report, which you can read online here, or download as a PDF here.

2011 was, as the year before, rather tumultuous with the Arab Awakening and with political, economic and social upheaval affecting every corner of the globe. The year has also been marked by terrible natural disasters. It was a very busy year for the Foundation and as a larger community interested in promoting peace, democracy, human rights and development through the use of ICTs and social media. We believe great progress was made in increasing awareness and better understanding of the international community on the enormous potential that we have in using these social media, online platforms and ICTs in general.

An important event for the Foundation this year was the successful hosting, together with the Swiss Government and the EU Joint Research Centre, of the 2011 International Crisis Mappers Conference in Geneva. It was the largest ICCM gathering to date.

We continued our rich cooperation with UN ASG and CITO Dr. Soon-Hong Choi to support the implementation of the UN Crisis Information Management Strategy as part of the UN Secretary General’s overall UN ICT strategy. The Foundation also supported UN OCHA in building the Humanitarian Response – Common and Operational Datasets (CODs) Registry to make critical information during a humanitarian crisis more widely available and accessible.

The Foundation developed and carried out training courses in Crisis Information Management (CIM) for multidimensional and multi-stakeholders missions in peacekeeping and peace-building. The content was anchored to new dimensions in peacekeeping and disaster management, including harnessing the potential of new media, the web, Internet and mobile technologies for increased situation awareness.

The work on the ICT4Peace Ushahidi Matrix Plug-in on information validation continued over 2011 and tested during the recent Egyptian elections, as well as the historic first democratic elections in Tunisia.

Late this year, the Foundation underwent an evaluation of its work since 2006 by the Swiss Government. The very useful findings and recommendations reaffirmed the unique role and relevance of the Foundation and will help refine its strategy from 2012 to 2016. We hope to continue to champion the use of ICTs in all aspects of peacebuilding, peacekeeping and crisis management over 2012, and beyond.

With my best wishes,

Daniel Stauffacher

28 November, Geneva, Switzerland – Daniel Stauffacher, Chairman, ICT4Peace Foundation, participated as a member of the Futurict project team in the EU FET Flagship Pilots Midterm Conference, 24-25 November 2011, Warsaw, Poland. This project is co-lead by Prof. Dirk Helbing, ETH Zürich and Prof. Steven Bishop, University College, London along with approximately 300 research teams all over the world. ICT4Peace has been supporting the efforts of Prof. Helbing and Prof. Bishop to build this important project since spring 2010.

The EU FET Flagships are ambitious large-scale, science-driven, European research initiatives that aim to achieve a visionary goal. The scientific advance should provide a strong and broad basis for future technological innovation and economic exploitation in a variety of areas, as well as novel benefits for society. The six selected FET Flagship Pilots were officially launched by EU Vice-President Neelie Kroes in May 2011 during the fet11 Conference in Budapest. The Midterm Conference in Warsaw was an opportunity for the six Flagship Pilots (FuturICT, Graphene, Guardian Angels, The Human Brain Project, EPFL Lausanne, ITFoM and RoboCom) to promote their projects in front of approximately 250 experts, including EC, national funding agencies and other stakeholders.

What is FuturICT?
We have built particle accelerators to understand the forces that make up our physical world. Yet, we do not understand the principles underlying our strongly connected, techno-socio-economic systems. We have enabled ubiquitous Internet connectivity and instant, global information access. Yet we do not understand how it impacts our behaviour and the evolution of society. To fill the knowledge gaps and keep up with the fast pace at which our world is changing, a Knowledge Accelerator must urgently be created. For this, the FuturICT flagship project will promote an interdisciplinary integration of natural, social, and engineering sciences with novel paradigms of information technology. This will produce the synergy effects required to address many of our 21st century challenges. After the age of physical, biological and technological innovations, FuturICT will lead Europe into the next era – a wave of information-driven social and socio-inspired innovations.

Globalisation and technological change have made our world a different place. This has created or intensified a number of serious problems, such as global financial and economic crises, political instabilities and revolutions, the quick spreading of diseases, disruptions of international supply chains, organised crime, international conflict and world-wide terrorism, and increased cyber-risks as well.

Although the creation of more and more interconnected systems and the pace of innovation in the area of information and communication technologies (ICT) have contributed to the above problems, future ICT can also be key to the solution. It can create unprecedented benefits for our economy and society, based on a whole range of new methods and innovations. For this, ICT must acquire the ability to flexibly adapt to the needs of society.

In this way, it can become a stabilising factor fostering transparency, trust, respect for individual rights, and opportunities for participation in social, economic, and political processes. This requires us to establish a new science of multi-level complex, global systems and a co-evolution of ICT with society, by bringing the best knowledge of experts on information and communication systems, complex systems and the social sciences together.

The vision of the FuturICT flagship project is to develop the capacity to explore and manage our future, based on a fundamental understanding of the institutional and interaction-based principles that make connected systems work well.

The methods and ‘Big Data’ needed for such a scientific endeavour are now becoming available: it is, therefore, time to make a ‘Big Science’ effort to couple methods and data with theories and models, like in the Human Genome Project. This endeavour should be open, because we need to prevent private monopolies of socio-economic data, and it should be federated, because joint interdisciplinary efforts are the only way to tackle humanity’s global challenges and ensure leadership in socio-inspired ICT innovations. The investments into the FuturICT project can benefit citizens and society in many ways: by promoting collective awareness of the impacts of our decisions and actions, by mitigating global problems and systemic risks, and by creating new possibilities to participate in social, economic and political affairs. In particular, FuturICT will create the basis for new spin-offs, business opportunities and jobs.

FuturICT is a visionary project that will deliver new science and technology to explore, understand and manage our connected world. This will inspire new information and communication technologies (ICT) that are socially adaptive and socially interactive, supporting collective awareness.

Revealing the hidden laws and processes underlying our complex, global, socially interactive systems constitutes one of the most pressing scientific challenges of the 21st Century. Integrating complexity science with ICT and the social sciences, will allow us to design novel robust, trustworthy and adaptive technologies based on socially inspired paradigms. Data from a variety of sources will help us to develop models of techno-socioeconomic systems. In turn, insights from these models will inspire a new generation of socially adaptive, self-organised ICT systems. This will create a paradigm shift and facilitate a symbiotic co-evolution of ICT and society. In response to the European Commission’s call for a ‘Big Science’ project, FuturICT will build a largescale, pan European, integrated programme of research which will extend for 10 years and beyond.

Why do we need it?
Today, society and technology are changing at a pace that often outstrips our capacity to understand and manage them. It seems that we know more about the universe than about our society. Therefore it is time to use the power of information to explore social and economic life on Earth and discover options for a sustainable future. As the recent financial crisis demonstrates, the systems that we have built to organise our affairs now possess an unprecedented degree of complexity and interdependence among their technological, social and economic components. This complexity often results in counter-intuitive effects driven by positive feedbacks that lead to domino-like cascades of failures. Neither the precepts of traditional science, nor our collective experience from a simpler past, adequately prepare us for the future. It is simply impossible to understand and manage complex networks using conventional tools.

We need to put systems in place that highlight, or prevent, conceivable failures and allow us to quickly recover from those that we cannot predict. We need this insight to help manage our financial markets but also to tackle other risks, such as flu pandemics, social instabilities, or criminal networks. At the same time, policymakers are currently faced with major decisions of how to plan the general infrastructure of services to cope with the demands of the future, and what is more, to do so in a sustainable manner. The same decisions are also posed to individuals who wish to improve their own lives. Thus now is the time to create a paradigm shift moving from a focus on the system components and their properties towards evaluating their interactions. These interactions are often hard to measure but create collective, emergent dynamics, which are characteristic of strongly coupled systems.

How will it work?
The FuturICT flagship project will align the research of hundreds of the best scientists in Europe through a 10 year, €1 billion research programme to develop new methods which integrate different scientific models, data and concepts. To build capacity, regional support will be developed alongside educational programmes for young researchers.

FuturICT will build a sophisticated framework for simulation, visualisation and participation, called the FuturICT Platform. A suite of models forming the Living Earth Simulator will power Observatories, to detect and mitigate crises plus identify opportunities in specific areas. These models will be driven, and calibrated, by data aggregated in real-time, which are gathered by a digital Planetary Nervous System. Both models and data will support the decision-making of policy-makers, business people and citizens, through a Global Participatory Platform, which is intended to facilitate better social, economic and political participation.

What will be the benefit?
The FuturICT project will produce benefits for science, technology and society by integrating previously separated approaches. ICT systems of the future will provide the social sciences with the datasets needed to make major breakthroughs in our understanding of the principles that make socially interactive systems work well. This, in turn, will inspire the design of future systems, made up of billions of interacting, intelligent components capable of partially autonomous decisions. One goal is the creation of a privacy-respecting, reputation-oriented, and self-regulating information ecosystem that promotes the co-evolution of ICT with society. The tremendous growth in social media, mobile applications, Open Data and Big Data will enable complexity science to tackle practical problems by uncovering laws of interaction and help us understand the implications of strong couplings, thereby forging a new science of global systems that are more resilient to disruptions.

Furthermore, FuturICT will produce outcomes that are relevant to society, creating systems that help decision makers assess the implications of alternative strategies. FuturICT’s Global Participatory Platform will thus provide something like a policy ‘wind tunnel’ where the consequences of decisions can be explored. Hence the project will create a focus on resilience and sustainability.

Exemplar, case studies will be performed in order to address major challenges such as smart cities or smart energy systems, but also build up our capacity to model systems and understand data. Additionally these studies will improve our understanding of over-arching, key concepts such as risk, trust, resilience and sustainability which are relevant to a wide range of systems, including ICT systems. Having all this new information in place will allow FuturICT to study interactions among society, technology, environment and the economy through interconnected Exploratories. This will allow us to create an Innovation Accelerator that will discover valuable knowledge in the flood of information, help to find the best experts for projects, and support the distributed generation of new knowledge, hence promoting innovation.

FuturICT will start an era of social innovation, sparking off novel, socially inspired technologies, spin-offs and whole new business areas.

Who is involved?
Active collaborations are now taking place among Europe’s top universities with hundreds of researchers engaged in the project. Hubs to support regional activities have been created in many European countries. FuturICT communities also exist in USA, Japan, China, and Australia. Individuals and a wide range of scientific organisations have expressed their explicit support, as have small and big businesses. Each supporter recognises the vital importance of securing funds for this area of research to build European expertise within an integrated project and create an innovation economy based on the digital revolution, while at the same time benefiting humanity. Affiliations with existing complementary projects are being established and new projects are being encouraged.

FuturICT: National Focus Areas and Responsibilities
Regional hubs have been set up in many countries to coordinate activities. Some of the collaborating institutes are shown; we envisage different institutes joining the project as it develops. In addition collaborations have started with e.g. Microsoft Research, IBM, Telecom Italia, Yahoo! Research, Disney Research and many others. Please see the website www.futurict.eu for the full list and details of the hubs.

Contacts
Prof. Steven Bishop UCL, FuturICT.eu Pilot Phase Coordinator, email: sbishopuclacuk
Prof. Dirk Helbing, ETH Zurich, Chair of FuturICT.eu Steering Committee, email: dhelbingethzch

This system is based on the principle of sending reports via SMS by the ISIE accredited observers to inform, for example on an offense or assault in a polling station.

This system allows ISIE to develop a dashboard of the conduct of the elections and to react in time to overcome any problems or offenses.

Through the platform every citizen will be informed in real time of the electoral process and election related violence incidents and he and the Government can react to the reports. The site does not include violations of the election campaign reported by the press and electronic media.

Adresse URL de la Carte : http://carte.isie.tn/fr/?l=fr_FR

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Dans le cadre de la réalisation de ses missions, l’Instance supérieure Indépendante pour les Elections ( ISIE ) a mis en place, grâce à la coopération avec la DCAF et avec le concours de la Fondation ICT4Peace , un système de contrôle de transparence et de régularité de l’organisation des élections et de sécurité du processus électoral.

Ce système est basé sur le principe d’envoi de rapports via sms pas les contrôleurs de l’ISIE pour dénoncer une infraction ou pour informer d’une agression dans un bureau de vote, les observateurs accrédités peuvent participer à ce système.

Ce système permet :

• à l’ISIE de dresser un tableau de bord de la marche des élections et de réagir à temps pour pallier à tout problème ou infraction,
• à tout citoyen d’être informé du déroulement du processus électoral et de réagir par rapport aux rapports qui figurent dans la carte ou de les commenter.

Le site ne comprend pas les violations de la campagne électorale enregistrée sur les médias.

Adresse URL de la Carte: http://carte.isie.tn/fr/?l=fr_FR

Download the report here. View full screen here.

Monitoring Tunisia’s first election: Rapport Preliminaire | Preliminary Report

…It is now a given that ICTs are front and centre in relief and aid work, irrespective of the nature of the disaster and where it occurs. Several significant challenges remain. Issues of sustainability, clear relationships with the United Nations, Governments, the role of crisis mapping in complex political emergencies, ownership and use of data, data architecture, and stakeholder management are some of these. The variance in the response—some disasters are seemingly more telegenic than others—is another challenge. Currently, for example, the Horn of Africa famine and the associated crises gravely affecting millions of people has not animated the crisis-mapping community and its online platforms to the extent of post-Haiti or, more recently, following the 2011 earthquake in Japan. Unfortunately, there are still “silent disasters” for which ICT can be used, but are often not to the extent possible or desirable.

Today, the CiMs process is well recognized within the UN system, and has moved from championing the use of ICT in relief work to championing a more robust framework for their adoption and use. Senior leadership in many agencies are embracing social networking and web-based tools, but this is still haphazard, with little or no organizational vision. Interoperability is still an issue—data created in some platforms, no matter how good they are, are still difficult to export and use in other systems. Financial and knowledge resources to train information management workers, especially at the field level, remain scarce. The Foundation’s engagement with UN agencies over the years on CIM suggests, enduring challenges over data sharing between the crisis mapping community, which is itself fractured, and United Nations agencies.

With ICT constantly evolving, the UN system needs to remain agile and aware of how these technologies can help prevent, mitigate, and respond to crises. The UN system is the international community’s “long-tail”—present in disaster areas long after global media attention and the swarm of NGOs have moved on. It is vital, therefore, to support the CiMS process as a means through which, in the future, the UN system can respond more efficiently and effectively to the plethora of challenges that beset us.

Read the article in full here.

Image courtesy The Lede, New York Times

Together with its partners, the Cairo Regional Center for Training  on Conflict Resolution and Peacekeeping in Africa (CCCPA), the Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA) Sweden, Zentrum für Internationalen Friedensdienst (ZIF), Germany, The Center for Crisis Management (CMC), Finland and the African Peace Support Trainers’ Association,  (APSTA), the ICT4Peace Foundation will conduct from 9 to 13 October 2011 a pilot JMAC–Crisis Information Management Course, which  aims to strengthen the skills and capabilities of present and future senior level staff of  UN, African Union or other Peacekeeping and Peace-building Mission Analysis Centres, be they civilian, military or police, in collecting, analysing, assessing and producing information for better crisis management and decision making at UN peace mission level involving a wide range of stakeholders. It also aims at developing African capacities for peace operations. The Course will also demonstrate the opportunities and challenges of these new ICTs and social media tools and provide some reality based simulation exercises. The Swiss Government financially supports the contribution of ICT4Peace.

Efficient and timely provision of shared situational awareness (SSA) and professional crisis information management are essential to enable decision-making in Multi-dimensional Peace Operations and are a prerequisite for effective action and integrated approach, founding principles of the United Nations and African Union integrated missions.

Ultimately, successful integration and coordination requires a high degree of sensitivity to the interest and operating cultures of a broad set of actors, and efficient and appropriate Information Management (IM). For this purpose, for instance, the UN has established Joint Mission Analysis Centres (JMAC) in peace missions that are staffed by civilian, military and police peacekeeping personnel. JMAC’s role is the provision of reliable information to decision-makers to make accurate and appropriate decisions in crisis situations – whether humanitarian or conflict based – using openly collected information from a variety of uniformed and civilian sources. These include modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) using social media, crisis mapping, and crowd sourcing as essential tools already used by the international community in crises.

The Folke Bernadotte Academy has carried out the Information and Intelligence Cooperation in Multifunctional International Operations Course, and contributed to the Development of the Nordcaps United Nations Joint Mission Analysis Centres Course. The Cairo Regional Center for Training on Conflict Resolution and Peacekeeping in Africa (CCCPA) and the ICT4Peace Foundation have cooperated in the past, in organizing Training Programs for Multidisciplinary Integrated Missions in Africa and a Training Programme for Integrated Missions to Overcome the Lack of Shared Situational Awareness in Peacekeeping Operations. ICT4Peace has supported the Kofi Annan International Peace-keeping Training Center (KAIPTC) in Ghana to develop a Crisis Information Management Course and carried out a Crisis Information Management Training Course at the Master Programme on Humanitarian Logistics and Management of the University of Lugano USI), together with OCHA.

At the Conference of the International Association od Peacekeeping Training Centers, IAPTC 2010 in Dhaka, ICT4Peace organized a workshop on a potential JMAC-CiM course, which was well received. Following that conference, FBA, CMC, ZIF, CCCPA and ICT4Peace agreed to jointly develop a Senior JMAC-CiM training course, building on the experiences of the above-mentioned courses and organisations, and in coordination with UN and the African Union. Subsequently ICT4Peace and its partners organized a one day workshop – kindly hosted at and by ZIF in Berlin, to discuss and develop the content of a new training course, under the leadership of Jacques Baud, Director of the course in Cairo, a former Head of the JMAC in Sudan and a Senior Advisor of the ICT4Peace Foundation. The course in Cairo is an integral part of and supports the implementation of UN Secretary General’s Crisis Information Management Strategy (CiMS), developed by the UN ASG Chief Information Technology Officer (CITO), Dr. Soon-hong Choi, in cooperation with the ICT4Peace Foundation.

Digital Development Debates published by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH features this week a short essay from the Foundation looking at the use of ICTs in crisis response, peace-keeping, conflict resolution and state-building.

Read the article in full here.

As we note in the introductory passages,

“Moving from a rigid traditional top-down hierarchical approach, the humanitarian community and the military are increasingly relying on mobile, inclusive and interactive tools, building on a wealth of information gathered from locals and those outside traditional humanitarian communities. This transformative switch to a more bottom-up and waterfront approach, focusing on the individuals in crisis areas, means encouraging communities and individuals to be prepared, self-sufficient and reliant in times of crisis and conflict.”

Eschewing the hype and inaccurate claims often made around the use of ICTs in crisismapping and humanitarian relief today, our short article flags serious questions around emergent policies, practices and thinking in the use of new online and mobile technologies for relief and aid work.

“In summary, approaching humanitarian relief with an increasing emphasis on ICT brings with it hope for a better future, but also significant challenges. It is true that UN agencies and many humanitarian organizations increasingly use web-based social networks and ICTs as an integral part of their operations, including content from Twitter and Facebook. Stressing the need for accountability, many organizations suggest that new tools and mobiles have significantly improved the ability of victims to help themselves and each other after a disaster.

Nevertheless, the challenges remain formidable. How can the humanitarian community and other actors physically assess the mountains of data that come in? There is very little time in crisis situations and even less time for reading thousands of emails and text messages. What steps do the humanitarian community need to take in order to manage this process? How can the accuracy of the information coming into a given platform be validated, in particular in conflict situations where misinformation is often used as a weapon? How can individuals in conflict situations who provide valuable information be protected? What responsibility do technology platform providers have? What happens when collected information cannot be acted on? How can the links between the information gathering and implementation be improved? How can responders ensure that new systems uphold the “do no harm” principle of the humanitarian community? What criteria exist, or should exist, for ICT providers (including crisis mappers and social media) to determine which crises they should address or “map”? Who actually owns and has access to ICTs that could be of use post-disaster as well as for disaster preparedness?

The question of accountability and the responsibility to asses new ICT tools and platforms from the perspective of the disaster-affected community is still a very important issue. This requires humility and the eschewing of what is a tendency amongst actors in relief work to take credit when things go right, and disavow responsibility when expectations are either not met, go unheeded, or, in some cases, even threaten lives.”

The Transparency Accountability Initiative recently released the final report on a Global mapping of technology for transparency and accountability. As the launch press release avers,

As internet and mobile phone use increases, technology is transforming the field of transparency and accountability making it an increasingly dynamic space across the globe. Technology is helping to improve citizen participation in decision-making and producing new ways of identifying public service challenges through processes such as ‘data mashing’.

This paper documents current trends in the way technology is being used to promote transparency in different parts of the world. It reviews over 100 projects from across Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, examining how new technologies are re-energising traditional methods. In particular, it focuses on how these new technologies are helping to engage different actors from citizens, media, authorities and the private sector.

Our research finds promising success stories alongside less accomplished examples. The authors argue that a key element of successful technology use in transparency and accountability efforts is their speed – both in execution and in stimulating change. Well-designed efforts produced relevant and usable information that can be used to demand accountability quickly. Technology for transparency and accountability tools need not be sophisticated, but it does need intelligent design that is relevant to the local context. Projects also have a better chance of effectively producing change when they take a collaborative approach, sometimes involving government.

The paper includes a summary of the key findings and recommendations for further research in key areas of this field.

Download the PDF from here.

Special Advisor to the ICT4Peace Foundation Sanjana Hattotuwa’s work in Sri Lanka using technology to strengthen democratic governance was highlighted as a key example in the lead up to this report.

The PDF and video below are taken from Technology for Transparency Network blog.

Approaching humanitarian relief, with an increasing emphasis on ICT, brings with it hope for a better future but at the same time significant challenges. How can the humanitarian community and other actors physically assess the mountains of data that come in? What steps does the humanitarian community need to take in order to manage this process? How can the accuracy of the information coming into a given platform be validated, in particular in conflict situations where misinformation is often used as a weapon? How can individuals in conflict situations, who provide valuable information, be protected?

Another important series of issues also need to be discussed about the responsibility and role of technology providers. What responsibility do technology platform providers have? What happens when collected information cannot be acted on? How can the links between the information gathering and implementation be improved? How can responders ensure that new systems uphold the “do no harm” principle of the humanitarian community? What criteria exist, or should exist, for ICT providers (including crisis mappers and social media) to determine which crises they should address or “map”?

At the end of the day, the question remains as to whether or not we will be able to use improved ICT in such a way so as to significantly improve the situation for affected communities in crises. Does increased ICT ability and use really mean progress and reduced loss of life? To date, the jury is out but at a minimum new technology provides an opportunity to re-think how we respond to crises, how we prepare communities for disasters and we manage conflict and post-conflict situations.

Participants of CiMAG meeting

• David Kaatrud, WFP
• Andrew Alspach, OCHA
• Kimberly Roberson, UNHCR
• Shelley Gornall, UNHCR
• Sanjana Hattotuwa, ICT4Peace
• Barbara Weekes, ICT4Peace
• Daniel Stauffacher, ICT4Peace, Chair

Read the full report here.

Tim Berners-Lee and British former Prime Minister Gordon Brown were at the University of Geneva on Wednesday 6 April to talk before 2000 people about the future of the web and its role in initiating change. Both leaders are prominent directors of the World Wide Web Foundation, whose mission is to help expanding access to the 80 per cent of the world’s population who do not have access to the web and trying to help people in Africa, Asia and Latin America put useful local content in their languages on the web and access it via simple, ubiquitous, mobile phone technology. Today, the minimum infrastructure required for providing mobile browsing is available. Some 95 per cent of existing phones worldwide have a basic browser or possibility to have one, and 90 per cent of the world is covered by a minimum GSM mobile telephone network. More important is the content, services and information. People have to be taught how to develop HTML sites that fit low capacity browsers and bandwidth (see full article on swissinfo.ch) and enable them to exercise their right of access to the web.

Daniel Stauffacher, Director of the World Wide Web Foundation Board and ICT4Peace Foundation Chairman, proposed and helped organizing this event in cooperation with the Government of Geneva and the University of Geneva.

Below are two English press pieces on this event:

• Web creator works to bridge digital divide
• Geneva-based Web foundation aims to get Africans online via cell phones

View the event poster in full-screen here.

• Background information on Libya and UN operations
• Key UN contacts
• Key situation reports, including from UN OCHA
• A plethora of carefully curated Twitter feeds and other social media updates in English
• Videos, photos and podcasts
• Mainstream media news updates, including streams and content from Al Jazeera, New York Times, BBC, France24 and CNN.
• Discoverable and free GIS / mapping resources
• Google Maps mashups
• Ways to help IDPs and refugees

To coincide with the end of the Standby Volunteer Task Force’s active participation in the live crisis mapping support for Libya, of which the Foundation was also a part of, we updated the wiki for the final time today.

Over a month, the 2011 Libyan Unrest wiki was viewed online well over two thousand times. As with our previous crisis information management wikis on disasters, it was also shared widely over email, Facebook and Twitter.

We have produced a comprehensive PDF of all the resources in the wiki. This is an invaluable document for journalists and researchers to access content of enduring value and relevance.

Download the PDF here.

2011 Libyan Uprising Wiki (Final Update)

11.1.11, Switzerland: The ICT4Peace Foundation, in collaboration with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and GeorgiaTech, is pleased to release, on the occasion of the anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti, the first in a series of papers looking at the increasingly important role of information and communication technology (ICT) in conflict prevention, peacebuilding, peacekeeping and crisis response.

Unlike other papers on innovative technologies (crowdsourcing, social networking etc) dealing with crisis response, reconstruction and humanitarian aid, this collection of thought provoking pieces by esteemed writers, including former Finnish President and Nobel Peace Prize Winner Martti Athisaari and a younger generation of cutting edge practitioners and scholars in this fast moving space, aims to encourage meaningful debate and action on how to solve the serious challenges that still exist in the effective use of ICTs.

“There has been solid progress in improving the international community’s response to crises through the effective use of innovative ICTs in crisis information management. However, there is still a long road ahead. In particular, we need to focus on how to extract and use verified information from crowdsourced data. The right mechanisms and tools for effective and coordinated crisis information management still need to be developed and refined.” Daniel Stauffacher, Co-Founder and Chairman, ICT4Peace Foundation.

Going beyond the current debate and positive hype about ICTs, this paper probes difficult questions and provides concrete recommendations concerning:

• the effectiveness of current systems of crisis information management;
• the need for a comprehensive assessment of the effectiveness of the use of ICTs in crisis response by the academic community;
• the need for better coordinative mechanisms amongst the key players, including the UN and its various agencies;
• the humanitarian responsibility of various actors, in particular new players such as crowdsourcing providers and social media;
• the serious challenges that still need to be overcome in terms of underlying political, hierarchical and traditional resistance to information-sharing amongst diverse organizations;
• the negative potential of ICTs in compromising the security of persons at risk in conflict situations;
• the lessons learned from the earthquake in Haiti on the use of new ICTs in disaster response situations and,
• the big picture of what this shift to an ICT-focused approach really means for existing humanitarian response systems.

Download the report here.

For more details contact Daniel Stauffacher  (danielstauffacherict4peaceorg)  , Chairman, ICT4Peace Foundation.

Download the full report here.

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22 December 2010

Dear friends and colleagues,

2010 was again a very eventful year for all of us who are working in this  exciting and challenging new field we call crisis information management, or peace and humanitarian operations in the information age.  During many of the natural and man-made crisis all over the world in 2010, it was demonstrated again in a most visible and credible fashion, how Information and Communication Technologies have once and for all changed the way, how the international community manages crisis and can positively support the humanitarian and peace workers and victims alike.

Like so many others, the ICT4Peace Foundation, has been for instance  actively involved in assisting crisis information management activities in Haiti, Chile, Pakistan Kyrgystan, Gulf of Mexico. Through the deployment of the ICT4Peace Crisis Information Management Wikis (www.wiki.ict4peace.org), the Foundation was able to support the actors on the ground,  and the Foundation was hailed by the UN for that effort.

Of course these new tools and processes also pose new challenges to the international community, which need to be addressed.  The Foundation therefore launched early on a reflection process and released a report in March 2010 – Haiti and beyond: Getting it right in Crisis information management (http://ict4peace.org/publications/haiti-and-beyond-getting-it-right-in-crisis-information-management-4) – the first critique of a number of others – on the deployment of ICTs to help aid and relief efforts in Haiti after the devastating earthquake in January 2010.  As noted in this succinct report, much more can and must be done to strengthen disaster preparedness and crisis information management. There are no longer excuses for ill-preparedness or haphazard aid response. We already know much of what needs to be done and going forward requires requisite funding coupled with political will of  the international community.

It was therefore gratifying to see that the UN Secretary General in its report to this years UN General Assembly on the implementation of the ICT Strategy of the UN  underscores again the need for a better and more robust crisis information management strategy  and  implementation,  the development of which the ICT4Peace Foundation was privileged to support since 2008 with the stocktaking report on the UN Crisis Information Management Capabilities, including the use of Web 2.0 and social networking tools.

As a follow-up to this report, in 2009 the UN CITO and other key UN agencies such as DPKO, DPA, OCHA, WFP, UNICEF, UNHCR convened the UN Crisis Information Management Advisory Group (CiMAG), to develop the UN Crisis Information Management Strategy (CiMS). (http://ict4peace.org/updates/report-of-the-un-secretary-general-underscores-crisis-information-management-strategy).

This positive development is mainly thanks to the relentless efforts of the UN Chief Information Technology Officer, Dr. Soon-hong Choi, who simultaneously published a very readable report on the  UN ICT Strategy with a reference to Crisis Information Management and the ICT4Peace Foundation. (http://ict4peace.org/updates/united-nations-core-ict-strategy-incorporates-crisis-information-management).

In the fall 2010 the Foundation along with the UN CITO, Dr. Soon-hong Choi  participated at the 2010 Crisismappers Meeting in Boston. The UN thus embraced for the first time at the highest level an increasingly important community of actors in crisis information management. The ICT4Peace Foundation subsequently was the first organisation to publish a report on the pressing question of how to support cross-fertilization between the UN IASC Core Operational Data Sets (COD) and Information generated by Crisismappers during a given crisis (http://ict4peace.org/updates/connecting-crisismapping-to-the-united-nations).

The ICT4Peace Foundation is also pleased to report on its second third year of successful cooperation with Ushahidi (www.ushahidi.org). In view of the increasing need to qualify and verify crowdsourced information, the ICT4Peace Foundation helped the development of the Matrix plugin for the Ushahidi platform. Used in the Ushahidi instance set up to monitor the Tanzanian national elections on 31st October 2010, this plugin essentially requires pre-trained reporters in the field tagging reports with the following for reports they enter into the system: 1.) Source Reliability and 2.) Information Probability. When the reports are filtered into the back-end, administrators via the analysis plugin would then see the attached matrix on tagged reports, which helps with making analyses’, finding related reports and/or possibly creating new reports to shield the actors involved in some of these reports.  (http://ict4peace.org/publications/the-matrix-plugin-for-ushahidi-platform).

The ICT4Peace Foundation was invited in October 2010 to participate at the early warning for protection conference in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, organised by Oxfam Australia and supported by Australian Government’s AusAID, to explore how private, public and civil society institutions can harness early warning information and communication technologies (ICTs) and mechanisms to contribute to the prevention of mass atrocity crimes. On behalf of the United Nations Francis Deng, Special Advisor of the Secretary General for the Prevention of Genocide and Dr. Edward Luck Special Advisor of the Secretary General for the Responsibility to Protect and leading experts participated. In preparation of this Conference the ICT4Peace Foundation published a report called ICTs for the prevention of mass atrocity crimes (http://ict4peace.org/updates/icts-for-the-prevention-of-mass-atrocity-crimes). The report explores what is being done to support the prevention of mass atrocity crimes as well as reconciliation, healing and justice with a particular emphasis on the use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) ?

The ICT4Peace Foundation, in the fulfilment of its mandate, also continued to work with the Cairo Regional Center for Training on Conflict Resolution and Peacekeeping in Africa (CCCPA), the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC) in Accra and L’Ecole de Maintien de la Paix (EMP) based in Bamako, Mali to develop Crisis Information Management courses training courses for peacekeepers, governments. I.O., NGOs in multi-stakeholder and multi-dimensional missions in the region. ICT4Peace, in close cooperation with UN OCHA also carried out a Crisis Information Management (CiM) Training course for humanitarian operations managers as part of the Executive Master Programme for Humanitarian Logistics and Management of the University of Lugano. This course included the testing of a first of its kind CiM simulation exercise using ICTs based on the events in Haiti and the ICT4Peace Wiki on Haiti. For many participants, this was their first experience of leveraging tools and services on the web to inform policies and responses regarding a sudden onset disaster.

The ICT4Peace Inventorisation Wiki, which started in 2006 continued to be updated in 2010 (http://wiki.ict4peace.org).  A number of new examples, anchored to the report The Role of ICT in Preventing, Responding to and Recovering from Conflict (http://old.ict4peace.org/articles/ict4peace_ebook1.pdf) are included in the Foundation’s ICT4Peace wiki (http://inventory.ict4peace.org), which is updated regularly with new initiatives and examples from across the world.

On behalf of the ICT4Peace Foundation, I wish you and your families a successful and fulfilling year ahead.

Daniel Stauffacher
Chairman
ICT4Peace Foundation
Geneva, Switzerland

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ICT4Peace took root with pioneering research on the role of ICTs in preventing, responding to and recovering from conflict in 2003 and lead to the adoption of Paragraph 36 by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis in 2005 which recognises “…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”.

The ICT4Peace Foundation (www.ict4peace.org) works to promote the practical realisation of Paragraph 36 and looks at the role of ICT in crisis management, covering aspects of early warning and conflict prevention, peace mediation, peacekeeping, peace-building as well as natural disaster management and humanitarian operations.

Follow ICT4Peace on Twitter here – http://www.twitter.com/ict4peace

Follow ICT4Peace on Facebook here – http://facebook.com/ict4peace

Download a copy of the journal here.

As noted in the Foreword by Dr. Choi Soon-hong, Assistant Secretary-General & Chief Information Technology Officer,

The goal of the ICT strategy, described in this publication, is to maximize the value of ICT in improving the Secretariat’s overall effectiveness and efficiency at delivering its services to the global community. The main thrusts of the ICT strategy are to overcome the difficulties attributable to what has become a highly fragmented ICT environment and to build strategic, integrated ICT capabilities through the introduction of improved systems, tools and methods to the Organization.

Page 30 of the report notes the Foundation’s on-going work with the United Nations to support the design and development of crisis information management platforms,

Crisis Information Management Strategy (CiMS): In times of crisis, whether natural or man-made, the CiMS aims to ensure effective information sharing across the UN system and among Member States. OICT is working closely with other Secretariat offices and departments, several UN agencies and other entities such as the ICT for peace foundation on developing and implementing CiMS.

The Foundation’s engagement with CiMS was also noted in the Status of implementation of the information and communications technology strategy for the United Nations Secretariat, Report of the Secretary-General (A/65/491).

Status of implementation of the information and communications technology strategy for the United Nations Secretariat, Report of the Secretary-General (A/65/491) prominently underscores the Crisis Information Management (CiM) Strategy, which the ICT4Peace Foundation has supported the UN’s Office of Information and Communications Technology (OICT) to design and develop since 2008.

Under the section ‘United Nations system-wide harmonisation efforts’, the report notes (Pg 38),

Crisis information management strategy. The Crisis Information Management Strategy is based on the recognition that the United Nations, its Member States, constituent agencies and non-governmental organizations need to improve such information management capacity in the identification, prevention, mitigation, response and recovery of all types of crises, natural as well as man- made. The strategy will leverage and enhance this capacity and provide mechanisms to integrate and share information across the United Nations system. The Office of Information and Communications Technology, together with the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the Department of Field Support, has worked closely with United Nations organizations such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and WFP and other entities such as the ICT for Peace Foundation in developing and implementing this strategy. It is envisaged that membership will be expanded to include other United Nations organizations in the near future.

Presented to the UN General Assembly at the sixty-fifth session, download the report in full here. The report is available in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish and English.

Also see United Nations core ICT strategy incorporates crisis information management.

The purpose of the Solution Salons is to engage participants to identify the key issues, problems and major obstacles which are hindering the effective use of ICT in advancing progress in each thematic area. This special Solution Salon/Workshop was focusing on ICT for Disaster Relief/Post-Conflict Zones. Participants also had a chance to suggest and/or present their own solutions to help overcome obstacles.