Collaboration: From HQ to the Field, and back
back to HumaniNet ICT Information Service
 Imagine
that you are a humanitarian NGO manager, and you've just been
informed of an emergency on the other side of the world. From
the outset,
you will be dealing with information in dozens of
categories: planning, logistics, coordination with UN/USAID,
travel plans, team orientation, working with on-the-ground partners,
internal messaging, and much more.
The volume of information will quickly
overwhelm
your
email inbox. You need a system that
will
help
you manage the information
flow within your organization, and with other NGOs, local
agencies and regional/national governments throughout the response
and
reconstruction efforts. But it has to be easy-to-use, easy-to-learn,
and fit into your existing workflows.
HumaniNet is researching and
testing best practices for online collaboration and information
sharing, so that we can better assist not only NGO managers,
but field staff, like those pictured in this internet
café in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.
 We
are currently operating several prototype collaborative workspaces
using Plone,
an open-source content management system (CMS). Our goal is
to implement flexible, adaptible tools to collect
and share critical information, and make them as useful and
usable in the field as they are from a desk at headquarters.
As
part of our 'release early and often' strategy, we have already
demonstrated the system to several NGOs to get their feedback
and input, and have invited more than a dozen individual field
partners to participate in using the systems directly.
Future areas of exploration include shared calendars, group
blogging tools, email notifications and updates, rich media
(photos and video) management and custom data collection.
Making sure the right information is available to the right
people, at the right time, with minimal distraction and disruption,
is not an easy task. Through our research and testing, HumaniNet
will do the 'heavy lifting', so our field partners can be more
informed and effective than ever as they meet humanitarian challenges
around the world.
Click the image to the right for a full-size
screenshot of our
tsunami relief coordination prototype in action.
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