The first 72 hours of the SomaliaSpeaks deployment were particularly intense. The purpose of this joint write-up with Al Jazeera and partners is to share some of our early lessons learned in this novel collaboration.  Every deployment teaches us a multitude of lessons, so our partners at Al Jazeera, Souktel and Crowdflower joined us in this effort to share these. We look forward to future collaborations with them as we share this story with you.

This purpose of this pilot project was to let Somalis speak for themselves. For the first time ever, a prominent news organization, Al-jazeera, used crowdsourcing and SMS to let thousands of Somalis express for themselves how the crisis has been effecting their daily lives. More than 4,000 text messages were received within just a few days. Of these, over 1,000 were translated from Somali into English by about 80 translators. The resulting map of Somali voices received over 25,000 page views.

Before reviewing our lessons learned, we first wanted to thank K’naan and Sol for the initial inspiration behind this project. They got in touch with Ushahidi last year because they wanted to use the platform to help amplify Somali voices and show how capable the Somali people are. The initial version of this project was a prototype that was not activated. But thanks to Al- jazeera, Souktel and Crowdflower, we were able to revive the project to help amplify Somali voices in the international media.

Despite being a pilot, the project exemplified valid use cases in the application of pervasive technologies such as the web and mobile phone to news and information gathering. Somalia being a country run down by decades of neglect and war as well being rife with insecurity  provides one of the most challenging operational environments. Within a very short time we were able to curate information traversing through different parts of Somalia. This would have proved futile if not overly expensive or impossible had it been done using traditional news gathering techniques. Furthermore the information collected provides more insight on the realities of life in Somalia.

Projects like this involve a lot of effort and goodwill from the community and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Therefore, building a strong community around the project goes a long way to solving problems and mitigating challenges. The community goes beyond the volunteer translators. We saw lots of support from the Somali blogging community, technology and media enthusiasts as well as innovators or innovation centric minds across the globe who all narrated or reported the Somalia Speaks project in their own ways. Having a strong community and inculcating a community ethos in  project operations and goals goes a long way influencing success. Without the community backing and promoting this project, it would have only been another temporary spotlight on Somalia.

The project worked as follows. Al-jazeera editorial selected the following question for interview:

“Al Jazeera would like to know — how has the Somalia Conflict affected your life? Please also include the name of your hometown in the response. Thanks.”

Our colleagues at Souktel distributed the question via text message to 5,000 of their SMS subscribers across Somalia. The responses were then forwarded from Souktel’s SMS platform to a customized Crowdflower micro-tasking platform. There, Somali-speaking volunteers translated and geo-located the text messages which were then manually uploaded to Al-jazeera’s Ushahidi platform.

There are three points worth highlighting in terms of lessons learned:

1. Messaging

While the question that was posed via SMS in no way asked for individuals to reply with their personal names, a small number of responders still added their names; some even added their full names. So these were deleted as quickly as possible. (Note that the numbers posted in the title of initial reports were not phone numbers but an assigned sequential number generated by the Crowdflower plugin). In hindsight, the SMS sent out with the question should have specifically asked that responders not include personal identifiers in their SMS replies.

2. Volunteer translation

While we had recruited a small number of trusted volunteers to translate the incoming text messages using a Crowdflower plugin, a decision was subsequently made to make the call for volunteers public to cope with the 2,500+ SMS replies received. This means that anonymous volunteers could see the original text messages, some of which initially  included personal identifiers. So we immediately reached out to Crowdflower for guidance to take the plug-in offline. We then began to manually delete several dozen text messages inside the Crowdflower plug-in that contained personal identifiers. Our colleagues at Al-jazeera took over this process and set up their own micro-tasking platform, removing all personal identifiers from the text messages awaiting translation and geo-location.

3. Security

One of Ushahidi’s community members tested the platform and identified a search security issue on Friday, December 9th. We quickly fixed this on the deployment. And, we issued a security patch to all deployers. (http://security.ushahidi.com)

In the future, for this type of “The People Speak” project,  we recommend taking the following steps:

1. On large multi-partner deployments: Global organizations work in multiple timezones, so communications plans need to include 24/7 points of contacts for each organization.
2. Text potential interviewees to ask whether they agree to be interviewed and to have their responses made public before sending out the main question.
3. Text those individuals who have consented to being interviewed with the desired question and ask them to include the name of their town but not their personal names.
4. Recruit trusted translation volunteers well in advance and ensure that the micro-tasking translation platform has no personal identifiers.
5. Stagger the launch of the text messages and the live map. That is, start with the SMS broadcast and spend however many days/weeks doing the bulk of the translation with vetted volunteers. The system that holds the raw text messages should obviously be fully secure. When the majority of text messages are processed, launch the live map and gradually add the already translated text messages to grow the map steadily over a period of days/weeks.

At Ushahidi, we’ve also made some plans to help all deployers in our community:

• We’re building a program for privacy and security education for our users in 2012. (Blog posts, webinars, videos and meet-ups.)
• Best practices for security and privacy will be included as essential documentation on our soon to be re-launched wiki.
• Ushahidi is open source and the community is a large part of what makes it work.  We’ll build a security working group focused on our software, but it’ll take your participation to make it work.
• Alongside our partners within the CrisisMappers community, we will participate in a security and privacy working group. This field is growing and collective lessons can only improve each map action.

Crisis mapping and journalism are both in the nascent stages of collaborating on real-time news connecting diaspora and citizens alike. Al-Jazeera is leading the fray in testing and implementing live maps into their fast-moving news cycle toolkit. We are thankful for all their efforts and look forward to further collaboration.

On November 28, 2011, elections began in Egypt as part of the political transition plan overseen by Egypt’s Supreme Council of Armed Forces. The full plan calls for elections for the People’s Assembly, followed by elections for the Shura Council, a more consultative body that along with the People’s Assembly comprises the Parliament. According to the plan, the Parliament will then choose the members of a constitutional assembly to draft a new constitution before presidential elections begin in late June 2012.

The Development and Institutionalization Support Center (DISC), an Egyptian NGO, is using Ushahidi to crowdsource election monitoring during the Egyptian transition. The project is called U-Shahid or Enta Shahid, which in Arabic means, “You witness.” DISC first set up U-Shahid to monitor Egypt’s 2010 parliamentary elections. This year, it has so far been used to monitor elections for the People’s Assembly, the third and final round of which came to a close on January 11, 2012.

In getting the word out about U-Shahid, DISC counted on social media. DISC utilized its online following, which includes, for example, over 65,000 Likes on Facebook. In addition, many people working on U-Shahid, whether as employees or volunteers, have thousands of followers.

With our partner NGO, the Egyptian Democratic Academy, we trained volunteers to act as monitors and send in reports during the voting and a team to help manage incoming reports. DISC employees acted as backup.

Those sending in reports were asked for a quick description of what they were observing. They also had the option to attach a photo or video as evidence backing up their report, or to include a link to such evidence. They also categorized their report in categories such as “Intimidation” in the larger category of “Violence” or “Polling station closed early” under the larger category of “Polling Stations.” And it wasn’t all doom and gloom, “All Went Well” was an often used category for reports. Visitors to the U-Shahid site could vote (yes or no) whether they believed received reports to be true, allowing people to contribute in a small way to verifying the accountability of reports. Additionally, Egyptians could sign up to get alerts about reports, particularly reports within a certain proximity to their home or location, allowing access to dynamic and personalized news.

Volunteers receiving incoming reports then checked the classification of the reports, expanded the description, and filled in the location, if it was absent. The final responsibility of verification fell to the administrators.

Our most common verification strategies were to corroborate reports by checking online news, looking at attached photos or videos, asking our local volunteers to investigate personally or through their local contacts, or contacting the sender. We had an additional team on the ground that could travel to investigate and verify reports of large-scale fraud.

Our verification volunteers also had two additional trainings. First, they learned how to use ICT4Peace’s verification matrix plug-in, which helped administrators ascertain the reliability of reports. Second, they had training from Reuters reporters, as traditional media has developed a range of intricate verification strategies in the face of their need to draw from social media.

In broad strokes, the reports recorded widespread illegal campaigning (such as campaigning to people waiting in line to vote – a banned practice), some evidence of vote buying, and plenty of examples of disorganization, but relatively little evidence of violence being used or systemic fraud. While all reports were of course made available in real time, reports such as this one, on the first stage of voting, were emailed to journalists and organizations that we believed would benefit from the information. As the Egyptian military proved hostile to the idea of election monitors, and in fact banned official international monitoring, our reports were only as valuable as the attention they gained among the public and among groups with a role in policy.

In evaluating the project, DISC found that U-Shahid was less successful than in 2010, receiving fewer reports and less media attention. A number of lessons can be learned and observations made:

-       U-Shahid was less well known in comparison to 2010, when it became so popular that it inspired four additional Ushahidi maps to monitor the election. This can be attributed to media focus being on the violence and protests in Tahrir Square in the lead up to elections, as compared to 2010 when a number of television programs featured U-Shahid. Also, in 2010 DISC purchased advertising space on Youm7, a popular Egyptian news service, but could not do the same this year, as our grants were less generous. This should serve as a reminder of the inadequacy of social media by itself and the necessity of a robust marketing campaign.

-       Two additional factors led to a decreased volume of submitted reports. First, this year saw even more election monitoring projects with and without the use of Ushahidi by organizations and newspapers offering cash to monitors. Depending on volunteers, we could not compete for reports with those organizations offering cash. And the proliferation of maps reduced the attention given to each. Attempts made to build a coalition with other NGOs and newspapers to work with DISC on U-Shahid were rebuffed due to a culture in Arab countries of organizations being more interested in getting credit than in forging effective partnerships. Second, monitors feared violent reprisals for documenting cases of fraud at the hands of police, the military, or hired thugs. During clashes on Mohamed Mahmoud Street in the run up to the election, for example, people recording abuses on camera were specifically targeted.

-       The feature allowing visitors to the U-Shahid site to vote on whether they believe a report to be true was rarely used and of no particular benefit

-       In December, the military raided a number of international and local NGOs as part of an “investigation” into the foreign funding of NGOs and their potentially suspect motives. This complements an ongoing smear campaign against NGOs. While this threatens DISC’s ability to continue work on the project, it also points to the resilience of crowdsourcing, as traditional election monitoring projects were cancelled by a number of NGOs in response to the military closing their offices and leaving their legal status in limbo.

-       DISC is planning a complementary follow-up project called Enta Sharek (“You Share”) in which focus groups in five areas will be shed light on their experiences during the elections. No reason that traditional information gathering techniques can’t be used to complement our efforts!

On November 28th, 2011 crowds assembled at 62,000 polling stations to elect DR Congo’s fifth president in the country’s first independently administered presidential elections since independence in 1960.

Polling Station in Bukavu, Ibanda Commune

Technology had improved considerably since 2006 with most people having cell phones and greater access to wireless. On the other hand, the remote areas most sensitive to violence and election fraud are the ones without cell service and electricity. Thus, many of the same challenges remained. Knowing all these challenges, we still decided that deployment would be useful since many organizations are looking to crisis mapping to assist in combating the ongoing insecurity in eastern Congo and massive sexual violence. We could all learn from the experience. The site went live one week before the elections, on November 18th, reporting in French and English.

Organizing Networks and Teams

Through the international partners, a U.S. based diaspora group, RDC2XTE, seeking an alternative vision for DRC through supportive actions to improve accountability and advancement, and our own contacts, we created a network of local independent observers and media sources based in Bukavu and Goma in the eastern Congo and Kinshasa to continuously report back what they were witnessing at various polling stations.

One of our main dedicated partners in the east, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, trained and organized local women journalists to SMS or email direct reports. A second dedicated partner, Collectif D’Actions Pour La Defense Des Droits Humains (CADDHOM), a local NGO focusing on a wide range of programs concerning human rights, was an official partner of the CENI (the National Election Commission) deploying 200 monitors in South Kivu. CADDHOM sent us reports via email and SMS as they received phone calls and SMS from their official field observers. I also accompanied the executive director of CADDOM, Pasteur Joseph on election day to observe the elections.

Outside EDAP Polling Station in Bukavu with CADDHOM Coordinator, Pasteur Joseph (right)

A third dedicated partner was Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD), who organized to station a volunteer in Kinshasa to receive reports from the 30,0000 network of Catholic Bishop monitors in the field. Although in contact with the EU monitoring team, there were no actual exchanges of information and the Carter center did not respond to emails.

We provided all partners with training material and produced post card sized printouts with SMS instructions. I only arrived on the ground on November 25th, but used my time there to meet with local partners none of whom, even though they had received all my materials before hand, had actually visited the site. Internet access is simply too complicated to spend time trying to view a site that takes hours to access. On the other hand, once I arrived and installed the local SIM cards, the Android phones with SMSSync worked perfectly. In fact, since I put the SIM cards on roaming, they work even here in Chicago.

Election Day, SMS Blocked and Lessons Learned

Even with the late start, once the elections got underway we began to receive reports via SMS and email. But then a major glitch came when the government shut down the whole SMS network on December 4th due to concerns of impending violence with the announcement of the election results scheduled for December 6th. Our independent deployment hit a major roadblock between the block on SMS and evacuation of internationals from Kinshasa. I was scheduled to fly to Kinshasa on December 5th, but could not get there since flights were cancelled. All work was suspended in Kinshasa and people ordered to stay home. As CENI continued to delay announcing election results and tension mounted, the CAFOD volunteer could not send any reports. CENI finally announced Kabila’s victory on December 9th, but with growing unrest from the opposition, SMS was not restored until December 14. As soon as it was, we immediately began receiving reports from the volunteer, but these were limited to the December 13th press release that the EU confirmed the Archbishop of Kinshasa’s declaration of irregularities in the elections and media reports.

Speaking with many organizations on the ground, it became apparent that Ushahidi was not widely known in the DRC and, although I physically sat with locals and showed them the platform there was interest, no one I met with could view the site on their computers given the slow Internet connection. A local radio station in Goma. Radio Mutaani, had also set up an SMS system and gmail chat feeding into their website, but were weary of sharing data with Ushahidi given security concerns. I visited their radio station and attended a program at the University in Goma and was impressed with the level of engagement surrounding the election. Until SMS was cut off, they had a lot of activity through their gmail chat.

Without SMS the deployment shifted to media monitoring coordinated by undergraduate Liz Casano of the NorthWestern University Student team and Bharathi Ram and Leesa Astredo of the Stand-by Task Force. The SBTF was instrumental in sorting through and reporting on more than 20,000 tweets. So far, a total of 320 online reports have been uploaded from over 70 locations, comprising 55 types of incidents. There are over 150 reports still waiting to be input into the system, most likely with more to come as the team reviews additional media sources.

One of our goals going in to the deployment was to be able to provide a broad platform to link up the work of local and international monitors and amass all the reports in “real time” for use by all. We learned that this was not in the best interest of the official monitors. Given the strategic role of the National Episcopal Conference of the Congo, the country’s Catholic bishops’ council as the largest monitoring group, it was in their best interest to kept their reports secret until ready to make an official announcement which they did on December 12th. In the end, the need of human rights and humanitarian organizations to report on and respond to crisis, did not coincide with the needs of official monitoring efforts to postpone release of information until they could better assess and negotiate the political implications.

Although more time to conduct networking on the ground would have produced more buy in from humanitarian, civil and human rights organizations, it seems that in the end we might have had the same problems given the SMS and need of the largest observers to withhold their reports until the best strategic moment.

The project team is now shifting its focus to analysis. In the next three months our goal is to issue two reports on the elections. The first will examine the question of transparency that was central to the rejection of the election results by the opposition and critiques of the official monitors. The second will layer in additional data to seek to answer questions broader questions such as did NGO civics work result in reduced problems? Were their areas that had violence in 2006 but not this time? And what kinds of responses were most successful and why?

At the beginning of March 2011, OCHA HQ activated the Standby Volunteer Task Force (SBTF), a self-organized group of structured volunteers, to create the Libya Crisis Map (LCM) early in March of this year to help provide better situational awareness of the unfolding situation on-the-ground. This site and the data were made available to responding organizations with the intention to them improve their operational planning. The site was extended beyond the first month largely based on efforts from OCHA Colombia, volunteers sourced from the UNV online volunteer service, and SBTF members who choose to stay on beyond the official SBTF deployment.

But Why the Collaboration?

The LCM data was being incorporated into the traditional Who-is-doing-What-Where products and info-graphics which were being created remotely by OCHA IMOs [Colombia, DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, Pakistan, South Africa, and South Sudan]. These products were then being printed and shared inside the emergency arena. So, what impact did those printed products have? We rarely try to measure their impact on decision makers but recognize they are necessary in every emergency. So, if the LCM data augmented these products, what measurable impact can we say it had?

The challenge in quantifying the impact of information products in situations such as the Libya crisis is they tend to be incomparable to other situations and may yield very skewed outcomes. For OCHA, the impact the volunteers had on the efficiency of the operations and quality of decisions being made is perhaps more interesting. This impact can be more easily quantified by assessing the effectiveness of the decision makers using the maps as input and compared to their workload in other crisis before the SBTF was put into action. This quantifying research is currently being conducted, but on our preliminary qualitative input we can already see that the SBTF has a significant impact on OCHA’s way of working.

The unexpected impact? How we now work differently.

There are three core areas in this collaboration that have influenced OCHA’s work:

1) Speed: as noted in my blog post on UN Dispatch at the end of March, I outlined how much faster we could produce standard IM products in the early phases of an emergency when working with remote volunteers and/or staff. It was quite stark and significant.

2) Connection / Communication: The information management team in OCHA HQ was quite impressed with how well the always-open, tiered Skype chats worked in collaborating with the self-organized task-team based volunteers. The team has taken this approach and opened our own group for OCHA Information Management Officers [which has really made our internal IM Community of Practice flourish and provide support to each other]. We have leveraged the same approach to help incorporate field-based staff into the development of standard tools and software – something we were rather poor at in the past. As well, when we had one IMO responding to floods in Cambodia, we asked for OCHA IM volunteers and placed them in a dedicated Skype group. We ended up with IMOs from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Cote D’Ivoire, Liberia and Haiti helping out with the efforts.  The OCHA IM team is really learning how we can leverage remote support and are incorporating these concepts into traditional mechanisms.

3) Collaboration Platforms: to collaborate with the external volunteers, we had no choice but to accept the use of non-UN standard software [e.g. Skype and Google Docs]. However, the abilities that these modern tools unlocked helped some of our traditionally skeptical staff members realize there are better ways of working.  It has started a culture change [even if slow].

So, you can easily deduce that OCHA is adopting concepts from the SBTF work style. How much of an impact is that?  Perhaps not quantitatively measurable, but could be qualitatively described a “big”.

But, what challenges arose from the use of new technology and the volunteers?

The challenges can be summarized into three categories:

1. Zoom Level. The volunteers tend to want to work at the highest possible zoom [i.e. close to the affected] and we can understand that desire. However, large responding agencies are dealing with multi-million dollar programme spanning across millions of people in countless locations.  Although they are concerned for the individuals, they need information at a different ‘zoom level’ in order to assess, plan and respond. Thus, we need to ensure that there is a way to aggregate the detailed data appropriately for people or organizations working at different zoom levels.

2. Always On. One major benefit of the volunteers, enabled by modern technology, is that they are dispersed around the world resulting in almost 24 hour support. However, the flip-side of that benefit is that the liaison person from the requesting entity can be faced with questions/issues around the clock if structures, messaging and requirements are not defined early. With the task-team structure used by the volunteers in place, we know that OCHA was sheltered from a large number of questions. Still, in the early days, there were a significant number of topics that arose which needed to be addressed. It meant that we had to be connected all the times – from checking Skype over breakfast, to responding to emails while on the bus, to skipping dinner in the evening to review a risk management strategy.

3. Questions. The volunteers are not necessarily experts – and do not pretend to be when they are not. The challenge for the requesting entity is that someone needs to be available to answer hard questions in a very timely manner. In the Libya context, defining appropriate report categories was one of the first and most challenging questions for OCHA to answer and has reconfirmed that standards are needed.

Did ethical questions arise for the UN?

Of course ethical questions arose during the LCM deployment. They were not specific to the UN. In the Libya context, we dealt with three specific issues:

1. Identify. We did not want any information provided in the LCM that could be used to identify the individual who reported.

2. Location. To avoid anyone from being able to pinpoint anyone reporting, the data was generally anonymized to the centroid of the city it was reported from.

3. Do No Harm. Given the situation in Libya was conflict-based, we needed to ensure that whatever we did minimized the chance of causing anyone harm.

Early in the deployment, OCHA made a decision to run two separate websites. The private site would hold all original data and only be accessible to approved agencies. The public site would show no identifiable information and the data would be delayed by 24 hours. Some have argued that two sites were not necessary [e.g. everything private or only have the anonymized public site], but all we can say is that “It worked”.

What is OCHA doing now?

In June, OCHA held a lessons learned workshop with several of the V&TC entities with whom we collaborated with either for Libya or Japan. That workshop pointed towards 9 thematic Communities of Interest (COIs) to be developed to ensure future collaboration can be maximized [see the final report]. OCHA has been pushing these forward in an attempt to get them started and hosted a one-day meeting with the COI leaders prior to ICCM 2011. [Note: originally a Humanitarian Standby Task Force was suggested, but it has morphed to a 'network-of-networks' concept - which will likely be called the Digital Humanitarians - and be designed to receive requests for virtual support and then find the appropriate entities to support those requests]. In the Libya and Japan crisis, OCHA received support from several V&TCs which resulted in some (positive) unexpected impact and we want to continue to explore and understand the possibilities through the COIs mechanism to help maximize the benefit and effectiveness of V&TC engagements with the traditional humanitarian entities.

This collaboration, amongst others recently, has helped to show OCHA’s IM team that we need to open up our work, our data, and our ideas to external parties very much in accordance with the principles Dan Tapscott outlined in Macrowikinomics: Collaboration, Openness, Sharing, Integrity and Interdependence. We are no longer in an era where good ideas only come from inside our own organization, but rather in a time where we have to be open and ready to receive them from outside.

Participants in November 2011 COI Leadership meeting included: Crisis Commons, Crisis Mappers, Geeks without Bounds, GISCorp, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, HOT (OSM), ICT4Peace, Internews, ISCRAM (Tilburg University), MapAction, Missing Persons Community, MIT Humanitarian Response Lab, NetHope, SBTF, UN Foundation, UNHCR, UN-OCHA, UN-SPIDER, University of Munser, UNOSAT, Ushahidi, US State Department (HIU),  Woodrow Wilson Center, World Vision

]]> http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2012/01/09/the-unexpected-impact-of-the-libya-crisis-map-and-the-standby-volunteer-task-force/feed/ 1 http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2012/01/09/john-etherton-trusted-developer/ http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2012/01/09/john-etherton-trusted-developer/#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2012 06:32:06 +0000 hleson http://blog.ushahidi.com/?p=6058 We are honoured to recommend John Etherton as an Ushahidi Trusted Developer. In addition to being the technical brains behind Ushahidi Liberia, he is a passionate and prolific contributor within Ushahidi Developer community. John often shares his knowledge with new deployers and community members. When we launched Tunis 2.1, John joined our Ushahidi SWAT team to dig into Quality Assurance (QA) testing and add bug fixes.

Here’s a full report from Kate Cummings, Program Manager for Ushahidi Liberia:

John is a remarkably talented developer and teacher. He has dedicated much of his time to not only creating contextually relevant plugins and features for Liberia’s Ushahidi instances, but also has spent the last 8 months conducting intro to programming training for the local staff so they can contribute their own code to the Ushahidi platform (and beyond). Working with John is an honor; he’s a natural humanitarian, always seeking ways to combine his technical expertise with pressing needs in places like Liberia.

The Simple Groups plugin – allowing multiple organizations composed of several unique users to have private admin access to the same Ushahidi instance. Each group has a private admin page that contains their own messages, reports, and admin map. Here are features we’ve added for groups:

• Whitelisted phone numbers – trusted sources’ phone numbers can be linked to particular groups
• Tagged reports – each group’s report is tagged with the organization’s logo so viewers can quickly identify the source that has approved and determined the verification status of the report
• Admin Map plugin– many partners to keep certain reports temporarily private due to their sensitive content. We created the Admin Map on each group’s admin page that shows all unapproved reports as black.

More features of Admin Map:

• Multiple categories can be compared at once using the Boolean functions OR and AND. These logical operators give groups a new way to look for trends in their data
• All of these features have also been added to the instance’s homepage (all except groups’ unapproved reports). Click on the “Big Map” button at the top of the election homepage
• Location Highlighter - When our partners are turning messages into reports, it can sometimes be difficult to find the message’s location on the map. To expedite this process, the Location Highlighter tool outlines Liberia’s counties and districts on the map to narrow the scope of the search. Because most of our groups work with low bandwidth, the Highlighter’s clear parameters allow admin users to spend less time clicking and dragging across the map and more time searching a clearly defined area
• Forwarding Messages feature – Because several of our partners have a customized instance and are Simple Group members on a shared instance (like Liberia 2011 or LERN), the “forward messages” feature was added so messages could be shared between the admin sides of both instances. We also created a code library for interacting with the Ushahidi API; this made it easier to use the API for forwarding messages, and will make it easier for all Ushahidi developers to interact with the Ushahidi API.
• Print Map – A map that’s setup to print well on letter and A4 sized paper. This page also adds a key to the map, so when it prints the user can see what categories were selected. The print map page also lets users create a link to just their customized map and selected categories. For example, if you wanted to show someone the reports of violence (one category) and women & children (another category) send them this link generated from the Print Map page at the bottom
• SMSSync and the platform – After extensive testing led by John Etherton and Ushahidi’s Henry Addo have formed a reliable protocol for operating SMS services in Liberia. Several issues were corrected in the SMSSync plugin and additional software was used on our phones to ensure the phones don’t default to “sleep” mode (which was disabling SMSSync). We now forward SMSs to our Ushahidi instances reliably.
• iFrame Map - This is for people who want to embed Ushahidi in another website. For an example, see this demonstration. Some of our partners that use the LERN site are using this feature to highlight their maps on their own websites
• Density map plugin - Another new feature on the instance is Ushahidi’s first Density Map plugin. Located on the right side of the homepage, just above the categories, the Density Map option makes it easier to separate reports by geographic region – in this case, by county. All reports that have been associated with a particular county will show up using the Density Map. This feature was requested by UN OCHA as well as other local partners, and serves as a small step towards making the Ushahidi platform a data analysis tool.
• Internationalization – Thanks to John’s twice-a-week programming trainings with Ushahidi Liberia’s local staff, many of the plugins written for Liberia have been setup to work in other languages. This helps to ensure the work we do in Liberia can be used in other parts of the world.

Contact John.

About the Ushahidi Trusted Developer Program

We are very thankful for our growing community. Each of their contributions are valued. We started the Ushahidi Trusted Developer Program to recognize excellence in Ushahidi software development.

Previous Posts in this series:
Introducing Ushahidi Badges
Recognizing Ushahidi Deployment Partners

Thanks John for all that you do! And thank you Kate for sharing.

The Nangahar Connect deployment, which crowd sources information on commodity prices of beef, veal, milk, corn, wheat[Commodities], labour prices, service prices etc. This is a deployment that is well populated with information, run by the ministry of Agriculture and uses the Ushahidi Cloud based application (Crowdmap). What struck us about this deployment is first, the amount of data available. Substantial. Khalid Amini, the Manager of Geospatial services at Afghanistan Information Management Services AIMS commented that the data was accurate.  We explored the map more on mobile by using the filter capability on the mobile app mentioned above. Mohammad Nasir Shir, The Executive Director of Gisworking.af explored with us and we found that the deployment also included diesel prices. Mr. Mohammad noticed that there was information about fuel prices in an area that is relatively dangerous to be in and that it was great to have access to such information online and on mobile.We were speechless at both observations; Because we just discovered a great source of information that is geolocated, contextual and relevant to Afghanis. It is encouraging that our platform and service is of use to the Ministry of Agriculture in Afghanistan, and the people of Afghanistan. Explore the map and add the irrigation channel layer provided on the site. Many thanks to the Ministry for doing this deployment, we are certainly in awe of what has been achieved thus far.

As we go into 2012,the experience underscored our plans at Ushahidi to organize Crowdmaps by country so that discoverability of initiatives like this can be more commonplace and easier than it is right now. We are inspired and encouraged by the various uses, and this particular deployment gives us a glimpse at how useful contextual information can be disseminated, and how layers can be used to provide even more context. We will continue to explore and bring you ways to engage with and contribute to Crowdmaps around the world, on issues that you care about on a local level.

When you get speechless about discovering something together, the thing you do is take a picture right? Right. This is the picture we took to remember this joint moment of discovery and awe. That the picture was taken by Dr. Michael Gould of ESRI adds another of awesome doesn’t it. In case you missed it, ESRI has been a great technology partner for Ushahidi. Data feeds from Ushahidi deployments, Flickr and other geo services can be overlaid on custom ESRI maps.

Ah. Khalid Amini AIMS, Angela and Juliana of Ushahidi, Mohammad Nasir Shir and Bilal Ahmad of Gisworking.af

The joint project combines the efforts of multiple partners including Al-Jazeera, Ushahidi, Souktel, Crowdflower, the African Diaspora Institute and the wider Somali Diaspora. The basis of my pitch to Al-jazeera was to let ordinary Somalis speak for themselves by using SMS to crowdsource their opinions on the unfolding crisis. My colleagues at Al-jazeera liked the idea and their editorial team proposed the following question:

Al Jazeera wants to know: how has the conflict of the last few months affected your life? Please include the name of your hometown in your response. Thank you!

So I reached out to my good friend Jacob Korenblum at Souktel. He and I had been discussing different ways we might combine our respective technologies to help in Somalia. Souktel has been working in Somalia and providing various SMS based solutions to several organizations. Jacob had previously mentioned that his team had a 50,000+ member SMS subscriber list. This proved to be key. Earlier this week, the Souktel team sent out the above question in Somali to about 5,000 of their subscribers. An effort was made to try and select geographically disbursed areas.

We’ve since received well over 2,000 text message replies and counting. In order to translate and geolocate these messages, I got in touch my colleagues Vaughn Hester and Lukas Biewald at Crowdflower in San Francisco. Crowdflower uses micro-tasking solutions to process and structure data flows. They were very keen to help and thanks to their support my Ushahidi colleagues Rob Baker and Linda Kamau were able to customize this Crowdflower plugin to translate, categorize and geo-locate incoming text messages:

They also wrote additional software so that text messages from Souktel could be automatically forwarded to the Crowdflower plugin which would then automatically push the processed SMS’s to a live Ushahidi map hosted by Al-jazeera. While the software development was moving forward, I connected  with colleagues from the Somali American Student Association who expressed an interest in supporting this project. Thanks to them and other members of the Somali Diaspora, hundreds of Somali voices were translated and shared on Al-jazeera’s public Ushahidi map of Somalia within days. But we still need lots of help. So if you speak Somali and English, then simply follow this link.

I wanted this project to serve as a two-way conversation, however, not just a one-way information flow from Somalia to the world. Every report  that gets mapped on an Ushahidi platform is linked to public discussion forum where readers can respond and share their views on said report. So I suggested that Al-jazeera invite their viewers/readers to comment on the text messages directly. The next step will be for Al-jazeera’s editorial team to select some of the most compelling and interesting comments and to text these back to the senders of the original text messages in Somalia. This two-way flow of information can be iterated and scaled given that the technologies and workflows are already in place.

In sum, the purpose of this project is to catalyze global media attention on Somalia by letting Somali voices take center stage—voices that are otherwise not heard in the international, mainstream media. If journalists are not going to speak about Somalia, then this project  invites Somalis speak to the world themselves. The project highlights  these voices on a live, public map for the world to bear witness and engage in a global conversation with people of Somalia, a conversation in which Somalis and the Diaspora are themselves at the centerfold. It is my sincere hope that advocacy and lobby group will be able to leverage the content generated by this project to redouble their efforts in response to the escalating crisis in Somalia.

I very much hope to see this type of approach used again in Somalia and elsewhere. It is fully inline with the motivations that inspired the launch of the first Ushahidi platform almost 4 years ago today: collective witnessing. Indeed, I am often reminded of what my friend Anand Giridharadas of the New York Times wrote last year vis-a-vis Ushahidi. To paraphrase:

They used to say that history is written by the victors. But today, before the victors win, if they win, there is a chance to scream out with a text message, a text message that will not vanish, a text message that will remain immortalized on a map for the world to bear witness. What would we know about what passed between Turks and Armenians, Germans and Jews, Hutus and Tutsis, if every one of them had had the chance, before the darkness, to declare for all time:

“I was here, and this is what happened to me”?

Use #SomaliaSpeaks to witness the project on Twitter.

I want to specifically thank the following individuals who put an incredible amount of time and effort (most pro bono) to make this project happen: Robert Baker, Linda Kamau, Michael Moszczynski, Katie Highet, Jacob Korenblum, Vaughn Hester, Mohammed Dini, Hamza Haadoow, Andrew Jawitz and of course the excellent Al Jazeera team in Doha. Thank you all for going above and beyond to make this happen.

]]> http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2011/12/08/somalia-speaks/feed/ 29 http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2011/12/02/un-and-ushahidi-collaboration-suggests-an-interwoven-future-is-inevitable/ http://blog.ushahidi.com/index.php/2011/12/02/un-and-ushahidi-collaboration-suggests-an-interwoven-future-is-inevitable/#comments Fri, 02 Dec 2011 14:15:50 +0000 kate http://blog.ushahidi.com/?p=6385 Guest post by David Foster: Lieutenant Colonel Foster has served over 24 years in the US Army.  He is currently assigned to the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) as a Plans and Operations Officer.  He recently led the development and implementation of a Joint Elections Security Plan for Liberia’s 2011 General Election.  He developed and served as the Officer-in-Charge of the Joint Elections Operations Center (JEOC) that leveraged geospatial technologies and social media to achieve and maintain situational awareness for mission leadership in support of the Government of Liberia, and its people. The following post is based on a presentation LTC Foster gave at the UN-SPIDER meeting in Geneva this November.

During the 2011 Liberian Election process, Ushahidi Liberia proved to be an invaluable team member for the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL).  Their crowdseeding efforts provided the people of Liberia, UNMIL and others, with timely access to objective reports from around the country.  Lighter and more agile than the UN structure, the Ushahidi Liberia team was able to collate nearly 5,000 reports from perspectives previously not readily accessible to most observers.  Additionally, the constant communication by phone, email and in person between Ushahidi Liberia and the UNMIL Joint Elections Operations Center (JEOC) personnel allowed for cross fertilization and information vetting, improving the fidelity of reporting for all consumers.

Situational Awareness Tools

The best sensors are the human senses. Broadly leveraging what these sensors acquire is impossible without standards, tools, training and leadership, structure that is both formal and informal.  The affected, on-the-ground responders, and providers with reachback capabilities create a circle of dependency that is often broken because of the lack of structure. On the flipside the ability to achieve and maintain situational awareness was and remains bound by the lowest common denominators of an organization and its personnel. The Ushahidi platform allowed UNMIL to break through some of the challenges of:

• Knowing what information is important, available and where to find and leverage it
• The End user’s
  • Education level
  • Language skills
  • Computer skills
  • Motivation level
  • Access to tools (power, computer, internet, phone)
  • Training on the tools

Information flows during Liberia's 2011 election

In the end, success was based on preparation and relationships.  The Ushahidi Liberia team provided access to resources and information that UNMIL simply could not have leveraged in their absence.  Constant communication by phone, email and in person between Ushahidi and the UNMIL JEOC allowed for cross-fertilization and information vetting.

About Ushahidi Liberia

1. Ushahidi Liberia has direct partnerships with 16 different NGOs (international and local), civil society coalitions and the government. Among these partnerships there are many other indirect partners (example:  Elections Coordinating Committee is a partner, but they are composed of 30 organizations; IFES has 20 CSOs that Ushahidi has trained who are out in the field reporting to them, etc). Ushahidi has also provided a map for UN OCHA made at their request.

2. Ushahidi had about 7 volunteers during the first run-off.

3. Total reports on elections instance since January = 4,954 (that are public)

4. Androids – Ushahidi had 4 of them running the free election shortcode and also the free long number for a national early warning map (LERN).

5. Ushahidi Liberia’s VSAT connection during the election was 1054/512 kbps (the fastest public internet connection in Liberia), now reduced (due to high costs) to 768/256 kbps – it is a dedicated C-band connection available to Ushahidi Liberia users in their facility. They have 16 computers running open source software. Their Dir. of IT, Dir. of Training, and Program Director are based in-country, with a Tech Lead based in the US.

Data from USAVE to end users

The geography of crisis and response

Geographic location, type of crisis, responder specialty and organization greatly impact the way in which the individual will operate.  However, each shares common, basic geographic (map) data requirements.  Imagery, terrain, political boundaries, infrastructure and hydrography are the minimal data sets required for any type of fieldwork.  Depending on the event, political, social, demographic, medical, refugee, reported violence and other kinds of information may become most critical to obtain.  For the purpose of this thought process we will focus on the base geographic data requirements.

LOCATE: Where am I?  Where is the disaster?  Where are those in need?  Where are response resources?  How do I get to the resources?  How do I get the resources to the affected?

- Country, city, town, base camp and devastated area

- Affected, other responders, and external partners

- Infrastructure (water, power, communications, sewer, medical, transportation, and security)

- Resources (water, food, shelter, medical, transportation, communication, security)

COMMUNICATE: Information, requirements, coordinates, coordination, challenges and successes.

- Affected, other responders, higher headquarters and external partners

- Collected field data, open source

- Data, space and ground based sensor data

- Needs, challenges and successes

FACILITATE: Response, assessments, support, capacity building, documentation & retrograde.

- Information collection and sharing

- Resource acquisition, delivery and employment

- Initial and sustainment training

- Documentation, configuration control

- Responsible turn-over to and departure from Host Nation

Just on the tip of what is possible

Looking to the future

If space-based providers can push data down to the lowest common denominator in a timely manner, in a format they may leverage, the future is bright.  If not, expensive space-based products will remain tools employed by the elite and an educated few “in the know”, remaining invisible to those it would best serve.  Using geographic information systems is no longer a luxury, it is a necessity across the spectrum of United Nations mission sets.  Manual procedures of reporting, filing and analyzing information should be placed behind us.

The success of the next crisis response begins today.  With the right equipment for the mission, end users may even operate disconnected from the grid, know where they are, collect and share information with others on the ground and, when finally connected, receive and transmit vital information to all interested parties. Each scenario requires the end user to pack appropriately based on factors such as financial resources, logistics restrictions, availability of infrastructure within the impact area, on-ground transportation and individual capabilities.

To give the end user access to harnessed capabilities one may consider providing equipment and training so the value may be broadly shared amongst operators instead of unintended hoarding amongst technical specialists.  If the end user connects to the grid, they will be able to receive timely ground and space based data like high resolution post-event imagery from numerous sources, as well as interface with the “cloud.”

The future is already here

A circle of dependency has become apparent between organizations, formal and informal, and the crowd.  They are intertwined, even though some resist.  The bounds have become tighter and the value greater among those parts of the circle working with, rather than against, each other.  During the election season, Ushahidi Liberia provided an environment of professional cooperation necessary for the cultivation of numerous complex relationships.  Together, we have taken a very large step forward into the future. Although, likely never to be the same, the road has now been traveled.  There is no going back.  Know the past, anticipate the future, show the way!

CAUSE Resiliency (West Coast) Experiment 2011

The CAUSE Resiliency (West Coast) Experiment project 2011 was a collaboration between the governments of Canada and United States with operational emergency management communities in British Columbia and bordering states. The goal was to simulate an emergency response with the use and integration of some emerging technologies, including the Multi-Agency Situational Awareness System (MASAS), ESRI and Ushahidi. Simon Fraser University, under Dr. Peter Anderson’s guidance, trained students to use Ushahidi for citizen reports:

CAUSE Ushahidi Chapter – FINAL from Planetworks Consulting on Vimeo.

Citizens will use the many online communication channels (email, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, and more) and their mobile devices during an emergency. Examples like this demonstrate how official organizations can incorporate citizen reporting platforms like Ushahidi to plan, give voice and build partnerships with their communities. Emergency responders often say that citizens are the first responders and witnesses in their neighbourhoods. With training and planning, it is possible to have an installation of Ushahidi ready for emergencies and use the mobile applications. The mobile apps can be white-labelled and customized for your city or emergency response group. There is a huge opportunity to replicate this simulation model connecting official responders, universities and volunteers. All it takes is leadership, initiative and a plan.

The Canadian National MASAS Information eXchange (MASAS-X) supports operations, exercises and training. (www.MASAS-X.ca).

Thank you
Special thanks to Jack Pagotto (Head, ESEC [Emergency Mgmt Systems & Interoperability, Surveillance/Intel, E-security, Critical Infrastructure Protection] Centre for Security Science) for funding and making this video clip available, Doug Allport, Senior Advisor, MASAS National Implementation Teamand the MASAS team for building software that connects citizens and emergency responders, Dr. Peter Anderson (Director, Telematics Research Lab, SFU Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology) for his support of Ushahidi and for engaging students, Daniel Stevens (Vancouver EOC) for his introduction, and as well many thanks to the actors and other professionals involved.

The SciFi geeks may recognize the actor who volunteered some of the narration as Bruce Greenwood, of the Star Trek movie fame and a native Vancouverite. This video was provided by Paul Childs, Planetworks Consulting with the film by Black Dog Productions.

More clips may be available from the Centre of Security Science on request.