Trying to explain FrontlineSMS to people is difficult, as it’s the kind of technology you really need to use in order to understand its full potential. I just came across a poster that was really designed well, showing some of FLSMS applications for field medicine.

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Direct Link to iPhone App via iTunes

Some ICT  solutions being deployed in Haiti right now

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I’ve been inundated with requests by people wanting to be volunteers in Haiti. While they’re intentions are great, unfortunetely there are too many conversations like this:

Me: Hope for Haiti

Caller: Hi! I want to get on the next flight to Haiti and help!

Me: Oh, hi, thank you! Do you have a background in medicine or disaster relief?

Caller: Not at all! I just want to help!

I get it, and I don’t begrudge them one bit. But the truth is, right now the only volunteers needed are experts. Haiti will need plenty of non-expert volunteers in the coming weeks and months, but for now resources there are so tight, and security is so haphazard, that it’s not practical, safe, or helpful to go down there.

So what can I do? Give money to these big orgs that already have raised a ton?

Well, yeah, that would be a good start. Give $5. Give $10. I’m working with Hope for Haiti, and we’re having our first plane full of doctors and nurses land in Port au Prince in about 10 minutes. Another plane is landing in the DR with supplies. So the money being donated to Hope for Haiti IS REACHING HAITIAN PEOPLE.

But let’s say you already donated, or want to help in a more tangible way. If you’ve got tech skills, we need your help with Crises Mapping.

1. Read up on it.
2. See it in action
3. Sign up to be a volunteer programmer/designer/data entry person

From the co-founder of Ushahidi (quotes are from Beth’s Blog)

We have received tremendous support from the crisis mapping community through the Crisis Mapping Network, the developer community, collaborating organizations like UN OCHA Columbia, INSTEDD, Haitianquake, Digital Democracy, FrontlineSMS, Google and others, and dozens of volunteers who’ve helped with everything from data entry, to translations, to data filtering.

Since the site went live, the team has been working round the clock to make improvements to the instance, fix problems (our server has crashed several times already and our alert system went beserk!), coordinate efforts with volunteers, share information with partners, and collaborate with other tech-based efforts e.g. the people finder at Haitianquake (since merged with Google’s). The fact that we have a global team means that we have been able to offer round the clock support, with the Africa-based team taking over when the US-based team goes to sleep and vice versa.

Ory describes their current challenges, including:

Close the feedback loop: that is, ensure that agencies trying to figure out where help is needed are tracking our reports and following up on requests for help that are coming in. We are currently doing this via the Crisis Mappers network, Sahana, and Internews and INSTEDD teams who have just landed in Haiti, but a lot more needs to be done.

Link to full res image

http://haiti.ushahidi.com
We have set up an international number:
+44 7624802524

We would be forever grateful if you could share this number with as many people in Haiti as possible and let them know that this is one way to identify who is in trouble and where they are so that response operations has them on their radar. The site has already been publicized by the Clinton Foundation, UNDP and we’re expecting CNN to cover this as well. Plus, we’ve got 200+ members on the CrisisMappers Google Group who are desperately looking for real-time information so they can plan their response operations accordingly.

This seems awfully (in all senses of the word) relevant right now.

The purpose of this Working Paper Series on Crisis Mapping is to briefly analyze the current use, and changing role, of information communication technology (ICT) in conflict early warning, crisis mapping and humanitarian response. The authors demonstrate that ICTs have the potential to play an increasingly significant role in three critical ways by: facilitating the communication of information in conflict zones, improving the collection of salient quantitative and qualitative conflict data, and enhancing the visualization and analysis of patterns.

Download the PDF here.

In lieu of actually writing my own content (too busy), here’s a collection of some recent Haitian news and developments. Click the link below to keep reading.

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I believe NGOs have a moral imperative to share their data; the information I have about a certain population in the area we work, could be invaluable to another NGO also working in the area. And vice versa. Catholic Relief Services (CRS) has been extraordinarily helpful in sharing several census’ they conducted. Granted, we don’t have the ACTUAL data yet, we needed two formal written requests, but I spent time with their M&E team and the data should be coming shortly.

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As if they weren’t sexy enough, the NYTimes and Economist have decided to sexy it times 10 in the past few weeks. [Links to specific articles]

I like ‘em too. Would like to implement them into my monitoring and evaluation plans for the NGO I work for. It would help us monitor schools on a daily basis, all over the Southern Department (picture teachers texting their daily attendance each morning, along with the weather, possible health concerns, etc., with each text automatically filed away digitally into a database.)

Without further ado, a roundup of cell phone in development solutions.

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