Information sharing vital to humanitarian response

["Irfan Khan" <khania@super.net.pk>]

GLOBAL: Information sharing vital to humanitarian response

NEW YORK, 6 Mar 2002 (IRIN) - The importance of accurate and timely 
information to help prevent, prepare for or mitigate humanitarian 
crises has been emphasised in a new statement on best practices 
adopted by relief professionals from the United Nations, 
nongovernmental organisations and donor community. 

"By sharing information we all become aware of which humanitarian and 
funding needs are being met," UN Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator 
Carolyn McAskie said in a keynote speech at a Symposium on Best 
Practices in Humanitarian Information Exchange in Geneva, Switzerland 
last month.

"Without this information we run the risk of unwittingly duplicating 
efforts," she added.

After the symposium, four days of discussions among 250 aid 
practitioners were synthesised in a six page statement on Best 
Practices in Humanitarian Information Exchange. It was posted on the 
Reliefweb site for two weeks to give all participants the chance to 
comment before being adopted today.

[see statement at 
http://www.reliefweb.int/symposium/final_statement.doc]

During the Geneva meeting, McAskie cited Afghanistan and the volcanic 
eruption near Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as 
examples of emergencies where information management was well-
coordinated.

"In the extremely complex operating environment of Afghanistan, 
existing information systems... were enhanced to create one common 
information framework dealing with emergency as well as transitional 
issues," she said.

In Goma, she added, "OCHA [the UN Office for the Coordination of 
Humanitarian Affairs], with the full support of its partners, was 
able to deploy - at very little cost and relatively quickly - 
existing information management capacities to provide up-to-date 
information services to the agencies on the ground through a 
rudimentary, but effective, humanitarian information centre."

Data and information must be relevant, accurate and timely to be 
useful, according to the statement. "Ensuring quality requires the 
development of, and adherence to, standards for information 
collection, exchange, security, attribution and use," it said.

The statement called for improved preparedness, including baseline 
data for high-risk areas and rapid response humanitarian information 
centres; and better field-level information coordination. 

The symposium statement called for donors to recognise the importance 
of information preparedness to humanitarian action.

"Many donors and aid organisations are still willing to spend 
millions of dollars on material relief and yet are reluctant to 
support information initiatives which seek to put across explanations 
as to what these donors or agencies are doing, and why," according to 
Edward Girardet of Media Action International.

The statement acknowledged OCHA's role as a focal point in the area 
of humanitarian information and calls for the creation of a "multi-
stakeholder steering committee" to look at several key issues: 
ensuring information systems meet operational needs; developing 
standards of information quality; and strengthening relationships 
among different information partners, including the media.

Field-based humanitarian information centres - when established in 
crisis situations - should be "open-access physical locations," and 
"serve as a neutral broker of humanitarian information, providing 
value-added products and beneficial services to the field-based 
humanitarian community," the statement added.

Participants at the symposium emphasised that technology is a 
powerful enabler, but that human judgement is the basis for 
operational decisions and systems should be relevant and easy to use, 
particularly in remote areas.

"We need simple and user-friendly technologies that allow us to begin 
operating the moment we hit the ground," said McAskie, adding: "If 
the information we seek sits somewhere in a database, it is utterly 
useless if we do not all possess the same basic technical skills to 
retrieve it."

Information management systems should also aim to reduce the effects 
of information overload, 
according to the statement.

"Just as the uncoordinated arrival of relief supplies can clog a 
country's logistics and 
distribution system, the onslaught of unwanted, inappropriate and 
unpackaged information can 
impede decision-making and rapid response to an emergency," McAskie 
said.

[ENDS]


source:
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=23912&SelectRegion=Global&;
SelectCountry=GLOBAL