As you watch the enormous humanitarian relief effort going on in Haiti on the evening news this week, following the devastating 7.0 earthquake that hit that country on January 12th, you can probably imagine the technology and IT infrastructure that the U.S. Department of Defense and other agencies has put into place to assist in that relief effort. Read more about it here. The Haiti government turned over the operation of the one runway airport at Port-au-Prince, the nation’s capital, to the U.S. military. An acknowledgement of the U.S. military’s prowess in logistics and technology. For a few days as the relief effort ramped up news reports of delays at the airport were heard, but as that relief effort got organized those reports of delays ceased even with the amount of aide and volunteers flowing into the country were increasing.
What is not reported on the evening news is how an army of geek volunteers from the private sector is supporting that relief effort. Leading the way are organizations like CrisisCommons, Ushaahidi, the International Community of Crisis Mappers and InSTEDD, according to an InformationWeek artical. Application software development gets into the mix, undertaking such tasks as developing ways to help locate U.S. citizens and provide information online about Haiti and how to donate money, developing a timeline of events and a wiki of information online, a GPS-compatible street map of Haiti, an English to Creole dictionary for IPhones and Android mobile devices, and a system to use Twitter messages to ask for or offer assistance to those in need. "We've been working a lot at Sunlight Labs to get application software developers to organize and work together in volunteer communities. Developers may not be competent with a saw, but are starting to realize they have a skill they can contribute," says Clay Johnston, director of Sunlight Labs. "The tools are available, and methodologies like agile project management have been popularized that can facilitate this."
In light of the reports of the failings of the coordination of relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina and the reports of the relief effort in Haiti, it is clear that it is IT solutions that have been put into place to better support humanitarian relief efforts worldwide and that technological advances has clearly moved into the 21st century in support of those efforts.
What is not reported on the evening news is how an army of geek volunteers from the private sector is supporting that relief effort. Leading the way are organizations like CrisisCommons, Ushaahidi, the International Community of Crisis Mappers and InSTEDD, according to an InformationWeek artical. Application software development gets into the mix, undertaking such tasks as developing ways to help locate U.S. citizens and provide information online about Haiti and how to donate money, developing a timeline of events and a wiki of information online, a GPS-compatible street map of Haiti, an English to Creole dictionary for IPhones and Android mobile devices, and a system to use Twitter messages to ask for or offer assistance to those in need. "We've been working a lot at Sunlight Labs to get application software developers to organize and work together in volunteer communities. Developers may not be competent with a saw, but are starting to realize they have a skill they can contribute," says Clay Johnston, director of Sunlight Labs. "The tools are available, and methodologies like agile project management have been popularized that can facilitate this."
In light of the reports of the failings of the coordination of relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina and the reports of the relief effort in Haiti, it is clear that it is IT solutions that have been put into place to better support humanitarian relief efforts worldwide and that technological advances has clearly moved into the 21st century in support of those efforts.
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