Shifting Aid from Analog to Digital: Paul Conneally at TEDxRC2

Paul Conneally is a former journalist turned aid worker, who has spent more than ten years "in the field," with both the ICRC and IFRC, working with communities affected by war and disaster. Conneally is a previous TEDxGeneva talker and was a featured speaker at the LIFT Conference in Geneva in 2011. He recently left the IFRC to join the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva as their new Head of Communications and Partnerships.

The humanitarian model
has barely changed

since the early 20th century.

Its origins are firmly rooted
in the analog age

and there is a major shift
coming on the horizon.

The catalyst for this change

was the major earthquake that struck Haiti

on the 12th of January in 2010.

Haiti was a game changer.

The earthquake destroyed
the capital, Port-au-Prince,

claiming the lives of some 320,000 people,

rendering homeless
about 1.2 million people.

Government institutions
were completely decapitated,

including the presidential palace.

I remember standing on the roof

of the Ministry of Justice
in downtown Port-au-Prince.

It was about two meters high,

completely squashed
by the violence of the earthquake.

For those of us on the ground
in those early days,

it was clear for even
the most disaster-hardened veterans,

that Haiti was something different.

Haiti was something we hadn't seen before.

But Haiti provided us
with something else unprecedented.

Haiti had allowed us to glimpse

into a future of what disaster response
might look like

in a hyper-connected world,

where people have access
to mobile smart devices.

Because out of the urban devastation
in Port-au-Prince

came a torrent of SMS texts:

people crying for help,
beseeching us for assistance,

sharing data, offering support,
looking for their loved ones.

This was a situation
that traditional aid agencies

had never before encountered.

We were in one of the poorest countries
on the planet,

but 80 percent of the people
had mobile devices in their hands.

And we were unprepared for this,

and they were shaping the aid effort.

Outside Haiti also,
things were looking different.

Tens of thousands
of so-called digital volunteers

were scouring the Internet,

converting tweets that
had already been converted from texts

and putting these into open-source maps,

layering them with all sorts
of important information,

people like Crisis Mappers
and Open Street Map,

and putting these
on the Web for everybody:

the media, the aid organizations
and the communities themselves,

to participate in and to use.

Back in Haiti,
people were increasingly turning

to the medium of SMS.

People that were hungry and hurting

were signaling their distress,

were signaling their need for help.

On street sides all over Port-au-Prince,

entrepreneurs sprung up,

offering mobile phone charging stations.

They understood more than we did

people's innate need to be connected.

Never having been confronted
with this type of situation before,

we wanted to try
and understand how we could

tap into this incredible resource,

how we could really leverage
this incredible use

of mobile technology and SMS technology.

We started talking with a local
telecom provider called Voilà,

which is a subsidiary
of Trilogy International.

We had basically three requirements.

We wanted to communicate
in a two-way form of communication.

We didn't want to shout;
we needed to listen as well.

We wanted to be able to target

specific geographic neighborhoods,
communities.

We didn't need to talk
to the whole country at the same time.

And we wanted it to be easy to use.

Out of this rubble of Haiti
and from this devastation

came something that we call TERA,

the Trilogy Emergency
Response Application,

which has been used to support
the aid effort ever since.

It has been used to help communities
prepare for disasters.

It has been used to signal early warning

in advance of weather-related disasters.

It's used for public health
awareness campaigns

such as the prevention of cholera.

And it is even used for sensitive issues

such as building awareness
around gender-based violence.

But does it work?

We have just published
an evaluation of this program,

and the evidence that is there
for all to see is quite remarkable.

Some 74% of people received the data.

Those who were intended
to receive the data,

74% of them received it.

96% of them found it useful.

83% of them took action,

evidence that it is indeed empowering.

And 73% of them shared it.

The TERA system was developed from Haiti

with the support
of engineers in the region.

It is a user-appropriate technology
that has been used

for humanitarian good to great effect.

Technology is transformational.

Right across the developing world,

citizens and communities
are using technology

to enable them to bring about change,

positive change, in their own communities.

The grass roots have been strengthened

through the social power of sharing

and they are challenging the old models,

the old analog models
of control and command.

One illustration of the transformational
power of technology is in Kibera.

Kibera is one of Africa's largest slums.

It's on the outskirts of Nairobi,
the capital city of Kenya.

It's home to an unknown number of people,

some say between 250,000 and 1.2 million.

If you were to arrive in Nairobi today
and pick up a tourist map,

Kibera is represented as a lush,
green national park

devoid of human settlement.

Young people living in Kibera
in their community,

with simple handheld devices,

GPS handheld devices
and SMS-enabled mobile phones,

have literally put themselves on the map.

They have collated crowd-sourced data

and rendered the invisible visible.

People like Josh and Steve are continuing

to layer information upon information,

real-time information,

tweeted and texted
onto these maps for all to use.

You can find out about the latest
impromptu music session.

You can find out
about the latest security incident.

You can find out about places of worship.

You can find out about the health centers.

You can feel the dynamism of this living,
breathing community.

They also have their own
news network on YouTube,

with 36,000 viewers at the moment.

They're showing us what can be done

with mobile, digital technologies.

They're showing
that the magic of technology

can bring the invisible visible.

And they're giving a voice to themselves.

They are telling their own story,

bypassing the official narrative.

And we're seeing similar stories
from all points on the globe.

In Mongolia for instance,

where 30% of the people are nomadic,

SMS information systems are being used

to track migration and weather patterns.

SMS is even used to hold herder summits

from remote participation.

And if people are migrating into urban,
unfamiliar, concrete environments,

they can also be helped in anticipation

with social supporters
ready and waiting for them,

based on SMS knowledge.

In Nigeria, open-source SMS tools
are being used

by the Red Cross community workers

to gather information
from the local community

in an attempt to better understand

and mitigate the prevalence of malaria.

My colleague, Jason Peat,
who runs this program,

tells me it's 10 times faster
and 10 times cheaper

than the traditional way of doing things.

And not only is it empowering
to the communities,

but really importantly,

this information stays in the community,

where it is needed to formulate
long-term health polices.

We are in a planet
of seven billion people,

five billion mobile subscriptions.

By 2015, there will be three billion
smartphones in the world.

The U.N. broadband commission
has recently set targets

to have broadband access
in 50 percent of the Developing World,

compared to 20 percent today.

We are hurtling
towards a hyper-connected world

where citizens from all cultures
and all social strata

will have access to smart,
fast mobile devices.

People are understanding,
from Cairo to Oakland,

that there are new ways to come together,

there are new ways to mobilize,

there are new ways to influence.

A transformation is coming,

which I believe needs to be understood

by the humanitarian structures
and humanitarian models.

The collective voices of people
need to be more integrated

through new technologies
into the organizational strategies

and plans of actions,

and not just recycled
for fundraising or marketing.

We need, for example,
to embrace the big data,

the knowledge that is there
from market leaders

who understand what it means
to use and leverage big data.

One idea that I'd like you to consider,
for instance,

is to take a look at our IT departments.

They're normally backroom or
basement hardware service providers,

but they need to be elevated
to software strategists.

We need people in our organizations

who know what it's
like to work with big data.

We need technology
as a core organizational principle.

We need technological strategists
in the boardroom

who can ask and answer the question:

"What would Amazon or Google
do with all of this data?",

and convert it to humanitarian good.

The possibilities that new digital
technologies are bringing

can help humanitarian organizations,

not only ensure
that people's right to information is met,

or that they have their right
to communicate,

but I think in the future,

humanitarian organizations
will also have to anticipate

the right for people to access
critical communication technologies

in order to ensure
that their voices are heard,

that they're truly participating,

that they're truly empowered
in the humanitarian world.

It has always been the elusive ideal
to ensure full participation

of people affected by disasters
in the humanitarian effort.

We now have the tools.
We now have the possibilities.

There are no more reasons not to do it.

I believe we need to bring
the humanitarian world

from analog to digital.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)