Robert Kirkpatrick GIVAS Project Manager Executive Office of the Secretary-General

1. Robert Kirkpatrick GIVAS Project Manager Executive Office of the Secretary-General United Nations Headquarters New York

2. What is GIVAS? GIVAS is a global decision support network created to • Enable policymakers to take rapid and effective action to protect the vulnerable in response to emerging complex global crises • Provide evidence for advocacy to ensure that the plight of the vulnerable remains the object of global attention

3. How has the nature global crises changed? • Sudden onset • Fast infection rates • Infodemics • Cross-border • Cross-sector • New population groups • Overlapping multiple crises • Complex feedback loops

4. Why GIVAS? • Recent events have revealed a wide information gap between onset of these new crises and the availability of actionable information to policymakers.

5. Questions we cannot yet answer on a global scale • Who is being affected by these crises, and how? • How are they coping? • How well are our current policies working? • What faint, early signals should we be listening for today?

6. Why GIVAS now? • Data is back, data is sexy • Mobile phone revolution • New tools for • Data collection • Data fusion • Filtering • Analysis • Mapping • Visualization • Alerting • Collaboration • New ways to combine human and machine intelligence • New approaches to harnessing the power of collective action. • Emerging global culture of sustainable grassroots technology innovation

7. What value will GIVAS add? • Quick-time and real-time actionable information • Cross-sectoral focus • Collaboration across disciplines, regions, and organizations • Integrate, enhance, and filter information already available • Hub for Southern Innovation

8. What is GIVAS not? • Another data collection technology • A global crisis early warning or forecasting system • Another top-down global indicator initiative • A tool to rank countries on some kind of vulnerability index • Yet another “one-stop-shop” web portal

9. What information might it integrate? • Existing high-quality statistical data and map-based visualizations • Existing sector-specific surveys, rapid assessments • Information from existing early warning systems and M&E databases • Satellite imagery and remote sensing data • Semi-structured and unstructured information from mobile phone reporting • Event-based information from text mining of online content

10. Early ideas for platform capabilities • Secure, customizable online workspaces for team collaboration around streams of information • Users choose what information to integrate, and what reports to publish • Users train system to detect and interpret locally-relevant patterns of interest • Automated indexing, text mining, mapping, and alerting • Social networking for usage incentives and quality control • Social metadata such as tagging, clustering, rating and comments. • Easy-to-use tools for interactive analysis, mapping and visualization

11. Challenges • Data Access • Data Quality • Data Comparability • Data Privacy & Misuse • Inadequate Baseline Data • Context-Specific Indicators • Fusing indicator & event-based information • Fusing quantitative and qualitative information

12. Operating Principles • Make sure the vulnerable are heard. • Build only where we must. • Local needs drive global innovation. • Focus on real needs of users. • Fail fast, fail often, and learn. • Make it free and open source and support open standards • If information is power, shared information is more powerful still. • Sharing requires trust, and trust takes time to build.

13. How do we get there? • Agile Development • Open Innovation • Phased Approach • Many Partnerships • Early-Adopters Program

14. Institutional Arrangement • Oversight: UN Deputy Secretary-General • Technical: DSG’s Technical Steering Group • Strategic: Inter-Agency Advisory Group • Leadership: Project Manager from outside • Team: Secondments, contract staff • Administration: UNOPS • Location: Physically separate from EOSG • Funding: Voluntary contributions from a broad range of Member States

15. Current Partners • 27+ UN agencies, including UNICEF, UNDP, The World Bank, WHO, WFP, UNFPA, and OCHA • Harvard University, Rutgers University, Columbia University, IDS • The Rockefeller Foundation, The UN Foundation, The Meridian Institute • The Open Mobile Consortium

16. Progress to date • Late April 2009 • Project start • September 2009 • First Baseline Report to UN General Assembly and G20 • Website launch (www.voicesofthevulnerable.net) • Concept film to facilitate outreach • Video testimonies by people impacted by the crisis in Bangladesh, Cape Verde, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Romania and Uruguay • December 2009 • Launch of Rapid Impact and Vulnerability Analysis Fund (RIVAF) • January 2010 • Selection of 9 proposals for funding • March 2010 • Hiring of GIVAS Project Manager

17. RIVAF Round One • Launched December 2009, proposals selected January 2010 • Support UN agency efforts to collect and analyze quick-time data • Encourages joint funding approach • 1-Year timeframe, preliminary data by May 15, 2010. • Initial studies on unsafe migration, crime, maternal health, women’s empowerment, women’s labor, disaster impacts, tourism, nutrition, food security, household coping strategies, and education • Global, regional, and national coverage: Jordan, Egypt, Colombia, Mexico, Ghana, Ethiopia, Malawi, Zambia, Madagascar, Indonesia, and Nepal.

18. Inputs to Analytical Framework • Outputs from RIVAF studies • Collaboration with WFP, Columbia University, and Harvard Humanitarian Initiative to inventory and evaluate existing early warning systems • UN University analysis of vulnerability definitions across communities of practice • Paper on best practices and lessons learned from early warning and impact monitoring systems • Planned survey of existing mobile phone data collection initiatives • Planned survey of existing databases (government, UN, NGO, academe, industry) to assess utility as baseline data

19. Milestones: 2010 • April – October • Series of 4 workshops on requirements, challenges, opportunities, and platform design: Blue Sky Thinkers, Member States, UN agencies, and technologists. • May – December • Series of Innovation Camps (3 planned for Africa, Asia, and US) • June • First RIVAF outputs to be used in 2nd GIVAS Report • First design prototypes and user scenarios published • September • GIVAS Team reaches 10 members (project staff, secondments) • November • First live technology demo of GIVAS Platform capabilities • visualization • collaborative analysis • pattern detection

20. Milestones: 2011 • March • Limited beta testing of integrated system with Early Adopters • June • Open public Beta Test (English only) • Aug • Public HTTP/REST APIs to support mash-ups • September • Public support for 2 additional official UN languages • October • Localization kit for developers • November • Mobile GIVAS client (Android? WinMo7? iPhone?) • December • Public support for all 6 official UN languages

21. Thank you! • Email: kirkpatrick@un.org • Mobile: +1 650.796.5709 • Skype: robertkirkpatrick • Facebook: rgkirkpatrick • LinkedIn: rgkirkpatrick • Twitter: rgkirkpatrick • GChat: rgkirkpatrick • Blog: humanitariantech.com