Smartening Up at the NOMAD 2013 Paris Workshop

A Mind Meld between Aid Agencies and Mobile Data Collection Technologists!

The proliferation of mobile and tablet applications for collecting, storing and sorting data faster, cheaper and with greater accuracy is already enabling aid agencies to deliver demonstrably life saving improvements in assistance.

However, with so many different tools on the market finding the mobile solution best suited to the individual information needs of a particular aid agency can be challenging. Fortunately A team of humanitarian practitioners with expertise in GIS mapping and information management from two French humanitarian organisations IMMAP and CartONG jointly launched The NOMAD Project to tackle this challenge.

The NOMAD Project links aid organisations with the latest information management tools to more easily collect, analyse and manage data. Towards this end, for two and a half days from May 15th – 17th, the NOMAD Project hosted a workshop at the French Space Agency Headquarters in Paris (CNES) that not only showcased the latest advances in smartphone-based data tools but that also convened representatives of ten technology providers - each presenting a distinct smartphone-based data collection tool – and aid practitioners from more than twenty different aid agencies. These two groups gathered for a series of product demonstrations, a tool fair and several aid worker testimonials on the successes and tribulations of using smart-phone data tools in field settings.

For aid agencies the workshop was a chance to try and test different data collection tools, learn about advances in the field, and make a tool selection. For tool providers the workshop was a vital opportunity to sign up new clients and receive feedback from aid practitioners on the usefulness of specific features. However, throughout this event these two groups were engaged in a much deeper conversation about how each could work more closely with the other going forward.

Traditionally these are two fields that have not had much to do with one another. Even within the aid practitioners present at the workshop an impressive fifty-eight per cent of the attendees had never used a mobile data collection solution before. Considering that the attendees of the workshop are among the most receptive and willing members of the international development and humanitarian community to embrace new digital technologies it is clear that the outreach work and possibilities for collaboration between these two fields is still in its infancy.

Furthermore, it turns out these are two groups that have quite a bit to say to one another. Collected via twitter and in person, event attendees remarked on the workshop’s success, describing it as a “great few days here at #nomadws, lots of amazing ideas and brilliant contacts” and “plenty of exciting discussions involving users &; providers of #MDC {mobile data collection] tools at the #nomadws: this will help users leverage their full potential.” A representative from PSI Mobile, one of the data tool providers that presented at the workshop, eloquently stated her organisation’s satisfaction with the workshop as follows:

“As a solution provider, the opportunity to meet many humanitarian organisations specifically to discuss digital data gathering has been excellent. We have been provided with a forum to present our solution and to engage directly with a community with operational requirements in real life programmes. We have also had the opportunity to listen to other solution providers, which has provided a source of both new ideas and also potential partnership opportunities. We look forward to the next NOMAD event.”

The NOMAD Workshop provided an important forum for technologists and aid practitioners to go beyond critiquing various existing tool features and begin brainstorming on ways to meet the outstanding data needs of the aid community not yet accommodated in existing products. We can only hope that these dialogues continue and lead to further innovations and customizable tools in the future.

These new features will add to an already impressive array of functions smartphone-based data collection tools are allowing aid workers to perform in the field. These include: the ability to snap pictures, record GPS coordinates and other spatial data for maps and graphics, scan bar codes for keeping track of inventories, input survey responses gathered in remote field locations and transmit all this data to secure servers and command centers instantaneously. The less time it takes to collect, upload and analyse data, the quicker humanitarian agencies can understand and respond to the needs of poor communities or populations devastated by natural disasters or violent conflict.

The advantages of using mobile tools for data collection in humanitarian and development setting is increasingly harder to disregard and of those fifty-eight per cent of event attendees who had never used mobile applications for collecting their data, seventy-seven per cent said that they left the workshop inspired to introduce smartphone-based data collection methods to their organisation.

Understanding that it can sometimes be a difficult transition for aid organisations to switch from non-digital to digital forms of data collection and storage, NOMAD also offers training services and maintains a rooster of technical experts that can deploy to train the staff of an organisation anywhere in the world in how to properly use these tools and activate their full potential.

The NOMAD team is looking forward to putting on its next event and is thankful for the enthusiastic participation of all attendees and their rave reviews of the May workshop. In the meantime, NOMAD is in the process of producing a summary document on the workshop, assisting its affiliate organisations IMMAP and CartONG with their upcoming GIS trainings, and recruiting more data solutions providers to feature their tools on the Online Selection Assistant that NOMAD has created to help aid agencies compare and contrast providers and find the data tools best tailored to their needs.

Check out the NOMAD website to learn more about what we do and what’s next on our agenda: http://humanitarian-nomad.org/

If you’d like more information on what was discussed in this event and on which organisations attended please contact Martin Noblecourt at [email protected]