Paper details

Paper authors	Robin E. Mays
In panel on	Participation and Accountability in Humanitarian Disaster Management
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

For the poor to be served successfully according to the guiding principles of the humanitarian imperative or human rights law, there exists a central requirement of community agency within project management. As technology takes on increasingly more responsibility within the management of humanitarian operations, technology design must be included in humanitarian accountability. This research presentations advocates for a social accountability of humanitarian technology design and development to the principles exigent within humanitarian missions. My research on humanitarian effectiveness reaffirms the theories of Chambers and Freire that dialogical and participatory methods are the critical pathways for achieving social well-being. This presentation highlights where my findings show centrality of community agency and lowest-level empowerment (in terms organizational design) are central to the humanitarian imperative. It identifies specific humanitarian practices relevant for design accountability within technology that can help bring transparency to design assumptions that may be incompatible with a humanitarian work-system. It emboldens pathways for establishing accountability to the socio- of humanitarian socio-technical systems in two ways: (1) Via the participation of those who drive the work-system in a holistic and hyper-participatory design process, and (2) Via the transformation of technology design and developments methods and evaluation to accommodate community agency.

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