Panel details

Panel organiser(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online
Number of paper presentations	4
Location	Istanbul

Abstract

The humanitarian community, broadly, has resourced countless efforts over the past 20 years to usher in digital technology to our humanitarian operations and contexts. Donor agencies, organizational headquarters and tech companies have been committed to transforming humanitarians’ critical analog work and information into digital spaces, including those of the affected and vulnerable communities we serve. Yet, humanitarian agencies have not as rigorously guided tech partners on how to adapt their business for the preservation of our operational methods and approaches which are deeply embedded with our mission checks and balances for achieving successful humanitarian outcomes.

We must invest the same rigor in our adoption of tech as we do to achieving our analog humanitarian aims. While tech creators are trained to determine if a product has met standards for good engineering, it is humanitarians who bear the burden to determine if the process and product are meeting our standards for humanitarian accountability.

While exceedingly successful in bringing digital tech into the humanitarian space, we have yet to adequately bring humanitarian accountability to the digital space. This panel will discuss what works – and what doesn’t – when designing tech for our humanitarian aims.

Paper presentations