The difference between data and information

Data or information?

In my experience one of the biggest problems is that people don’t understand the difference between collecting data and analysing information. When you talk to a beneficiary, fill out a form and then archive that form somewhere, then you have collected data. However, that data only turns into useful information once you have entered it into a database or spreadsheet so that you can filter, sort, aggregate or calculate data.

If you work for a big retailer, you might think that this is obvious. However, in the humanitarian aid industry it sadly is not.

Three examples:

1. An organization working with refugees announced during a meeting that they would relocate between 2,000 and 4,000 people from host communities to a refugee camp during the next few weeks. Another organization that is in charge of providing food to that camp, said that they’d need to have a more precise number so that they know how many sacks of rice to buy. However, in the rush of the crisis the first organization had only registered heads of household and was not sure how many people were part of each household.
2. Different meeting, different actors, similar issue: Somebody announced that 458 people would be relocated to a refugee camp in the coming week. Someone working for a an education agency asked, how many of these would be children for whom schooling would have to be provided. The first organization was not able to provide that information since, while they had captured the age during registration on paper, they had only entered “minor” or “adult” into their database.
3. A while age I got to work with a big Excel spreadsheet that contained data of people who had been registered. Many of these people had two or three names (Last name, Middle name, First name), all of which were entered into a single cell called “Name” in the spreadsheet. However, people would sometimes give their last name first, and another time say their first name first, making it difficult to find them in the list. This problem was made worse by the fact that many of the people were illiterate so spellings might differ slightly from one time to the next. Once we put each name into a separate field, it was much easier to find even the ones that were misspelled because at least one of the three names would normally be consistently spelled and then you could simply scan the list of remaining names for phonetic matches.

Granularity and structure of information

I realize that collecting data during an emergency is a very challenging task. However, the three issues I described are not about an inability to collect data, they are about a lack of knowledge how to treat data properly so that you can use it to inform your decisions. In other words: they are examples of bad information management.

One frequent answer to this is “True, but we didn’t think about that in the beginning.” Well, that is exactly why you need to have professional, experienced information managers!

Particularly during the first phase of an emergency, organizations should invest in people who can help them structure the information they need in such a way that it is collected and entered in a useful way. This is something that can even be done by consultants on short-term contracts. Then, once the structure is in place, other (less expensive) people can enter data into those spreadsheets or databases and programme people can use the information as a tool.

Data confidence and errors

The second big challenge is to ensure that the data is entered correctly and stays correct. Everyone makes mistakes, particularly when you have a mind-boggling boring job like entering a list of thousands of names or dates of birth into a spreadsheet. One of the most efficient ways to prevent data entry errors is the double entry method. This means that everything is entered twice, by different people. Once all the data is entered, you can automatically compare the two data sets and look at the differences. I know, I know … I can almost hear cash-strapped managers groan at this suggestion, but hiring two data entry clerks might be only marginally more expensive then hiring one more qualified person.

The second way to reduce errors and increase data confidence is to have programme people work with the data themselves. I’m not necessarily talking about the initial massive data entry, but of the subsequent steps. In a lot of situations, updates are simply given to a person, whose job it is to update the database. This person normally has no knowledge of the programmes or the cases and most of the time never leaves the office. So for him, the data has no context and he will happily enter things that are written down, even if they don’t make sense. On the other hand, a programme person will notice inconsistencies or even be able to suggest improvements to the database. However, that means that organizations have to invest into teaching their programme people the basics of information management so that they understand how to do things and why certain things are done a certain way.

Stop reinventing the wheel

Last but not least, I’m still amazed to see people reinvent the wheel over and over again. A lot of the data that has to be captured is the same in different emergencies, with only small adjustments being necessary to fit the specific context. However, in each emergency people seem to start from scratch and build their databases and spreadsheets as they go.

It should be the role of the global cluster leads to provide standardized information management tools that can be reused and adapted. And while some clusters are already doing this, it is still too few and in the cases where the clusters do provide these tools, a lot of organizations are not aware of them – which again calls for an experienced information manager who knows where to find these tools and how to use them.

I know that hiring people with laptops and spreadsheets is not as sexy as buying trucks or as photogenic as handing out food to beneficiaries. But I am convinced that if we are serious about being efficient and about using the money that we have been given to the greatest advantage of the beneficiaries, we need to professionalize and invest into information management. The people who can do that job already exist, you just need to have to the will to find the budget and hire them. You programmes will improve because of it.

Related posts:

1. From collaborative “crisis mapping” to “crisis feeding”

In many villages, satellite phones are the only way to make a call - and even that doesn't always work.

This is my first time in Africa. However, the one thing that all my colleagues with Africa experience had told me was: “Everybody has a mobile phone.” This made sense to me based on my experience in Haiti where, even though the country is extremely poor, many people even had two mobile phones, one for each network. In Liberia – not so much.

Only 4 per cent of women have  access to a cell phone

Internews recently published a study showing that only 37 per cent of all male and only 4 per cent of all female refugees from Ivory Coast have access to a functioning mobile phone. Not “own one” but “access”! While you might argue that the refugees are probably in a worse situation than many Liberians, my feeling is that cell phone penetration among Liberians in rural Nimba is not much higher, either. (Obviously the situation is different in the capital Monrovia).

The main reasons:

• Many villages are not covered by the two big Liberian cell phone providers, Lonestar and Cellcom. Ironically villages that are right at the border sometimes fare better, because they are covered by MTN and Orange from Ivory Coast.
• The Ivorian phone providers block phones for outgoing calls if that phone has not been used for a while.  While this is also standard in a lot of Western countries – normally after one year of inactivity – apparently MTN and Orange block your phone if you haven’t used it to make an outgoing call for only a few weeks! And of course, the only way to reactivate it is to buy extra credit, which many people can’t afford.
• Some villages don’t have electricity, not even a generator, so people cannot charge their phones.
• In the villages where you have generators, you have to pay to charge your phone. This means that many people only switch on their phone when they want to call someone or when expecting a call.

Considering that many villages are in very remote areas and extremely hard to reach, this lack of phone coverage has direct implications for the delivery of aid. While in other countries, you can use mobile phones to inform communities about planned activities, in Liberia organizations sometimes have to find people from a certain village during market day in the next town, to pass a message to their community. While this tends to work quite well for news affecting the whole community, it can be more difficult when you want to reach particular people, especially refugees who might not be widely known in the host community.

 Sorry – moved houses

Take my work, for example: On a daily basis I’m travelling around the county to see children who have lost touch with their parents and for whom we have information regarding  their parents’ whereabouts. Sometimes this is just a short letter saying “Dear daughter, we are well. We are back in the village.” Sometimes it is a request to bring the child back to the parents (a service that the ICRC provides in some cases). Sometimes it can also be sad news, for example when a family member has died. The point is, we actually have to find and talk to the recipient of the message in person.

But a lot of times, when we arrive in the village where the child is supposed to be, he or she is either working on a farm (which can be a two or three hours march from the village) or we just find out that they recently moved to another community. But without any means of communication, there is no way to relay that information to us in time. As you can imagine, this can be quite frustrating and limits how many children we can see in a day.

“Mommy, I’m fine and I’m in Liberia”

Of course this also has implications beyond being an inconvenience for me and my colleagues: without means of communication, many refugees have not been able to tell their relatives where they are and that they are alive. When we go to the villages, we always have mobile phones and a satellite phone with us (whatever works) that people can use to call their relatives. So many months after their flight, I would have thought that the majority of refugees would already have had some way to get in touch with their relatives. But in a lot of villages that is clearly not the case and as you can imagine it can b very distressing not to know where members of your family are or whether they are even alive.

From what I hear from my colleagues, Liberia is the exception among many African countries and cell phone service here is significantly worse than in other countries. But is shows that mobile phones are not the one-size-fits-all solution that some people suggest it is.

Related posts:

1. Web based election monitoring in Liberia: a failure
2. Lack of communication fuels panic during riot
3. Liberia: Ushahidi to monitor elections

Below you find a presentation I have given on two occasions on that topic. At the bottom of my previous post you can also download the social media staff guidelines.

I decided to use Camtasia this time to create a presentation that includes the audio, which is why it’s embedded as a YouTube video. Of course you can also download it from Slideshare as powerpoint without my explanations.

I hope you find it useful and please tell me what you think.

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The question is: How useful are Twitter, Ushahidi, Facebook etc in disasters at the moment?

In this post I won’t go much into the potential and in what could be but will try to have a sober look at where we are today.

I like to look at this question in three different areas:

1. Information inside the disaster zone
2. Information coming in and out of the disaster zone
3. Information about the disaster.

Inside the disaster zone

Noula.ht is a local Ushahidi application in Haiti.

Assuming we are talking about a developing country, I don’t think social media really plays a substantial role.

By far the best technology to send an receive information aside from radio is by SMS. While many people don’t have access to a computer and the  internet, mobile phones are ubiquitous. In Haiti, the Red Cross is able to target broadcasts to the point where even single cellphone towers can be selected, enabling us to send information that is relevant to that specific area. But we need to get better at using mobile phones to collect information. Multiple choice SMS-surveys are a first start, but we still have a long way to go.

I have also become more critical of Ushahidi than in the past. While Ushahidi is good at collecting information, they aren’t very good at effectively linking up with relief organizations. In my opinion collecting information without being able to then follow-up is just not good enough. When you ask people “What do you need” you also have to have the infrastructure in place to then do something with it. Else you are just creating false expectations.

To their credit, Ushahidi has recognized this and as far as I know is talking to humanitarian organizations.

Not so long ago, there was an interesting discussion about this at the UN Week Digital Media Lounge (see video below).

Information to and from the disaster zone

It would appear to be logical that this should be where social media excels – giving people a voice. And while that is true from a media point of view, it is not necessarily true from a response point of view.

After all, you already know that there is an earthquake or a flood etc.. So what you need is actionable information that can be used to shape the response. However, most information you find on social media channels after an earthquake is more descriptive. “Many houses have collapsed”, “people are sleeping on the street” etc. Again: from a media point of view this is good information but it doesn’t help when planning a response.

It’s certainly interesting and I think it can add additional dimensions to information you already have received, but it is of secondary interest only. But f course that is a criticism of the way the information is used and not of the tools. We could definitely make better use of these channels by agreeing on standards and training people to convey operational information.

Which brings me to my last category:

Information about a disaster

This is where social media really makes a difference! In the same way that we used to have the “CNN effect” we now have the “Twitter effect”. Social media is able to create attention for a disaster. And with attention comes donations. The American Red Cross was able to raise 32 million US dollars for Haiti through SMS and that process was partly driven by Twitter and other social media channels – in addition to traditional media. I am convinced that it wouldn’t have been possible if it hadn’t been for smart phones that already combine internet applications like Twitter and mobile technology. Convergence is the key

For me this is where social media is really relevant. Fundraising might not be as glamorous as giving people in repressive regimes a voice, but it is nevertheless vital. Because without donations, emergency response organizations couldn’t do their job. And unlike everything else, this is something where social media can make a real difference.

What do you think? Am I right or off the mark? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Related posts:

1. From collaborative “crisis mapping” to “crisis feeding”
2. A call for investing into information management in aidwork

Anyhow, this project gives me the rather enviable opportunity to create something from scratch without having to worry about integrating any other systems or databases. And of course, in my mind I have played the “what if”-game many times. Now is my chance to put it into practice.

The conditions

• Website must be easy to maintain
• Must have a backend
• Must have a backend in a language that can be used by the people maintaining it
• Multilingual support
• Cheap
• Site should be up as quickly as possible
• Big developer community

With all that in mind I suggested to use WordPress as a CMS to drive the website. The National Society accepted this proposal and I have been fine tuning it since then. It’s running on a dedicated virtual server. For the design we decided to modify a premium theme.

Below is the set-up that I have in place so far. Please chip in, if you have any additional suggestions. I hope others will find it useful as well. All plug-ins can be downloaded from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/

• After the deadline
  Checks spelling, style and grammar of your English language posts.
  
• Category header content
  Let’s you add HTML at the top of your category or tag-pages. In my opinion, you shouldn’t need a plugin to do that, but it’s the only way I found to add custom text to the top of category or tag-pages.
  
• Contact Form 7
  A customizable contact form. Supports many languages.
  
• Dagon Design Sitemap Generator
  Generates a human readable sitemap.
  
• Easily navigate pages on dashboard
  The site will have a lot of pages (as opposed to posts). This plugin makes it easier to jump to individual pages.
  
• Google XML Sitemaps
  Adds a Google XML site map.
  
• Lightview Plus
  Improves the standard WordPress gallery and has slide show features. I have not figured out how to make this multi lingual yet. The plugin requires that you buy  the lightview script for 3 euros.
  
• Media Tags
  Allows you to assign tags to your media files which will make it easier to find them in the future.
  
• Registered Users only
  Hides the site from anonymous users while still under development.
  
• Sociable
  Adds Twitter/Facebook etc. “share” buttons to all posts and pages. I love how customizable this plugin is!
  
• WP DB backup
  Emails me a complete database backup every day. The frequency is customizable, as are the tables that are being backed up.
  
• WPML multilingual CMS
  This plugin is seriously impressive! WPML does not only create a multilingual structure for your site but also helps your editors with the translation workflow and even supports translations of widgets and text-strings (though that doesn’t always work 100%). Since my day job is to maintain a multilingual site I can tell you that I’d be much happier if we had this!   The plugin was developed by a translation company that integrates their translation services into the plugin. Very smart.
  
• WPtouch iPhone theme
  Delivers site news for mobile devices (not just iPhones). Since the site is for a disaster-prone country where mobile phone are widely used, this could be a useful feature.

I have not installed any YouTube and Flickr plugins yet because the one’s I’ve seen haven’t really convinced me.

I am still looking for a good comments-plugin that is available in multiple languages. Please leave a comment if you know one.

What would you add to this list?

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Why Flickr?

I believe that most non-profits spend too much time preaching to the choir. Flickr is a great website to show what your organization is doing or why it is doing it to people whom you haven’t reached so far.

1. Know your audience

Quality is important

A large group of Flickr users is really passionate about photography. A second important group is people who are looking for free stock photos that they can use in presentations etc. Both groups have in common that they are looking for high quality photos. Respect that and be extremely critical about which photos you share. I ask myself every time “Could this photo be on a postcard or on the front page of a newspaper?” and try to post only those photos that meet this standard. Please note: photos of conferences or internal meetings never meet that standard.

2. Newsworthiness beats quality

This photo attracted 15,000 views - most of them in the fist 24 hours.

The only time when you can forget about quality and simply post whatever you have is when you have fresh, exclusive photos from a breaking news event: when cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar in May 2008, we were the only organization that had current photos from the affected areas during the first few days. As a result, the photos attracted more than 70,000 views in 48 hours.

Update: Please read this post about the impact we had with Flickr after the Haiti earthquake.

To a large degree this was because Yahoo! decided to link to them directly from their news homepage, but I’ve have seen similar, smaller surges when we had photos from other, hard to reach areas. Timing is essential for these kind of photos: to be successful you have to be lucky and fast. Once Reuters and AP get their photographers on location, interest in your less-than perfect pictures will wane fast.

3. Less is more

On Flickr, if someone likes your photos, he can add you as a “contact”. This means that his personal profile page will show your latest photos. However, it will only load a maximum of five photos. I have found that there is no significant difference in extra traffic beyond five photos. Unless the photos are urgent, you will gain more by spacing them out over a few days.

Tip: It seems like you can batch-upload and prepare all photos at once as long as you keep them “private”. I think that the trigger for showing up in your contact’s photo streams is not “last uploaded” but “latest photos that have been made visible.” In other words: I might upload 16 photos at once but then switch them from “private” to “public” four or five at a time over the next days.

4. Understand what you want to achieve

Flickr is not a good tool to fundraise or even to drive traffic to your site. Most people will stay on Flickr and not make that extra click to your donations-form or your site. This can make it difficult to measure impact. I consider Flickr to be a valuable tool to showcase the work of the organization and to increase visibility, particularly with people we normally can’t reach.

In addition, National and local Red Cross Red Crescent societies and branches can take our photo feed (through RSS or the API) to highlight the international work of the organization on their websites without any extra work on their part. I think this a good idea for any non-profit or NGO that has branches.

5. Groups, groups, groups

Almost every time I hear someone complaining that his/her Flickr stream doesn’t attract enough people, the reason is that they are not using groups. Think about it: most people don’t go to Flickr with the intention of seeing your photos. Most of them want to see photos that have a  certain topic and it is in these topical groups that you find your audience. So, if you are an animal-rights organization, upload those puppy-photos to one of the many “dogs” group. If you work in DRC, upload your photos to the “Congo” group etc. I normally add each of our photos to at least ten groups.

Tip: Be on topic, but be different. You want your photos to stand out from the crowd so try to surprise people. Adding Tsunami photos to a “beautiful beaches” group or photos of malnourished children to “children portraits” is absolutely acceptable and can be very effective. Just make sure that they fall within the topic of the group.

6. Appreciate the work of others

You should also consider creating your own group and ask others to contribute to it. As administrator of a group you’ll see a new comment-button under all photos on Flickr, which makes it very easy for you to ask others to add their photo to your group. Ideally this will make them join your group and become a regular visitor and/or contributor. As the size of your group grows it becomes more and more likely that others will be exposed to your issues.

7. Flickr needs attention

I find that traffic to our photo stream falls very rapidly once I haven’t uploaded anything for a few days. Each time I let that happen, I slowly have to work the traffic back up from 40-50/day to 500-600/day, which is realistic for us outside of newsworthy events. This normally takes four or five uploads or about a week.

8. Use creative commons licenses – with care

A good example of the kind of photo to which we assign creative commons licenses. The photo shows our work and the branding is subtle.

I’m a big fan of creative commons licensing and believe that you should license your photos on Flickr accordingly, if you have all the necessary rights. The biggest advantage is that it allows people to spread your message without any hassle on their part. It also means that your photos show up when someone is looking for CC-licensed material using Flickr’s or Google’s image search. However, the important thing is to only license photos under CC that actually contain  your message.

You should also think about how you would feel about seeing your photos in a competitor’s annual report. In our case that means that I only apply a CC license to photos that contain a visible red cross or red crescent emblem. Basically I don’t want another organization to be able to use one of our non-branded photos without having to ask for permission first. I am far more flexible when it comes to photos that are branded, since it is in our interest that these photos are shared as widely as possible.

What I’m missing

What I find disappointing about Flickr is the lack of  integration with Facebook. There are a number of apps, but none of them do what I want. What I’d like to see is something akin to the existing “Blog this” feature in Flickr that would allow me to selective add photos to the album of our Facebook page. I’m also missing a “share this” button that would allow visitors of our photostream to post a link and a thumbnail to their own Facebook news feed.

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