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 spaces into digital, including those of the affected and vulnerable communities we serve. Yet, humanitarian agencies have not as rigorously guided tech communities 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.
While exceedingly successful in bringing digital tech into the humanitarian space, we have yet to adequately bring humanitarian accountability to the digital space. This side event will introduce what works –and what doesn’t– when designing tech for our humanitarian aims while also inviting inputs from governments and partners.
As we invest the same rigor in our adoption of tech as we do to achieve 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.
