From development to diffusion

In May this year we were delighted to hear that the HIF had awarded our project with a small grant to help us make the transition from developing the Humanitarian Genome prototype towards securing its future as a usable platform.

It is important to our partners and us, that the Humanitarian Genome (HG) is sustainable and light to maintain, easy to use, and flexible to develop in different directions depending on user needs. In order to achieve this, we have developed a step-by-step design and development process, which the Humanitarian Genome is undertaking. This approach leads us to create the ultimate vision of the Humanitarian Genome, which facilitates a semi-automated coding system. This will allow users to independently upload formal or informal experiences to the Humanitarian Genome, which will auto code the material, making it reliable and tangible, (short extracts) and available instantaneously. Then, as in other social platforms (e.g. Wikipedia), both Humanitarian Genome experts and users will be empowered to rate and comment on the Humanitarian Genome content, adding the human factor to the ‘auto coding system’ and by this continuously validating the data.

How did we come up with this and why? For the HG prototype, 95 evaluation reports were hand-coded by numerous coders in order to test and retest the coding scheme, as well as to ensure that the coded data and manner of coding is reliable and consistent. While we strongly believe that these invested resources are trivial in comparison to not utilizing past experiences and investments, this is still a laborious, time-consuming process and the Humanitarian Genome’s core aims is to facilitate speedy use of past experiences whenever the user might need. Hence, we have been looking for options to hasten this process. Together with leading ICT expert (Leon Fedotov) we outlined programming requirements for a semi-automatic coding device that is feasible and possible.

In order to progress in the Humanitarian Genome adventure, we aim to use the small grant to do the following:

1. Develop a promotional clip for easier dissemination of the Humanitarian Genome.
2. Make the prototype known to our wider partners’ user groups in order to generate feedback and user market data. This will be done via a web-based webinar.
3. Further develop the strategic plans of the Humanitarian Genome, aiming to ensure future sustainability of the system and integration with ALNAP and other such relevant platforms and partners.