With thanks to Michael Keizer, disaster relief logistics specialist, this article has been updated to reflect the difference between the “legal” term, “open source” and the “behavioural” or organizational term, “crowd sourcing.”
Web Marketing Strategist Michelle Greer posed an interesting question two days ago:
What if Disaster Relief Were Run Like an Open Source Project?
She makes an argument for crowd sourcing Haiti relief efforts through the White House. The more I thought about open source crowd sourcing relief, the more I thought we already have an open source crowd sourcing model for disaster relief.
In an odd sense, philanthropy is open source crowd sourced disaster relief. People and corporations with resources and abilities to give, create or make happen the products or services required for relief, at will.
The response to the Red Cross text-to-donate campaign (text ‘HAITI’ to 90999) is evidence that philanthropy as open source crowd sourced disaster relief works without any need for recognition (i.e., on whitehouse.gov).
The fact that business owners have stepped forward with money, services and commodities (at no charge and without prompting) suggests we already have an open source crowd sourced model for disaster relief.
Hank Asher is one such person. He offered up his private jet to fly relief missions back and forth to Haiti and contributed 50 satellite phones to the relief effort.
At the end of the day, someone is paying for fuel, pilot services, medical equipment, phones, maintenance on the aircraft and Lord knows what else as part of these relief missions. Those are real costs (remember, open source is not free) associated with disaster relief. Pilots have families to support. Fuel is sold by a concession at an airport; they have to pay their people, maintain their equipment to regulated standards. The phone supplier incurred a cost for the phones… it just goes on!
Government and Open Source or Crowd Sourced Disaster Relief
Where government “intervention” is concerned, I think we have to be realistic about our expectations for open source crowd sourcing. While I love my country, I am not in favor of the US government creating THE open source crowd sourced solution to rebuild Haiti.
If an open source a crowd sourcing model of relief and rebuilding were to be implemented above and beyond current philanthropic efforts, (i.e., as a concerted effort), I would be more comfortable having a consortium of independent people, logisticians and relief agencies establish an accountable model.
Then we could have more efficiency, better coordination and no duplication of effort when creating relief tools to help Haiti.
My hope for Haiti is self-determination, open government, security and prosperity. Open, accountable, ongoing relief and rebuilding efforts that create stability and a right to self-determination get my vote.
People with hearts know what the right thing to do is. The evidence is right in front of us. They’re already there for Haiti in body and spirit – and they are still giving.
For More Information About the Relief Efforts in Haiti
Michael Keizer wrote a very relevant article about disaster logistics. I went there to relieve my initial frustration at not being able to do more than donate. I learned that aid efforts are actually VERY coordinated.
Guest blogger Alanna Shaikh did not mince words when she wrote Nobody wants your old shoes: How not to help in Haiti for AidWatch.
Alanna also writes for the UN Dispatch and BloodAndMilk.orga blog about international development”. Her style is brusque, frank and to-the-point. I rather like it. She recently posted, “Three bad ideas for helping Haiti.”
LogCluster and Haiti.com are also very useful.
In the near future, I expect a coalescing of effort. I hope for a centralized, independent or Haitian-run website that allows for coordination, accountability and publicity of relief efforts and rebuilding needs.
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Yes, people are giving money, but they are giving money to buy things. In open source, you see a need and you literally just fix it. You don’t throw money at it. It’s why Internet Explorer is a less secure browser than the open source alternative FireFox, because there is less bureaucracy involved in getting bugs fixed.
In this thought exercise, the coordinators wouldn’t ask for money. They would ask for goods and services directly and people would step up to deliver.
In spirit, open source disaster relief is already working. People and organizations with needed resources are able to make things happen. Witness Hank Asher. Like many other philanthropists and business owners, he saw a need and stepped up. He made medical relief happen because it was in his heart and within his means. Most of us do not have those means. So we donate money or volunteer locally or blog incessantly to spread the word!
Cash, though is still needed. There is an efficiency in throwing money at something (donating!) that is not conserved, necessarily, by “doing” on a small scale (unless that which you do is so rare that only you can do it, so small scale will have to do – it’s as efficient as it gets at that point).
Think of buying power: cash-rich, high-quantity buyers receive volume discounts. I personally am not a high-volume buyer. So when I buy food and blankets, the cash I exchange is not leveraged very well. By receiving donations, a right-minded charitable organization can leverage the volume of cash for more goods.
When disaster strikes in our own community, I can understand, in terms of open source relief, how the average person can make a difference by doing instead of donating. She can pick up her two feet, get to where help is needed and go to work. What I’d like to see discussed is how the average person can make that same difference when the disaster is outside of her community. Right now, the way to relief is through donations of cash.
I think my biggest concern with the open source disaster relief idea as you put forward is government intervention. I’m elated if any government wants to step forward as an open source player (ie, as you described, a quid pro quo form of advertising on government website). I’m not in favor of government regulating open source anything. This is compounded by the fact that we are talking about actors moving in and out of a nation state (also touched on in the comments on Michael Keizer’s blog).
There is another component to this and it’s one that Michael Keizer discussed on his blog: disaster preparedness. Using your idea, open source disaster preparedness should also be discussed. Another question goes to scale. Any open source model needs to be able to scale up and down.
I’d be very interested in the opinions of disaster logisticians (like Michael Keizer) on open source relief per your initial blog post. We need to bring this discussion back to your blog.
I am a bit reluctant to get involved in this discussion, for three reasons:
1. I think we are confusing open source (a legal model) with crowdsourcing (an organisational model), so we would need to clear up first what exactly we mean here.
2. I think that we should be more specific about which efforts we are talking about: some things might benefit from crowdsourcing, but others not at all, or could even be hindered by it.
3. I am by no means an expert on either open source or crowdsourcing.
So I will leave it to the experts to weigh in here.
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Pingback: Valerie Booth