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We are excited to head to Colombia and Kenya this week to talk to local partners about their data needs and the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX) platform. We have two goals for these field trips: 1) to introduce the closed beta version of HDX to potential early adopters; and 2) to undertake design research with partners so that we continue to build a platform that meets users’ needs.
OCHA staff getting feedback on infographics.
Credit: OCHA/Opulencia.
The HDX team will be joined by colleagues from frog design who wrote about their engagement with us in a recent blog post. We decided to partner with frog because we knew that we were trying to solve a hard problem, i.e. making humanitarian data easy to find and use for analysis, and we were impressed by frog’s previous work with UNICEF Innovation. The frog team got started with us in mid-May by talking to project stakeholders and OCHA staff.
In Colombia, OCHA and frog will meet with partners from the Government, UN agencies, NGOs and donors. We will also travel to an OCHA sub-office to observe first-mile data collection by joining a multi-cluster rapid needs assessment.
In Kenya, the team will meet a similar set of partners to understand how data is shared and used to inform humanitarian action across Eastern African. They will also visit local innovators and developers who are driving the burgeoning tech scene in Nairobi.
If you are based in these locations and want to meet us, e-mail hdx@un.org. We’ll be tweeting about our work through @humdata and @frogdesign using the hashtag #InsightsHDX. We look forward to hearing from you!