The Future of ICT in Relief

RedR Conference, LondonDecember 5, 2007

Edward Granger-HappCIO, Save the Children

Chairman, NetHope

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"The art of prophecy is very difficult-- especially with respect to the future." --Mark Twain

Looking Back

"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” --George Santayana

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The world is an increasingly unsafe place to be

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Banda Aceh – Ground Zero

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What are the key questions?

1. What is fundamental in disaster relief?2. What is fundamental in long-term

development?3. Is technology a benefit to communities in

crisis?4. For relief operations, do we bet on on-

line or off-line applications?5. Can supply chain management (SCM) be

a competitive advantage for nonprofits?6. What is commodity and what is value-

added for a non-profit?

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What is this large object?

a very large ship 5 miles inland in the middle of the road

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Changing Priorities By Program Type

Ranking factors 1-4, 1=highest

Factor ER Trans DevCost 4 3 2Time (Speed) 1 4 4Quality 3 2 1Volume 2 1 3

Program Type

For emergency response, time and volume are king;

for development, cost and quality reign

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In 7 yrs, cost drops 30x and speed increases 400x

Mobile Data Cost versus Speed for 100 KB

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Codan HF(1998)

Mini M(2000)

ThurayaSatPhone

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IridiumSatPhone

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RBGAN(2003)

BGAN(2007)

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Stages of a Disaster

Stage 0: Preparedness– Relief agencies:

• Collaborate and determine roles in a disaster• Determine systems of data, voice, video and

physical exchange• Develop a protocol for engagement• Catalog relief resources• Partner with local communities• Prepare to engage, inform and steward

potential donors– Example: STC earthquake preparedness in

Georgia

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Stages of a Disaster (cont.)

Stage 1: Within hours of disaster striking– First relief workers arrive on the ground. – Survey and assess damage, transmit pictures,

security information, relief material and personnel requirements to Head Offices.

– Agencies decide how deeply involved they will be with relief efforts.

– Locating family members (people don’t eat, clothe themselves or sleep until they found their loved ones)

– Example: CRS in sectarian fighting in eastern Congo

– This is the Highly Individual, Highly Mobile ICT stage

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IRAQ

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Stages of a Disaster (cont.)

Stage 2: Within two weeks of disaster striking– Teams begin to arrive on the scene as risk of

disease and malnutrition escalates.– Requirements are continuous monitoring of

disaster, assessment of victim needs, management of relief material deployment between and across aid agencies, personnel security, application and reporting of donated funds, uploading of case studies, pictures and relief reports.

– Example: Relief International in Bam, Iran earthquake

– Small Group, Highly Mobile/Temporary ICT stage

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Stages of a Disaster (cont.)

• Stage 3 – From one-six months following a disaster striking to multi-year.– Agencies provide resources for building

reconstruction, counseling, family reunification, food distribution, water purification, etc.

– Agencies become part of the community over a long period of time.

– Example: Actionaid in tsunami relief in southern India

– Large Group - Permanent ICT stage

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Stages of a Disaster (cont.)

• Stage 4 – Learning – Lessons learned:– Agencies determine what worked and

what did not work– Then make adjustments– Example: NetHope members in Pakistan

earthquake response

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An NGO Supply Chain

Plan Ship Warehouse Ship Ben. Track

Country – Sub-Office

• For development, procurement is competitive; for emergency response, procurement is pre-determined and agile

• Beneficiary tracking is key in the NGO supply chain; commercial SCM applications lack this

Procure

Assessment Reporting

Looking Ahead

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A Triad of IT Drivers

Moore’s LawCPUs double

every 18 months

Nielsen’s Lawhigh-end user's connection speed grows by 50% per year

Metcalf’s Lawthe network effect is exponential

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Verizon FIOS Service

• 100 MB/sec fiber to homes!

• This is the same speed as the backplane of a laptop 3 years ago!

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Bottom Line?

Don’t Bet Against the Network!

By the time it will take you to work around the connectivity issues, the network will be where you need it to be.

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What if we’re wrong?

Strategy is about making bets!

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Advice from a Hockey Legend

“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.” --Wayne Gretzky

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A Leading Indicator

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Another Leading Indicator

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Current University Students

• I asked Dartmouth Graduate students:– So what do you use to communicate more,

IM or Texting?

• Answer: Neither• Neither?• We do everything in Facebook

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It’s the Social Network not the Wired Network

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Why?

• The social network is the future• Working together in loose-tight ways

– “Loose” geography (e.g. the NGO community)

– “Tight” purpose (e.g. disaster relief)

• Richer collaboration (e.g. NetHope)

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“If you’re a CIO, you need to spend a lot of time out on the fringes of the Web because that’s where the innovation’s taking place. You need to spend a lot of time with people under 25 years old.” –Gary Hamel

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“Did You Know?” presentation, Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado, United States.

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For the rest of the world, this is the Internet

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Key strategic questions

1. If we will have all the bandwidth we need globally, what changes for relief applications?

2. If the #1 device used in emergency response is the cell phone, what changes when the cell phone can operate like today’s laptops?

3. Do we build disconnected applications for the interim or wired applications for the future?

ONE MORE TIME: Where is the puck going to be?

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Questions?

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Appendix

• Additional detail slides

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Top Ten Themes

1. Continuing explosion of computing hardware triangle

2. Global communication growing geometrically 3. Commoditization of technology components 4. Retirement of the current middle class 5. Flattening from triple convergence6. Run-the-business software (ERP) 7. Increasing regulatory framework 8. Results-oriented philanthropy 9. Rise in world-class, operational excellence 10. Rise in merger and acquisitions

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On Leaders and Followers

• First-movers – the pioneers, trail-blazers, fast & agile leaders; but with higher costs and higher risks—requires serious focus

• Second-movers – the fast followers; capitalize on the mistakes/learning of pioneers; follow the successes, but need to overcome the leaders

• Frugal-movers – the pragmatic followers; more cautiously follows industry leaders, picking what works well, waiting for lower costs of entry; may constantly be in catch-up mode

• Late-movers – the laggards, miss most opportunities, resist change; sometimes luck-out

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Key strategic either-or bets

Follower• IT focused on operations• More effective-efficient

service dept’s• Add results-oriented M&E

data/reporting when donor demand is unavoidable

• Build technology and operations incrementally

• Capacity building by staffing and training

• MOS operations

Leader• Programs leveraging

technology• More effective and efficient

programs• Lead NGOs and set the results-

oriented M&E data and reporting standard

• Leapfrog competitors by buying the best operations

• Capacity building by staffing, training & leveraging technology

• World class operations

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Pendulum Dichotomies - IT cycles over the past 50 years

Left Brain (60s, 90s)• Centralized• Standardized• Generalized• Rationale• Autocratic• Big is Better• In-source• Tight

Right Brain (70s, 80s)

• Decentralized• Customized• Specialized• Creative• Democratized• Small is Beautiful• Outsource• Loose

The next wave?

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1. Continuing explosion of the computing hardware triangle

• Applications & data will be distributed in-country, closest to sources & lowest-cost-to-maintain locations, yet will seem as if we are running programs on our desktops.

• Continued time-compression made possible by readily available, cheaper & faster technology means an increasing real-time involvement in each others work, and donor participation in programs. This will drive greater levels of collaboration, but not always in ways we expect or want. For example, fact that donors & providers will be able to virtually participate in program planning, delivery & evaluation, may be unwelcome, but inevitable.

• Cheaper, faster information & communication technology (ICT) will also mean that where work gets done will become less relevant & highly flexible. Working real-time in groups while in different locations will become commonplace, as will employees working from home, on road, etc.

• These trends will also drive greater levels of collaboration among NGOs, as is already evident with consortia like NetHope, LINGOS & IWG/ECB.

• Increased 24 x 7 connections will continue to drive up stress & make it more difficult to unplug from work. Productivity gains rapidly produce information saturation, high stress & burn-out. Managing work-life balance will therefore become a major organizational issue & need in near future.

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2. Global communication will -continue to grow geometrically

1. Digital divide among world's population will widen rather than narrow as acceleration in computing outpaces global adoption. Efforts to bridge this gap will need to double & triple. Educating adolescents on use of computers as a way to break cycle of poverty will become increasingly important from a programmatic standpoint.

2. Need for technology education programs among emerging countries will increasingly become a requirement for children to thrive as productive adults.

3. Most strategic use of technology is to deliver wholly new programs, or existing programs in wholly new ways, that would not be possible before application of technology. This means thinking abut programs in a new way

4. For dissemination of information (outward flow), technology can play a more capacity building role. This impacts all of sectors. flip side is collection & reporting of information (inward flow) from beneficiaries to providers in terms of basic M&E data.

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3. Commoditization of technology components

• shift from development to integration (already one of IS strategic shifts) will continue to accelerate.

• Moving IT work to regions and country offices will need to become part of our IT strategy.

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4. Retirement of the current middle class

• Immediate impact will be on staffing positions (technology and others!), with a resulting sellers market and bidding war among organizations. This will require three responses:

– moving more jobs offshore, developing our field locations to do more headquarters jobs,

– moving up food chain to do higher-level tasks in HQ (e.g., integration rather than development for IT), and

– use of more standard, off-the-shelf software and tools.

• opportunity is keep aging workers engaged, with more creative retirement and semi-retirement plans

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5. Flattening from triple convergence

1. Internet revolution means (1) new global playing field, (2) new businesses processes & (3) entry of huge workforce of China, India & Soviets

2. Donors will increasingly expect to work directly with field programs, & to do so virtually, working through the Internet. Those nonprofits that are able to offer this will increasingly attract donors who expect this.

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6. Run-the-business software

1. Save will increasingly be in catch-up mode if we do not make leap to enterprise software.

2. time & investment to take this leap will become less attractive the longer we delay, forcing us to look to an acquisition strategy of buy it now rather than build it for later.

3. most effective program delivery organizations will attract a greater share of donor contributions from ever more sophisticated donors who will have had first-hand experience with efficiently run corporate organizations & expect this from nonprofits they support.

4. success of the Alliance & its long-term initiatives of Unified Presence & Stronger Members will increasingly demand shared enterprise software.

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7. Increasing regulatory framework

1. Increasing administrative & systems support will be required to meet growing regulatory demands. Compliance will be more expensive than our physical security costs to-date

Choices:1. Do we build now in anticipation, or react

after-the-fact?2. When is the right time to invest?

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8. Results-oriented philanthropy

1. Investment in higher-order systems will be required, such as Executive Information Systems (EIS), Balanced Scorecard systems (BSC), & GYST-like program tracking systems

Choices:1. Do we lead NGOs and set the standard,

or do we follow when donor demand is unavoidable?

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9. Rise in world-class, operational excellence

• increasing emphasis on process will require new sets of expertise among our employees to work in process-improvement mode

• Significantly more data collection & reporting on administrative & programming processes themselves will be required. demand will rise for data, data, & more data.

• Nonprofit donors will increasingly expect direct access to this data

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10. Rise in merger and acquisitions

• key opportunity is for buying rather than building impact

• For example, we are faced with prospect of spending $3-5M over next 3-5 years migrating from our legacy donor management system to a world-class system. Yet at end of this process, we will be where some of our competitor agencies are today

Choices:• Do we build incrementally, or leapfrog

competitors by buying the best?

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From IS Staff Briefing

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1. Continuing explosion of the computing hardware triangle

• Hardware triangle:– Bandwidth: Verizon FIOS service– Disk storage: Google server farms – CPU speed: Moore's law

• As all three of these factors accelerate, the cost per unit continues to fall. – “…the cost of computing power is now around 1/1,000

of 1 percent of what it cost 50 years ago.” – PCs have dropped in price an average of 21% per

year since their introduction– “If the automobile had followed the same

development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get a million miles per gallon, and explode once a year…”

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2. Global communication will continue to grow geometrically

• By 2010 there will be 2.5B mobile phones subscribers--twice as many as PC's

• 88 per cent of e-mails are junk including 1 per cent virus-infected

• e-mail messages rising by 84 per cent each year• 1,035 million mobile phone text messages sent

each month in Britain • 37 average texts per user sent per month

compared with 21 in 2001 • 1 million children aged under 10 in Britain (1 in 3)

own a phone • 8 years old is the average age at which a child

gets a mobile phone in Britain

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4. Retirement of the current middle class

• 50% of people in technology jobs will be leaving their jobs in the next 10 years.  With this will go their knowledge & experience.  More importantly there are fewer technology people to take their place.   – NASA has 3 times number of people over 60

versus those under 30 – More than 50% of IT workers in US

government are eligible to retire by 2013 – Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Case: 40%

of TVA’s staff is eligible to retire in 5 years

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5. Flattening from triple convergence

• Internet revolution means:a) new global playing field, b) new businesses processes c) entry of huge workforce of China, India

& Soviets

• See Thomas Friedman’s book, The World is Flat for an abundance of evidence of the trends so far in the 21st century.

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6. Run-the-business software

• There will be nonprofit Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems that will standardize and streamline all administrative processes. It will then extend to the processes of delivering programs themselves.

– Blackbaud’s new strategy to be the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) vendor to nonprofits

– Children International’s (CI’s) recent porting of a mid-enterprise ERP to their sponsorship business model

– CARE, World Vision and the World Food Program’s adoption of the enterprise-wide GYST program management and reporting system

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7. Increasing regulatory framework

• Following the impact of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) on for-profits, we can expect an increasing regulatory framework for non-profits.

– Changes in the annual IT audits at nonprofits strongly indicate this trend as do recent charitable regulation changes in CA and NY

– For example, the total SC/US audit costs have increased 38% since FY04; the IT portion has increased 50%+ based on time required to complete it.

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9. Rise in world-class, operational excellence

• Following corporations, we can expect a rise in world-class, operational excellence to be a factor in nonprofit success.

• We will see streamlining programs such as Work Out, Six Sigma and Lean Thinking applied to nonprofits

– Our own recent experience with business process improvement (BPI) in Leadership Giving, and the streamlining task force are cases in point.

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10. Rise in merger and acquisitions

• We can expect to see a rise in merger and acquisitions for the nonprofit sector. This will result in combining of operations and the systems used to support them or the migration of one partner’s systems to the other

– “Having seen internal consolidations succeed for such recognizable groups as the Girl Scouts and the American Lung Association, nonprofits of various shapes and sizes are testing the waters for possible mergers and are often taking the plunge.”

– CSM notes that there are 1.3 million nonprofits today, growing at the rate of 7% per year (80,000 to 90,000 new nonprofits are created each year)

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Worldwide cellular access is exploding

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International Internet Bandwidth Growth by Region, 2002-2005