Sixth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum
27 -30 September 2011
United Nations Office in Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya
September 29, 2011 - 14:30PM
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The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Sixth Meeting of the IGF, in Nairobi, Kenya. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> KELLY O'KEEFE: Okay. Welcome, everybody. I think we're going to get started. We've given people time to get back from the lunch break.
Welcome to the Disaster Relief and the Internet panel. My name is Kelly O'Keefe. I'm the Director of International Public Policy at Access Partnership, which is a consulting firm based in Washington D.C. I've been working for quite a few years on the topic of disaster relief. Particularly working with Developing Countries in an ITU Working Group helping to promote disaster preparedness with respect to communications for Developing Countries. And because of that, I had gotten more involved with the IGF. So we put together this panel.
This is the first time the IGF has had a panel on disaster relief and the Internet, a global one I believe. IGF USA just had a panel on this topic as did IGF Japan and IGF Asia-Pacific. So I think this is a great opportunity for us to bring together all of the experiences from throughout the world and help identify some lessons learned and next steps for the future.
So I'm going to briefly introduce my panelists. And then they are going to be providing some presentations. And then we'll move on to questions.
We'll start over here on the left. This is Raman Jit Singh Chima, the senior policy analyst for Google India.
Tsuyoshi Kinoshita, the managing Director of Borderless Network Architecture Asia-Pacific and Japan for Cisco Systems.
Ambassador Philip Verveer the U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy at the United States Department of State.
Kristin Peterson, the co-founder and CEO of Inveneo.
And Izumi Aizu, the executive co-Director, Information Support pro bono Platform. And also a professor of Tama University.
And last we have Etsuko Nakanishi, Director for global ICT strategy, the computer communications division at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan.
And she was our last introduction. And I wanted to give the floor to Ms. Nakanishi. And she's going to provide a presentation to summarize I guess the experiences that Japan just experienced with their earthquake. And also how they have already taken some steps to think about how they can improve things for the future. So thank you.
>> ETSUKO NAKANISHI: Thank you. Thank you, Kelly.
I would like to thank you for the opportunity to talk about disaster response with ICT after the great Japan earthquake. It is said that an earthquake such as this may occur every 2,000 years in Japan. So I'm convinced we should share this experience with as many people. Next slide, please.
First of all, I would like to explain on the earthquake.
Next slide, please. Measured 9.0 earthquakes started in northeast Japan. This earthquake was over -- triggered over a 10 meters high tsunami caused tremendous loss of life and structure damage.
The number of deaths is over 15,000 and over 4,000 persons are still missing.
These are photos of the disaster areas. Next, please.
At this time of the crisis in Japan we received messages and assistance from many countries around the world. On behalf of the Government of Japan and the Japanese people, I would like to express our deepest gratitude for such support from all areas of the world.
Let's go into ICT.
This disaster also caused considerable damage to the ICT infrastructures. After the mega earthquake, a million telephone lines were destructed and 15,000 base stations for mobile phone were out of service.
This is equivalent to one-third of the fixed phone lines and around 20% of the base station in the disaster area. As a result of quick reconstruction, 99% of fixed phone lines and 95% of bay stations are now operational.
Next, please.
What this disaster has taught us is importance of keeping electric power. The crisis of the earthquake dealt with a loss of power. And it's been reported only 10% of mobile base station was damaged by the attack of the earthquake and tsunami and 90% were out of service because of power outage.
The base station is equipped with backup batteries. However, they can work only 3 to 10 hours. This is the reason why telecommunication was out of service in the disaster area. Next slide, please. Thank you.
Collective efforts by the Government and telecommunication carriers, through these efforts, the telecommunication infrastructure has been almost restored. This slide shows the main example of efforts. As efforts for restoration of infrastructure, they deployed temporary base stations using satellite.
As for effort to support disaster victims, they provided free public phones. They provided temporary public phones and mobile phones for free. Next slide, please.
And Japan has an earthquake monitoring system, which issues along where earthquakes occur. This system is able to provide a warning for the area away from the epicentre ten hours before the earthquake so the people in those areas can prepare.
Next, please.
In addition, this warning is simultaneously provided to the mobile phone service subscribers in the area likely to be afflicted by the disaster. Since so many earthquakes will occur afterhours in the p.m., the alarm is a little bit noisy. Next please. And one more.
This chart was made by a Government agency and it analyzed what kind of things were important for the people in the disaster area. Information, TV and the news were higher particularly just after the disaster.
People in the disaster area were eager to have information such as medical service, food and -- food supply stations and medical plants or job opportunities.
Next slide, please.
The communication -- there were communication difficulties immediately after the disaster. Even in the Tokyo area. According to the survey conducted by a private institution, two-thirds of the people in the Tokyo area through attempts to contact family or friends told their mobile phone was completely unusable and nearly half the people said they were unable to use their fixed lines.
On the other hand, a large number of people used the Twitter to check whether their families or friends were safe or not.
Next, please.
As for traffic congestion, while fixed and mobile voice communication almost didn't work due to destruction by carriers, but package communication arrived with little delay. Next slide. This slide shows a temporary radio station set up to provide the information needed.
Radio receivers work with batteries. So radio played a very important role in the disaster area. Next, please.
And one more.
A larger scaled system that has been used is Person Finder. This system was set up immediately after the disaster. Thank you, Google.
Next, please. With the help of broadband around the world, information in papers found that application centres became necessary for database. About 6,000 people can be searched by their names or other means by means of this system.
Next, please.
In order to deliver food and supplies to the disaster area it's critical to know which rows are used. The Internet system has been used to help us obtain this information. This system gives driving information for victims equipped to these navigation units then. The system integrated information and the -- sends traffic information to users.
Next, please.
The Government also used Twitters to send message like from the nuclear power plant conditions, traffic conditions or statements of the Prime Minister.
Next, please.
And one more.
We have been holding a study group to diffuse a way of securing communication in emergencies. Since April to solve problems like congestion and disruption.
We expect this Study Group to issue the final report by the end of this year. As for Internet utilization issues, how to be prepared is one of the biggest issues. We have to discuss the difference between privacy and information exposed for example can we share medical history of each sick person within the disaster area. If we can access it and how we should deal with it? It must be solved to determine a victim information format.
Next, please.
Let me conclude my presentation. We learned the Internet became one of the most important lifelines from the disaster. It records sharing our experience and co-operating in this way with many countries, thank you for your kind attention. Thank you.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: Thank you so much. I think the one slide which highlighted how much information is an important -- one of the most important things that people really need after a disaster. All of the tools that we're talking about here in Internet applications really are just a conduit to help us get the information that we need. And the -- during a disaster that information really is lifesaving, critical for people. So I think that was an important point to highlight.
To provide some additional insights from the experiences of Japan is Professor Aizu, Cisco.
You'll go first? Okay. Tsuyoshi Kinoshita from Cisco.
>> TSUYOSHI KINOSHITA: Thank you. And I would like to first thank you for the opportunity given to be upon us today. Let me take this opportunity to share the OI experience and disaster relief environment from the Internet infrastructure perspective.
Soon after the disaster happened on March 11th, through the partnership with some of the private and public agencies, we have assembled a project team, how to provide Internet access in those affected areas.
So in the next few minutes I will share how that -- our effort really helped in terms of restoring Internet access in those affected areas.
Can you go to the next? So as Ms. Nakanishi mentioned that the disaster we have experienced in March has actually affected very wide area. It's about 300 kilometers north to south. And it's not the typical earthquake experience we have in Japan. Meaning that the -- typically the affected areas are contained in certain cities or an area. But this time it has actually spread across three, four prefixes and also the -- more than a thousand people in the towns actually got impacted from the tsunami.
So our project was quickly recognized the need of the restoring the Internet in those remote areas, especially on the coast side where the most of the telecom infrastructure was damaged from the earthquake and the tsunami.
So we have approached some of those local governments. And then based upon their need of having Internet access, we have installed about 52 sites in major cities across some of those areas.
Since we have begun this effort late March, as of the -- August, we have seen more than 30,000 using actually got the benefit of having Internet access for a variety of reasons, 30,000 users but we are very happy to see so many people actually able to have their information for their information access or communications as well as requesting help from others and so on. Can you go to the next page?
So the types of the approach we have took in terms of the restoring Internet infrastructure actually utilize a variety of transmission methods.
As you heard previously that the fixed line infrastructure pretty much lost in most of the affected areas. So we look at the south -- cell phone to make the main connection to Internet connectivity available however we have seen realised that the voice communications are restricted by the telephone due to the regulatory requirement but the mobile data Internet was pretty much up. So that we looked at the mobile Internet as an effective way of expanding the -- our reach throughout those affected areas.
And over the time when the fixed infrastructure got restored such as fiber to the home and in the area cell, we have also utilized those traditional wireline infrastructures, as well.
But because the scope of the project was to provide Internet access under the disaster recovery and relief environment. So we basically aimed to provide that Internet access to everybody. We didn't restrict the use of Internet at all. So if we ever wanted to have an Internet access we were basically useless at that point.
Can we go to the next page?
So as we began installing the Internet, the types of the users we have first seen was the evacuators who actually were looking for information, for their friends, their families, that they are all right. So we were actually providing the -- looking at the people who evacuated the main users. But at the same time we did see that the medical people are actually -- actually wanted to have access to the Internet because while they were dispatched on the ground, they were lacking a method to communicate their medical needs back to the back support offices and so on.
So can you go to the next?
So we have three points of the lessons learned. And the two points of recommendations.
So at the IGF this time we have here a lot of the Accessibility Challenge the Developing Country faced. But under the disaster situation, we are actually seeing a similar -- almost the exact same challenge. Meaning the Digital Divide has been created in those affected areas.
So especially in the initial period where the people who were affected badly required help, assistance from others, the cost of those information what kind of assistance were needed was very expensive especially this time the affected areas once again 300 kilometers spread north and south. And very distance from main areas like Tokyo. So that we did see that the Internet is the most effective communication their platform to collect and distribute those needed information to affectively provide assistance to that area.
And the other stuff is the WiFi access. Unlike before, we did see that the WiFi enabled access was the main device being used whether ordinary people whether medical stuff but providing WiFi access in addition to the wireline access of the Internet was the crucial success factor how the facilities were being utilized.
Lastly the bandwidth requirement has also the -- created some challenge for us. Because initially only text-based information sharing. But over time in order for -- in order to share the accurate information of the affected area, for example, people start sending their YouTube video in addition to the text-based information sharing.
So that band-wise requirement has quickly gone up from the narrow band to the broadband so that the infrastructure setup we provided also needed to adjust depending on how the use of the users and also the use of the needs of the Internet at those locations. Can you go to the next? So the additional challenge we have learned from our engagement is that the timely creation value chain is going to be the determining factor, how the Internet infrastructure can be utilized. So that the -- wider -- many players like Cisco and others has very good intention to provide offer. But the receiving agencies such as the local Government really needs to partner with us in order for them to accept and utilize it. So we did see that the challenge of value creation was very common scene across all of the sites we went to install the infrastructure.
The other stuff is I touched on the Digital Divide. But at the site on the area level but also at the individual users level because most of the people who live in northern Japan where we did see that tsunami effect, elderly people, they are even before the disaster happened, they were not used to utilizing IT. So in order to make the Internet be beneficial to them, we needed to also dispatch some human resources assistance to make them have access to the information.
So finally on the recommendations, I have two points to make.
The traditional utilities were being viewed as a priority to work on the restoration and after the disaster. But the Internet Governance Forum also had -- it's about time for us to look at the Internet as a critical infrastructure.
So that the power line, food and water while that was getting looked after we believe the Internet -- how to restore the Internet access in those areas are somewhat not well looked after at this moment but we believe that it's about time for us to really revisit that state of the Internet.
And to that end we believe that the structural framework shall be prepared as part of the rapid response actions. We do see that medical industry or sector has a very good proactive response mechanism prepared to deal with this kind of a situation. I believe that similar kind of proactive structure framework approach can be also put in place if we as the multi-stakeholder sub Internet community work together. So that's pretty much it for me.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: Thank you. I think all of the many -- more than a thousand people who are here at IGF would probably be surprised to know that the Internet is not considered a critical infrastructure. But I know that it is the case, especially for people who are involved in disasters. So I think that's an important point you raise, to really think about it in a different way such as that.
And to give some further perspective on Japan, we'll now turn to Professor Aizu, thank you.
>> IZUMI AIZU: Thank you, Kelly I have to thank Marian who really connected us to this workshop. She is not here.
Go to the third slide, please. No, before that. Yes.
Being a Civil Society member after my Government and Private Sector presentations, I may take a little bit different views. Things are not really getting better after six months. That's my one take. I've been to these places since early April for every almost month more and visiting really devastated people and places. And I would say the disaster places are turning out to be the real natural disaster. People are starting to kill themselves with hopeless future. Others are heavily depressed these are widely observed not only this one but natural scale or man-made disasters and although certain care has been taken. But it's not sufficient at all.
So with all due respect, our society as a whole I'm not blaming the Government or Private Sector but society as a whole is not really capable of handling problems to the degree we would like to see. What if your kids are, sort of you know, left out without your parents of that many? Are we doing the job?
So many people are suffering, even those who moved to temporary houses. You see very temporary very hot in summers, very cold in winters. They are trying to get out of this but -- okay. The next slide, please.
So this is he were April I went through and used my -- early April I went there and used my iPhone I didn't really want to take pictures but by urges of my friends there you've got to tell. So I'm telling many people go there. It's just amazing picture. Next slide. Next slide.
That's a -- that's from the drivers seat which is still there if you Google that, I mean the picture that showed that.
This is my friend's house in Kisindi where I stayed overnight it's an evening sight. You may not be able to see many houses exactly but many of these were washed away from afar.
The next morning, that's the scene just standing from below. After three weeks, no army, no police have been here to find bodies. The next day they started.
Okay. Next, please.
So the question we have is what can I see the Internet do for them? And there were little emergency preparedness as Ms. Nakanishi said before this happened there's a big informational gap that's the source of the wider problem we didn't really get the exact information what people want because the infrastructure is broken. Not only the telecom but roads and all of the highways broken for a few days to a few weeks.
So we started some platform. Skip two slides.
Okay. More. More.
We started some survey on the peoples informational -- or information behaviors. There are many anecdotal stories and many overall stories how people used Twitter, how wonderful they were. I ask the question: Where was it? When was it? Is it Tokyo or Kisindi? It varies so it's -- my colleague asked me to do some kind of survey because it will take the two -- two to three months for the national Government to have any survey ways under way now. So this is July. We used both the online question which is written on the offline or in-person interviews. I couldn't put into this. I forgot. I didn't have time. 186 people were also interviewed. But our local members we didn't want to go there because we don't speak their language.
There's big sentimental gap, as well.
Next, please.
So under the survey we had this set of questions which to me were useful with all due respect to the Government and the Private Sector's surveys more or less from the suppliers side. We really wanted to reach the users. And how the people relied on information resources was from the word of mouth, newspaper or the flyers, bulletin boards to the digital TV and the other devices. Next, please.
So out of the survey over the Internet. So it has some deficiencies those who could still using Internet were the only ones responding on this survey although the other one I mentioned the interviewed one are not those net literate people and we put how people used before the earthquake a TV, 80% to the Internet via PC, then the mobile phone use and SmartPhone we separated and fixed line phones.
Just after a few hours it's the valleys where only the radios were reliable. Actually we also divided these surveys into the local locales whether you were washed away by the tsunami or inland not affected by the tsunami but heavily affected by the power supply and these vary a lot I don't have much time to go into details but we hopefully to -- we plan to publish this hopefully in English as well. In addition to the tools we asked what kind of information sources they relied on and they also asked within Internet which is about 80% of the respondents said we were able to use the Internet. But in any case, interestingly in Japan, Yahoo is very popular and they remain the No. 1 source which is not on this screen. I'm sorry but second to Yahoo was Twitter where you had a connection.
Again, it depends on where you are and how was your infrastructure. So Fukushima was able to use Twitter on the coastal side, hopeless. There's no medium but radio, word of mouth and nothing was the most severely hit -- damaged areas.
So you have to be very careful as to where exactly you're talking about.
Next, please. Sorry; skip this, that's my mistake.
So we also did a lot of emphasis on the real interviews by their words and of course the mobile phones were a primary source of confirming family and friends, yet they are the -- they are a great target of frustrations we couldn't use the mobile phone for hours and we just got the e-mail, you know, five hours later and so on. Still both the mobile phone and e-mail had about 50% of the people said after a few hours that was the means that I could get information.
And so peoples expectations have been very high. They tried 20 times to get connected. They waited for long and stuff like that. And they said yes we could use the mobile but wanted to get it much earlier.
Power loss was the biggest things -- biggest loss of information. And Twitter with the limited conditional locale and timelines -- locale was used very well so we hoped it would be involved in much wider areas we are talking with people in Japan as well.
Next.
The multi-stakeholder came naturally but didn't work as well as we wanted to be. We can discuss a lot more later. Next, please. So that's my last slide. So our lessons, it's tentative lessons. We made this by mostly people in Tokyo that were not really affected so we went to the place the other day and we continued to involve the local people who got really damaged if these are the ones that they want as a conclusion lesson. So I would want my central Government people, as well. So don't just make it everything from Tokyo. That's very different view. Things in New York is very different from things in Texas. Right? That's what I mean.
So mobile networks should be really robust enough, be innovative. 50 times as much traffic is concerned but that's what we have filed ten years ago with previous technology. So we should be able to make it. Power supply, a lot of reconsideration being needed. The collaboration framework of the people, organisations.
Government I found is very triangle hierarchy and very difficult to talk to the next department or next city.
Disaster management. People need to have a new understanding for the latest ICT services. Google did a fantastic job. Although there were other services prepared from the 16 years ago earthquake, which didn't really work well over the mobile Internet.
ICT people should establish new emergency preparedness I great with Ms. Nakanishi and also last but not least with local governments suffering they lost PCs, they lost servers and somehow the governmental measures are not enough. I was asked to find some 80 PCs after two months from one local government office. So it goes on.
I think I'll stop here. Thank you.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: Thank you.
>> IZUMI AIZU: I have the paper and the presentation here so you can have it now.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: Thank you. I think that was a very useful perspective to add. Especially I guess it showed two things. One is to ensure that those who might not be as literate with ICTs are also incorporated into the disaster response framework. The more that people use ICTs to respond to a disaster, there still are parts of the society that might still be relying on their radios. And that is -- we can't forget that, too.
But also to demonstrate how important the Internet and ICT framework were for people to still be wanting to have access after the disaster several months out. Obviously it's a very important part of the infrastructure. So it should be prioritized in terms of both recovery of the network and the -- developing the new network and also in preparedness.
So I think that's a good segue into Google, who will give some experiences both in Japan but also from the Chile earthquake and Haiti.
>> RAMAN JIT SINGH CHIMA: Thank you for the introduction, Kelly, and for inviting us to the panel. As you mentioned previously, I work with Google's Public Policy Team. And one of the basic jobs what we did is work with governments and policymakers across the world about how the Internet can be used for public good and what sorts of -- what sorts of policies have to be articulated to promote those public goods.
One of the things is we work closely with colleagues in Google.org. You can see up on the presentation, Google.org -- next slide -- is the charm of Google. It's part of our mandate and commitment of Google that we use our resources in at least 1 to 2% of our profits towards making the world a better place in the most ambitious and simplest way to put things.
Next slide. What Google.org tries to do is utilize technology for areas partners good projects and one of the things we often do is try to see what Google products how they can be used across different organisations by non-profits by governments and also what specific specialised products can also be created but a lot of what we do often is sometimes taking Google products and make them more accessible to non-profits and to governments across the world and this is something I want to come back to at the end of my presentation just talking about illustrations where we haven't had dedicated response products but still being used for crisis response but one thing we have done from .org has been crisis response initiatives and if you go to the next slide. And that slide after this.
It's been to figure out what is it that we can do. And many of the -- the fact the main thing required in a crisis is information and it's being able to accurately collate and make it available and this has been completely organic with Google we never set out to do this it came about it came about because of responses to various natural disasters and pressures that people from outside the company made to us saying why don't you guys help how can you do it and we never intended to create this but it came about as a result of that we discovered one of the simple things is that the recent scale of information services online very often Google services it's very easy to immediately tell people about emergency situations to explain this to them quite fast and across the various products that they already use. Next slide.
And this is a couple of things. You have already seen this in some of the previous presentations we notice some things in crises one is that the mobile Internet generally stays up. The other thing is people go online for particular information needs. They utilize open products to iterate. This is the thing it's not a specialised created focused closed product it's an open product that people can hack into and create new things whether it's the our engineers or people outside the company or just users adding small changes and iterations to an existing online product.
They also discovered that online collaboration really incredibly increases and a couple of anecdotes I'll give towards the end of my presentation as well and it empowers people. Next slide.
So Haiti was the original situation for us and the worst case. The Internet access immediately suffered due to many underground undersea cables being cut from the island right after the quake if you go to the next slide you can actually see the infrastructure was really badly hit. Next slide. But the one thing that did stay up and my colleague from Cisco mentioned very often is Internet and telecom stayed up these networks stayed up despite existing you mentioned critical infrastructure being devastated but surprisingly telecom networks managed to stay up despite the heavy load placed on them in this crisis situation and that was also the case in Haiti. This is also what we noticed from Haiti Internet usage there was an immediate hit when the earthquake took place it immediately starts spiking up and readily being restored but you see a surprising number of it's remaining -- it remaining quite active.
This might be surprising. Because we might think that the usage of the network spike dramatically but if you take most regular Internet usage either on consumer usage standard work services now those services actually suspend during a crisis so that the general median Internet usage figure drops but despised that it bumped up and in Haiti it's often due to telecom networks being switched back on or staying up despite service interference. Chile we also saw this but in Chile it remained low throughout the process in New Zealand it stayed pretty much the same this is during the New Zealand landslides we saw usage remained nearly the same but what happened is during the period most of the searches people made and the queries that they were making on search indexes or on social networks tended to be on crisis response related terms.
And one of the things we saw during each crisis is we were looking at what information is needed. One is what's happening, where are people, my friends, my family, colleagues, where are they located? And what resources do they need? Wherefore shelter, water, power, medical supplies. Next slide.
And this is something that in many ways we managed to do most effectively during the Japan situation thanks to some of the things we learned previously one was we immediately launched as the representative from the Japanese Government mentioned Google people finder which was a simple tool allowing people to quickly share information as to if somebody was missing where are they people posted I am here other people said I know this person was in X or Y location we put that out we launched a front public facing page very soon that's something you'll also see later it's getting this up in the public domains the most important thing as soon as possible. You also got specific Japan related what we call mini products or mini features out that gave you know -- we marked out maps for example be sure to check the records.
Give other certain information up. Next slide.
This is interesting you can see the beginning the beginning time stamp and end time stamp the progress times run three and a half hours one of the reasons this took place this is actually an activity log from our teams this is by this time we had created a cross functional response team after the experiences of Haiti and Chile and New Zealand we created a cross functional team in Google from product engineering even teams like Government affairs local business leads who have relationships with the local Government or with other important policymakers and they also work cross functionally immediately to share information and have products against jurisdictions one person who might be doing a product critical to Japan may not be there they may be somewhere else but as you notice within three hours many of these things went online.
One of the first things is we have a simple alias inside the company where people can share information and immediately crisis response judges whether it's a situation that requires our intervention what sorts of intervention is needed have external groups reach out to us and what do they need. Next slide.
And Person Finder was launched up and Person Finder is there in a public crisis response page each time we have modified it and localized it. It must be available in local languages so people can easily understand even if they can't understand they can show it to other people many times Government or non-Government organisations they play the role of a supplier where people may not be able to understand this information because they are illiterate having it in the local language expands it's reach this is built on existing open platforms we mentioned that's why it's easy to create although it's difficult to iterate although -- it's on many existing products the app engine and other tools and standards crucial to this. Next slide.
In fact you can see the deployments in certain situations led to dramatic amounts of information but to give you some context in information has not been easily accessible because groups not being literate or other situations where they couldn't access the tools there's difficulties for example in the Pakistan situation we did have difficulties because people couldn't provide information local records were badly damaged and local service groups were badly hit and not able to collaborate and provide information in a way that's effective enough for the tool to be really useful there but in other situations it's been effective and one of the ways we learned is to figure out how to train organisations about this and figure out ways they can perhaps act as points to feed this information in.
This is again a case of a particular tool that we iterated and created for Japan which is this mapping real-time traffic data we discovered many situations especially in countries where people extensively use online maps the case of for example an earthquake many of those roads have been destroyed but need to be immediately mapped these things were going on live. Amongst the response teams we were recreating roads building new bridges diverting traffic and that needed to be put up there live and this is made possible thanks to an existing product something called Google Map Maker, which is a wiki sort of tool which allows users to immediately ad map annotations and other geographic data on an online platform we just immediately active -- what we did was first tracked it the edits went live much faster and spent more time looking at the edits to make sure they were accurate.
Next slide.
And this is something you can see I believe the illustration you made of the ship that is washed up on the road it's right there this is the thing what we saw people could immediately identify it since also what we did this is another illustration of something we did do within those three hours we got vehicle updated imagery data with Japan thanks to corporation which have this imagery available. Next slide a lot of this has been made possible by what I mentioned as open standards KML is an important standard in the geographic space and that's important for governments because governments tend to have impact of the most geographical data and useful data for these situations and they use these open standards they can overlay it on not only our tools but other tools wiki map the priority tools the Government uses the Voom satellite platform or other services like Microsoft's Bing platform.
We also made it easy to facilitate donations on the crisis response page to organisations that are actually there.
And importantly as I mentioned the people who have been doing this for some time who do this work sometimes more effectively than we do the groups such as crisis commons or OSHA Haiti did a fantastic work from Africa which other jurisdictions I know for example north Asia used particular platforms we got our tools in which we could make them more easily useful for them for enterprise products and talked to them about what tools needed to be created.
Next slide this is an important element now is public alerts and how do we do this. Now the most important things people need is information and one of the most important things governments do is simple it's the siren it's the warning it's something has happened and people need to react to that in online spaces how do we make it easily available one of the things we needed we can surface this information immediately on our properties on the Google Search page but one of the main challenges here is how to do it.
This needs to be done in a standard that is easily available on the Internet that everyone agrees to that they can easily access and that shows rich amounts of data.
Next slide.
Sorry it's not coming up really well but I'll just go on. Just go back.
So what we discovered is many governments already have alert services but they don't for example necessarily show that on the Internet or even if they do it on the Internet they don't make it machine readable for example we may know the Indian metrological survey has a warning page for flash floods but if a machine can't read that it's not usable or scalable it can't be flashed across products it causes an engineer to manually make updates but if it's on an API interface or list of subscribable systems it can be immediately fed and that's crucial for governments because many governments across the world right now are engaged in open Government partnerships in driving standards here and we make -- we say this is a priority for governments across the world in the local Government efforts even if they don't open Government work is that existing systems for dealing with crises and natural disasters need to use these sorts of open standards and mechanisms for sharing information making it easily available on the Internet and if that's not possible, that can cause sometimes the greatest harm and that's the most actionable and easily doable Item on our list and again this should be done in standards that can easily be accessed for different entities open standards and platforms so people can build onto this and you don't have to go and pull this information out each time and at that I'll end.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: Thank you I think it was informative to highlight again how citizens are becoming empowered to find and access information on their own and help themselves which I think is really transformative for disaster relief which was normally done by a Government or relief worker who are rescuing citizens so I think it's really useful to hear that.
I would like to now go to Kristin Peterson from Inveneo who will give us I think talking a little bit also more about the different sorts of infrastructure development as well thanks.
>> KRISTIN PETERSON: Hi thank you for having me here today my name is Kristin Peterson and I have an organisation called Inveneo. Inveneo is just for those who don't know us which is probably many of you, Inveneo is a non-profit social enterprise that's based in San Francisco. We're focused on getting the tools of ICT better computing and better access to the Internet out to organisations and communities in the Developing World, particularly in rural and very challenging environments across many countries in Africa and now in Haiti.
Are you having trouble with it?
So I'll continue to describe Inveneo a little bit and then we'll jump right into Haiti Inveneo serves organisations. And we serve organisations that operate in environments primarily in very rural areas and we identify and develop and deploy with local partners all across Africa solutions that are designed for challenging environments such as solar power computing labs and regional rural broadband networks using long distance WiFi.
So our experience across Africa over the last several years put us in a very interesting position when the earthquake in Haiti happened. Inveneo is not a disaster relief organisation. However, our experience in working in austere and difficult environments had really enabled us to take a look at what we could bring to the table in terms of enabling better access to communications on very short notice.
So if you'll go to the next page. Thank you.
As many or most of you know, the earthquake in Haiti happened in January 2010.
We as Inveneo had already started laying groundwork to develop our partner programme and look at Haiti in terms of delivering rural ICTs for schools in healthcare systems and the like. So we were already starting to invest in understanding Haiti's ecosystem for IT people and the ISPs and services around Haiti. We were actually supposed to be in Haiti two days after the earthquake and we had already been collaborating on some ideas for projects. In particular we were working with a group called NetHope for those of you who don't know that NetHope is a collaboration of the world's largest NGOs approximately 35 humanitarian NGOs focusing on how technology can aid and enhance the speed of services through those NGOs through their programmes.
NetHope -- on the day of the earthquake we had -- we were having a meeting with NetHope. And they came to us and said: What do you think you might be able to do for Haiti. And we took about half a day to think through it. And realised that with NetHope having 20 major organisations, including the international Red Cross, mercy corp international rescue committee and others that were really alerted and focused on providing instant relief because they already had operations on the ground we felt one thing we could do was deliver broadband in this type of environment given our experience so within a day of the earthquake we had established a team with NetHope and actually with Cisco, as well with their tech ops team to decide what could be done. And within a few days of 24-hour -- 24 by 7 logistics and planning and ordering of equipment, we sent engineers, two engineers down to Port-au-Prince with 40 boxes full of gear for -- gear which was long distance WiFi equipment that can operate on low power environments can operate on batteries pulls about six watts per station and able to shoot WiFi 20, 30 kilometers no problem line of sight within six days of the earthquake we were on the ground we were working from a place as many of you know if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem in a disaster setting.
And because many people flocked to the disaster settings you have to have a base to work from and we worked with one of the members of NetHope to provide a base for us.
Haiti was truly -- Port-au-Prince which was not the epicentre but which was the epicentre of our operations was almost completely destroyed. Over 200,000 people dead. And over 1 million people displaced from their homes. And the situation was quite dire.
Although I will agree that Internet was still continuing to work. And the main infrastructure was working. But most of the service providers operational capacity was down because they had workers who died. They had buildings -- most of the buildings were crushed in Haiti. So operationally delivering broadband was a real challenge. When I'm talking about delivering Internet I'm talking about delivering business class 1 megabit symmetrical thing something like that to each location.
So literally the emergency crews were using satellite systems. And once SMS was coming back SMS started to come back very quickly. And phone service coming back a little bit -- fairly quickly, as well.
But to -- it was our goal to establish real broadband back.
Within a few days we had established with NetHope backhaul from a satellite provider I think it was about 4, 5 megabits and 8 locations and within two weeks we had started partnering with the local service provider to get much better terrestrial broadband. I think we had about 10 megabits within the first two weeks being distributed to NGOs.
Within three weeks we were working in 35 locations -- 25 locations with 20 of the NGOs and other organisations that were delivering vital services within the region. And within 90 days of the earthquake we were concluded with our work.
and we had ultimately served 35 locations of 20 organisations if you go to the next page you'll see the network you'll see Port-au-Prince and it's the grey buildings there. And we were -- this is a variety of the organisations we were serving within three weeks. And as Inveneo -- is customary with Inveneo we work with local organisations we had no intent to establish a network to keep it operating by ourselves so we brought in and transitioned the network within 90 days to being functionally supported by local ISPs and local IT people and within the last -- this network is still up and operating. And we're in the process of transitioning it over to a service provider right now, so a local service provider right now.
So if you can go to the next slide. Thank you.
So once again, NetHope is a collaboration of some of the largest NGOs that you'll see up there. What we found in this programme, this project that we implemented in Haiti which I think was one of the first disaster responses where large scale broadband was delivered. I think -- but within the first two, three weeks they were using about 20 megabits of data services to perform relief activities.
So we took a look at what the NGOs were using the connectivity for.
First and foremost it was logistical coordination of relief and rescue services. One of the things that was really important in Haiti as you can see by some of the pictures was there literally were no roads left. There were no road signs so we used Google Maps and combined them with open street maps to actually find where we had to go in the day to establish a broadband network.
If you took the wrong turn or if you went to a mistaken site you could end up being three hours delayed because there was rubble everywhere.
And so it was really critical to get mapping we were using it ourselves but every other organisation had the same issue also what was very important was headquarters to field coordination. Trying to find out what was getting in, what was needed and when it was going to get in and where it was going to be delivered was very critical information.
Also media outreach to get support to get donations, to get the right kind of resources.
And so the kind of media outreach where you could make a Skype call or VoIP call to BBC or CNN was helping to draw a lot of attention and helping enable the agencies we were working with to build up capacity to deliver more and more relief.
And also of course just within communications within the staff and security considering security and safety issues around the really devastated areas. So what are our main learnings from this? If you could go to the next slide.
First and I think everybody voiced this on the panel there is a definitive and growing relief for broadband for relief agencies and just to get a sense especially in Developing Countries where you don't have a great infrastructure to begin with, many development organisations, many relief agencies are starting to build more and more of their capacity in the cloud.
And so capacity for knowing where people are. Capacity for value chain delivery of food, supplies, everything. So the need to access the cloud is really becoming more and more critical every day.
And so when you're in a challenging environment, getting that information out can really accelerate what can be done in the field and what can be done out of the field to get help to the field.
Secondly, broadband can be delivered in challenging situations in a very quick manager. The new technologies that exist today and the training that's needed in these environments, it's not rocket science.
It's process oriented. And I think one of the Cisco team members called it hastily formed networks. It's something that could be done and should be built as a practice in environments in -- to be used for disaster settings.
Additionally protocol is key in a disaster setting and when I say protocol, knowing who to call. If you're providing part of the solution, is really critical. Who do you call to get access to the right flights in? Who do you call to get access to the right shipments? How do you get your equipment in over a crate of T shirts. How do you prioritize what gets shipped in in these environments? Because everyone is trying to play the same game. They are trying to help.
And someone has to prioritize what gets in, who gets access.
But Government, U.S. Government played a critical role in this but I think the State department played a critical role in starting to connect the dots and connecting the dots for many, many weeks. And having a location, which I also call protocol and right of access. So having a base count. So having that if you -- if you come in and try to provide relief with the best intentions and talking about that a little bit beforehand there were a lot of individuals and groups trying to find out ways they can help but if it's not coordinated in some way if they show up on the ground they are part of the problem if you don't bring tents or food or if you don't have a way to -- so you have to -- to really effectively provide relief for ICT at any level you have to have plans you have to have a receiving body you have to have the ability to get around and you have to be not a problem but a solution.
Additionally what is very critical -- could be very critical in accelerating relief capacity is looking at how we can preplan and coordinate much better there's so much good will in a disaster from organisations. There's intent by agencies who are focused on this but there's goodwill by people, by companies. To want to do something and coordinating that and having the ability to coordinate it to make sure it really makes the right impact is really important.
Having training. And positioning of gear to deploy a broadband network and other types of systems are also really important.
And it's not expensive. That's the other thing to know. Is most of the preplanning, it doesn't have to be you know cost billions of dollars.
So having some simple gear in place can be really helpful and another item which I haven't mentioned here but it was highlighted in a few other presentations and I would also like to mention is it's just not the first few days. It's just not the first few weeks. In a disaster setting, the disaster continues to go on, over and over, for many months and many years. So when you're looking at bringing a solution, consider that what happens to that solution over time.
If you'll go to the next slide.
One of the things that we found in Haiti was that helping build back -- helping Haiti with the earthquake was not about just helping with relief but helping build it back and helping build it back better. And so one of the things Inveneo is doing, last year we raised the money to build up a project to deliver broadband to most of the country but we first went to Leogane where the epicentre was in August we put the first broadband network there. There was such demand we were using 10 megabits within the first few days and had 35 humanitarian agencies on the network right now so we are looking at how -- well we are doing it across Haiti and our network should be built, by the way, in partnership with a number of the local ISPs out to most of Haiti as you can see. The areas that are circled where about a third -- no, about -- we're about half done right now and should be done in January or February.
So I guess in summary, I would say that there's a lot that's possible on broadband we need to focus on broadband as a critical infrastructure element. And that we need to make -- we need to plan on how it can be used better. And we hope actually to be doing some of that very soon. Thank you.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: Thank you, Kristin. I think that was a useful example for a Developing Country but also to highlight both how preparedness and the importance of developing broadband networks for all countries is important. But also how useful it is to work with the local organisations when you're going into a relief situation to think about the ongoing use of those networks by the local citizens and local ISPs, which is very important and before I introduce Ambassador Verveer I want to pull out a few things that we have talked about today so far. We have touched on infrastructure development including mobile broadband and fixed broadbands, access, accessibility, development, capacity building, Cloud Computing and services, security issues, privacy, digital literacy, e-Health and eGovernment, social media, standards. It's like a little snapshot of the entire IGF that happens right here in this disaster relief panel.
All of the things that we've been talking about here all week really do come to home in a disastrous situation. And I think this leads well into Ambassador Verveer's presentation. Because one of the things we've all talked about here and seen from the presentations is the importance of co-operation amongst stakeholders. Private Sector, NGO, governments, citizens. How do we as a group all work better together to make sure the next disaster, we have a better response so Ambassador Verveer.
>> PHILLIP VERVEER: Thank you, Kelly. This is I think ultimately a story about the Internet ecosystem, about the ability of all of the contributors to the Internet to assist in the event of serious disasters. And I'm going to be reflecting on at least one part of the U.S. Government response to the experiences in Haiti and Japan in particular.
Following up rather closely on Kristin's points about the necessity for protocol and the necessity for planning, one of the -- one of the consequences particularly of the cosmic level disaster in Haiti was and understanding -- improved understanding of the willingness and ability of the Private Sector and the NGO community to assist in the event of a disaster that affected ICT activities. And from that experience, from that recognition of the very significant abilities and willingness to contribute has come a further understanding about the obstacles to the effective and efficient contributions. And an effort on the part of the U.S. Government at least in part on behalf of the State Department to see if we couldn't find ways to make things somewhat more efficient.
One of the things that's important to understand and it's something that at least I found very far from intuitive is that when we talk about the protocols that might be useful in terms of disaster response, we are talking among other things literally about legal protocols.
It is somewhat surprising but apparently nevertheless absolutely true that if you're going to try to bring help to your neighbors in another country, to your friends in another country, you have to worry about such things as the regulations and licensing of ICT equipment. You have to be concerned about customs duties or visa requirements to get disaster assistance in on the part of those who would like to be able to help.
There are also enormous practical questions again touched on by many of those who have spoken previously.
You need to be sure that there are provisions for the people who are coming in for assistance because very, very often, especially in the case of a poor country like Haiti these aren't going to be available in the local marketplace.
Now, again one of the lessons that we learned in Japan is that terrible disasters in a rich country call forth the different kinds of requirements and terrible disasters in a poor country.
So one has to always do something to make one's self aware of the circumstances and the very material differences that circumstances may bring to bear.
One of the things we have done was a few months after the Haitian disaster, we attempted what you might describe as a partial after-action study and report.
We invited the Private Sector and NGO community that had participated in Haiti to come to the State Department, engage in a lengthy Round Table discussion to describe the experiences they had so that we could find out what had been done right what had been done wrong what should be done differently.
Out of that we have created a subcommittee of a Federal Advisory Committee to provide advice to the U.S. Government about the things that we should do to make the responses more efficient when we encounter disasters of any variety.
And the work has been chaired by Paul at Cisco he's done an absolutely superb job in conjunction with other volunteers from a variety of companies and NGOs including our Chair here Kelly O'Keefe who has contributed a great deal to the effort.
I would like to very quickly go over the objectives that the subcommittee has produced. It's still a work in progress. But it is produced at least tentatively. And you're going to see I think that these are things that are entirely intuitive. But it also is going to be -- I think you'll also see quite readily that they are things that have to be reduced to practice if we're going to do better. And the reduction to practice is a very big and continuing undertaking.
The first thing that needs to be done is to sort of foster a global disaster preparedness set of arrangements to be sure that we've been able to reduce the barriers that are faced by the public institutions but also obviously the private and NGO institutions.
A second thing touched on by others is to get an adequate recognition of the importance of ICTs in the disaster response and recovery effort.
It is a surprising reality that the recognition of the foundational elements of ICT have not really been fully appreciated.
People can see the need easily enough to bring in food, to bring in water, to bring in shelter. But they don't quite so readily see that unless you can get the ICT environment in as good shape as possible as quickly as possible, that it's going to impair the recovery efforts.
And so we are making considerable efforts to see that the importance of ICT is in fact integrated into all of the planning for activities in the recovery sphere.
It's also important -- and here I really am now talking about something that has to be reduced to practice. It is important to improve the coordination and the engagement between the countries that might experience disaster and those that are in a position to offer assistance.
And that in a kind of very general statement involves better networking. It is very important that one identifies who the people are who need to be contacted in the Government especially. In a country that may have experienced a disaster. But also in the NGO community, in the parts of the Private Sector that are in a position to help. To know who they are. To know how to contact them immediately turns out to be tremendously important.
There are in theory requirements within the U.S. Government to have this information on hand. But it is something given the inevitable relatively rapid changes among people in Government agencies all over the world, it is something that has to be updated constantly. And if it's not, it may well be that you don't have the information that you need to have when you need to have it. And the last thing -- and again, much commented on by others today is to improve communication and information forums.
Speaking with a Japanese Government official about the -- about the significant learnings that the Japanese Government had acquired in consequence of the earthquake and tsunami, I heard something that seems to me to be, again, perfectly sensible once somebody has said it to you but maybe not so obvious until they do. We know it's important for the responders to have information. What's equally important is for the victims to have information.
That the concerns about rumors, misunderstandings, or an inability to get information about where to go for help, what to do, what not to do, turns out to be tremendously important.
Again, emphasizing the foundational nature of ICT activities.
One of the things that we have seen happen in both Haiti and Japan is something that's very important for us I think to keep in mind as we work with respect to the inevitable future disasters.
The ICT activities in most countries are remarkably well organised. In many, many countries better organised than almost anything else that you will find on the ground.
As a result, they are able actually to recover more quickly than many, many of the other activities.
And that's important to know that. It's important to understand that because it will inform, depending on the circumstances, the kind of assistance that is most urgently needed. And it will tell us a good deal about what we need to do in the immediate aftermath of disasters. There's a lot more to be said about this. And I hope we'll have some time for discussion.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: Thank you. All the information that was provided today is exactly -- was extremely helpful and I think the lessons learned were useful I wish we had one time for discussion but we will make some time for it but one point I did just want to make quickly is how much all of the discussion today focused almost so much on process even more so than technology. The process, the frameworks, the collaboration, the relationships. Understanding those processes and procedures are really one of the things that we need to work together to understand and work on, even more so than which technology we use.
So I'm going to open the floor for questions. Yes.
>> Thank you. Should I say -- my name is Amaka and I'm a city advisor to the Government of Rwanda. Actually I went into this field, ICT for development, because of my personal experience during the Kobe earthquake in 1995 where our family lost everything but I actually had more information about what's going on where my family's relief, goods, waters, so on it was still instances we had different mode of communication including radio and even like a poster -- like even Blackboard and so on but they actually combined these appropriate technologies very effectively to mitigate the disasters.
Now, I have two comments or questions basically. Two of you -- sorry I came into the room a bit late. Ambassador and then the person from Inveneo, right, was mentioning about the need for coordination preparedness for the Government on the ICT for disaster relief. Now, you in ITU actually have a Convention called tamper Conventions basically that specifies the kind of steps and preparation necessary for the ICTs for disaster relief. I just checked the Web site. Only 43 countries are signatory to that.
Now what is the community, ICT for community doing to support the Government, to sign this Convention so at least we have this you know important like ICT coming in and it doesn't get customized duties and so on and so forth and also preparations to accept ICT for disaster relief. That's No. 1.
No. 2, coordination. UN actually has UN OCHA Office for the Coordination of Human Assistance. And underneath OCHA actually UNICEF is tasked to do all of the ICT communication during the disaster.
Now, in -- actually I heard a lot of confusion in terms of a lot of ICT for disaster relief agencies and also NGOs coming in. But information is a bit scattered.
How did you actually -- I'm not sure how you did it in Haiti. But how did you mitigate this? And you know like what kind of process that you are pressing or what kind of lesson learned and the improvement that you are actually doing as a type of disaster communities so we can actually work with UN agencies and also different agencies and having streamlined information basically you know access and also information processing. Thanks.
>> PHILLIP VERVEER: Well, the improvements are exactly the thing that we're trying -- in terms of planning, in terms of preparation are the things that we are trying to effect. In Haiti in particular because of the enormous extent of the disaster, the Haitian Government was in a very reduced ability to contribute or participate in the relief efforts. That's a very unusual circumstance. It turned out in a sense in co-operation with the Haitian Government, many of the activities that a Government might normally undertake had to be undertaken by others and this these kinds of things were things that had to be worked out on the ground for example experts had to be brought in for spectrum deconfliction so when various kinds of radio equipments were brought in they weren't interfering with one another leaving us no better off.
There were fairly serious kinds of activities that had to be taken care of by the United States military command that again in a different circumstance in Japan for example would be undertaken by the Japanese Government. I frankly don't -- I hope we do not see a disaster of the extent of the Haitian disaster for a very, very long time on our planet. And so I think that we're not quite in as bad shape and we're not likely to be in quite as bad shape with respect to future disasters. But the question really is the thing that we're trying to be sure that the next time around we'll have a better answer for.
>> KRISTIN PETERSON: I can't speak to the ITU question. But I can speak as an implementer on the ground about what's happening at the ground level.
So not very shortly after the disaster in Haiti the -- what happened with the UN is they formed the cluster system which is a traditional system apparently for disaster, health -- and there's a telecommunications cluster and World Food Programme is actually ahead of the telecommunications cluster at UNICEF.
So they took charge of that and they reached out to the entire community that was handling anything related to ICTs they opened their arms like everybody needs to come here. We all need to work together. And I think I have to say because of the extent of the disaster in Haiti, there are a lot of good learnings within the ICT community I think that the cluster system while it took a while to get up and running is continuing a really strong dialogue about how can better coordination be done in both the Haiti setting, post Haiti setting and some of the new issues that are coming around Adab and what's going on with the famine in Africa.
So I think that while I'm not directly involved with it I know a number of organisations directly involved with the cluster system start with -- start with the ICT cluster still in Haiti and now building in and around Adab that there's a much more open dialogue and actors are starting to speak a lot more about solutions not just for their own organisations. There's the UN organisations. There's major humanitarian organisations. There's governments. But they are starting to dialogue a lot more about how immediate needs can be met but also how future coordination can mitigate some of the earlier -- some of the issues that they found earlier in delivering broadband. So I think it's a good story. And I see from the outside looking in that things are really changing and moving.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: Thank you. We have a question over here and then one from a remote participant. And then over here and then I think we might have to end. I'm really disappointed we don't have more time for discussion. But yes, sir.
>> Yes, thank you I'm Douglas from the New Zealand Ministry of Education ICT unit. I'm from Cruscich (phonetic). People have been talking about that today so I wanted to take a little bit to speak about that we only had a small number of people killed in the earthquake 188 about 75% of them were killed in two particular buildings we had a lot of people come out from the U.S., China, Japan and during the time that the Japanese rescue team were in New Zealand the tsunami struck Japan so a third of them left to go back to Japan.
I think the main problem -- our ICT systems as a first world country stayed up pretty well. The fibers on the ground were pretty resilient power like in Japan and people had high expectation of mobile phone technology but of course immediately after the earthquake the mobile phone networks were overloaded I guess the particular issue that we have in Haiti has -- there's the expression that earthquakes don't kill people, buildings kill people. And not many people get killed by an earthquake if they are in the middle of a field. So I think Japan and New Zealand and the U.S. tend to have very high standards of building they probably have the three highest standards of any countries in the world a lot of other countries around the world that have major earthquake tallies tend to have pretty poor standards I know the factors here today is around ICT and the response ability I guess I would put another plea globally of whatever governments can do to enforce strong building standards even in countries like ours.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: I think you can draw parallels to that to the ICT infrastructure, too, though I think a lot of the panelists have discussed the recovering and rebuilding of ICT infrastructures and making sure they are more resilient to disasters in the future, as well. Our remote participate.
>> Okay. We have a comment and then we have a question.
The first comment is given the inevitability of the impact of Climate Change in the Pacific region and the increasing vulnerability of Small Island States most specific governments still don't understand the importance of investment in ICTs as part of the emergency planning I really appreciate the contributions by the panelists in emphasizing the coordinated approach to preparedness and then the question we have is from a different participate and this is from Deidria Williams in Saint Lucia has anyone found the way to use the Internet to offer people hope? Izumi spoke of despair and Japan in Haiti my information is of hopelessness has there been any attempt to assist people affected in whichever country to share experiences and support one another?
>> We are having some remarks interesting that Twitter became a very well mental support for me knowing other people are supporting us. There are various ways of supporting people and not necessarily only using the ICT but one example is to have some elderly people use the Galaxy Pad or tablet computer to take the videos of their own stories assisted by the students because when they watch TV it doesn't fit with their mental experience and they don't want to watch them. So it just doesn't make sense to them but rather they wanted to really create their own images own stories and share over the Internet. So their scattered approach is not coordinated yet.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: Yes, Google.
>> RAMAN JIT SINGH CHIMA: Just to add on the point of scattered approaches you may want to say messagesfromJapan.com we put this up quickly people that were sending messages and you could essentially see a live map immediately a note was being posted every two seconds by somebody issuing a statement of hope, many people in YouTube offering stories and offering support in response to videos being posted on YouTube. There's no consolidated report but messages of Japan just realise why not put it onto one URL and make it available for everyone.
>> KRISTIN PETERSON: Hi this is Kristin from Inveneo there's another way to bring hope when you're using ICTs to build out recovery. And that is by incorporating job opportunities for people who live in the damaged areas.
The network we have just built out from Port-au-Prince out to lay owe gone in the most damaged point -- Leogane in the most damaged point in Haiti we started employing youth who are really good at ICTs in putting up those networks the first person we hired we didn't hire him but we trained him on the technology and trained him onto begin his own business to deploy and support broadband to NGOs he lost his job he had not lost immediate family members but he had a daughter five years old he was supporting he was driving a car for a relief agency as a temporary job. And he did have IT skills. So we've taken him from making the barest minimum wage being a driver with very few skills to be able to have his own business and deploying IT infrastructure and he even has someone else working for him now and he's starting his own he's starting his own business and now his daughter can go back to school and it's important to remember that ICT brings jobs after many jobs are lost after an earthquake.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: Thanks for raising that and the point of training which I don't think we touched on as much and how that's part of preparedness to make sure people are trained on equipment or as systems are being deployed that training is incorporated.
One more quick question and then I think we'll have to close.
>> I'll try to be as quick as possible. I'm Ana. I'm innovation media advisor for Internews Network. And my question is about accountability and respect of international standards by corporation or organisations that deploy or use specific tools for emergencies. And I'm going to use the example of Google Person Finder not because I want to attack Google but I think it's a very clear example for that Google Person Finder collects information about missing people and tries to connect them with people that are looking for them. Internationally speaking this mandate belongs to the Red Cross.
And it belongs to the Red Cross also because there are specific standards and regulation relating not only to how you collect information but also are you verifying information or sharing information for how long do you keep this information in your database. And this has been a big issue both in Haiti in Chile in Japan, too. Or at least in Japan at one point there were four different database, Red Cross, Google. There was -- there were papers attached to the different collection of people points where people were just writing the name. So this actually instead of making things easier, it makes things actually more complicated it was much more difficult to find people. And it was more difficult to share information because the standards followed by all of the different organisations were different. The Red Cross cannot take very easily old information collected from Google Person Finder.
And my point here is there is a big issue that we need to address when we have businesses or corporation coming into the emergency relief world, which is how do we count, how do we try to make a point about accountability and respect of humanitarian standards when we're not dealing specifically with NGOs or with governments but we're dealing with businesses. Google.org is great initiative. I use a lot of the tools that have been developed there but it's not necessarily bounded by the same regulation. And this is true for a lot of other corporation and businesses that are creating tools that are being deployed for free during emergencies response.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: I'll say a quick answer and I guess Google would want to respond this came up in the IGF USA as well by the Red Cross but I think what came out of the panel was more that these ICTs are now enabling so much more information and we've heard today that collecting information is what the relief agencies need, what citizens need what governments need. So we're still kind of in a new phase. Like what do we do? We have more tools now to collect all of this information. The methods, the mechanisms, the collaboration between Private Sector, between the relief agencies, we're still evolving I think those models but the fact we can have all of that information which is needed I think it's a positive step but you're right it's something still evolving so Google.
>> RAMAN JIT SINGH CHIMA: In fact thanks for bringing the point up you're exactly right and this is something that Kelly mentioned that many of these things have come about rate from existing standards processes one of the reasons was because of speed there wasn't something up and engineers created it and it got fantasticly used in a comment you can do this better or you can do it in a better language or use existing models so somebody else can use it so I'm sure that will be incorporated in models of people finder in the future but with existing standards again it depends on what's the nature of your audience the tool is being used for many of the times it's focusing on technical expert groups established governments whereas Google our focus tends to be on anyone who can access the Internet so not just specialised groups so we tend to therefore incentivize and have a bias in favor of speed scalability and those other mechanisms then what we do with any product is create it figure out how to adapt it and build onto what's already there and with respect to current systems the fact that we launch something and are looking at an existing standard on this for example might just be because an engineer -- engineers aren't e-workers but they did find it useful e-workers stated very politely said you could have run the system better and we took that and that's one of the reasons we take part of these discussions so we can better adapt our tools.
>> KELLY O'KEEFE: So I think with that I'm sure we all could spend the next hour talking about this but I think the point you made at the end is -- and also made by Ambassador Verveer is that the relationships we're building here at the IGF and all of the other venues we work in are important. And we need to continue having the dialogue and figure out how we can better use these technologies.
>> I would just really like to appreciate the presence remarks and what you said and hope you convey these to the counterparts not only our ministry in intergovernmental ways but more of multi-stakeholder ways and especially those who are you know expert on the disaster mitigation both home and abroad are not quite aware of this development. And unless we take some proactive action to break the barriers or silos then the next disaster we'll maybe have to have the same discussion. So it's our job, your job. Thank you.
(Session ended at 4:17)
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