No invitation needed: a resource for communities on making digital accountability a reality

We are very excited to share that “How to hold organizations accountable for their use of digital technology: a guide for crisis-affected communities” is now out. In a world where tech solutions are built with little input from the communities they affect,  this resource helps anyone touched by an emergency to shape how solutions are designed. 

So far, while efforts around digital accountability in humanitarian action have been valuable, they have also been directed at humanitarians. 

At CLEAR Global we are no exception: we brought out guidance on responsible humanitarian use of technology last year. Yes, it promoted participatory approaches to designing and implementing digital tools in emergencies. Yes, it drew on consultation with crisis-affected communities in Nigeria. But it didn’t support those communities themselves to influence the design, implementation and evaluation of humanitarian uses of digital technology—without waiting for an invitation. And we couldn’t find any other resources that did.

The goal: a resource for communities themselves to understand, assess and engage 

So, with UKHIH and Elrha, we set out to bridge that gap. Our first step was to scope out what a community-facing resource should address and what it should look like. In a light-touch study with civil society practitioners and a handful of digital accountability experts, we explored:

• What risks community members face from humanitarian uses of digital technology
• How aware they are of the design and implementation process for tech applications
• How aware they are of their rights in that regard
• What space there is for them to claim those rights in practice

What we learned, from Afghanistan to Venezuela and from Syria to South Sudan, highlights that genuinely co-designed applications are rare, and digital harm is real, unequal and poorly understood. It also points to the potential for improving community participation and digital accountability by making key information truly accessible for those who need it.

People rarely expect to be consulted

Genuine co-creation of tech applications with their intended users is the exception. Community consultation is cursory at best, giving people no real opportunity to influence decision-making. 

And community members often have no idea it should be any other way. There is generally no expectation that they should have a say in how digital products and services are implemented. Worse, implicit trust in both humanitarians and technology to provide the best solutions often encourages people to accept those solutions without question.

This tells us that a community-facing guide needs to:

• Introduce the concept of human-centered design and what communities can expect of humanitarians at each stage: design, implementation and evaluation 
• Encourage a realization that community members are the experts on their own needs, priorities and experiences
• Identify the opportunities for influence even in an imperfect process

A knowledge gap compounds vulnerability

When things go wrong with digital technology in emergencies, the consequences can range from a loss of vital support to targeted violence. 

The risks are greatest for individuals with less power and support, including women, refugees and internally displaced persons, older adults, people with disabilities and speakers of marginalized languages. These groups are more likely to have limited functional literacy and to lack digital confidence or digital awareness. Most importantly they are not part of the process: digital tools are rarely co-designed and developed with their input. And all these factors both increase their exposure to risk and limit their ability to mitigate it. 

With this in mind, the guide highlights the specific risks to women, older people, and other potentially vulnerable individuals, uses plain language and limit the use of unfamiliar concepts, and it is accessible, brief and modular, so the user can easily pull out only the information they need.

It also means that the content of the guide will need to evolve: localized and less text-heavy versions will be needed for it to become more widely accessible.

The dangers are abstract and poorly understood

Practitioners stressed that communities have little awareness of these potential harms. Concepts like data and data privacy can seem abstract and trivial, especially at times of crisis. Humanitarians themselves often don’t fully understand or control how personal data is stored and transferred, in a context where highly specialized services are widely outsourced.

Because of this, it was important for the guide to:

• Make risks tangible, linking them to real-world experiences that users can relate to
• Relate risks to specific tools that communities may be exposed to, like chatbots or mobile money
• Identify practical safeguards that organizations can put in place, and communities can ask for

Power imbalances make it hard for people to claim their rights

Power imbalances in emergencies can leave people feeling they have no option but to accept the use of digital technology, even if they have concerns. Consent to sharing personal data or registering to use digital tools can be seen as transactional—just the price you pay for assistance. 

Seeking accountability can also be risky, especially where local power brokers have an interest in avoiding disruption to aid programs. Informants flagged that in many contexts women, young people, refugees and internally displaced persons hesitate to raise concerns for fear of a backlash.

What the guide can do in this situation is to:

• Set out the principles, standards and commitments that organizations sign up to, and how community members can use these to hold them to account
• Support collective advocacy as potentially safer than individual action, and highlight the right to confidentiality when making a complaint
• Normalize questioning humanitarian choices and encourage the expectation that non-digital alternatives will be provided

An imperfect first iteration

The first version of the guide aims to meet these and other needs identified by the scoping study. It offers 11 resources for different but complementary uses, ranging from an overview of relevant humanitarian standards to a glossary and a game. The language—English for now—is plain and concise. We have tried to make it visually accessible too, using design to signpost the user to the content they need. 

But this is clearly just the first step. What we need now is to test and further develop the guide with the intended users in their languages. We fully expect that will result in significant changes of form and maybe content, including localization and non-text adaptation to people’s real needs. We hope this resource will be used, adapted and refashioned as something communities find useful.

The guide could also benefit from structured review by organizations that are developing digital solutions in consultation with crisis-affected communities. The initial scoping study was rich in learning, but involved only a small group of organizations; now we have a first version, we want to hear from a wider cross-section of humanitarian practitioners.