For the past year, we have been advocating for bringing the concepts of open data into the humanitarian space. We have written a number of blog posts, we have spoken at conferences, and we have traveled the world and met with humanitarian organizations, academic organizations, private sector companies, governments, digital volunteer groups and donors.

Wherever we go everyone is very supportive of the concepts we are presenting. Everyone agrees that there is a need for a significant improvement in the way we share information during humanitarian response.

During this time we have identified the need to focus on all three aspects of this big issue, the political/policy side, the technical side, and the capacity side. We have also identified the key road blocks in each area and we have come up with proposals on how to address them in a step by step manner over the coming years.

It is now time to formalize this significant public-private partnership effort. As a result we have decided to form an alliance of organizations interested in working on this effort collaboratively with us. This alliance has gotten the name Open Humanitarian Alliance (OHA). Its purpose is to further the sharing of information in the humanitarian space through the principles of open data. Our tentative plans are to formally launch the Open Humanitarian Alliance on May 28th, in New York City.

If your organization is interested in learning more about joining the Open Humanitarian Alliance, then feel free to reach out to us through OHI at nethope.org.

We would also like to invite all organizations and individuals interested in working with us on making this important effort a reality to join our OHA launch task force. This task force will help draft the governance structure for the alliance. It will also focus on the advocacy work of bringing all the key players into the alliance. You can sign up for the task force by contacting us at OHI at nethope.org.

Published March 27th 2013 at DisasterExpert