What was GeOnG 2022 about? A snapshot of 3 days of debate and key learnings

This introduction encouraged IM practitioners to only collect data for a purpose, reminding them that tech solutions can be a double-edged sword -contributing to people's agency but also putting them at risk, and that tech is much more material than we are usually led to believe, being responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the lorry fleet or than the civil aviation traffic.

Visual of the ways participants think we might do harm as a data community

Various sessions explored the opportunities and costs in more depth. First and foremost, we looked at the multiple uses of technologies applied to the environmental crisis that have proved their value. Various examples of how satellite imagery can make a difference to reveal and respond to the environmental crisis were shared as food for thought, as well we also explored insights on how to make IM systems there to alert on the crisis as relevant as possible.

One of the main findings of this edition was that we still have much to learn on reducing the environmental impact of our tools and systems, and that we need to ensure we don’t only focus on IT for Green but that we also follow the principles of Green IT. We saw this through sessions such as the one exploring what sobriety applied to data means, in particular in relation to data minimisation and taking on the “digital divide”. Another roundtable focused on the ways to build resilience into IM systems and technology, tackling such topics as: i) how it’s necessary to embrace a collective rather than individual approach -for example not depending on the skillset of a single staff, ii) thoughts around the economic/society models behind software, as well as iii) looking at the very material side of our infrastructure -location of servers, equipment, etc.- and ensuring these are as risk-free and embracing sustainability as much as possible. An evening event centred around the Digital Collage (or Fresque du numérique in French) and the impacts of the digital world today helped make the stakes we are facing more concrete to participants.

To ensure we are sustainable in our learning approach, we also circled back to our 2020 theme focused on promoting responsible and inclusive practices to see the evolution that took place in the last two years in the sector. We saw this through a session presenting some use cases where the data protection risks involved in the deployment of systems and approaches were thought through, or conversely, insufficiently thought through, with more and more coverage of these situations. A more specific session tackled the question of what we are learning from the current context in Ukraine, where the classification of data sensitivity is a key point of discussion, as well as the difficult choices one has to make to evaluate when the benefits of sharing data outweigh the risks. 

The question of involvement and collaboration was also looked into through a couple of sessions, with reflections and practices that clearly showed that many actors are becoming more proactive than they used to be. First of all, by looking at the shape and form collaboration can take to improve information management practices, for example how it requires proper ownership of activities and data at all steps and from various stakeholders -including communities of course- and how collaboration needs to be thought through beyond an individual project’s timeline to be sustainable. Another session looked at this topic of participation through the lens of digital systems with its opportunities and drawbacks, as well as how donors can change their approach to make participation less of an uphill battle for organisations going down that route or the question of how to make participation as inclusive as possible. It also leads to the question of whether participation should really be the end goal, or whether we shouldn’t put the focus on engagement and empowerment, and what it requires in terms of power shifts amongst actors of the sector. 

And we can’t talk about the 2022 GeOnG forum without mentioning the Fail Fest, with the courageous sharing by two organisations of a… failure and associate learnings, from the 2022 event of the year in terms of responsible data practices: the cybersecurity data breach at ICRC that occurred in January, to data quality issues with the engaging of 10,000 new contributors in a month on MapSwipe.

The closing session, co-facilitated by Pierre Gallien, representing Alternatives Humanitaires, helped put on paper some of the learnings of this year’s edition, in particular, that we have now gotten the ball rolling with some structured reflection for the first time on what we can do as a sector. It also helped summarise some of the questions raised by several days of exchanges. As part of the closing session, a collaborative exercice was organised to identify how we can change our practices in the future, resulting in these three main pointers: 

1. Being more proactive in the greening of our IM systems, 
2. Putting mutualisation and sharing at the heart of our modus operandi, and 
3. Moving beyond participation to ensure proper involvement of local communities in the IM systems of which they are too often the fifth wheel.