Interview Questions for Ewan Oglethorpe, Data Friendly Space's Executive Director
In the ever-evolving landscape of humanitarian aid, a new tool is making waves - the Data Entry and Exploration Platform (DEEP), an open-source project developed by Data Friendly Space (DFS). This innovative platform is designed to streamline the management, exploration, and analysis of data in humanitarian contexts, transforming raw information into actionable insights.
DEEP, available on GitHub and welcoming contributions, is a response to the laborious management of spreadsheets and post-its that plague the humanitarian community. It offers a centralized, indexed location for housing legacy data, and it can extract information systematically from secondary data sources. This efficiency is particularly valuable in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, where DEEP's capabilities have been instrumental in supporting responses across countries like Colombia and Bangladesh.
Data Friendly Space (DFS) is an organisation that collaborates with humanitarian actors to foster digital transformation and the responsible use of data and emerging technologies in the humanitarian sector. While the specific historical details about DFS's founding or early development are not extensively documented, it is clear that DFS engages in partnerships, such as with AWS, to co-develop tools and frameworks addressing practical challenges facing the humanitarian community, with a focus on impact and governance.
The mission of DFS revolves around enabling the humanitarian sector to effectively leverage data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) by prioritizing people, security, ethical governance, and context-specific solutions. DFS advocates for a shift away from a restrictive mindset towards a forward-looking, impact-driven approach that aligns AI tools with real humanitarian needs.
In line with this mission, DFS is providing the humanitarian community with tools like DEEP, which is designed to support the goals of humanitarian actors while addressing governance, security, and operational challenges. The approach involves working backward from the impact humanitarian actors want to achieve, ensuring that DEEP supports those goals while addressing governance, security, and operational challenges.
As the global aid community grapples with improving digital literacy and capabilities at the field level, DFS emphasises the need for more support in this area. DEEP is hosted in AWS environments and uses Docker for containers, making it accessible and scalable for various organisations. However, many organisations host their data in ways that are not machine-readable, making it difficult to systematically access this information. DFS is working to address this issue, aiming to make data more readily usable for the humanitarian community.
DEEP is a standard web application stack written in Python and Javascript, with key technologies including Django, GraphQL, ReactJS, and D3.js. This robust technology stack ensures that DEEP is versatile and adaptable to the diverse needs of the humanitarian community.
In summary, DFS works with key tech partners to accelerate digital transformation in humanitarian settings, focusing on people-centered AI impact and responsible innovation. By providing tools like DEEP, DFS is enabling the humanitarian community to effectively manage data and adopt AI aimed at enhancing humanitarian outcomes. The approach stresses starting from desired humanitarian impact and then tailoring technology solutions accordingly. As we move forward, it is crucial to continue supporting organisations with limited IT capacity or budget to improve their data infrastructure and make their data more readily usable.
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