On behalf of the Commons Lab of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (The Wilson Center), the National Alliance for Public Safety GIS Foundation, the International Association for Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management, ESRI, TechChange, NetHope, and Project EPIC, we are honored to invite you to participate in a Live Webcast of the Keynote Discussion on Open Innovation, a part of the policy roundtable “Connecting Grassroots to Government for Disaster Management,” scheduled for Friday, September 15th from 1:00-1:55 pm Eastern.

By harnessing the collective power of citizens and engaging communities in their own response and recovery, new technologies and methods, like social media, crowdsourcing, and “crowd-mapping,” have the potential to transform disaster management. Yet many challenges – including characterization of reliability, guidelines for use, and demonstration of value – must be addressed before federal agencies can take full advantage of these approaches.  Early uses of social media and crowdsourcing methods in disasters have raised a number of questions: Can citizens generate inputs to critical decisions faster and perhaps more accurately than traditional methods? What is the research telling us, and how are the best ideas being translated into practice? How have agencies successfully navigated potential roadblocks to the use of citizen-generated information, such as privacy and procurement or the Paperwork Reduction Act? When and how is it possible to innovate through open and participatory design with citizens and communities? This event will bring together members of the research, practitioner, policy, and “digital volunteer” communities to discuss the questions posed above and expand the list, as needed.  The objectives are to build a community of interest, prioritize key issues, and identify possible solutions.   

Moderated by Gisli Olafsson, Emergency Response Director, NetHope

Keynote Speakers:

Christopher Fabian, Co-Lead, Innovation Lab, UNICEF

Nigel Snoad, Product Manager, Crisis Response, Google

 Federal procurement rules are often oriented to controlling fair competition between entities that are unlikely to collaborate. Open innovation often takes the opposite approach: aggregating multiple tools into ecosystems that can solve complex problems through collaboration of organizations across specializations. When should agencies use competition or collaboration? What are the best methods and models for organizing collective work? From the perspective of leaders in government, what are the main challenges that need to be overcome if open innovation is to take a wider role in federal problem solving? This panel will assemble key players in the federal technology space and ask how to work towards open innovation for disaster response.

Follow the live webcast discussion on Twitter using hashtag: #DG2G

Or email your questions before and during the live webcast to: DG2G@TechChange.org

For information about the Commons Lab, please visit:

The Commons Lab website    Commons Lab blog post    Collaboration with USAID

Speakers: