8. Innovation and digitalization.

Welcome to innovation and digitalization forum!

I am Gina Pattugalan, Chief of Governance and Partnerships at the Technology Division. I am very pleased to be one of the moderators of this forum.

Very much looking forward to hearing your views on these two questions:

1. What do you think are the critical long term and future shifts that are transforming how WFP embraces and scales up innovation, digitalization and data analytics?
2. In that future, what should WFP do differently or better in regard to this cross-cutting field of work?

WFP is an inherently innovative organization. Our systems, process and culture have always been adaptive to ever changing global context, especially to humanitarian and development needs in the field. We are in an exciting era of innovation, as digital technology and data have become more prominent and powerful enablers of our decisions, our work, and our relationships. Digitalization offers different ways for us to know and serve better WFP’s beneficiaries, to strengthen our partnerships with diverse actors, to become more transparent and accountable, to contribute to organizational simplification and efficiencies, and many more. 

To give some examples of what WFP already does on innovation and inspire you to think of two question above: The great enablers - UN World Food Programme (wfp.org)

Share your forward-thinking perspectives in this forum!

Thanks Gina for kicking this off! 

Hi everyone! I am Kyriacos Koupparis, Head of Frontier Innovations at the Innovation Accelerator. I am really excited to engage with all of you as one of the moderators for this discussion board. In addition to the great resource shared above by Gina, I also wanted to share the Accelerator 2020 Year in Review which features great innovation work from across the entire WFP family.
To help spur the conversation, here is an article that raises many important issues that we need to consider when thinking about innovation and technology within the humanitarian sector (and beyond). 

Looking forward to a lively discussion! 

Thanks Gina and all for providing this opportunity, great initiative!

With regard to the critical long term and future shifts to think of, I believe those can and should be looked at in different ways – there are technical solutions, (socio) economic resources and capacities to consider, ethical questions to raise, human elements to highlight, and many more. We often tend to focus on only few of those aspects while there is a whole digital, humanitarian ecosystem to look at in an integrated and holistic manner. In the long run, a multidimensional approach to digitalisation offers many opportunities for our cross-functional ways of working and improved partnerships. To me, innovation is about learning, digitalisation about change management, data analytics about technology but also data protection. Therein, we have to start questioning our modus operandi, put affected persons back to the centre of our operations, introduce new concepts like data subject rights, recognise humanitarian risks and learn from one another.

Thanks again and looking forward to an open minded discussion!

Hello Gina and colleagues. Thanks for getting this conversation going. My two cents follow, largely colored by what I am seeing from New York. Thanks!

1-What are the key long term trends. 

-The UN has an ambitious agenda to revolutionize it's approach to digital. The SG has a Roadmap for Digital Cooperation and a UN Strategy calling for a 'Whole of UN data ecosystem': big changes coming up for WFP. Our work will need to plug into that ecosystem. 

-The trend to increased decentralized economies is a major emerging factor. Decentralized energy grids. Decentralized finance (crypto!). WFP will need to build on these to stay relevant in the next decades. I would love to see WFP use decentralized mechanisms to empower people. 

-Member states now have ambitious plans to upgrade their economies in the age of AI. See the US commission on AI for instance. 

-Civil society is increasingly vocal about the undesired impacts of technology and even within the UN, important voices are skeptical of 'Big Tech'. 

2- What could WFP do better or differently in this cross cutting field?

-We can do a lot more with open source models. Look at what UNICEF is doing. If we were able to offer an open source version of tools like SCOPE or LESS we would be very popular with governments and NGOs. Let's be clear, open source also involves constraints, but we can do more in this strategic area at a time when the UNSG is calling for 'Digital Public Goods'.  

-WFP needs to embrace open data to a greater extent. We can be leaders here by making the agency open by default, like the US government or the World Bank. If we're able to figure out how to do this it will help the cause of ending hunger by equipping others with data.

-We will need to stay true to our humanitarian roots and ensure the tech we build or use truly empowers people. We will need thought leadership and a robust dialogue with externals (who might be critical) on how to best use tech to reach SDG2. 

-In terms of working with others we will need to rebrand the ETC - from "Emergency Telecoms Cluster" to "Emergency Tech Cluster" -- this will help us better engage in the interagency environment and promote some of our white-branded products.

Hi Francesca. An example is that all WFP reporting systems will need to be interoperable with UN INFO by late 2023. This was just announced this week and it’s just the start.

One of the solutions on open source is to work with partners! Entities such as the Digital Public Goods Alliance or the Digital Impact Alliance at the UN Foundation can help us.

Dear colleagues, my two cents here:

1. What do you think are the critical long term and future shifts that are transforming how WFP embraces and scales up innovation, digitalization and data analytics?

Enhanced reach of wireless technologies for effective real-time data collection, which translates to timely information to support decision-making process, while reducing operational costs and fragmented data. We should fully embrace promising solutions like SpaceX’s Starlink.

The above will also contribute to further adoption of cloud-to-the-edge computing technologies, to power faster and immediate access to complex data sets like drone imagery and GIS, supported by AI.

We should embrace Low-Code/No-Code development platforms and solutions, while providing users and partners with the right tools to foster localized automation of non-critical processes, with the proper service model and governance in place

Digital telecoms all the way through. Long gone are the days when an analogue VHF radio was the de-facto security telecoms medium. By adopting fully digital telecom solutions, we will be able to extend some of the services to radio users which are only available to digital users, i.e. email, SMS, location services, etc.

All of the above backed by with consistent investment in cybersecurity. None of this is worth it if our systems get compromised, privacy is breached, and data is corrupted or lost

2. In that future, what should WFP do differently or better in regard to this cross-cutting field of work?

The support to Governments to advance their digital roadmap needs to be thoroughly formulated and made official, with harmonized narrative and objectives across the organization

More engagement with the private sector, which is and will continue being the driver of innovation in technology.

Linked to that, we need to engage more with ecosystems and partners to help bridge the skills gap and leverage the strengths of others. Users must know how to get the benefits of digital technology before they can help their customers do the same.

Further adoption of green technologies and efficient use of renewable sources of energy.

Democratization of innovation, where IT drives cultural change by empowering the business to self-serve and deliver solutions quicker.

Innovation will also include aligning ourselves to emerging trends within the external environment. For example the drive by some of the key donors to focus a a lot on environmental sustainability initiatives (SDG 15). Ongoing Energy delivery models training on we learn is a key enabler, where Co's can think outside the box and come up with some innovative ideas. Collaboration between functional units, Admin, Program, Supply chain, Budget and programming, will be of paramount importance.

I am a strong advocate of spreading data literacy and upskilling data skills in order to develop a truly data-driven culture. This does not mean everyone knowing how to code or query data, but everybody knowing how to ask the right questions to answer about the data and, in turn, the data-generating process (i.e. the uncertainty in how the underlying data is collected and the randomness and uncertainty in the process that creates that data). 

The impression I get is that there is an attitude to speak of data infrastructure and analytics as a "TEC" thing. This causes a disconnect when rolling out "top-down" solutions that require critical thinking and deep understanding of the programmatic operations. This has real implications. For example, do we care whether the intended beneficiaries actually are the recipients of aid? Therefore, can we link the identities of beneficiaries to distributions or redemptions? Are these identities real?

We should be thinking about reconciling business process issues so that existing technologies work better. Our operations are full of disintegrated platforms and gaps that lead to data quality issues, an inability to reconcile information and evaluate whether the operations address the fundamental issue of food insecurity. I think we need strong business technology and delivery engagement staff that can proactively address these. More "shoe leather" and less "pie in the sky" approaches.

Hi wanted to jump on on the discussion on data literacy.  

The major gap I see is in accountability around data - linking the data we obtain to individual actions. The story I always share is about the New York Police Department in the 1990s which set up a data system that reduced crime by 60%. (Ignore this post if you've heard me before)

The key to the story is not the maps and charts the NYPD analysts spun out  - it's that the commissioner, Bill Bratton, would call weekly meetings of all precinct commanders. Attendees looked at the data together to take action, looked at hotspots and were asked why crime on the rise in their precinct. One day a precinct commander showed up drunk and was fired on the spot.

Of course not everything in this experience is transposable to WFP. But we should ask -- does WFP data feed into internal mechanisms where people are accountable for their actions?

Read more about it here. CompStat - Wikipedia

Dear all - my two cents here, touching upon some of the points already raised by colleagues.

In my view, WFP should pursue increased automation by assessing existing business processes and identifying margins for improvement. As of now, we still heavily rely on transactional work, which results into process delays and human mistakes. Increased automation would reduce this and allow staff to focus on analysis and strategic decision-making.

As mentioned by Andrea Duechting, siloed systems (sometimes outdated) are an issue; harmonization of data from environments that do not properly communicate to each other brings similar challenges to those listed above (errors, delays, and a generally scarce quality of data). WFP should address such challenges through increased integration, leading to a uniform data environment.

I also agree with Luis Alvarado on the need to move from an offline to an online, cloud-based approach. Many processes (especially from the budget and supply chain perspective) still take place offline: for example, Excel is still seen as the lowest common denominator across all WFP offices and many processes (e.g. pipeline planning) are still Excel-based. With this lowest common denominator now being the web, an online approach would enable real-time planning, improve request tracking, as well as reduce back and forth, email-based communications.

Finally, I believe that, recognizing we often operate in challenging and remote areas with low or no connectivity, WFP should adopt emerging technologies to enable end-to-end traceability throughout the entire value chain (from farm to fork) to the maximum possible extent, as well as improve its systems to capture local retail price- and sales-related information.

Hi all!

In case you've never seen it, I'm attaching also the UNSG Data Strategy which is quite relevant for our work. Definitely interesting and very comprehensive.

00_UN-SG_Data-Strategy.pdf2.32 MB