Doc-IT into the next phase
Doc-IT, the DefendersTech project helping human rights organisations to improve their documentation systems by using electronic data collection and storage has been running since June 2016.
Collecting information on human rights abuses is an important part of many organisation’s work. Being able to organise the data in a simple but reliable way is the first step to have the possibility to analyse the data. And without that it will be hard both to get the message out and to do advocacy.
Twerwaneho Listeners’ Club (TLC), based in Fort Portal, is one of the organisations in Doc-IT. From their own experience Gerald Kankya, Simon Amanyire and Thomas Guma from TLC could tell us how thanks to their own records of complaints they had been able provide evidence in a court case where other CSO records were doubted. Their documentation and advocacy has shone a spotlight on child labour practices and on unfair land dispossession cases in Western Uganda.
But systems must be simple. Inevitably with small offices and sometimes different computer skills systems can be too complicated for practical use. Could all share documents? Could all update documents? Should the database be kept on physically vulnerable office computer, in servers elsewhere, or in the cloud?
In the Doc-IT project we have evaluated a variety of tools designed for documenting and human rights cases. These tools include Martus, OpenEvSys, CiviCRM, Elmo, Kobo Toolbox, as well as tools from HURIDOCS.
Every tool has its pros and cons and its ideal use case. Each organisation must decide for itself. There are different needs and many solutions.
In September we were blessed to have Eric Wamugu and Clément Habinshuti join us from HURIDOCS, the Swiss-based organisation working to support NGOs with modern information systems. Both are software developers based in Kenya. HURIDOCS has developed OpenEvSys, a classic documentation system, but more recently created Casebox, where organisations can keep track of legal cases to use both for advocacy and litigation, and Uwazi, a smart document management system for knowledge sharing. Eric and Clément demonstrated the uses of these new tools to the Doc-IT member organisations.
Doc-IT organisations have had successes but also considerable usability challenges transitioning from paper-based or unfiled documentation into an organised database system.
In the near future other Ugandan organisations taking part in Doc-IT will also meet the experts and the team from DefendersTech to see what their needs are and how systems work.
In mid-October there will be a two day course to deepen the participant’s knowledge of how to handle data in spreadsheets, how to clean data and how to analyse the information. Up to the end of the year the Doc-IT organisations will be producing improved advocacy and public engagement templates based on their reinforced documentation capacity.
The stronger your data — the stronger your message.
Doc-It is generously supported by the Royal Netherlands Embassy to Uganda. Our exchange with HURIDOCS was supposed by the Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa.
DefendersTech is a Project of DefendDefenders which assists human rights defenders to use technology strategically, securely, and effectively.
