Funding the exploration of novel decision-making methodologies
In its second iteration, UNHCR’s Innovation Fund focuses on new and improved problem-solving strategies.
By Amy Lynn Smith, Independent Writer + Strategist
Innovation comes in all shapes, sizes, and scenarios, which is something the UN Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR) Innovation Service not only embraces but encourages, even within its own operations. That’s why in its second iteration, the Innovation Service’s Innovation Fund has an entirely new focus: decision-making. Why? Because giving people the ability to make the best possible decisions is crucial to any organization, but particularly one that works with vulnerable populations, as UNHCR does.
What’s more, decision-making is an important area of study in innovation, so an opportunity to learn more about effective processes in decision-making, as well as the relationship between decision-making and innovation, could prove extremely valuable to the Innovation Service and the entire UNHCR organization, now and in the future.
“Decision-making is about turning insights and information into strategies we can apply to solving problems to the best of our ability,” explains Dina Zyadeh, Associate Innovation Officer (Operations), who leads the Innovation Fund. “We want to strengthen our value proposition, and one way we could do that is to look at innovation that improves decision-making in the organization, both at the strategic and day-to-day operational level on the ground.”
The first iteration of the Innovation Fund, which was launched in June 2016 with a grant from the IKEA Foundation, placed an emphasis on people, not projects, and was largely considered an experiment to evaluate the impact of seed funding and creating a budgetary space for UNHCR staff to innovate. This first iteration of the Fund initially supported applicants across 32 countries. Projects included the Refugee Food Festival, a project to build homes in refugee settlements made of recycled materials — an idea brought forth by a refugee — and the development of a computer lab at a settlement in Zaatari, Jordan, equipped with hardware and a teacher to train qualified refugees to collect, analyze, and map settlement information. The Zaatari project not only provided refugees with valuable skills but also helped them earn money for their work, and many participants in the Refugee Food Festival went on to secure employment or start their own businesses. A number of the projects that were started with Innovation Fund grants have gone on to receive funding from other sources to continue their work.
Evaluating the Experiment
Toward the end of the first iteration of the Innovation Fund, the Innovation Service evaluated what went well and what could be improved, Zyadeh says. This offered the opportunity to consider what kinds of projects would be most beneficial to support if a second iteration of the Innovation Fund could be launched.
“We knew there was an absence of coordinated support to develop new initiatives and that few channels existed to unearth problems and solutions directly from colleagues, which is why it was imperative for us to continue carving out a safe space for experimentation,” she explains.
Then serendipity intervened — something Zyadeh says is often a driver of innovation, along with leveraging hard work and experience to take advantage of unexpected developments: The Innovation Service was given the chance to pitch the idea of a second fund to the Government of Belgium. The result was a project grant known as “Fuelling innovation from the field up: The Innovation Fund 2.0.” Launched by the Innovation Service in December 2018, the Fund received 109 applications from 42 different operations, with 19 projects selected for funding.
Moving Forward with Intention
Zyadeh says the Innovation Fund took a more deliberate approach to soliciting and selecting projects the second time around.
“The thing that sets this iteration apart is that we’re not just interested in supporting innovation for the sake of innovation,” she explains. “So that’s where the emphasis on innovation for improved decision-making came about.”
She points out that no one can control the outcome of a decision, but it’s important to consider issues like sustainability and recognize that when you’re working with vulnerable populations, decision-making processes have a significant impact. The Fund sought applications for projects in areas the Innovation Service wanted people to explore, to not only understand some of the decision-making problems UNHCR faces but to experiment with new ways of approaching these challenges.
However, the Fund wasn’t positioned to candidates as being focused on improved decision-making, even though that was the ultimate goal.
“If we told people we have a Fund that supports improved decision-making, that would be very confusing — decision-making is a big area of work that means something different to everyone,” Zyadeh explains. “So we didn’t necessarily emphasize decision-making in our application process.”
The four areas of work were chosen because they’ve been shown to improve decision-making, and would help link work tasks and decision-making and improve accountability to affected populations.
Here’s a look at the four areas of work being supported by Innovation Fund 2.0, including some project examples.
1. Data & Artificial Intelligence
For this category, the Innovation Fund sought applications for projects focused on the use of computer science techniques that can help UNHCR transform large volumes of data into information, and to turn this information into valuable insights and action. Examples in these areas of work include data mining and natural language processing tools and techniques.
“There’s more to good decision-making than having a large quantity of information,” she adds. “It’s about turning that information into action. It’s very difficult for us to sit at the table and talk about automated decision-making, which some governments are now using in their immigration and refugee systems. The ability to safely and ethically experiment in this area is imperative for us to explore.”
For example, do people actually trust the information they get from artificial intelligence (AI)? Do they use it in their decision-making process? How do they like to use it?
One of the projects awarded a grant in this area is testing the application of machine learning technology to see if it’s possible to extract citations from case law. This would support legal officers in better preparing legal briefs for refugee status determination, which is often the first step in ensuring that asylum-seekers can exercise their human rights.
The goal is to use machine learning to help UNHCR staff, lawyers, and others working on behalf of refugees and asylum-seekers find established case law and legal arguments more quickly on refworld.org, a UNHCR database of law and policy documents relating to refugee law. According to Iris van der Heijden, Project Coordinator for Refworld’s Case Law Collection, the team was struggling to keep the site updated and also wanted to improve the ease of navigation, to make all legal documentation that might be applicable to a particular case more easily accessible.
“It all relates to asylum decision-making,” she explains. “We believe AI will be very helpful to the people working on uploading information to refworld.org, and will also help improve the quality of the arguments lawyers are going to write, to make sure asylum seekers get the protection they need.”
AI is used to refer asylum decision-makers to other cases mentioned in the judgment, including decisions made in other jurisdictions, making the process of finding relevant cases to present on behalf of an asylum-seeker much more efficient. Using an automated process for this will also decrease the time spent identifying the related information by staff and reviewers who are uploading legal documentation. This will give them more time to focus on other aspects, such as providing headnotes and summaries to the cases so end users will be able to sift through the list of cases in the search results much more efficiently because they will no longer have to read the entire text of the judgment to understand whether the case is relevant to their search.
Of course, accuracy is vital — and the fact that the case law can come from multiple jurisdictions and countries, sometimes involving multiple languages, can make the process complex. So part of the project includes evaluating the accuracy of using AI for this process.
“In the end this is about making sure there’s easy access to quality information with regard to laws and policies,” van der Heijden says, “so those who are trying to work with the claims of international protection have all the information they need in a quick way to set up a very good argument on behalf of an asylum-seeker.”
2. Inclusive Intelligence
In this area, the Innovation Fund sought applications for novel ways of engaging displaced people in the decision-making process — including their lived experiences and intelligence, especially in framing the problems that impact them, defining priorities, and informing and overseeing the services UNHCR provides. For example, people of concern, such as refugees, would be asked to participate in budgeting based on their real-world needs, rather than a budget being set arbitrarily to provide the resources they need..
According to Zyadeh, this area is a prime example of the fact that innovation is not always about technology. “We want to engage people of concern in decision-making, so that they participate meaningfully in the decisions that affect their lives, families, and communities,” she says, adding that this is clearly stated in an important UNHCR policy about gender and diversity. UNHCR has not yet tried participatory budgeting, which is something some governments and municipalities are already testing. If others find it potentially valuable, that indicates it may be of benefit to UNHCR, too.
Zyadeh adds that projects supported by the Innovation Fund are an ideal way to explore and document new ways of bringing people of concern into the problem-solving process beyond some of UNHCR’s usual strategies, such as focus groups
However, she adds that the applications submitted for this area weren’t as strong as those in other categories, which means the Innovation Service needs to do a better job of explaining what inclusive intelligence is and why it’s important. Zyadeh considers this a learning opportunity in itself — and one the team is exploring in hopes of identifying better ways of soliciting interest in inclusive intelligence to continue finding new approaches to problem solving.
3. Modeling & Simulation
The Innovation Fund awarded grants to projects that are using computer models and simulations to analyze the potential consequences of different policies before taking action, and to identify actions that perform adequately across a range of future scenarios.
Zyadeh uses climate change to explain this kind of decision-making. When it comes to people displaced in the context of disasters and climate change, there are so many different projections that it becomes hard to forecast based on those because of their variability.
For example, a component of one team’s project was to build and test a multi-agent system to simulate mixed-migration movement in North Africa. The goal was to understand how different scenarios could unfold, and how the Global Compact for Refugees could be leveraged to support operational responses to mixed-flows.
“We not only want to look at computer models and simulations to analyze potential consequences and policies, but also identify actions that perform adequately across the range of different future scenarios,” she says. “Obviously, what the future may hold is always uncertain, but it’s still worthwhile identifying different actions that perform well no matter how the future unfolds.”
4. Storytelling & Culture
The Innovation Fund sought projects that are applying creative stories and anecdotes that harness the powerful role emotions play in driving decision-making, and which can lead to sustained, positive behavioral change. Examples in these areas of work include public interest communications and storytelling campaigns to refine, strengthen, or reimagine UNHCR’s organizational culture.
This is work the Innovation Service is already doing, in conjunction with the Center for Public Interest Communications at the University of Florida. The team wanted to explore the potential of using storytelling and emotion in other areas of UNHCR.
For example, one of the project teams is looking at how managers can be better equipped with storytelling tools so they can develop stronger narratives to explain the importance of diversity and inclusion. The goal is to help shape dynamics in meetings and other decisions made internally.
The Innovation Service is keen to make a specific link between storytelling and UNHCR’s internal organizational culture. The ability to make good decisions impacts employees as well as the people of concern the organization works with, and emphasizing how emotions can be harnessed to create long-lasting positive behavioral change can help improve the culture of UNHCR’s operations.
Making Decisions for the Future
Innovation Fund 2.0 wraps up at the end of 2019, but as with the first iteration of the Fund, there’s no reason the projects can’t apply for additional funding, either through UNHCR or external sources. Plus, the Innovation Service will continue evaluating the success of the Fund — and specifically the results of the decision-making projects that were awarded grants — and determine if there’s value in continuing with future iterations of the Fund.
In the meantime, Zyadeh believes many of the goals for the Fund are being met, particularly in terms of nurturing projects that can help build an evidence base around what works and what doesn’t. She also believes these projects gave the importance of decision-making greater recognition across UNHCR. Ideally, this will motivate a stronger dedication to and understanding of some of the decision-making challenges the organization faces — and a commitment to exploring underutilized and under-explored methodologies, such as the four areas explored as part the Fund.
“Decision-making goes well beyond the Innovation Fund,” Zyadeh says. “Hopefully it’s recognized that this really does impact people, so even if we decide the Fund isn’t something we continue doing, bringing an emphasis to the importance of decision-making and improving that would be a massive win for us and the organization.”
