cdac network evaluative report: review of the infoasaid project's media & telecoms...

7/27/2019 CDAC Network Evaluative Report: Review of the infoasaid Project's Media & Telecoms Landscape Guides. July 2013

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CDAC Network Evaluative Report:

Review of the infoasaid Project’s

Media & Telecoms Landscape Guides

Executive Summary

The infoasaid project’s Media & Telecoms Landscape Guides (MTLGs) (http://infoasaid.org/media-and-

telecoms-landscape-guides) were developed by the infoasaid project (a DFID funded consortium of BBC

Media Action and Internews) between October 2010 and December 2012. The aim of the Guides was to

provide comprehensive, detailed information on media and telecommunications usage and availability in

disaster affected countries. The project delivered 20 guides covering countries at risk of natural disastersand/or conflict.

During the lifetime of the infoasaid project, there was no opportunity to review how widely the MTLGs

were being used and how useful their users perceived them to be. With the assumption that the Guides

would be taken forward by the CDAC Network in some way, the Network decided to undertake a short

review of the use and usefulness of the Guides in order to provide recommendations as to their future

development. Forty people completed an online questionnaire, and a web analysis was undertaken of the

use of the MTLGs from the infoasaid website.

Primary data collected from the survey showed respondents used the MTLGs predominantly for planning

communication with disaster affected communities (80%). The majority of participants felt the MTLGs

should be both updated (86.2%) and further developed (90%). The reasons cited were that the MTLGsprovide better quality information than agencies can collect alone; the information is ready to use in

disaster response; and the information provided is unique in an often overlooked area of humanitarian

action. While survey participants found the guides useful, some respondents (who were involved in

developing the MTLGs) pointed out that they were expensive to produce and update. Other feedback

identified the absence of an advocacy strategy as a barrier to the reach of the MTLGs.

The MTLGs continue to be the most popular tool on the infoasaid website, attracting 110,000 unique page

views since they went online in November 2010. Website analysis shows the pages from the Kenya and

Nepal MTLGs have attracted the most views, even though none of the survey respondents listed Nepal as

one of the Guides they had used. In terms of the infoasaid website more generally, some 1,300 users

accessed over 200 pages of the website, showing there is a core group of keen visitors to the site. Website

traffic data registered a compounded average monthly growth rate of 19.2% over the past 36 months. Even

though it has not been updated since December 2012, the website has attracted 4,000 additional users per

month since then. The website analytics indicate that the MTLGs have interested regular users across the

world, and traffic is still increasing despite the end of the project.

This report recommends that:

The CDAC Network should advocate for the continuation of the MTLGs: The MTLGs are a used and

valuable resource for people working for UN agencies, media development agencies, international and

national NGOs, and likely many other actors who were not aware of this review. Their existence

promotes and facilitates the use of the existing media and telecoms structure in a country by

humanitarian actors, to hopefully improve their information provision to, and communication with,

disaster affected communities. For this reason the CDAC Network should advocate for their

http://infoasaid.org/media-and-telecoms-landscape-guides




http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaaction/



http://www.internews.eu/










continuation, even if the Network is currently unable to financially support their maintenance and

development.

The platform which houses the Guides would benefit from being improved or redesigned to offer

better functionality. In particular it was proposed to allow broader participation to the content

submission and verification (akin to a wiki approach)1 as well as better navigation (through a better

search interface, more structured information, and alternate ways to filter or sort, for instance by

popularity)2. For more information see footnotes 1 and 2 below.

If the guides are further developed in the future, suggestions and recommendations from

participants of this survey should be taken into consideration: In particular the suggestions of:

enabling searchable content; inclusion of information about social media use; translation into the

language(s) of that country; and linking to platforms which provide information about humanitarian

actors in the area, such as http://www.humanitarianresponse.info/

The infoasaid website should not be closed until a viable alternative platform is available to capture

the users of the MTLGs.

AbbreviationsCDAC-N – The Communicating with Disaster Affected Communities Network

INGO – International Non-Governmental Organisation

MDA – Media Development Agency

MTLG – Media and Telecoms Landscape Guide

NGO – Non-Governmental Organisation

UN – United Nations

BackgroundThe infoasaid project (http://infoasaid.org/) was set up as a consortium of BBC Media Action

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaaction/) and Internews (http://www.internews.eu/) in 2010, in recognition of

the fact that although access to reliable information is a critical component of humanitarian response, it is

often not prioritised as such. The infoasaid project, which was funded by DFID, ran for two years (with a

short, no-cost extension period), with the objective of improving the quality of humanitarian aid as a result

of improving information exchange between crisis-affected communities and aid agencies. The infoasaid

project developed many tools and resources throughout its lifetime, which are available on its website, as

well as on the website of the CDAC Network (www.cdacnetwork.org).

This review focuses on one of the project’s resources, the Media & Telecoms Landscape Guides (MTLGs).

These were developed by the infoasaid project between October 2010 and December 2012. The aim of theMTLGs was to provide comprehensive, detailed information on media and telecommunications usage and

availability in disaster affected countries. The first Guide, to Kenya, was published in November 2010. In

total, the project delivered 20 guides covering countries at risk of natural disasters and/or conflict.

Seventeen of these were made available in PDF and HTML formats, and three are only available as PDF

documents. The HTML version of the guides includes an interactive broadcast coverage map, including

information about radio and television transmitter locations and ranges, as well as population density and

natural disaster risk areas within the country. The MTLGs are available for use on the infoasaid website, at:

1It has been highlighted that contributions from guide users are useful, but without verification, there is a risk that individual media outlets may try

to exaggerate their own reach and audience. They may also be sensitive to people with political agendas trying to insert false or biased information.2

Such evolutions would need to be approached using standard technical project management methodologies including a requirement gatheringprocess, followed by a user experience design phase to elaborate the information workflow implications and the user interface improvements

before being costed and implemented.

http://www.humanitarianresponse.info/



http://infoasaid.org/















http://infoasaid.org/media-and-telecoms-landscape-guides. Due to their size they have not yet been

migrated onto the CDAC Network’s website. This will be addressed in the redesign of the website over the

next six months.

The infoasaid project ended at the end of 2012. Although the MTLGs in their current format will remain

available online, they will need regular updating due to the particularly dynamic nature of media andtelecommunications landscapes. This review was undertaken to assist the CDAC Network (CDAC-N) and the

wider sector in making a decision about the future development and production of the Guides, by capturing

users’ (and potential users’) views about whether and how they should be kept up to date, and how they

should be developed in the future.

Aims & Objectives of the ReviewThis review aimed to ascertain:

How widely the MTLGs are used, by whom, and what for, including which countries and sections of

the Guides have been most widely used

Level of awareness about the guides, and how people found out about them

How users perceive the Guides’ accuracy, comprehensiveness, usefulness and usability

Whether users and potential users feel the MTLGs should be updated, and how they would like

them to be developed in the future

The key objective of the review was to provide recommendations to the CDAC-N regarding the future of

the MTLGs, based on the information collected from current and potential users.

MethodologyThe initial stages of this review (those covered in this report), included the following activities:

Developing a short survey to circulate to users and potential users of the MTLGs

Undertaking an analysis of activity on the MTLG pages of the infoasaid website

It was expected that these two activities would give some idea about usage, usefulness and usability of the

MTLGs, and capture some user suggestions for the development of the Guides. More in depth focus group

discussions or workshops will need to be carried out if it is decided the MTLGs will be further developed in

the future. For this reason, respondents were asked to include their email address if they would be

interested in participating in future discussions about the Guides.

Survey DevelopmentA questionnaire was developed in collaboration with colleagues who were involved in the development of

the MTLGs, to ensure the questions were appropriate and would provide the required information. The

questionnaire was put into SurveyMonkey® for dissemination.

Data CollectionThis review used convenience and snowball sampling to try to reach as many current and potential users of

the MTLGs as possible, as no record exists of who has used the Guides (i.e. downloaded them from the

website). An email with a link to the survey was sent to contacts (see below), with a request to disseminate

the survey link as widely as possible amongst the recipients’ networks, using email, twitter, websites, blogs

and other social media sites. The email assured participants that the survey was anonymous, unless they

chose to give their email address to be contacted at a later date.

The initial email was sent to:






Representatives from all CDAC-N member agencies (including affiliate members).

Everyone who had registered on the infoasaid website. Although this registration was intended for use

of the Message Library, it was assumed that some of these users would also have come across the

MTLGs on the website.

Everyone who attended a CDAC-N event where the MTLGs had been presented by the infoasaid

project.

The survey was also repeatedly advertised through the CDAC-N website and social media sites (particularly

Twitter and Facebook) throughout the period of data collection. The survey link was disseminated on 23rd

May 2013, and the last response included in this analysis was completed on 18th

June 2013, meaning the

data collection period was 24 days long.

Data analysis

Data was analysed using the SurveyMonkey® data analysis software, and Microsoft Excel. Most of the data

was quantitative. Qualitative data (from open-ended questions) was categorised and included in the

quantitative data analysis.

Survey Results

RespondentsForty people completed the questionnaire about the MTLGs on SurveyMonkey®. Of these, 35% work for a

UN agency, 22.5% for an INGO, 15% for an MDA, 7.5% within the Red Cross movement, 5% for a national

NGO, 5% were independent consultants, and the other individuals work for a Press Freedom Organisation,

a University, and a Technology Provider.

The majority of respondents are based in international headquarters (38.5%), 20.5% are based in national

headquarters, 12.8% in both regional and field offices, and 10.3% work across headquarters and field

offices depending on deployment.

Knowledge of the MTLGsEighty percent of respondents had heard of the MTLGs before seeing the survey, and just over half (52.5%)

had previously used them.

Respondents reported hearing of the MTLGs through the infoasaid project (39%), through the CDAC

Network (22%), from other online networks (13%) or colleagues (13%); some were involved in the

development of the guides (4.3%) and others weren’t sure where they had heard of them (8.7%).

Use of the MTLGs

Users

Twenty-one respondents (52.5%) had used the MTLGs when they completed the survey. Of the 10

participants who answered the question ‘What did you use the MTLGs for?’ 80% said they used them for

‘Planning communications with affected communities in an emergency’. A breakdown of how respondents

used the MTLGs is represented in the bar chart below.



Figure 1: Bar chart showing reported usage of MTLGs

The top five countries which respondents reported using the guides for were Somalia, Kenya, Chad,

Ethiopia and Pakistan, as shown in the following bar chart.

Figure 2: Bar chart showing which countries respondents have used MTLGs for

The information in the MTLGs is organised by different sections. Participants reported very little difference

in use between each section. Participants were asked to rate on a scale of 1 (low use) to 5 (frequent use)

how often they used each section. The sections focusing on radio coverage were used most frequently: the

0 2 4 6 8 10

Planning communications with

affected communities in an emergency

Information about telecoms

Information campaigns to support

development projects

Planning public information and public

relations campaigns directed at

national audiences

Number of respondents

R e p o r t e d u s e o f M T L G s

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Afghanistan

Bangladesh

Chad

Columbia

DRC

Ethiopia

Guinea

Haiti

Indonesia

Ivory Coast

Kenya

Mozambique

Nepal

Niger

PakistanPhilippines

Somalia

South Sudan

Yemen

Zimbabwe

Number of respondents used MTLG

C o u n t r y o f M T L G



Radio Broadcast Map had an average rating of 3.3, and sections on Radio Stations and Radio Overview were

rated 3.2. The media marketing and advertising section was the least used amongst this group of

respondents, with an average rating of 2.4.

Non-Users

Seventeen (42.5%) of respondents had never used the MTLGs, and two (5%) were not sure if they had used

them before.

Of the 17 who had never used the MTLGs, 14 gave the following reasons for not having used the guides

(multiple answers were allowed):

Reason why had not used the guides n (%) of

respondents

I hadn't heard of them when I needed them 4 (33.3%)

The information in the guides is not relevant to my work 3 (24.9%)

I haven't worked in a country for which a guide has been produced 2 (16.7%)

I forgot they existed 2 (16.7%)

I didn't think they would be useful to me 1 (8.3%)

I found the information on the guides too difficult to navigate 1 (8.3%)

My colleagues in the field are already well connected and therefore don’t use the guides 1 (8.3%)

Users’ perceptions of the MTLGs

Accuracy of information

Of the nine participants who commented on the accuracy of the MTLGs, 100% felt the information in the

guides was fairly to very accurate. However, four people (45%) commented on the fact that the information

was quickly outdated; one person noted that some of the contact information was still provisional, and one

person felt the information was not specific enough for their needs, as they were working in a particular

area.

Missing information

The eight participants who responded to this question felt the following information was missing, or would

be a welcome addition to the Guides:

A contact directory of humanitarian agencies working in the area

Additional information3

about radio stations, such as:

Popularity

Type of programmes broadcast

Peak times of listenership

Average price for services

Information about media dark areas

Contact information for radio stations (where this was missing)4

Complete, up-to-date information (including broadcast coverage maps) for countries / departments

/ regions where this was missing

Accessing the guides

Of the 12 respondents to the question ‘Did you have any difficulty accessing the Guides online?’ 100%

reported no difficulty. When asked if the Guides were difficult to navigate, seven of the eight respondents

(87.5%) said no.

Overall, participants reported the following difficulties in using the guides:

3It should be noted that this information was routinely given wherever it was available, but often it was not.

4It should be noted that where information was missing, it was because it was not possible to retrieve it.



The narrative format made it difficult to find required information – there was too much text

Readers felt the radio stations were just listed, rather than organised according to popularity (they

were, in fact, listed according to their degree of influence, judged in terms of audience size,

geographic coverage, and credibility of content)

It was difficult to search for the country guide required (i.e. had to scroll down the list)

Coordination and partnerships

Only 25% of respondents felt that the information given in the guides helped them to coordinate better

with other organisations working in the same areas. One respondent felt the information was not specific

enough for the area in which they were working, and another said there was a lack of contact details

provided in the Guides which could have facilitated coordination.

A slightly higher number of respondents felt the information provided helped them to develop new

operational partnerships (38.5%). One participant specified that they had developed a partnership with a

radio station based on the information read in an MTLG, and another felt it had helped them to understand

the media and telecoms context before arriving in country. Participants who did not develop new

partnerships felt this was a result of financial constraints and poor coordination, rather than because of lack of information in the guides.

Usefulness of the Guides

Although no specific question was asked around usefulness of the Guides, the comments suggest that

respondents find the MTLGs useful, because they:

Remedy duplication of effort in collecting this essential information, and provide better quality

information than agencies would have been able to collect alone;

Provide a unique information resource in a field which is often overlooked;

Were ready to use in the event of a disaster response.

Future Development of the MTLGs

Updating the MTLGs

Of the 29 respondents who answered the question, 86.2% felt the MTLGs should continue to be updated.

The other 13.8% didn’t know.

Respondents commented that the Guides are valuable, unique, and “vitally useful to humanitarian relief

efforts”.

Two participants acknowledged that the MTLGs would require a large budget to keep up to date, and one

suggested this needed to be undertaken in partnership with other organisations, and possibly using a wiki

website platform which anyone could update. It was acknowledged by two participants that the Guides

would not be used if they were out of date, particularly as the media landscape in some of the countries

covered can change quickly.

Developing the MTLGs

Of the 29 respondents who answered the question, 90% felt the MTLGs should be further developed.

Format

In terms of format, respondents felt that new Guides should be developed in both PDF format (77.8%) and

HTML format (85.2%), so they could be used in remote areas with no internet access. An offline version

which could be used on a mobile phone was suggested as being would be useful by 48.2%, and there was



also a request to host the Guides on a wiki website, so registered users all over the world could add

information to keep it up to date.

New additions to the MTLGs

Over half of respondents expressed an interest in all the new additions to the Guides which were suggested

(see bar chart below), and some suggested other ideas. Twenty-eight participants answered this question.The most popular suggested addition was to include information about NGOs working in the area (71.4%),

closely followed by including information about MDAs; using a wiki format which users could update; and

including a function to search for specific information required (67.9% each).

Figure 3: Bar chart showing responses to ‘If the guides were to be further developed, which of the following

additions do you think would be useful?’

Additional requests for development

Participants also made suggestions that the MTLGs should be developed to include the following.

In terms of content:

Be translated into the language(s) used in that country

Include information about the use of social media within countries

Ensure enough information is given about media in complex political contexts

Reflect the extent to which the communication landscape can vary within a country

In terms of format:

Be hosted on a wiki or another online platform which would:

o Enable specific information to be searched for more easily (using a layered databaseformat, rather than listing the information)

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%100%

A search function which enables you to find the

exact information you require

The possibility to download solely the

information required, rather than the whole…

The option for registered members to update

the information in the guides (wiki format)

More in-depth radio transmission information

on the interactive maps

Information about media development

agencies working in this area

Information about NGOs working in this area

Develop guides for more countries

% respondents who felt addition would be useful

P r o p o s e d a d d i t i o n t o t h e M T L G s



o Enable information to be submitted and edited by registered users all over the world. This

would mean the Guides are owned by the online community, and anyone could contribute

to them. It could provide a cost-effective way of keeping the information up to date.

In terms of usage:

Be more widely advertised, to broaden the user base globally. An advocacy strategy needs to bedeveloped around the Guides to ensure people who would find them useful are aware of their

existence.

Country Guides requested

Participants requested Guides should be available for all countries that are at risk of, or are currently

experiencing disaster (including conflict-related crises). New MTLGs were specifically requested by

participants for the following countries:

All Arab Countries

All South East Asia

All disaster-prone

countries in LatinAmerica

Brazil

Burundi

China

Colombia (PDF already

exists)

DRC (PDF already exists)

Egypt India

Indonesia (PDF already

exists)

Iraq

Madagascar

Mali

Myanmar

Rwanda

Tajikistan

Tanzania

Thailand

Uganda

Vietnam

There was also a comment that the selection of countries was random. The countries profiled by the

infoasaid project were chosen according to a set of criteria. These included: their vulnerability to different

types of humanitarian crisis; the degree of involvement of the international community in humanitarian

responses; the existence of a viable media infrastructure which humanitarians could work with; and thesize of population. India and China were excluded because they seldom call for external help. Burma,

Eritrea and North Korea were excluded because the media was too tightly controlled by the government at

that time.

Future discussions

Eighteen of the 40 participants expressed an interest in being involved in further discussions about the

development of the MTLGs.

Website Analysis Results

The infoasaid website has a total of 95,000 unique visitors to its site, and averages 7,300 page views permonth. Of these visitors, 1,307 people have visited the website over 200 times. This suggests there is a core

group of users who use the infoasaid website frequently. New visitors to the website increased from 25th

March to 30th

April 2012, shortly after the infoasaid project hired the services of a social media specialist

who promoted the Guides on Facebook and Twitter, and secured a higher priority in search engine

searches. Since the infoasaid website went online, it has registered an average monthly growth rate of

19.2%. Even though the project ended in 2012, the website has attracted 4000 additional monthly visitors

from the end of 2012 to June 2013. This represents a 50% increase in the number of visitors to the site,

even though it has not been regularly updated.

Only 11% of visits to the infoasaid website were using a mobile device (including tablets).



The MTLGs section has had 110,502 unique page views (i.e. visits) since they went online in November

2010. Website analysis shows that the most frequently downloaded resources from the infoasaid website

have been the MTLGs for Kenya and Nepal, with 31,000 and 20,000 page views respectively. The ‘Guide’

section was the most visited part of the infoasaid website registering 48% (140,933 page views) of site

traffic, followed by the homepage (10%) and the news section (3%).

The majority of the traffic reaching the MTLGs has come from Google searches (34%). Eight per cent of

traffic comes from directly accessing the Guide, and the remainder is people accessing the Guides through

a range of over 8,000 external sources.

The top eight countries listed from which users have accessed the Guides were United Kingdom, Kenya,

United States, Nepal, Philippines, India, Ethiopia and Bangladesh. There are also 19,297 page visits where

the country origin is unknown. The top 10 most frequently accessed Guides are shown in the bar chart

below.

Figure 4: Bar chart showing how many page views the top ten MTLGs experienced

It should be noted that the number of page views for each Guide will have partly been determined by the

following factors:

1. Date of publication (i.e. Guides which have been online longer will have been viewed more often).

2. Unique nature of resource: For many of these countries no comparable media survey exists (eg.

Somalia, Guinea, Mozambique, Niger, Ethiopia).3. Occurrence of a major disaster (e.g. the Philippines MTLG was the 4

thmost frequently used, even

though it was only published in 2012. This is most likely a result of the response to Typhoon Bopha

in late 2012).

4. Where Guide users are geographically located (e.g. many aid agencies have their East African HQs

in Nairobi, which could explain the high number of page views for the Kenya MTLG).

Conclusion & Recommendations

This review of the infoasaid project’s MTLGs provides some information about usage and usability of the

Guides, as well as some ideas for their future development. However, there were a number of limitations of

the review.

5463

5508

6680

6699

6745

7507

8948

9373

20046

31756

0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000 30000 35000

Somalia

Guinea

Bangladesh

South Sudan

Mozambique

Niger

Philippines

Ethiopia

Nepal

Kenya

Number of page views experienced by top 10 MTLGs



Limitations

The contact details of people who accessed the MTLGs online could not be obtained, therefore it was not

possible to ensure they received the survey link. As people did not need to register to use the Guides, our

information about them is limited to which country they accessed the Guides from, whether they used a

mobile device, and how they reached that page. For this reason we were reliant on convenience andsnowball sampling to find both users and potential users to complete the survey. By using our existing

contacts databases we will likely have missed many users and potential users of the Guides, particularly

those who do not work in the humanitarian sector or those who are based in field offices. The contacts

database of the CDAC Network mainly consists of people interested in communication with disaster

affected communities. This will have biased our data, to show a higher than average proportion of

participants who have heard of or used the infoasaid guides.

The other key limitation was that although 40 people completed the survey, they did not complete all the

questions, meaning that for some questions only 38% of the participants responded (for example, eight of

the 21 participants who had used the Guides answered the question.) The answers given are therefore not

representative of all the respondents’ views.

Discussion of Results

The high number of unique visitors to the infoasaid website, and the fact that a core group of over 1,300

visitors have visited over 200 pages on the site, show that the site and its resources are generating interest

worldwide. The website data analyses tell us that the MTLGs were the most popular tool visited on the

infoasaid website, particularly the MTLGs from Kenya and Nepal, although these were not the most

frequently quoted by survey respondents, which highlights that our sample was not representative of all

users. The survey showed that participants most frequently sought information about radio stations from

the Guides.

Respondents of the survey reported mostly using the MTLGs for planning communication with disasteraffected communities. However, due to the sampling method of disseminating to CDAC Network contacts

and website users, survey respondents predominantly worked in humanitarian response. This figure is

therefore unlikely to be representative of the 110,502 visits the Guides have received online.

The website statistics highlight the popularity of the infoasaid website even six months after the project

was completed, and the MTLGs are the most visited section of the website. Participants of the survey were

supportive of the MTLGs, with 86.2% of respondents feeling the Guides should be updated, and 90% feeling

they should be further developed. The convenience sampling method used in this survey means the

participants are likely to be interested in communications with disaster affected communities, and

therefore are more likely to be supportive of the guides (61% of participants had heard about the guides

from the infoasaid project or the CDAC Network). However, many of the comments provided highlight howuseful respondents felt the Guides were, particularly to people working in the humanitarian and media

development sectors. Respondents found the Guides to be useful, as they:

Remedied duplication of effort in collecting this information, and provided better quality information

than agencies would have been able to achieve alone.

Provided a unique information resource in a field which is often overlooked.

Were ready to use in the event of a disaster response.

In terms of usability, participants found the information in the Guides to be accurate for the most part,

although some of the information does, or will need to be, updated in the future. Participants reported no



difficulty accessing the Guides online, and very little difficulty navigating the information. The only difficulty

reported was in not being able to search data.

Although participants found the Guides to be useful, and relatively easy to use, a number of problems were

identified by respondents. It was acknowledged that the MTLGs in their current format are expensive to

produce and to keep up to date, due to salaries of research staff in each country for which a Guide isdeveloped. The cost of producing one new guide is estimated at £15,000 (dependent on the size of the

country and the sophistication of its media landscape). The media and telecoms sector can change quickly,

particularly in disaster-affected countries, and it would be challenging to keep the Guides up to date. If the

MTLGs cannot be kept up to date, they will cease to be used because the information will no longer be

useful.

Respondents suggested a cost benefit analysis should be undertaken to determine whether the benefits

were worth the resources required to keep the Guides updated and to develop new ones. Two participants

also suggested using a wiki website platform to host the Guides, making them open source so they could be

updated by anyone who becomes a registered member. This means the Guides would be owned by the

online community, and could be updated by the local population, local media organisations, humanitarianactors or MDAs working in the area. Another suggestion was to consider broadening the user base to

include commercial media groups, who may be able to financially support the development of such a

resource if it was also valuable to them.

One respondent also felt the MTLGs had not been disseminated widely enough, as there had been no

advocacy strategy alongside the publication of the Guides. The survey results show that 80% of participants

had already heard of the Guides, but as discussed above the respondents are likely to be from an interested

group. A third of respondents who had not used the Guides reported ‘not having heard of them when I

needed them’ as being the reason. It is possible that the open source solution recommended by two

respondents could contribute to wider awareness and use of the Guides, as people all over the world could

be contributing to the information available.

In conclusion, the infoasaid project’s MTLGs are viewed as an important, valuable resource by respondents

of the survey, and seem to be of substantial interest to the 95,000 users of the infoasaid website. Given the

resources that have already gone into the development of the Guides, and their perceived usefulness by

users and potential users, it would be regrettable not to keep them up to date and in use. However, it is

clear that if the MTLGs are to be maintained and further developed, a less resource heavy and more

sustainable solution for their maintenance will need to be found.

Recommendations

This report recommends that:

1. The CDAC Network should advocate for the continuation of the MTLGs: The MTLGs are a used and valuable resource for people working for UN agencies, MDAs,

international and national NGOs, and likely many other actors who were not aware of this review.

Their existence promotes and facilitates the use of the existing media and telecoms structure in a

country by humanitarian actors, to hopefully improve their information provision to, and

communication with, disaster-affected communities. For this reason the CDAC Network should

advocate for their continuation, even if the Network is currently unable to financially support their

maintenance and development.



2. The platform that houses the Guides would benefit from being improved or redesigned to offer

better functionality: In particular, it was proposed to allow broader participation to the content

submission and verification (akin to a wiki approach) as well as better navigation (through a better

search interface, more structured information, and alternate ways to filter or sort, for instance by

popularity). The costs of quality control of information being supplied by external contributors

would need to be taken into consideration, to mitigate against false or biased information beingprovided. [See footnotes 1 and 2 on page 2 for more information on this recommendation].

3. If the guides are further developed in the future, suggestions and recommendations from

participants of this survey should be taken into consideration : In particular in terms of enabling

searchable content; inclusion of information about social media use; translation into the language(s)

of that country, and linking to platforms which provide information about humanitarian actors in

the area, such as http://www.humanitarianresponse.info/

4. The infoasaid website should not be closed until a viable alternative platform is available to

capture the users of the MTLGs.





cdac network evaluative report: review of the infoasaid project's media & telecoms...

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