The Foreign Service Journal, April 2010

42 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 1 0 organization, Nesbit specializes in providing health care via mobile phones. He thought a short mes- saging service (aka texting) system could be crucial in Haiti. Joined by a Caribbean cell phone company and Google, he launched 4636 — a number Haitians could use to text information about the injured and people trapped under rubble. The State Department also joined the effort and helped route messages to the U.S. Coast Guard and Red Cross responders. More than 20,000 texts were received, translated and forwarded to rescuers on the ground. But the numbers only tell part of the story. Some text messages helped res- cue personnel find and free victims trapped in collapsed buildings. One text even helped get care to a woman giv- ing birth. “4636” saved lives. Mobilizing Manpower Because Haiti is multilingual, most of the text messages were not in English, the primary language for many of the emergency personnel. So State is using another informa- tion technology initiative, the Virtual Student Foreign Service, to recruit U.S. college student volunteers via Facebook and other social networking tools for translation and mapping services. Helaina Stein of Tufts University was one of the stu- dents who used the Ushahidi Web site (http://haiti.us hahidi.com ) to map the locations of injured people. The Ushahidi volunteers received SMS messages from those in Haiti, translated them fromCre- ole into English, and then geo- coded and reported the messages for use by rescue personnel. The Ushahidi group also reached out to the Haitian diaspora to participate and take over ownership of the process. “Wiki” means fast, and the de- partment has learned to use Web-based wiki software to organize and disseminate information and mobilize people working on common projects. State’s Crisis Management Center has long used the interagency Intelipedia wiki as a focal point for crisis management information, and it did so effectively in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake. In- telipedia is available worldwide to share information among the U.S. government’s foreign affairs and national security communities that provide support for relief ef- forts. Internally, the Bureau of Consular Affairs and the In- formation Resource Management Bureau’s Office of eDiplomacy used the Diplopedia wiki, which is hosted on State’s internal network, to mobilize an outpouring of vol- unteers — from desk officers to lawyers, contractors and other support staff — representing every bureau in the de- partment to staff the round-the-clock Haiti earthquake consular task force. Person Finder: A Tool for Welfare and Whereabouts After the Jan. 12 earthquake, a number of organizations quickly offered Web sites aimed at helping people report or search for information about the welfare and whereabouts of missing people. Recognizing that a fragmented effort would impede efforts to find information, State initiated a conference call to in- terested organizations — public, private and non- governmental — to coordinate a central service and to share the data. Within hours Google.org, the nonprofit arm of Google, helped to build Person Finder. The system is available in English, French, Spanish and Creole, and includes an option for other organizations to embed it on their own Web sites. At one point, the service handled about 70 requests a second, and within weeks had accumulated more than 58,000 records. F O C U S What we did that night made a real difference for many of those who most needed our help. Sec. Hillary Clinton discusses Haiti relief with Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding in Kingston on Jan. 16. Public Affairs Office, Embassy Kingston