Lin Wells' Blog, May 14, 2009

Recent STAR-TIDES Activities

The past few months have been very active for TIDES projects and the STAR-TIDES network. Since January, we’ve:
• Contributed to several projects in Afghanistan related to information, communications and renewable energy;
• Upgraded the website;
• Participated in field observations of integrated infrastructures with the Naval Postgraduate School in California;
• Engaged more closely with the US Southern Command in several areas;
• Fielded displays at the AFCEA (Armed Forces Communications Electronics Association) West conference in San Diego and Joint Warfighting event in Virginia Beach,
• Begun a closer integration with Human Interoperabilty studies and social network development
• Built closer partnerships with several Private Volunteer Organizations (PVOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and foreign participants, and
• Generally expanded the network.
I’ll address many of these in future posts, but let me focus first on Afghanistan.

Based on visits to Kabul, Jalalabad and Bagram in January, and work with folks with long experience in Afghanistan, the STAR-TIDES network contributed to reviews in areas like:
• The role of distributed, renewable energy in support of essential services in remote Afghan villages;
• Understanding better how to align information and communications infrastructures in Afghanistan with government, private sector and coalition objectives; and
• Providing opportunities for enhanced information sharing in Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan.
The reports are available in the reference library section of the star-tides.net website. We've also been working with various Afghan Ministries, and have been able to tie some companies and foundations into Afghanistan-related efforts.

There are many opportunities to build on this momentum, especially by working through public-private partnerships, whole-of-government approaches, and international engagement. Some 14,000 villages in Afghanistan don’t have power. Distributed, renewable energy (microhydro, wind, solar, local geothermal) can support services such as water purification, lighting and agricultural food processing. Communications, especially cell phone-based (coverage now reaches some 85% of the Afghan population), can provide agricultural information, weather forecasts, health care (e.g. prenatal and maternal care information), mobile banking, etc. Voice messages can help reach those who can’t read. At the same time, bandwidth expansion to universities and teaching hospitals can open learning opportunities for Afghan youth. With some 60 percent of the population under 25, education offers exceptional leverage. Finally, enhancing “situational awareness” by sharing information better among government organizations, PVOs, NGOs and others can be a quick win. This is not a technology project—it’s how to make technology transparent to human purposes and to integrate capabilities with trust-building, effective operating procedures, funding, training and the related activities that lead to successful outcomes.

Of course there will be challenges. It’s important to work with bottom-up organizations like the National Solidarity Program to make sure that the services provided are useful to, and sustainable by, the Afghans in their situations, not in ours. In some cases, opponents also will get access to these services. On balance, the potential rewards seem to far outweigh the risks, but the risks need to be addressed. In the coming months STAR-TIDES will be working with partners to support their planning efforts.

This is a very rich topic and we’ll explore it more in the future. Comments welcome.

Lin