by Carina Lopes

Tanya Notley
(Tactical Technology Collective)
http://www.tacticaltech.org/

Turning Information Into Action

Tactical tech is an international NGO helping human rights advocates use information, communications and digital technologies to maximise the impact of their advocacy work. They provide advocates with guides, tools, training and consultancy to help them develop the skills and tactics they need to increase the impact of their campaigning. Tanya explained the way their work focuses on three areas they think is critical for rights advocates wanting to use information and digital technology to advance their cause. These three areas are: 1) ACT (Supporting advocates to make strategic choices and effectively employ the use of digital tools to turn information into action); 2) PROTECT (Raising awareness about digital security risks and providing the tools/skills to help advocates address risks) and; 3) REVEAL (using visualisation tools as way to present information to engage wider audiences).

1) The collective’s aim is to help human rights advocates and to develop supporting digital tools. (The presentation was divided into two parts with the second one incorporating a discussion and a spectrogram discussion exercise around privacy, security and digital technology issues.)

•  View of short animation movie presenting Tactical Technology Collective: ‘How do we use information to create change?’
o   Work with advocates: strategic use of tools and make of efficient exposure of information.
o   Targeted advocacy + really good data.
o   The right packaging.
o   Evidence-based campaigning that works.
o   Create‘Toolkits and Guides’ in collaboration with rights advocates, designers and technologists
o   Participatory development of toolkits and guides involves a process of
- Research – Listen
- Consult – Collaborate
- Create – Distribute
- Evaluate – Reflect
o   Attempt to develop material that is right for a specific audience.
o   Organize large events that bring rights advocate/technologists and designers together so they can share skills and work collaboratively
o   Work on projects/grassroots work.

1) ACT PROGRAAME
→ Realistic about the use of technology – critical and reflective about the tools before creating a strategy; as a tool might not be appropriate/useful in different contexts.
On eexample of work in this programme is, Film: ’10 Tactics for Turning Information into Action’ (see http://www.informationactivism.org/)
 
  - 20000+ absolute unique site visitors from 174 countries;
  - More than 30000 plays of videos online;
  - Film has subtitles in 22 languages and cards in 9 languages. Uses creative commons to support people to remix and reuse content.

2.2) PROTECT

- Focused on Attention/ Awareness/ Ability around digital security
- Helping advocates using digital technologies safely.
- Which is safer to use: Gmail or Yahoo! Mail? Gmail! Explains HTTPS versus HTTP (which gmail supports and yahoo does not and this encrypts your email). Explains these are some of the simple steps advocates can take to protect their communications.
- A new trailer for a series of animations is played that aim to raise awareness around digital security issues, featuring a robot called ONO.

2.3) REVEAL

-Visualizing information:
  - Not all visualization has to relate back to numbers, for example: Women Genital Mutilation (Amnesty International).

3) Over the last six months, the Collective has been working with ‘Anti-Slavery’:
  - Playing with data: to produce a campaign’s poster on products of slavery;
  - Working now on an Interactive Website:
      - Depth – specific info on countries & industries.
This work is one example of many collaborations they are working on around visualising information.

The discussion concludes with a Spectogram where all participants are engaged in a discussion based around how much they agree/disagree with the following statements:

1. “Good researchers need to value objectivity more than they value activism in their work”
2. “You should always be able to keep your information private”
3. “Technology radically changes activism and advocacy”
4. “The internet is a more powerful force for change than religion”.
5. “I don’t need digital security because I’m not doing anything wrong.”