Programme

The entire Symposium took place over the course of five days, starting with two days (22-23 October) of small, focused working groups, followed by a two-and-a half day plenary meeting (24, 25, 26 October) consisting of keynote addresses, panel discussions, and presentations by the working groups.

Organisation of the Working Group Meetings

The first two days of the Symposium (22-23 October) consisted of five focused working groups with up to 25 members each. Participation was by invitation only and consisted of humanitarian information practitioners drawn from a cross section of the humanitarian community, whose purpose was to review principles and best practices established during the last five years with the objective of proposing agreed global standards. A steering group dedicated to ensuring that all working groups and panels led to these agreed standards developed a framework using the guidelines of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Once agreed, these standards like the principles of information management endorsed in 2002 would guide the humanitarian community in good information management practices. Each working group was expected to identify best practices in humanitarian information, lessons learned and key issues. The working groups also recommended proposed information standards and identified their strengths and weaknesses. During the plenary the working groups each presented their outcomes which built into a final statement to later be endorsed by the Symposium participants.

Working Group Meetings

Organisation of the Plenary Session

Days 3, 4 and 5 (24 – 26 October) were a plenary meeting, starting with a keynote address on each morning. This was followed by panel discussions consisting of experts and practitioners from international organisations, non-governmental organisations and governments, followed by ample time for a question-answer period.

Panel Discussions

Please click here to download the Programme of the Global Symposium +5.