What We Learned Testing the Humanitarian Data Toolkit

In early 2013, the Internews Center for Innovation and Learning (ICIL) set out to pilot a new system that
allows humanitarian communications professionals and responders to quickly gather, analyze, and act
upon data to understand information needs of an affected population during a crisis. The system, called the
Humanitarian Data Toolkit (HDT), was piloted under a Lean Startup Model, experimenting with a relatively
rough prototype as the beginning of a process of testing and iterative development. This report documents
the journey of the pilot – based on our experience, working as a collaborative team testing out the effectiveness
of doing an information needs assessment with the HDT in Dadaab, Kenya.