Tsunami : How The Web Trumps Governments’ Info Efforts

The reaction to the absolute horror of the disaster that has taken place in the Southern Asia reflects how governments have been left behind by the digital age in effectively communicating real time information to their nationals.

Let me give my personal story:

I am a 33 year old Brit who works at an ad agency in New York City. My girlfriend on Monday took her flight from JFK on Monday to India for a holiday she had booked. She left very nervous. Before she departed, in view of the current situation, I thought the most reliable place to check the situation for travelers would be to check the British Foreign Office website.

The following travel advice is all I could find there (and on the British High Commission of India’s web site):

• Press Release re. Jack Straw’s condolences: British nationals are advised to look carefully at the Travel Advice before undertaking journeys to regions affected by the tragedy.
• India Travel Advice Page: Tidal waves have hit India following a major earthquake in the Indian Ocean. The FCO emergency telephone number is as follows: 0207 008 0000

Do you know dear readers how many people tried to call that number? 4,300 in the first hour. And probably a lot more of those calls were important that inquiry. Was the Foreign Office set up to deal with this? Of course not – but that’s because they elected to use the time honored ‘emergency telephone number’ rather than the digital tools they should have had available.

Let me add some context to this : In the aftermath of this tragedy hundreds of websites and weblogs have reported very important information that has helped document the tragedy and even aid the relief effort. Eyewitness accounts are here, here, here. Bloggers including World Changing are providing first-hand reports and helping to coordinate relief efforts and here. And that’s just a few – check what the New York Times has to say about the impact of the blog on the disaster: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/28/technology/28blogs.html. The BBC has even set up a site allowing people to post messages to find one another.

At the end of the day, my girlfriend being nervous about flying to Kerala is one thing but – if all these webmasters/bloggers/journos/regular folk around the world can provide all this information in real time – I wonder why the British Foreign Office failed all those British relatives looking to find information about the situation and loved ones in Southern Asia??!!

I think they have updated the information since I was looking, but it’s still not enough in this day and age.

After 9/11 and the lessons learned – we don’t understand that governments still fail to see that web as a mechanism to immediately convey important information to a needy and nervous public. Why could the Foreign Office only provide a (engaged) telephone number? I believe that it’s pretty appalling that there’s no web site with up to the minute information and a search database of nationals’ details.

It just goes to show – the digital revolution is charging ahead empowering the individual who in turn, as a collective group can help to change everything with or without the support of governments.

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