Pentagon’s Social Network Becomes Hub for Haiti Relief

[Eric K. Noji, M.D.]

After three years of development, the military was done developing a new crisis-response communication tool. All that was left to do was to test the new communications and collaboration system in its element—disaster scenarios. The test, scheduled for this summer, was a simulated hurricane in the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Then, last Tuesday, real disaster struck, rocking Haiti and sending relief organizations, governments, and people all over the world into crisis mode. Money and people have poured into Haiti to help address the devastating circumstances.

But with much of Haiti offline, from airports to ports to basic phone lines, communication, internally and externally, has been extremely tough. Without the ability to communicate with air traffic control or relief workers, it’s been hard to gauge what’s really going on in Haiti, to communicate what is needed, or to make sure aid goes where the need is.

That’s the problem the military geeks at DISA (Defense Information Systems Agency) are supposed to untangle. DISA’s job is to make sure the military always has active communication and the ability to collaborate and share information, across borders and organizations. So they put their still-untested communication and collaboration tool, into active duty.

TISC (”the Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation”) is a new iteration of APAN, the All Partners Access Network, which was developed by the Defense Department a few years ago. Initially, the military was using APAN to communicate across borders, particularly in countries without sophisticated communication technology. Even in third-world countries, Internet connection seemed to be frequently accessible, so the APAN system was built to work over the Internet, to facilitate the sharing of classified files, as well as things like coordinating calendars.

The system is designed to be as simple as possible, and is as easy to use as a site like Facebook, says Ty Wooldridge of the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii. It uses file-sharing applications, wikis, blogs, and calendaring tools, among other things, to coordinate information and action among people, no matter where they are. Though there are obvious military implications to that kind of network, its first battlefield test is ongoing, on the ground in Haiti.

Without another way of collaborating, the TISC platform has become one of the de facto standards for communication among the relief effort in Haiti.There are more than 1700 0 different users in Haiti, most of them relief organizations of various size and specialty looking for how to get involved, and to coordinate efforts to maximize results. It’s operating on a larger scale than DISA had originally planned, but it’s scaling well, says Jean Dumay, one of DISA’s leads on the TISC project. “The test came early, and it became very real, but we were ready for it.”

The simplicity of TISC is the reason for its explosion of adoption, and is a great strength of TISC and APAN, says Wooldridge. It’s also an intentional one: a few years ago, when he was in Thailand, teaching Thai officers how to use the military’s communications tools, he had them set up passwords including special characters. After hours of trying, one soldier admitted than none of the Thai officers knew what a special character was. “That was when we realized we needed a simpler solution.”

In addition to TISC, DISA is coordinating a number of other communications-related solutions in Haiti. When relief organizations come in to a country in droves, Anderson told me, their communication frequencies often overlap, creating a crisis even among those who brought their own means of communication. To stabilize the situation, as DISA is accustomed to doing for the military, DISA’s Defense Spectrum Office is now in Haiti, “trying to deconflict the electro-magnetic spectrum. These needs aren’t only for the U.S. military, but for all the NGOs to operate so that we can work together.” Super High Frequency communications are being provided to the military, in particular the US Navy ships that are arriving to provide medical care, security, and more.

TISC, one of a number of high-tech initiatives being used in the relief effort in Haiti is helping military and relief efforts alike, Dumay tells Danger Room. The applications allow for groups to communicate within Haiti—groups are using it to point out water shortages, direct gas trucks to where generators have run out, and more—as well as to report back to the US, reporting needs so more aid can be sent.

Haiti’s communication infrastructure, Anderson says, was essentially broken by the earthquake, and without a way to pass information reliably and easily, aid and relief come at a much slower pace. If it works, the TISC-type social network might become the disaster-communication means of the future, and make relief efforts that much more effective.

– David Pierce is a intern at WIRED magazine in New York. This is his first post for Danger Room.