The Sumatra Trench Tsunami: Politics, Technologies and Opportunities
A Way Forward
Regardless of the de jure sovereign state response to the Tsunami, they will need to work with organisations which are:
- Global and local
- Shareholder sensitive and philanthropic
- Market leaders able to leverage related technologies
- Community and citizen oriented
- Intrinsically creative as a base for brokering and marketing
- Sensitive to public sector policy formulation as part of the creative process
We at Microsoft may not be perfect when set against these six criteria but we must be closer than most. As a medium term exercise it might be interesting to see how far we and some of our public sector partners think that we match up to these six.
We are in a good position, nonetheless, to take an international lead in the establishment of a global disaster warning and relief system, as the trigger for a two-way citizenship communications network, which combines the traditional strength of the public sector with the emerging importance of the private sector and civil society, harnessing our basic technologies and using these to drive collaboration and innovation between the IT, broadcasting and telecommunications systems to produce a seamless, cross platform data flow. In the first instance this will provide warnings which can save lives and property and co-ordinate relief to minimise the impact of disasters but in the longer run the value of the system will be in the build up of social and community capital based on trust which will allow poor communities better to withstand the vagaries not only of their natural but also their political and social ecologies.
This is a delicate topic for a major corporation. It is clear that IT is implicitly subversive but we wish to provide services through legitimate channels, protected by solid legal regimes. To say this, however, is not to put all our eggs in the de jure governance basket if only because there are many aspects of life where government has little or no impact. If an upgraded global warning and relief system is established as a self standing entity totally governed by the United Nations and its Members, this will not only be the economic waste of a resource it will also be a socio-economic setback. We already know from emerging democracies that public sector shortcomings have to be remedied through commerce and civil society.
In spite of these complexities, major challenges which impinge on the global consciousness, particularly where these are associated with correcting errors and making new starts, present organisations like ours with immense opportunities to combine and enhancement of our business, our self worth and our image. To proceed at a relatively high speed in seeking to take a leadership role in constructing a new global citizenship information network presents some risks but these are small compared with the opportunities. We have technology, market position, leverage and self belief.