Reliefoversight.org is a component of the Disaster Accountability Project's ongoing effort to increase transparency in disaster prevention, response, relief, and recovery systems through new media.

Reliefoversight.org is an easy-to-search, publicly generated, data-driven application to monitor the activities and effectiveness of organizations soliciting donations for disaster relief. While traditional NGO fundraising oversight has focused upon fiscal and governance issues to the exclusion of other issues, reliefoversight.org has the potential, as it is publicly sourced, to greatly increase the effectiveness of relief as NGOs are able to make more informed decisions when forming strategic partnerships and donors can make more informed donations.

After disasters, charities are heavily engaged in advertising for donations and may be less likely to reveal capacity limitations and difficulties delivering aid. While negative exposure could impact fundraising efforts, lives are jeopardized when problems go unreported. The reliefoversight.org's aggregation of updated and independent information in one location increases awareness of relief groups' actual efforts and allow individuals to engage to the greatest extent possible in a wide range of opportunities.

It is critical that the public has access to the most objective and reliable information on groups' capacities, activities, difficulties, prior experience in the region/community, history of collaboration and coordination with other relief groups, status/presence on the ground, budget size, and prior experience with populations served.

ABOUT DISASTER ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT

The non-partisan Disaster Accountability Project works to improve disaster management systems through public accountability, citizen oversight and empowerment, whistle-blower engagement, and policy research and advocacy. DAP monitors the public accountability of disaster prevention, response, relief, and recovery systems by engaging a community of stakeholders in tracking policy recommendations for the improvement of these systems and operating the Disaster Accountability Hotline as a listening device to receive information from survivors and relief workers about critical gaps in relief services.

If disaster relief agencies and organizations are not held accountable and forced to learn and implement the lessons of disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, they will repeat the same mistakes in the future.

The project focuses on both immediate and long-term disaster accountability and oversight by means of:

1. Real-Time Disaster Oversight: In the immediate aftermath of disasters the Disaster Accountability Project leverages various communications media, such as a toll free hotline, to ensure gaps in disaster relief/response services are identified and addressed by responsible agencies and organizations.
2. Policy: The Disaster Accountability Project engages in Policy Research initiatives in areas ranging from Mass Care to Pandemic Influenza to Temporary Housing. By targeting specific policy areas with informed advocacy DAP works to ensure that disaster prevention, response, relief, and recovery systems are comprehensive, inclusive, reflect best-practices and lessons-learned from recent disasters, and account for problems reported to the DAP hotline in the immediate aftermath of past disasters.
3. Citizen Engagement: The Disaster Accountability Project works to engage citizens across the U.S. to ask informed questions, learn about local and regional preparedness efforts, and demand transparency and public accountability in local disaster planning and management systems.

ABOUT THE DEVELOPMENT EFFORT

The initial release of Relief Oversight Database was developed over a two week period by a group of volunteers who contributed a diverse array of talents to making the concept of crowd-sourced real-time oversight in times of crisis a reality. The application could not have been developed so quickly without the commitment and dedication of this group of designers, developers, researchers and community organizers. The core group of volunteers represented 3 countries and 5 states and included Daniel Perlaky (TX), Chadwick Wood (TX), Diego Olano(NY), Per Nilsson (TX), Matt Danner (TX), Isao Jonas (TX), Rath Yin (TX), Veronica Hadad (Argentina), Nathan Wheeler (NC), Sivaji Ganesh (India), John Moyle (MI), Nancy Wheeler (NC), Benjamin Wheeler (NC), Anna Curran (NY), Peter Hanink (NY), Jess Hamilton (CT), Angela Alves (RI), Jared Joyce-Schleimer (NY) and Ben Smilowitz (CT). Many other volunteers and companies donated time, workspace, coffee, hosting and other services and our heartfelt thanks go out to all of them.