Download our Briefing Paper on OpenEvsys (PDF, ~240kb) which contains the same text as this page.

1. What is OpenEvsys and what will it do?
2. Which organisations will find OpenEvsys useful?
3. How can these organisations use OpenEvsys?
4. OpenEvsys is Free and Open Source
5. Earlier databases from HURIDOCS
6. When will OpenEvsys be ready?
7. Who is building OpenEvsys?
8. Contact information

1. What is OpenEvsys and what will it do?

OpenEvsys is a software tool, currently under development by Human Rights Information and Documentation Systems, International (HURIDOCS) and Respere. It will be used for managing information about human rights violations, and interventions made by human rights organisations. Anyone can download it and install it for use in their organisation.

Human rights organisations that monitor and document human rights violations can use OpenEvsys for three main purposes: a) for quantitative analysis of violations, b) for managing actions and interventions, and c) for storing and sharing information.

Quantitative analysis of violations

OpenEvsys can be used to produce analysis of human rights violations, and help identify trends and patterns of violations. It makes it possible to answer questions like these:

• How many incidences of violation A occurred in region 2 during a given time period?
• Which part of country X was most affected by violations committed by the military, and how has this changed?
• How many victims were journalists, children or women?
• Do violations of type B increase when a specific military unit enters a geographic area?

OpenEvsys can display results in the form of lists, graphs and tables. Results can also be exported to external applications for creating reports, or to geographical mapping tools like ARCGis or Google Maps for visualisation and anaylsis.

Management and tracking of interventions

OpenEvsys can also be used to manage interventions made by yourself and other human rights organisations. These include the following tasks:

• Produce the history of interventions made for a particular event or person.
• Produce working lists of interventions, for example, by progress or status (completed, in progress, by responsible staff members).
• Produce statistics on interventions: by type, by response, by department or sub-office.

Digital storage of documents for easy retrieval

OpenEvsys can be used to store supporting documents related to violations, such as affidavits, legal documents, medical records, case notes, photos, audio recordings and video clips. Paper documents can be scanned as PDF files and uploaded into the system.

This makes it possible to store information digitally, which can make it easier to protect against hostile acts. It also becomes easier to retrieve documents. Once they have been stored, all files and documents relating to a particular person or event can be retrieved with a few mouse-clicks.

Sharing information on violations

OpenEvsys can be installed and operated from a web server. This will be particularly useful when the members of an organisation are separated geographically, and need to use the Internet to share information about human rights violations.

The underlying “Events” methodology can provide a group of organisations with a common language for describing and recording violations, making it possible to pool data, or at least to corroborate findings and minimise discrepancies and contradictions within that group.

2. Which organisations will find OpenEvsys useful?

OpenEvsys is designed for use by organisations who need a software tool to manage information on violations. These include international and national non-governmental organisations, advocacy networks, national human rights institutions and accountability mechanisms such as Truth and Reconciliation Commissions.

These may be single organisations which collect information about human rights abuses, or groups or networks of organisations, either as a shared documentation system or as a system of information exchange.

Typically, these organisations or networks have the following characteristics:

• They will have a team of information workers.
• They require staff across departments, organisations or geographical locations to have direct access to information about violations.
• They have increasing ICT governance and a greater capacity to access local technical support.
• They are beginning to incorporate Internet-based tools into their public information and advocacy work.

3. How can these organisations use OpenEvsys?

Some anticipated scenarios:

• Some organisations need to produce advocacy reports based on monitoring of cases of violations. They have collected a large amount of cases, and need a tool to produce quantitative research to illustrate their report, and identify patterns of abuse.
• Some organisations provide services to victims of violations: legal aid, litigation, medical aid, material assistance, orientation and referrals. They need a tool to track their interventions, and monitor the cost or effectiveness of their work.
• A group of organisations may wish to collaborate on a report, for a national audience, for the United Nations’ Universal Periodic Review of Human Rights, or for a report to one of the human rights Treaty bodies. They need a standard approach to monitoring, a common vocabulary to describe violations, so they can pool their data for a stronger common analysis of the human rights situation in their country.
• Organisations like national human rights institutions and ombudsmen accept individual complaints, and need a tool to store and manage these complaints, tracking a case's progress and the interventions they make, and store all supporting documentation. They need to produce a yearly report to account for their activity.
• Networks often address challenges at a regional or global level, such as those which fight global problems like slavery, trafficking, discrimination, or attacks against freedom of information or human rights defenders. They need a web-based tool so that all members of the network can record and retrieve cases of violations, and access the latest statistical summaries. They need to share good practices they have produced.
• Nationally-based human rights defenders sometimes operate in dangerous security environments, and their data is at risk of being taken or destroyed. They need a tool to store their information digitally, which may make it easier to backup and protect.

4. OpenEvsys is Free and Open Source

OpenEvsys will come as a free and ready-to-use software, already loaded with HURIDOCS's controlled vocabularies. It will be easy to to download, install and use OpenEvsys thanks to a clear user manual.

Organisations will be able to customize OpenEvsys, change the controlled vocabularies, add new fields, create custom reports, and add translations into local languages. It should therefore respond to the demands of most organisations.

However, some organisations will want to adapt OpenEvsys to their particular needs. They may even want to develop their own system from scratch, and may be looking for a functioning system to use as a starting point.

For this reason, OpenEvsys will be developed in the open, and released as open source software so that users can learn from it, improve and adapt it as they like. The source code is freely available to examine, use, and modify. We are creating a mechanism whereby modified code can be contributed back to the OpenEvsys project, so that improvements made by one organisation can benefit the whole human rights community. HURIDOCS will establish and support the infrastructure required to make this happen.

5. Earlier databases from HURIDOCS

OpenEvsys is a vastly improved version of existing software developed by HURIDOCS, based on Microsoft Access, called WinEvsys (for "Windows Events System").

OpenEvsys will use the same “Who did what to whom?” data model as WinEvsys. This data model is mature and very flexible – it is widely accepted by the human rights community as a standard. HURIDOCS will also assist organisations to move their WinEvsys data into OpenEvsys.

OpenEvsys will also benefit from the 48 controlled vocabularies (HURIDOCS micro-thesauri) which can be used to describe all aspects of a human rights violation. These vocabularies have already been translated into multiple languages by the HURIDOCS network: English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, and Turkish. Translations into Bengali, Bahasa Indonesian and Khmer are currently in progress.

HURIDOCS decided to develop OpenEvsys following feedback from the WinEvsys user community. Improvements were requested for the user interface, in particular an easy way of recording cases (events). Users also wanted stronger statistical functions with built-in tables and charts for reporting on their cases, and improved security. Some organisations expressed the need for a web based system which would allow the system to be used from the field. The general features for OpenEvsys were designed to satisfy these requests, and are available on the HURIDOCS website in our original Request for Proposals.

6. When will OpenEvsys be ready?

OpenEvsys is currently under development. An early release for testing will be ready by February 2009, and the final software will be ready by April 2009.

A number of organisations already using or familiar with the current WinEvsys software, are participating in the development as pilot users. They will contribute deep feedback during the development process to make sure that the final OpenEvsys is as user friendly as possible, and matches the needs of the human rights community. As we approach a stable release, we will also make a test suite available online for anyone to use.

The OpenEvsys code will be also available for viewing and download from the start of development.

7. Who is building OpenEvsys?

HURIDOCS

Human Rights Information and Documentation Systems, International (HURIDOCS) is a non-governmental human rights organisation based in Geneva, Switzerland. We support many organisations worldwide, helping them collect, manage, analyse and share information about human rights violations. We do this through the development of free tools and data standards, setting up of regional support networks, and provision of in-country advice about setting up documentation centres. We work on a not-for-profit basis. More information about us can be found on our website. HURIDOCS's work on OpenEvsys is financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark.

Respere Lanka

OpenEvsys will be developed by Respere, a Sri Lankan software development company. Respere were selected after a public tender run by HURIDOCS in Summer 2008.

OpenEvsys will be built using the same underlying software (its "application framework") as the SAHANA Open Source Disaster Management Platform. SAHANA was built during and in the aftermath of the Asian Tsunami of 2004/5, as a web-based application platform to allow humanitarian organisations to share information on disasters.

SAHANA is a platform into which specific modules can be built. Existing modules for use in humanitarian emergency situations include a shelter registry, a disaster victim registry, tool to match requests for aid with donor contributions, and a system for alerting people of disasters using text messages.

SAHANA has many features which make it an ideal foundation for OpenEvsys:

• Free, open source and has a vibrant development community.
• Web-based, but can also be run on a standalone PC, a network, or even from a USB stick
• Built-in GIS mapping.
• Very good internationalization, meaning it can support many languages and different alphabets.
• Designed to work in tough, low-technology environments.
• Easy to install and deploy.
  

Respere was formed by prominent members of the SAHANA development community, and provides professional SAHANA related support, deployment and deployment services.

8. Contact information

For more information about this project please contact:

Tom Longley,
HURIDOCS Project Manager
tom.longley@huridocs.org
Tel : +44(0)7922858422

Mifan Careem
CTO/Founder Respere Lanka
mifan@respere.com
Tel: +94(0)112500511

HURIDOCS Secretariat
48, chemin du Grand-Montfleury
CH-1290 Versoix, Switzerland
info@huridocs.org
Tel: +41(0)227555252