Info 202 F12

Immediately following a natural disaster, government representatives and Red Cross volunteers arrive on the scene en-masse. They bring not only supplies, shelters and expertise, but also information systems that facilitate disaster recovery. But when they disappear 3-5 days later, communities are left with no long-term systems to aid disaster recovery.

recovers.org, recently featured on CNN, fills this void with a cloud-based disaster management system (i.e. organizing system). It pairs volunteers and donations with the people who need them. But instead of Red Cross experts doing the pairing, volunteers and donors post their services online where local leaders can search for them. Local leaders can then manage a disaster recovery themselves long after the national-level resources depart.

Although they don't know it, recovers.org founders were thinking of systems in a "design space," as The Disciple of Organizing suggests. How? They adjusted several "dimensions" of standard disaster management systems to create recovers.org:

• Who's doing the organizing? Community leaders, instead of experts, pair volunteers and donations with the people who need them.
• When's the organizing being done? Instead of organizing volunteers, donations and people needing help as they enter the system, leaders organize them "just in time" by searching the system when they need them.