Collective Intelligence Actions Behind COVID-19 Response

23 de May de 2020

Figure 1: Programme Coordinator for Global Fund for HIV in Angola on the sensemaking session. ©AccLabAO

The Accelerator Lab has emerged with a series of protocols to support the intent to tackle the most complex development problems of the century, avoiding the less efficient traditional existing methods. Collective Intelligence (CI) is one of these protocols and is greatly valued as the Accelerator Labs Network is moving towards becoming the biggest learning network on development challenges ever seen. 

In simple terms, collective intelligence is a tool that allows groups of people to work together, very often with the aid of technology, so that more information, knowledge and ideas are mobilized to solve problems.

While countries are battling with the new global pandemic, communities and Governments worldwide are more and more reliant on CI to design their COVID 19 responses. We are happy to share that Angola is also following the same path for an effective response to this pandemic. 

Figure 2: Sensemaking participants Day 3. © AccLabAO

Sensemaking Application for COVID-19 Response

In the current context, we are witnessing how advancements in digital technology have also contributed to collective intelligence achievements such as more human connections, generation of more and new insights from new data sources, together with an increasing need to make sense of the portfolio of solutions already in place and collectively explore what are the available resources, capacities and partnerships to address this fast-evolving global pandemic.

Applying sensemaking into practice includes designing a series of well-structured conversations, capable of providing a comprehensive view on the scale, diversity, impact and other aspects of the actions that a team, an organization, a country or even the world, is working on. For this reason, the Accelerator Lab Angola (AccLabAO) was invited by the Global Fund for HIV, Malaria and Tuberculosis, as well as the Health unit of the Provincial Government, to help facilitate sensemaking workshops, in order to clarify some abstractness on the work being developed by all actors involved in community actions. The team identified overlapping efforts and possible synergies to be considered when structuring a community response to COVID-19. This process usually requires a certain period of time, from the preparation of the workshops to the analysis of the information but, in this case, the work was effectively quick - developed within three days - to collectively generate useful knowledge and room for learning, in order to contribute to the response to this pandemic.

This invitation arrived after the Provincial Government, and specifically the Provincial Health Unit, identified the need to create a single Strategic Plan that would congregate all actors engaged in building community resilience and the response to COVID-19 outbreak, namely faith-based organizations, civil society organizations and UN Agencies. Each group of actors were mobilized for a half-day sensemaking session, starting with the Faith based organizations.

Figure 3: Sensemaking notes Day1. © AccLabAO

The three-day workshop was the first step to synchronise each groups actions within the communities. The main objective of the sessions was to explore what is needed and available, such as resources, technical capacities, partnerships and external factors (political/institutional/ social/cultural and environmental) that influence the work of these organizations and could boost an integrated collective action. The collective knowledge generated from the sessions would then be used as basis to develop a well-structured draft of the Provincial Community Engagement Strategy, which will be endorsed by the local authorities. The strategy is expected to potentially enhance existing and future capacities for delivering community services, mobilize and support the engagement of community volunteers and monitor the implementation of the work already in place.

Even though there were some constraints caused by the limited timeframe, as well as the need to carefully navigate through the different Institutions’ plans and agendas, that can sometimes be conflicting, we believe this exercise was overall gratifying and productive for all involved. The vast experience in the public health sector and specifically in HIV community outreach and planning offered by our colleagues of the Global Fund was essential to understand insights from the sessions, which eventually will lead to the operationalization of the Strategic Plan at the Provincial level.

Venues for financing the plan are actually being explored, including contributions from the government, private sector and UN Agencies. A sensemaking session with business associations is also expected to take place in the upcoming days.

These workshops have showed us that this crisis can also be an opportunity, it has laid the ground for new partnerships and synchrony of actors to emerge, something that is strangely new for some of this organizations that have been sharing the same field of work for many years. It also opened the Provincial Government’s door for new participatory methods and new ways of driving development, by listening to local solutions and actors that have always been working with the communities. Like the members of the religious institutions of the Inter-Faith group mentioned: “We don’t need to go to the communities, we are in the communities, we are the community”.

It is widely accepted that this pandemic moves at a VERY rapid pace, so there is a NEED to catch up so we, countries, nations, do not lose all the development achieved throughout the last decades. We must reframe our work, connect our brains and speed up the way we learn to tackle this global issue. Although the change will not happen overnight, we believe that if we stay aligned and work fast and efficiently, it is a matter of time until we get through this. Do not stop believing. We are going to get over this.