ABSTRACT
Abstract: After the March 2003 Iraq invasion, the international humanitarian community entered the country with a new set of methods, including management information systems (MIS). Mine action is the sector within the humanitarian domain that is tasked with reducing the impact of the explosive remnants of war on the local population. The MIS adopted by the Iraq Mine Action Program (MAP) was the already globally tested Information Management System for Mine Action (IMSMA), developed by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ) and the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD). This chapter presents the main MIS tools applied in the mine action domain and moves on to explore the challenges that were faced in the use of the tools in Iraq. The lessons learned from the Iraqi mission included: the importance of a national authority to provide governance of the information management; the impact on successful MIS usage by the deteriorating security situation; and the importance of making the applications robust and intuitive in order to increase the resilience of the national staff and reduce dependence on expatriate experts.
