Together We Stand

[ 162 ] In-progress tagging of documents within the Kira database (left) and an excerpt from the report for ‘Cash-based programming’ (right) Source: Linklaters allowed reviewers to identify the multiple issues raised by each submission, highlight links between issues, and collect that information into digestible reports for the benefit of the synthesis report’s drafters. Finally, we assembled a multi- lingual team of attorneys and other legal professionals from various offices in Linklaters’ global network to execute this methodology, with multiple levels of review and quality control at each stage. All told, more than 20 attorneys and legal professionals (paralegals, legal technology support staff and legal secretaries) contributed more than 3,300 hours to this project, over the course of several months. Our methodology was as follows. First, the documents were uploaded into a database hosted by a legal technology company, Kira Systems, which partnered with us specifi- cally for this project. Then a dedicated team of reviewers, all attorneys at Linklaters, read each document, highlight- ing all salient text and ‘tagging’ it according to an issue framework developed in conjunction with the World Humanitarian Summit Secretariat. Given the richness of the evidence base, content could be tagged as falling under multiple issues or sub-issues. In order to provide the flexibility for new ideas to be identi- fied and brought forth during review, our reviewers were also trained to identify additional issues and sub-issues outside of the initial framework, which were then incorpo- rated into the review protocol. We incorporated multiple levels of review and quality control into the process, which was designed to ensure a thorough and consistent outcome from the review. Once all the relevant content in the documents was tagged, the Kira database was used to generate reports containing all tagged text under each of the 82 identified sub-issues. These reports enabled the synthesis report’s drafters to read a single output of all text, across the hundreds of submissions, relevant to the particular issue or sub-issue of interest to them. Each document was also tagged with relevant identifying information such as stake- holder group, region and national context. The drafters of the synthesis report made use of these reports in evaluating support for, and critique of, the ideas raised during the World Humanitarian Summit consul- tation process. The drafters also had access to the Kira database itself, permitting more targeted research on an ad hoc basis according to their needs over the drafting process. Linklaters provided editing support to the drafters of the synthesis report over various iterations of the draft, comment- ing on the use of the evidence base and issues of style. In partnership with Kira, Linklaters also provided the space in which to host the massive number of online comments received by the Secretariat, which were tagged and reviewed in an analogous process by United Nations volunteers. Linklaters’ involvement facilitated the methodical, considered and consistent analysis of the thousands of pages of evidence underpinning the World Humanitarian Summit Synthesis Report, providing a well-informed, independent perspective on the evidence base as a comple- ment to the expertise of the synthesis report drafting team. Through this partnership, Linklaters was able to assist the World Humanitarian Summit Secretariat in embedding good governance into this unprecedented multi-stake- holder process, ensuring that the information gathered would be organized, analysed and packaged in a transpar- ent and accountable fashion. T ogether W e S tand