This Framing Paper outlines the critical conversations informing the CDAC’s Public Forum on 10 December 2025 in Bonn, in partnership with DW Akademie and Fondation Hirondelle. The paper lays out the current state of information and why it is at a crisis point, and makes a bold Call to Action on what we can do about it.

Through its public events in 2021, CDAC Network explored digital communication and accountability – in particular, asking how technology could offer a tipping point in shifting the power in aid. This policy brief outlines our key takeaways.

Insights from the 2021 CDAC Public Forum: part two.

Insights from the 2021 CDAC Public Forum: part one.

In this background paper for the 2021 CDAC Public Forum, Kaurin argues that, ‘Localisation of technology can support humanitarian localisation in making communities resilient, instead of reliant on international aid and services that are disrupted by global crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.’

How do we make technology inclusive, fair and accessible? Read insights from the 2020 CDAC AGA and Public Forum, ‘Accountability in the age of the algorithm: championing pathways to inclusion in tech-driven futures’, where interdisciplinary experts wrestled with the dual problems of equity and efficacy.

From the 2020 CDAC AGA and Public Forum, ‘Accountability in the age of the algorithm: championing pathways to inclusion in tech-driven futures’, a fundamental challenge to the systems of inherent privilege on which today’s aid sector is built and how they intersect with new technology.

Concept note and background for the 2020 CDAC Network Public Forum.

This report summarises the main themes raised during the 2019 CDAC Network Public Forum and offers solutions to some of the innovation challenges facing the humanitarian system.

Written in advance of the 2019 CDAC Network Public Forum, this background paper looks at the evolution of innovation in the humanitarian sector.

Report from the CDAC Network Annual Global Forum in 2018. Participants acknowledged the communication environment is now one where hierarchical ‘business as usual’ approaches are demonstrably less effective and on the wrong side of history.

The ‘12 essentials for system change’ came out of a global forum held in May 2017 by CDAC Network and the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response, on ‘The authenticity challenge to the Participation Revolution’.

Background discussion papers for the 2017 CDAC Public Forum: (1) Participation and community engagement: the challenge to make it authentic; and (2) Seeing the woods and the trees: the quiet rise of community philanthropy.