16 Usefulness of tools Opinions varied as to the usefulness of technology tools in facilitating documentation of human rights violations. Interviewees identified many more problems than success stories. Overall, there was consensus that in theory, technology could facilitate documentation work – especially in situations where paper documentation was simply getting overwhelming in quantity, a problem which will only increase with time. RECOGNISING PATTERNS Organisations who invested time and effort into setting up well-structured information management systems noted that the ability to pull up cases quickly and efficiently benefited their work. For example, for the Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust, rather than manually going through 60 case files with lots of documents – which involved requesting copies of case documents from different offices – they anticipate that having the system digitised will make analysing the cases much easier. They hope that being able to see similar cases at a glance will help them to push for law and policy change, supporting their longer-term goal of not just prosecuting individual cases, but identifying and lobbying for a change in laws and policies to address the problem systemically. PARTNERSHIPS The most successful examples of technology tool uptake involved partnerships between organisations from different sectors, such as Umbrella. The way these collaborations were framed were particular in that they weren’t explicitly described as “capacity building” partnerships, but rather just as partnerships to make sure that the tools development was anchored within different organisations’ needs, and that tools users had opportunities to help shape the development from the very beginning. Though these partnerships started focused on a technology tool or problem, they made collaborating on other issues easier, too. Veronica Vidal, who works on women’s rights with the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), mentioned that using technology to document violations has really strengthened their work because it has enabled organisations within their network to collaborate and pool their resources in a much easier way than previously.