The Humanitarian Exchange Language (HXL) has been in beta since Spring 2015, during which time it has been through two field trials (the Nepal earthquake and the Guinea Ebola response) as well as several smaller pilot implementations. We are requesting public comments before finalising version 1.0 of the standard. The commenting period will continue to 29 February 2016.

The standard

The HXL standard consists of two parts:

  1. A general set of tagging conventions defines the use of HXL hashtags and attributes for data providers and software creators. This part of the standard is independent of the specific tags in use, and could be applied to different sectors beyond humanitarian response.
  2. A set of 32 core humanitarian hashtags along with recommended attributes. These are hashtags for data types that are useful across multiple humanitarian domains, and we expect that each sector/cluster will create additional tags for its specific needs.

Please send your comments to the hxlproject@googlegroups.com mailing list. The HXL Working Group will respond to all comments, and we will include a summary of the comments and resulting actions in the 1.0 final version of the standard.

There is a collection of 10×15 cm [4×6 in] HXL postcards that summarise both parts of the standard in an easily-portable format. The postcards are available in English, French, Arabic, and Spanish.


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Acknowledgements

We would like to extend a special thanks to the people and organisations who have contributed to the development of version 1.0 the HXL standard. We look forward to increasing the use of the standard in the year ahead.

Features HDX Human-centered design HXL User experience