Introduction: Ronna provides an online space for all-partner collaboration in Afghanistan.
In support of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) conducts operations in Afghanistan to reduce the capability and will of the insurgency, to support the growth in capacity and capability of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), and to facilitate improvements in governance and socio-economic development in order to provide a secure environment for sustainable stability that is observable to the population.
Challenges: Find a solution to help bridge the information-sharing gap that exists between ISAF, Afghan partners and parties that do not have access to military information systems.
ISAF uses APAN resources to provide a simple and reliable online information sharing environment to exchange unclassified information across the civil-military boundaries. The ability to easily share information has improved governance, development and security for the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
Solutions: Ronna, meaning “guiding light” in Dari, is an online community of interest hosted by APAN. Through APAN, Ronna allows groups involved with the reconstruction of Afghanistan to customize web-based information sharing communities to include self-governed access controls, translation features and social media tools.
ISAF partners around the world can quickly and immediately share information through their Ronna community. Each community has a manager who can customize each user’s access to information within a Ronna community. The community manager also has the ability to customize features to meet their information sharing goals and objectives.
APAN offers language translation services which greatly reduce language barriers for Ronna members who use primarily Dari and Pashtu. Web pages, text, documents and chat messages can also be translated from English into multiple languages. Computer-based translation services found at https://translate.apan.org enable Ronna users to minimize language barriers and reduce the need for human translation services.
Results: Over thirty communities from organizations including ISAF, USAID, the U.S. Treasury and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan are actively sharing information in Ronna’s online communities.
Fourteen ministries of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan maintain or actively utilize communities on Ronna. With personal support provided by staff from U.S. Central Command and APAN, Ronna will continue to support information-sharing and relationship-building between the people supporting security and growth in Afghanistan.
The RONNA community hosts a COVID-19 information sharing group. It is publicly visible. Join the group to be added to the email announcements provided by the RONNA Afganistan Support Team.