UN OCHA’s Humanitarian eXchange Learning (HXL) is an information sharing standard that enables humanitarian agencies easily share spreadsheet datasets in emergency contexts.

HXL has successfully scaled using an open source and highly collaborative approach that has resulted in adoption of the innovation by many large humanitarian agencies including UNICEF, the Standby Taskforce and Ushahidi.

HXL engaged from early on with a range of other agencies and managed the innovation through an open-membership steering group. The membership of the group changes over time and the responsibilities are shared.

The innovation is free to adopt and use and is treated as a public good. In addition to the free and open source model their success in scaling is also the result of a modest but continuous investment in outreach, awareness-raising and training about the innovation at humanitarian conferences and events.