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Benefits, barriers and tips for ICT-enabled M&E

Posted in development, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, monitoring and evaluation, wait... what?, tagged , , , , , on April 17, 2013 | 1 Comment »

At Catholic Relief Services’ annual ICT4D meeting in March 2013, I worked with Jill Hannon from Rockefeller Foundation’s Evaluation Office to organize 3 sessions on the use of ICT for Monitoring and Evaluation (ICTME). The sessions covered the benefits (known and perceived) of using ICTs for M&E, the challenges and barriers organizations face when doing so, and some lessons and advice on how to integrate ICTs into the M&E process.

Our lead discussants in the three sessions included: Stella Luk (Dimagi), Guy Sharrack (CRS), Mike Matarasso (CRS), David McAfee (HNI/Datawinners), Mark Boots (Votomobile), and Teressa Trusty (USAID’s IDEA/Mobile Solutions). In addition, we drew from the experiences and expertise of some 60 people who attended our two round table sessions.

Benefits of integrating ICTs into the M&E process

Some of the potential benefits of integrating ICTs mentioned by the various discussants and participants in the sessions included:

  • More rigorous, higher quality data collection and more complete data
  • Reduction in required resources (time, human, money) to collect, aggregate and analyze data
  • Reduced complexity if data systems are simplified; thus increased productivity and efficiency
  • Combined information sources and types and integration of free form, qualitative data with quantitative data
  • Broader general feedback from a wider public via ICT tools like SMS; inclusion of new voices in the feedback process, elimination of the middleman to empower communities
  • Better cross-sections of information, information comparisons; better coordination and cross-comparing if standard, open formats are used
  • Trend-spotting with visualization tools
  • Greater data transparency and data visibility, easier data auditing
  • Real-time or near real-time feedback “up the chain” that enables quicker decision-making, adaptive management, improved allocation of limited resources based on real-time data, quicker communication of decisions/changes back to field-level staff, faster response to donors and better learning
  • Real-time feedback “down the ladder” that allows for direct citizen/beneficiary feedback, and complementing of formal M&E with other social monitoring approaches
  • Scale, greater data security and archiving, and less environmental impact
  • Better user experience for staff as well as skill enhancement and job marketability and competitiveness of staff who use the system

Barriers and challenges of integrating ICTs into M&E processes

A number of challenges and barriers were also identified, including:

  • A lack of organizational capacity to decide when to use ICTs in M&E, for what, and why, and deciding on the right ICT (if any) for the situation. Organizations may find it difficult to get beyond collecting the data to better use of data for decision-making and coordination. There is often low staff capacity, low uptake of ICT tools and resistance to change.
  • A tendency to focus on surveys and less attention to other types of M&E input, such as qualitative input. Scaling analysis of large-scale qualitative feedback is also a challenge: “How do you scale qualitative feedback to 10,000 people or more? People can give their feedback in a number of languages by voice. How do you mine that data?”
  • The temptation to offload excessive data collection to frontline staff without carefully selecting what data is actually going to be used and useful for them or for other decision-makers.
  • M&E is often tacked on at the end of a proposal design. The same is true for ICT. Both ICT and M&E need to be considered and “baked in” to a process from the very beginning.
  • ICT-based M&E systems have missed the ball on sharing data back. “Clinics in Ghana collect a lot of information that gets aggregated and moved up the chain. What doesn’t happen is sharing that information back with the clinic staff so that they can see what is happening in their own clinic and why. We need to do a better job of giving information back to people and closing the loop.” This step is also important for accountability back to communities. On the whole, we need to be less extractive.
  • Available tools are not always exactly right, and no tool seems to provide everything an organization needs, making it difficult to choose the right tool. There are too many solutions, many of which are duplicative, and often the feature sets and the usability of these tools are both poor. There are issues with sustainability and ongoing maintenance and development of M&E platforms.
  • Common definitions for data types and standards for data formatting are needed. The lack of interoperability among ICT solutions also causes challenges. As a field, we don’t do enough linking of systems together to see a bigger picture of which programs are doing what, where and who they are impacting and how.
  • Security and privacy are not adequately addressed. Many organizations or technology providers are unaware of the ethical implications of collecting data via new tools and channels. Many organizations are unclear about the ethical standards for research versus information that is offered up by different constituents or “beneficiaries” (eg., information provided by people participating in programs that use SMS or collect information through SMS-based surveys) versus monitoring and evaluation information. It is also unclear what the rules are for information collected by private companies, who this information can be shared with and what privacy laws mean for ICT-enabled M&E and other types of data collection. If there are too many barriers to collecting information, however, the amount of information collected will be reduced. A balance needs to be found. The information that telecommunications companies hold is something to think about when considering privacy and consent issues, especially in situations of higher vulnerability and risk. (UNOCHA has recently released a report that may be useful.)
  • Not enough is understood about motivation and incentive for staff or community members to participate or share data. “Where does my information go? Do I see the results? Why should I participate? Is anyone responding to my input?” In addition, the common issues of cost, access, capacity, language, literacy, cultural barriers are very much present in attempts to collect information directly from community members. Another question is that of inclusion: Does ICT-enabled data collection or surveying leave certain groups out? (See this study on intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation for feedback.)
  • Donors often push or dictate the use of ICT when it’s perhaps not the most useful for the situation. In addition there is normally not enough time during proposal process for organizations to work on buy-in and good design of an ICT-enabled M&E system. There is often a demand from the top for excessive data collection without an understanding of the effort required to collect it, and time/resource trade-offs for excessive data collection when it leads to less time spent on program implementation. “People making decisions in the capital want to add all these new questions and information and that can be a challenge… What data are valuable to collect? Who will respond to them? Who will use them as the project goes forward?”
  • There seems to be a focus on top-down, externally created solutions rather than building on local systems and strengths or supporting local organizations or small businesses to strengthen their ICTME capacities. “Can strengthening local capacity be an objective in its own right? Are donors encouraging agencies to develop vertical ICTME solutions without strengthening local systems and partners?”
  • Results-based, data-based focus can bias the countable, leave out complex development processes with more difficult to count/measure impacts.

Lessons and good practice for integrating ICTs into M&E processes

ICT is not a silver bullet – it presents its own set of challenges. But a number of good practices surfaced:

  • The use of ICTs for M&E is not just a technology issue, it’s a people and processes issue too, and it is important to manage the change carefully. It’s also important to keep an open mind that ICT4D to support M&E might not always be the best use of scarce resources – there may be more pressing priorities for a project. Getting influential people on your side to support the cause and help leverage funding and support is critical. It’s also important to communicate goals and objectives clearly, and provide incentives to make sure ICTs are successfully adopted. The trick is keeping up with technology advances to improve the system, but also keeping your eye on the ball.
  • When designing an ICTME effort, clarity of purpose and a holistic picture of the project M&E system are needed in order to review options for where ICT4D can best fit. Don’t start with the technology. Start with the M&E purpose and goals and focus on the business need, not the gadgets. Have a detailed understanding of M&E data requirements and data flows as a first step. Follow those with iterative discussions with ICT staff to specify the ICT4D solution requirements.
  • Select an important but modest project to start with and pilot in one location – get it right and work out the glitches before expanding to a second tier of pilots or expanding widely. Have a fully functional model to share for broad buy-in and collect some hard data during the pilot to convince people of adoption. The first ICT initiative will be the most important.  If it is successful, use of ICTs will likely spread throughout an organization.  If the first initiative fails, it can significantly push back the adoption of ICTs in general. For this reason, it’s important to use your best people for the first effort. Teamwork and/or new skill sets may be required to improve ICT-enabled M&E. The “ICT4D 2.0 Manifesto” talks about a tribrid set of skills needed for ICT-enabled programs.
  • Don’t underestimate the need for staff training and ongoing technical assistance to ensure a positive user experience, particularly when starting out. Agencies need to find the right balance between being able to provide support for a limited number of ICT solutions versus the need to support ongoing local innovation.  It’s also important to ask for help when needed.  The most successful M&E projects are led by competent managers who seek out resources both inside and outside their organizations.
  • Good ICT-enabled M&E comes from a partnership between program, M&E and ICT staff, technical support internal and external to the organization. Having a solid training curriculum and a good help desk are important. In addition, in-built capacity for original architecture design and to maintain and adjust the system is a good idea. A lead business owner and manager for the system need to be in place as well as global and local level pioneers and strong leadership (with budget!) to do testing and piloting. At the local level, it is important to have an energetic and savvy local M&E pioneer who has a high level of patience and understands technology.
  • At the community level, a key piece is understanding who you need to hear from for effective M&E and ensuring that ICT tools are accessible to all. It’s also critical to understand who you are ignoring or not reaching with any tool or process. Are women and children left out? What about income level? Those who are not literate?
  • Organizations should also take care that they are not replacing or obliterating existing human responsibilities for evaluation. For example, at community level in Ghana, Assembly Members have the current responsibility for representing citizen concerns. An ICT-enabled feedback loop might undermine this responsibility if it seeks direct-from-citizen evaluation input.  The issue of trust and the human-human link also need consideration. ICT cannot and should not be a replacement for everything. New ICT tools can increase the number of people and factors evaluated; not just increase efficiency of existing evaluations.
  • Along the same lines, it’s important not to duplicate existing information systems, create parallel systems or fragment the government’s own systems. Organizations should be strengthening local government systems and working with government to use the information to inform policy and help with decision-making and implementation of programs.
  • implementors need to think about the direction of information flow. “Is it valuable to share results “upward” and “downward”? It is possible to integrate local decision-making into a system.” Systems can be created that allow for immediate local-level decision-making based on survey input. Key survey questions can be linked to indicators that allow for immediate discussion and solutions to improve service provision.
  • Also, the potential political and social implications of greater openness in information flows needs to be considered. Will local, regional and national government embrace the openness and transparency that ICTs offer? Are donors and NGOs potentially putting people at risk?
  • For best results, pick a feasible and limited number of quality indicators and think through how frontline workers will be motivated to collect the data. Excessive data collection will interfere with or impede service delivery. Make sure managers are capable of handling and analyzing data that comes in and reacting to it, or there is no point in collecting it. It’s important to not only think about what data you want, but how this data will be used. Real-time data collected needs to be actionable. Be sure that those submitting data understand what data they have submitted and can verify its accuracy. Mobile data collection needs to be integrated into real processes and feedback loops. People will only submit information or reports if they see that someone cares about those reports and does something about them.
  • Collecting data through mobile technology may change the behavior being monitored or tracked. One participant commented that when his organization implemented an ICT-based system to track staff performance, people started doing unnecessary activities so that they could tick off the system boxes rather than doing what they knew should be done for better program impact.
  • At the practical level, tips include having robust options for connectivity and power solutions, testing the technology in the field with a real situation, securing reduced costs with vendors for bulk purchasing and master agreements, using standard vendor tools instead of custom building. It’s good to keep the system simple, efficient and effective as possible and to avoid redundancy or the addition of features things that don’t truly offer more functionality.

Thanks to all our participants and lead discussants at the sessions!

Useful information and guides on ICTME:

Mobile-based technology for monitoring and evaluation: A reference guide for project managers, M&E specialists, researchers, donors

3 Reports on mobile data collection

Other posts on ICTs for M&E:

12 tips on using ICTs for social monitoring and accountability

11 points on strengthening local capacity to use new ICTs for M&E

10 tips on using new ICTs for qualitative M&E

Using participatory video for M&E

ICTs and M&E at the South Asia Evaluators’ Conclave

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Mobile technology and workforce development programs with girls and young women

Posted in development, education, girls, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, mobile, mywd, TSNYC, wait... what?, youth workforce development, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 25, 2013 | 2 Comments »

The March NYC Technology Salon offered an opportunity to discuss how mobile technology can transform workforce development and to hear how mobile is improving the reach and impact of existing initiatives working with girls and young women. Attendees also raised some of the acute, practical challenges and the deeper underlying issues that need to be overcome in order for girls and women to access and use mobile devices and to participate in workforce development programs and the labor market.

Conversation kicked off with comments from Kris Wiig (Samasource), Nancy Taggart (Education Development Center)  and Trina Das Gupta (former head of mWomen). The Salon was part of the Mobiles for Education Mobiles and Youth Workforce Development (mYWD) Working Group Learning Series, an initiative created in partnership with the MasterCard Foundation and USAID. The Salon was hosted at the offices of the Clinton Global Initiative.

The benefits of mobile vs stationary ICT for youth workforce development programs

Mobile holds a number of benefits over stationary ICT, including the feature of reaching people where they are because of the ubiquity of hand-held devices. Mobile is being used as both a primary tool in workforce development programming and as a complementary tool to enhance or reinforce content and interaction happening via other means such as web, face-to-face, and radio.

Reaching girls and women. Mobile can reach girls and young women with services and information they cannot normally get, helping them access the opportunities, skills, and information they need to better position them for work. Mobile job matching allows girls and young women to seek jobs without leaving the home. Micro-tasking (breaking up jobs into tiny tasks that can be done by a number of individuals, eg.,  via a mobile phone) offers a way for girls and young women from slum areas, those not able to work outside of the home, and those pulled out of difficult situations like sexual exploitation; to access entry-level work and gain experience that can help them quickly move to better jobs. Some 75% of women doing microtasking with Samasource move on to better jobs within 6 months, for example.

Getting geographically relevant information out to youth. Mobile can help spread information about opportunities to formerly unreached locations. In many places, jobs and scholarships exist, but they are promoted in places where youth do not see them. Mobile social networks can reach youth and connect them, based on their profiles and skill sets, to opportunities in their own geographical area, helping change the idea that youth have to move to the city in order to find work.

Strengthening soft and hard skills. Using mobile applications, gaming and quizzes, youth can work through career pathfinders in a fun way, find out what they like and what they are good at, and begin learning how to plan a career and what types of courses or preparation they need to achieve goals. They can also learn about savings and create savings plans for items they want to purchase, meanwhile making commitments to give up habits like smoking in order to put their limited resources towards other goals. Applications that reinforce basic literacy and numeracy, such as EDC’s Stepping Stone, help girls and young women strengthen the skills they need to move to a higher level of training or to access additional mobile-based information or engage in communications that help improve their livelihoods.

Lowering barriers to entry. Mobile offers a lower barrier to entry than more traditional ICTs. Mobile web has made it easier for many people to get online, especially in rural areas where people often have to be transported to centralized places in order to access desktop computers and broadband. Mobiles also require less electricity than desktop computers, a big plus in rural areas. One participant noted that an iPad costs only $400 vs a desktop that costs much more and requires more expertise and resources to set up and maintain. Tools available today make it easier for non-experts to create mobile applications. The challenge is getting over inertia and allowing kids to play and experiment.

Designing mobile workforce development programs with and for girls and young women

Even with all these benefits, however, mobile may not always be the best tool because access to information and content delivery does not resolve deeper gender-related issues. Salon attendees offered some insights on ways to make mYWD programs more inclusive of and adapted to the needs of girls and women.

Addressing underlying gender issues. Girls and young women may find a scholarship or a job via mobile but for various reasons, such as controlled mobility or cultural or resource restrictions, they may not be able to take advantage of it. When working with girls and women, underlying issues are central, for example, past trauma, self-esteem, self-doubt and the question “will I ever be good enough.” Organizations can talk this through with girls and women via a mobile phone or online chat, but in truth it’s a much a deeper issue than a cellphone can solve. Corollary and holistic programs are needed to respond to these broader issues in order to have real, in-depth and lasting impact.

Making mYWD programs accessible to girls and young women. Workforce development programs need to be designed in ways that fit the lives of the girls and women they aim to support. For example,  training needs to happen at a time when women are more able to participate, such as after breakfast and before lunch when the children are at school and the husband is not back yet. Child care may need to be provided. It’s also critical to understand the dynamics of husbands and mothers-in-law who often want to know what young women are doing at all times. Some women may be happy to conceal the fact that they are participating in training, but programs should help women and girls gauge their potential risks. Another strategy is working with husbands and men to generate buy-in so that girls and women can participate in different labor market-related activities. In some cases negative reactions from fathers and husbands deter girls and women from participating or cause them to drop out. Eg.: “I make more money and my husband takes it and he drinks more, and then he beats me more.” The many precise cultural and social issues around gender and mobile require more research. Talking with girls and young women about these barriers and ensuring programs take them into account is an important part of the design process.

Remembering that women and girls are often the last to own phones. GSMA research found that there is indeed a mobile gender gap. Though there may be a high level of mobile penetration at the household level, often it’s the husband, then the first-born son who get a phone, and only afterward that perhaps a daughter or a wife get one — and this scenario is in wealthier households where there are multiple devices. For most families in emerging economies, there is only one or possibly two phones per household, and women and girls only have access to the phone when the man of the house gives it to them. This does vary from country to country, but overall, women are less active and with less access to mobile devices. This is a critical gap if organizations wish to involve girls and young women in mobile-based programs. Knowing the audience, population and context and designing information and communication strategies and workforce development programs that use a variety of channels (traditional and new media as well as face-to-face) to reach girls and women can help avoid marginalizing or not reaching those without mobile access.

Finding the incentive base for men. In many emerging markets, work needs to be done to discover what might incentivize men to allow girls and women to access mobile phones and/or to participate in workforce development activities. Sometimes it is money, but not always. Men may not want women and daughters working or earning money. In Afghanistan, for example, the CEO of the mobile network operator would sit with the men in the households and discuss the idea of women and girls having mobile phones. As part of one program that trained women for work, transportation services were set up just for women. It is important to meet people where they are in terms of cultural barriers and not try to shift things too quickly or all at once or there can be serious backlash.

Encouraging girls and young women to enter high growth sectors. Age-old gender frameworks are still at play and many girls and young women are not interested in entering certain high growth sectors, such as technology. This is a worldwide hurdle in terms of positioning girls and young women for the new jobs being created in these sectors, not just something that happens in ‘developing’ countries. Some programs are reaching out specifically to girls and young women to teach them to code and to break down the idea that only boys and men are smart enough to do it. Encouraging girls and women to see the world by accessing Internet via the mobile web and connecting with other girls and women this way can also be hugely transformative. Communication and marketing can play a role in helping girls and women see the world as it could be, if there were gender parity, and planting a seed that helps girls and young women see the possibilities of their own impact in the world. Enabling girls and young women to create, not just consume content, can change the status quo.

Mobile as a complementary tool, not a replacement.  Mobile can resolve some information and communication aspects, however, in the case of girls and young women, resource-intensive services are often the most needed and the most important, and these cannot always be done via a device. Mentoring and networking, for example, have shown to be highly valued by girls and women. These need to be more than a quick check-in however; they should be strong, active and consistent relationships of support. Some organizations are doing interesting work with mentoring but even with the added benefits of mobile technology, efficient and cost-effective ways to support quality mentoring at scale have not been fully worked out yet.

Data and research

There is a dearth of data around how girls and women use mobiles. Research has been done in some contexts with women at the base of the pyramid, but in many cases it’s difficult to apply conclusions across contexts. Evidence on what works, what is sustainable, and what can effectively scale is missing.

Understanding the meaning of mobile for girls and women. There is a need for more research on women’s ownership and use of devices, and a better understanding of what these devices mean to girls and women in their daily lives, in their family dynamics and with regard to their purchasing habits. In one country, 40% of women interviewed said they didn’t like text messaging, but this may not carry over to other countries or to girls and younger women. Women in one survey in Uganda said they didn’t like borrowing a phone because it meant they would owe a favor to the woman they borrowed it from — this breaks with assumptions that mobiles are freely shared in communities and everyone can access them. In Papua New Guinea, women surveyed in a micro-tasking project said that what they most liked about having mobile access was not the work opportunity, it was being able to call and arrange dinner time with their husband so they would not be beaten if he came home early and it was not ready.

Gaps in gender and age disaggregated data. The huge gap in gender and age disaggregated data on mobile ownership and use is a huge impediment in terms of going to scale. Donor organizations and governments often ask, “Where is the data that shows me this works?” Using mobile for different programs is a big shift for most countries and organizations. It requires behavior change and large investments, and so decision-makers logically want to know if it works. Some organizations avoid working with government as it can slow down processes. Others argue that government buy-in and support are vital to achieving scale and sustainability and that government plays an important role in reducing tariffs and establishing regulations that favor mobile for development initiatives.

One discussant recommended: “Do your baseline. Track your data. Share your data. Share your failures. Collect gender and age disaggregated data.” Large research firms are starting to set up these data but they are for the most part proprietary and are not available to those working in development. Organizations like CGI could use their influence to encourage firms and companies to share some parts of their data. Going beyond micro-level pairing of people with jobs to the use of mobile data at scale to look at development trends could be hugely beneficial.

In summary, more needs to be done to better understand the intersecting areas of gender, mobile technology, and youth workforce development programming. Further reading and resources compiled to complement the Salon are available here.

The Technology Salon methodology was used for the session, including Chatham House Rule, therefore no attribution has been made in this summary post. Sign up here to receive notifications about upcoming Salons in New York, Nairobi, San Francisco, London and Washington, DC. 

Visit the Mobiles and Youth Workforce Development Working Group page and sign up to receive information on mYWD Learning Series Events and the upcoming mYWD Landscape Review, due out in July 2013.

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Tapping networks: moto-taxis, SMS and violence reporting in Benin

Posted in Benin, children, CoM, communication for development, development, ICT4D, m4D, mapping, VAC, violence, wait... what?, youth, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 6, 2013 | 1 Comment »

As part of their efforts to reduce violence against children, Plan Benin is rallying motorcycle-taxi drivers to use SMS to report violence against children that they witness in the streets.

Florence Cisse, Plan West Africa’s regional communications officer, says:

The Zemidjan or “Zem” swarm the streets of Cotonou like bees. They are everywhere; silent observers to all comings and goings. Now, they have received training on how to recognize cases of child trafficking or kidnapping which often occur on the same busy streets. Using SMS texting on their mobile phones, they send information which is tracked and mapped by Plan using Ushahidi, an open source web-based technology platform. Plan then alerts authorities through partnerships with the Benin Central Office of Child Protection and ministries of Family, of Home Affairs and of Justice who begin the process of retrieving the children or investigating the abuse.

“The Zem are always working on the streets, which is where children experience the greatest risk,” said Michel Kanhonou Plan Benin Programme Manager. “The use of Ushahidi to track SMS texts and map the incidents of violence has helped to inform the authorities where, block by block, they need to invest greater resources to keep our children safe.”

The Zem join youth, heads of police squads, community and religious leaders and others who have received the training on how to recognize abuse and report it through simple SMS from Plan. Plan promotes a phone number that is used to collect the SMS on billboards and radio programmes.

This is the kind of innovation I think is most interesting – identifying existing networks and systems, and seeing how to enhance or expand them via new technologies. I’m looking forward to seeing how the program advances, and what Plan Benin learns from this effort to engage broader networks in preventing, tracking and responding to violence against children.

The team in Benin has created a video about the violence reporting system, which uses both FrontlineSMS and Ushahidi. The technology tools, however, are only part of the program. In addition, the team launched billboard and community radio campaigns to promote the violence-reporting number; engaged local communities, government, child protection agents, and NGOs; and trained children, families, teachers, school directors, parents and community leaders (and now moto-taxi drivers!) about violence, its impact on children and how to respond to it. Children and young people have been involved in program design and implementation as well, and there have been thorough discussions on how to manage this type of sensitive information in a private and secure way.

For some older posts that demonstrate the evolution of the project, which started off in early 2010, click here.

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The ethics of participatory digital mapping with communities

Posted in communication for development, development, disaster and emergencies, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, mapping, open data, participation, politics, protection, smart aid, social media, technology salon, TSNYC, wait... what?, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 11, 2013 | 5 Comments »

The February 5 Technology Salon in New York City asked “What are the ethics in participatory digital mapping?” Judging by the packed Salon and long waiting list, many of us are struggling with these questions in our work.

Some of the key ethical points raised at the Salon related to the benefits of open data vs privacy and the desire to do no harm. Others were about whether digital maps are an effective tool in participatory community development or if they are mostly an innovation showcase for donors or a backdrop for individual egos to assert their ‘personal coolness’. The absence of research and ethics protocols for some of these new kinds of data gathering and sharing was also an issue of concern for participants.

During the Salon we were only able to scratch the surface, and we hope to get together soon for a more in-depth session (or maybe 2 or 3 sessions – stay tuned!) to further unpack the ethical issues around participatory digital community mapping.

The points raised by discussants and participants included:

1) Showcasing innovation

Is digital mapping really about communities, or are we really just using communities as a backdrop to showcase our own innovation and coolness or that of our donors?

2) Can you do justice to both process and product?

Maps should be less an “in-out tool“ and more part of a broader program. External agents should be supporting communities to articulate and to be full partners in saying, doing, and knowing what they want to do with maps. Digital mapping may not be better than hand drawn maps, if we consider that the process of mapping is just as or more important than the final product. Hand drawn maps can allow for important discussions to happen while people draw. This seems to happens much less with the digital mapping process, which is more technical, and it happens even less when outside agents are doing the mapping. A hand drawn map can be imbued with meaning in terms of the size, color or placement of objects or borders. Important meaning may be missed when hand drawn maps are replaced with digital ones.

Digital maps, however, can be printed and further enhanced with comments and drawings and discussed in the community, as some noted. And digital maps can lend a sense of professionalism to community members and help them to make a stronger case to authorities and decisions makers. Some participants raised concerns about power relations during mapping processes, and worried that using digital tools could emphasize those.

3) The ethics of wasting people’s time.

Community mapping is difficult. The goal of external agents should be to train local people so that they can be owners of the process and sustain it in the long term. This takes time. Often, however, mapping experts are flown in for a week or two to train community members. They leave people with some knowledge, but not enough to fully manage the mapping process and tools. If people end up only half-trained and without local options to continue training, their time has essentially been wasted. In addition, if young people see the training as a pathway to a highly demanded skill set yet are left partially trained and without access to tools and equipment, they will also feel they have wasted their time.

4) Data extraction

When agencies, academics and mappers come in with their clipboards or their GPS units and conduct the same surveys and studies over and over with the same populations, people’s time is also wasted. Open digital community mapping comes from a viewpoint that an open map and open data are one way to make sure that data that is taken from or created by communities is made available to the communities for their own use and can be accessed by others so that the same data is not collected repeatedly. Though there are privacy concerns around opening data, there is a counter balanced ethical dilemma related to how much time gets wasted by keeping data closed.

5) The (missing) link between data and action

Related to the issue of time wasting is the common issue of a missing link between data collected and/or mapped, action and results. Making a map identifying issues is certainly no guarantee that the government will come and take care of those issues. Maps are a means to an end, but often the end is not clear. What do we really hope the data leads to? What does the community hope for? Mapping can be a flashy technology that brings people to the table, but that is no guarantee that something will happen to resolve the issues the map is aimed at solving.

6) Intermediaries are important

One way to ensure that there is a link between data and action is to identify stakeholders that have the ability to use, understand and re-interpret the data. One case was mentioned where health workers collected data and then wanted to know “What do we do now? How does this affect the work that we do? How do we present this information to community health workers in a way that it is useful to our work?” It’s important to tone the data down and make them understandable to the base population, and to also show them in a way that is useful to people working at local institutions. Each audience will need the data to be visualized or shared in a different, contextually appropriate way if they are going to use the data for decision-making. It’s possible to provide the same data in different ways across different platforms from paper to high tech. The challenge of keeping all the data and the different sharing platforms updated, however, is one that can’t be overlooked.

7) What does informed consent actually mean in today’s world?

There is a viewpoint that data must be open and that locking up data is unethical. On the other hand, there are questions about research ethics and protocols when doing mapping projects and sharing or opening data. Are those who do mapping getting informed consent from people to use or open their data? This is the cornerstone of ethics when doing research with human beings. One must be able to explain and be clear about the risks of this data collection, or it is impossible to get truly informed consent. What consent do community mappers need from other community members if they are opening data or information? What about when people are volunteering their information and self-reporting? What does informed consent mean in those cases? And what needs to be done to ensure that consent is truly informed? How can open data and mapping be explained to those who have not used the Internet before? How can we have informed consent if we cannot promise anyone that their data are really secure? Do we have ethics review boards for these new technological ways of gathering data?

8) Not having community data also has ethical implications

It may seem like time wasting, and there may be privacy and protection questions, but there are are also ethical implications of not having community data. When tools like satellite remote sensing are used to do slum mapping, for example, data are very dehumanized and can lead to sterile decision-making. The data that come from a community itself can make these maps more human and these decisions more humane. But there is a balance between the human/humanizing side and the need to protect. Standards are needed for bringing in community and/or human data in an anonymized way, because there are ethical implications on both ends.

9) The problem with donors….

Big donors are not asking the tough questions, according to some participants. There is a lack of understanding around the meaning, use and value of the data being collected and the utility of maps. “If the data is crap, you’ll have crap GIS and a crap map. If you are just doing a map to do a map, there’s an issue.” There is great incentive from the donor side to show maps and to demonstrate value, because maps are a great photo op, a great visual. But how to go a level down to make a map really useful? Are the M&E folks raising the bar and asking these hard questions? Often from the funder’s perspective, mapping is seen as something that can be done quickly. “Get the map up and the project is done. Voila! And if you can do it in 3 weeks, even better!”

Some participants felt the need for greater donor awareness of these ethical questions because many of them are directly related to funding issues. As one participant noted, whether you coordinate, whether it’s participatory, whether you communicate and share back the information, whether you can do the right thing with the privacy issue — these all depend on what you can convince a donor to fund. Often it’s faster to reinvent the wheel because doing it the right way – coordinating, learning from past efforts, involving the community — takes more time and money. That’s often the hard constraint on these questions of ethics.

Check this link for some resources on the topic, and add yours to the list.

Many thanks to our lead discussants, Robert Banick from the American Red Cross and Erica Hagen from Ground Truth, and to Population Council for hosting us for this month’s Salon!

The next Technology Salon NYC will be coming up in March. Stay tuned for more information, and if you’d like to receive notifications about future salons, sign up for the mailing list!

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Technology Salon NYC summary: ICTs and Child Migration

Posted in C4D, children, CoM, communication for development, development, disaster and emergencies, girls, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, migration, protection, TSNYC, wait... what?, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 20, 2012 | 1 Comment »

The November 14, 2012, Technology Salon NYC focused on ways that ICTs can support work with children who migrate. Our lead discussants were:  Sarah Engebretsen and Kate Barker from Population Council, and Brian Root and Enrique Piracés from Human Rights Watch.

This post summarizes discussions that surfaced around the Population Council’s upcoming Girls on the Move report, which looks at adolescent girls’ (ages 10-19) internal and regional migration in ‘developing’ countries, including opportunity and risk. (In a second blog post I will cover Human Rights Watch’s points and resulting discussions.)

The Girls on the Move report (to be released in February 2013) will synthesize current evidence, incorporate results of specially commissioned research, illustrate experiences of migrant girls, provide examples of promising policies and programs, and offer concrete action-oriented recommendations.

1) How are migrant girls using ICTs?

While the report’s focus is not technology, the research team notes that there is some evidence showing that adolescent girls are using ICTs for:

  • Extending social networks. In China and Southeast Asia, migrant girls are building and accessing personal networks through mobiles and texting. This is especially pronounced among girls who work long hours in tedious jobs in factories, and who do not have much time with family and friends. Text messaging helps them maintain connections with existing social networks. It also gives them space for flirtation, which may not be something they can do in their former rural context because of cultural norms that look down on flirtatious behavior.
  • Finding new jobs. Both boys and girls use mobiles and text messaging for exchanging quick news about job openings. This suggests there could be an opening for program interventions that would connect to migrant children through texting, and that might supply information on community resources, for example, where to go in cases of threat or emergency—that might then propagate across migrant virtual networks.
  • Sending remittances. Based on research with adolescent girls and drawing from examples of adult migrants, it seems likely that a vast majority of migrant girls save money and send it to their families. Evidence on how girl migrants are using remittances is limited, but a survey conducted in Kenya found that 90% of adult migrants had sent money home to families in other parts of Kenya via mobile phone in the 30 days before the survey. There is more research needed on adolescent girls’ remittance patterns. Research is also lacking on adolescent girls’ access to and use of mobile phones and on whether mobile phones are owned or borrowed from another person who is the handset owner. Remittances, however, as one participant pointed out, are obviously only sent by mobile in countries with functioning mobile money systems.
  • Keeping in touch with family back home. In Western Kenya, migrant brides who are very isolated placed great importance on mobiles to stay in touch with family and friends back home. Facebook is very popular in some countries for keeping in touch with families and friends back home. In Johannesburg and Somalia, for example, one participant said “Facebook is huge.” Migrating adolescent girls and domestic working girls in Burkina Faso, however, do not have Internet access at all, via mobiles or otherwise.

2) Areas where ICTs could support work on child protection and migration

  • Child Protection Systems There is a general global move towards developing child protection systems that work for different kinds of vulnerable children. These efforts are important in the transit phase and right upon arrival as these phases are particularly risky for children who migrate. ICTs can play a role in managing information that is part of these systems. Ways to connect community child protection systems into district and national systems need more investigation.
  • Reporting abuse and getting help One example of ways that ICTs are supporting child protection in India and several other countries is Child Help Lines. ChildLine India received almost 23 million calls as of March 2012, with 62% of callers between the ages of 11 and 18. The helplines provide vulnerable groups of children and youth with referrals to local services, and in the best cases they are public-private partnerships that link with national and state governments. Of note is that boys call in more often than girls, and this raises questions about girls’ access to phones to actually make a call to obtain support. It also points to the need for differentiated strategies to reach both boys and girls.

3) Technology and exclusion

  • Social exclusion and access is a specific challenge due to the pronounced social exclusion of many migrant girls, particularly those who are married or working in socially isolated jobs such as child domestic workers. Girls in these situations may not have any access to technology at all, including to mobile phones.  Girls and women especially tend to have less access than men; they are often not the owners of devices. There is a research gap here, as no one actually knows how many migrating adolescent girls access mobiles and how many can borrow a phone for use. It is not clear if girls have their own phones, or if they are using an employer’s or a friend’s phone or a public call box. This would be a key factor in terms of working with adolescent girls and understanding risk and designing programs.
  • Technology should build on – not be seen as a replacement for – social networks. Girls access to social capital is a huge underlying topic. There is normally a rupture in social networks when girls move. They become socially isolated and this puts them at great risk. Domestic girl workers leave home and become more vulnerable to exploitation —  they have no friends or family around them, and they may not be able to access communication technologies. For this reason it is critical to understand that technology cannot replace social networks. A social network is needed first, and then ICTs can allow girls to remain in touch with those in their network. It is very important to think about understanding and/or building social networks before pushing the idea of technology or incorporating technologies.

4) ICTs and potential risk to child migrants

  • SMS, anonymity and privacy. According to a study one participant was involved in, some children and youth report feeling that they can speak up more freely by SMS since they can text privately even in close quarters. Others noted that some organizations are incorporating online counseling services for similar reasons. A study in Nigeria is ongoing regarding this same topic, and in Southeast Asia it has been shown that girls often use text messages to flirt using an alternate identity.
  • Retaliation. Concerns were raised regarding the possibility for retaliation if a child reports abuse or uses a mobile for flirting and the phone is confiscated.  Practices of self-protection and message deleting are not very well implemented in most cases. A participant noted that some of the low-end phones in Tanzania and Kenya periodically delete outgoing messages and only keep 15 messages on the phone at a time. This can help somewhat, though it is not a feature that is particularly aimed at protection and privacy, rather, it is more a function of low memory space. Safer Mobile is one initiative that looks at risk and privacy; however, like most efforts looking at risk, it is focused on political conflict and human rights situations, not at privacy and protection for child migrants or other types of abuse reporting that children may be involved in.

5) Research gaps and challenges

  • Migration contexts. It was emphasized that migration during an emergency situation is very different from a voluntary migration, or seasonal migration. Work is being done around communication with disaster or emergency affected populations via the Communication with Disaster Affected Communities (CDAC) Network, but this theme does not seem to be one of widespread discussion among US-based NGOs and humanitarian organizations.
  • Migrants are not necessarily disadvantaged however a bias exists in that researchers tend to look for disadvantage or those who are disadvantaged. They often ask questions that are biased towards showing that migrants are disadvantaged, but this is not always the case. Sometimes migrating children are the most advantaged. In some contexts migrating requires family support and funds to migrate, and those with the least amount of resources may not be able to move. In some cases migrant children have a huge, strong family structure. In others, children are escaping early marriage, their parents’ passing away or other difficult situations.
  • Integrated information and data crossing. One issue with research around migrants is that most looks solely at migrants and does not cross migration with other information. Many girls migrate with the idea that they will be able to get an education, for example, but there is not a lot of information on whether migrating girls have more or less access to education. The literature tends to focus on girls in the worst situations. In addition, although there are 4 times as many internal migrants as there are international migrants, focus tends to be on international migration.

In a second post, I will cover Human Rights Watch’s work on using data visualization to advocate for the rights of immigrants in the US.

Many thanks to our lead discussants from the Population Council and to the Women’s Refugee Commission and the International Rescue Committee for hosting! The next Technology Salon NYC will be coming up in January 2013. Stay tuned for more information and if you’d like to receive notifications about future salons, sign up for the mailing list!

Also, if you have research or examples of how child and youth migrants are using ICTs before, during or after their journey, or information on how organizations are using ICTs to support the process, please let me know.

Related posts and resources:

How can ICTs support and protect children who migrate?

New communication tools and disaster affected communities

Empowering communities with technology tools to protect children

Children on the Move website

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ICT for WASH and public service delivery

Posted in ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, monitoring and evaluation, wait... what?, wash, water and sanitation, tagged , , , , , , , on November 19, 2012 | 5 Comments »

This is a guest post from David Schaub-Jones who works with SeeSaw, a social venture that focuses on how technology can strengthen sanitation and water providers in developing countries. Follow SeeSaw on Twitter:  @ontheseesaw.

In June, two organisations focussed on using ICT (Information and Communications Technology) in the water and sanitation sector joined forces in Cape Town. SeeSaw, a social enterprise that customises ICT to support sanitation and water providers and iComms, a University of Cape Town research unit (Information for Community Oriented Municipal Services) co-hosted a two day event to look at how ICT tools are changing the way that public services function in developing countries.

(from SeeSaw’s website.)

There are growing expectations that harnessing ICT intelligently can bring about radical improvements in the way that health, education and other sectors function, particularly in developing countries. SeeSaw and iComms wanted to look at this in more detail – and to build on the open sharing of experience to provide general principles to those planning to harness ICT for public service delivery. Their overarching goal is to help practitioners cut through much of the complexity and hype surrounding ICT usage and give them a robust set of guidelines with which to plan and negotiate partnerships and projects on the ground.

The event brought together 30+ practitioners – with water sector professionals from across Southern Africa joined by their colleagues from the health sector – a sector that has been quick to innovate, try different approaches and learn lessons. A full write-up of the event can be found here in the Water Information Network of South Africa’s October Newsletter. (See www.win-sa.org).

Key messages

1) Putting in place an effective ICT system can make a visible impact on the ground. It can pay for itself quite quickly in terms of efficiency gains and even costs saved. Yet a fair amount of thought must go into designing the system to fit the local context – just transplanting a system that has worked in one place to a new environment is generally a recipe for trouble.

2) An important spin-off result of looking at how to use ICT is that the effort taken to design a responsive system forces stakeholders to reflect more closely on the existing structures, process and current information flows. This can have significant benefits even if no system is later built.

3) A recommendation is to spend due time and effort in understanding the system, asking direct stakeholders what information they currently get, what information they need and then seeing how and whether ICT systems can be used to gather data that can generate additional, better or faster information and get it to where it is needed (in a way that suits the working patterns of those individuals).

4) For impact at any significant scale it is crucial that ICT systems, whether in healthcare or water and sanitation, integrate with existing government systems. There is a great risk of fragmentation – too many organisations piloting new ICT systems put in place technologies or processes that cannot easily be absorbed into existing government systems (or worse still, undermine these).

5) A lot of initiatives, particularly in the healthcare system, have tried to harness ICT to get people to do what is good for them. And only that. For instance, cellphones used to gather field information can be restricted so that they can only do one thing and no longer function as a phone. Airtime and data bundles used for transmitting information can be isolated to only contribute to ‘the project’. The disadvantage is that this turns the device into something used only for work, something alien and otherwise ‘not useful’. Alternatives do exist though and can be productive. If frontline workers being asked to use phones and new ICT tools are permitted – sometimes on a limited basis – to use them for their own purposes (browsing the internet, accessing facebook, receiving SMS) then they are more likely to engage with the project, look after the equipment, etc. A balance is surely needed, but a quid pro quo arrangement can be a sensible approach. This was characterised as “give them pizza with their broccoli”!

6) ICT tools can be incredibly powerful at improving the flow of data and, from there, the flow of information. But what if the flow of information is not the real problem? There are many issues that undermine healthcare or water and sanitation systems – and a lot of them have little to do with information. Cultural conflicts, different worldviews, individual rivalries, dysfunctional facilities – all of these can be the ‘sand in the gearbox’. Don’t assume that a new ICT system is going to solve all problems – after all, these are tools, not a panacea to what are typically complex and entrenched challenges.

Next Steps

SeeSaw and iComms are now exploring how to take forward research into how to improve information flows and how incentives shape the behaviour of different stakeholders within any ICT system designed for the water and sanitation sector. A similar event is also planned for East Africa in early 2013.

If you are interested in hearing more about these topics, subscribe to SeeSaw’s newsletter for more details.

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Exclusion, innovation, mobile tech and youth workforce development

Posted in development, education, m4D, mywd, youth, youth workforce development, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 9, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

As part of the work I’m doing with the mEducation Alliance around mobile technologies and youth workforce development (mYWD), we’re putting together an event focused on innovation in the mYWD space on October 15  from 9-12.30 EDT.

Some of the topics we’ll be looking at include:

  • How do workforce development programs address different forms of exclusion? And how do different forms of exclusion affect approaches to youth and workforce development programming?
  • What do innovation and ‘disruption’ mean in the context of mobile technologies and youth workforce development?  What are some different frameworks for thinking about innovation?
  • What role might mobile technologies play in increasing access to information and work/entrepreneurial opportunities for young people?
  • Where are there opportunities for innovation with mobile technologies in YWD? What are some examples? What are some precautions?
  • What can mYWD learn from other areas/sectors? What can be adapted and built upon?

Philip Auerswald (The Coming Prosperity: How Entrepreneurs are Transforming the Global Economy and the Innovations: Technology, Globalization, Governance Journal), Nick Martin (Tech Change), John Zoltner (FHI360), and a host of development and technology practitioners working in mobiles and youth workforce development (mYWD) and related fields will be joining.

From the event preparation research and the discussions, we’ll assemble a short publication to share, and (if all goes well!) we’ll do some short videos exploring what innovation means to different people working in this space.

If you’d like to join the meeting, RSVP now by emailing Matthew French at MFrench [at] jbsinternational [dot] com. In person space is limited, so hurry! The event will take place at FHI 360 Conference Center, 1825 Connecticut Avenue NW 8th Floor, Washington, DC 20009 (Map)

If you are not able to participate in person, contact Matthew by October 11 for details on joining the session online.

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Summary: Mobiles for Youth Workforce Development sessions at the mEducation Alliance Symposium

Posted in development, education, m4D, mywd, wait... what?, youth, youth workforce development, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 5, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

September’s mEducation Alliance Symposium included a special track around mobile technologies for youth workforce development (mYWD) as well as a session to discuss a new mYWD Working Group,  which is now up and running online. (Join by first registering at the mEducation Alliance website, then clicking here to join the mYWD Working Group.)

If the topic of mobile technologies and youth workforce development is of interest, don’t miss the October 15th event Innovations in Mobiles for Youth Workforce Development.  Among others, we’ll have the brilliant Phil Auerswald (@auerswald) helping us frame what we mean by ‘innovation’ in the mYWD space. RSVP info here.

In the meantime, here are some highlights from the mYWD sessions at Symposium:

Session 1: Mobiles for Youth Workforce Development (mYWD): Taking Stock of mYWD started with a presentation on the GSMA’s ‘Shaping the Future report by Lauren Dawes.  Then we heard from Theo Van Rensburg Lindzter (M-UBUNTU) and Thabang Mogale (Millenials as Mobile Educators).

  • The GSMA report found that education was a key priority in the lives of the young people surveyed, preceded only by family and health. Respondents also prioritized a good career and noted that they need to improve their skills to find better work. Only 25% of the young people surveyed listed the classroom as their primary source of education. Word of mouth was their main source of information on employment. The single largest barrier to educational information noted was lack of funds; meaning services need to be affordable if aiming to reach the majority of young people. Mobiles are an important asset for young people, ranking above clothing and shoes. Voice is a favored service among youth; most do not use their mobiles to access data. Key recommendations for mLearning and informal education include that youth are enthusiastic about the possibility and potential of learning and improving their chances of finding meaningful work via their mobiles. Linking mLearning to existing activities and behaviors will bring better results. Targeting the whole family is important as youth may not always be owners of mobiles, and parental gate-keepers may not see value in a handset. The youth surveyed expressed willingness to receive advertising in return for access to content and services.
  • The Millennials as Mobile Education Providers project takes place in South Africa. The pilot project grew out of a partnership between Durban University of Technology (S Africa), the M-Ubuntu Project (Sweden, S Africa, US), Sprint Re:Cycle (US), and six rural and township schools in S Africa. A key part of the program is working to shift attitudes from “youth as a problem” to “youth as untapped resources who can engage, lead and contribute to training initiatives.” The project includes subsidized internships for unemployed or out of school youth that tie vocational skills training to related community service; service learning as a credit-bearing component of university degree programs; in school service learning opportunities for secondary school students; service that meets an identified community need and upfront training accompanied by ongoing support and mentorship. The program utilizes recycled devices as platforms for curriculum-aligned educational content. University students serve as literacy/numeracy coaches for students in under-performing rural and township high schools, especially students who are preparing for graduation exams, and where there is typically a very low rate of passing. Young people like Thabang serve as mobile tech apprentices at schools, handing device charging, repair and content transfer for teachers. Thabang has found incredible personal success through the program, finding a useful skill. He emphasized the numerous global connections made through the program which have motivated him to keep working and striving to be his best.

Session 2 was Connections and Content for Out of School Youth, facilitated by Kimberley Kerr from the MasterCard Foundation. It featured Scott Isbrandt from Education Development Center talking about PAJE-Nieta and the Stepping Stone mobile content authoring platform (video) and Jonathan McKay from Praekelt Foundation talking about: the Ummeli job portal.

  • PAJE-Nieta is aimed at increasing literacy and entrepreneurship skills among 14-25 year olds in small rural villages with few services. The hope is that by increasing those skills, the youth can access market information systems which can then lead to enhanced livelihoods. Scott noted that local youth may produce, but they run into difficulties when it comes to knowing where to sell. There is a database of information available, but it is not accessible unless a person is literate. The challenge is taking the wealth of what has been done with ICTs to places with no electricity and no connectivity, and making it affordable and accessible. EDC determined which handsets were widely available, cheapest, run on Java, could run simple multimedia,had a speaker, and were within the purchasing power range of youth. Then they built Stepping Stone for this model so that teachers could create and push out local content. Stepping Stone includes digital text books, learning assessments, direct feedback capability and an interactive audio that is pre-loaded onto phones. A concern is what happens when the grant is over, so EDC is looking at ways to work with kiosks, pre-loading content on micro SD cards, and thinking about membership fees as something that would enable people to continue to load additional content. Stepping Stone will be released as an open source platform so that others can use it.
  • Ummeli is a mobile platform created because youth who participate in Praekelt’s Young Africa Live initiative expressed that finding meaningful work was a higher priority even than HIV prevention.  Praekelt worked with Vodacom to ensure that there would be no cost, because youth, in marginalized and/or rural communities normally cannot cover data charges. Ummeli has a CV builder that youth can fill out and fax to a potential employer for free. They can also fill out surveys that gain them points that they can use to cover the cost of faxes. Ummeli was designed specifically for mobile and as a community rather than as an individual tool. It is the first purely mobile job platform in South Africa. Rather than only listing job opportunities, Ummeli enables users to create their own opportunities and has extensive supplemental support such as career advice, life skills and peer networking. Youth can geocode or do other small microtasks to earn points that they can use in the Ummeli system. Rather than only looking at ‘finding employment’, Ummeli is set up to help youth find ‘meaningful work.’ This can be in their communities, volunteering or interning, all of which give youth experience, help them make contacts, and help them build their resumes. Ummeli hopes to turn depression into action by positioning youth’s free time as an asset that can be used for positive things like helping their communities. Ummeli is looking at taking existing course work and enhancing it for low-end handsets; they are looking at how to get around the verification and accreditation issue so that these opportunities will be seen as credible. Ummeli currently has 87,000 unique users.

Session 3 was facilitated by Suzanne Philion (U.S. Dept. of State) and looked at mYWD: Mobiles for Youth Skills Development. Speakers were Michael Carrier (British Council) on “Using mobile devices to strengthen educational systems, specifically in English for Basic Education and supporting workforce readiness;” Bhanu Potta from Nokia on “Nokia Life Education services – mLearning at scale of millions;” and Shayan Mashatian from Appexiom – Petanque, with A demonstration of a mobile learning pilot and findings from its implementation.

  • The British Council’s Learn English Apps focus on applications that can help youth to learn English via mobile to increase their chances to obtain employment.  One point that Michael brought up was that people can use their short bits of downtime to learn English on their phone rather than go on a cigarette break or check their Facebook. The Council’s programs are available on different devices from iPhone, Nokia, Samsung, Ovi and the Android OS. Apps include podcasts, a soap opera, pronunciation exercises and games to improve grammar and vocabulary
  • Nokia Life provides education, youth empowerment and lifelong learning; health, agriculture and entertainment services. Nokia has developed software that makes a very cheap mobile look more like a data-enabled phone because, as Bhanu noted, all levels of consumers wish to have a data-like experience. This includes a dynamic home screen with a rotating menu for high discoverability, integration with voices services, a dynamic inbox that highlights new content, and new content channels that can be added using just SMS. Social elements available include ‘ask an expert’, share, and ‘respond to polls’. Nokia Life is currently available in India, Indonesia, China, Nigeria and some additional countries in Middle East and Africa. Nokia Life will provide curated content rather than offer access to all the information available on the Internet via Google. Nokia Browser, a cloud based service will make this information easier to access by compressing the information by 85% making it 3 times faster to download and much cheaper for people to access.
  • Appexiom-Petanque allows for educational content creation via a simple set-up where creators can drop in content, making it easy to publish. This helps overcome some of the current failures of distance learning and addresses the need to see learning differently. Rather than try to put textbooks onto a phone, Sayan commented, m-Learning needs to be re-organized, re-formatted and re-engineered for the mobile phone. It needs to focus on the user experience and provide interactive content, allowing people to choose, multi-task and integrate social media.

Session 4. The final mYWD session shared some initial findings from the mYWD Landscape Study (in process) and looked at setting the foundations of the mYWD Working Group, brainstorming some priorities and topics for the group to tackle, and discussing what makes for a successful community of practice or working group. From this session came the idea for the October 15 Learning Series event on Innovations in mYWD. If you’d like to attend, either let me know or RSVP directly to MFrench at JBSInternational dot com.

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Mobile phones, toilets and libraries – beyond access

Posted in communication for development, development, gender, girls, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, open development, participation, social media, wait... what?, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 4, 2012 | 7 Comments »

Everybody loves memes and those who work in or care about international development are no exception. One meme that popped up early 2010, is the oft-quoted “there are more mobile phones than toilets.” Apparently, the origin of the phrase was the India census. Subsequently, the statistic was used to raise a point about water and sanitation in India by a UN institute. It was picked up in a New York Times article and became generalized to “more people have [access to] mobile phones than toilets” and “there are more mobile phones than toilets” and other variations.

This simple idea has captured the hearts and minds of many development and technology practitioners and theorists the world over. The phrase has become a staple illustration for those who are looking at the potential of mobiles to change the world. But there is more to it than simple ‘access.’ We need to think beyond access.

What is missed in this meme’s beautiful simplicity is that the mobile access/mobile phones referred to are not necessarily equally distributed. A recent blog post by Marc Bellemare refers to a study he worked on (with Ken Lee) called “Look Who’s Talking: The Impacts of the Intrahousehold Allocation of Mobile Phones on Agricultural Prices.”

“…mobile phones do not seem to be the household public good many development practitioners think they are. In other words, policies designed around the distribution of mobile phones to households (rather than individuals) might contain the seed of their own failure if the intrahousehold [use] of technology matters.

Moreover, after a referee asked us to look at whether major household surveys asked about mobile phone ownership at the household or individual level, I was surprised to find that many of those surveys only collect information on the former.

So if there is one thing I would like our article to change, it’s the kind of data that are collected: We should really collect information on individual rather than on household mobile phone ownership.”

The GSMA and Cheri Blair Foundation study on women and mobiles found that women lag behind in mobile phone ownership in many African, Latin American, Middle Eastern and Asian countries. Women are even further behind in terms of access and use of the Internet.

At the practitioner level, assuming women everywhere can access and use mobiles and Internet can make a project run into problems, as described in this quick video.

In some places where women’s literacy and numeracy skills are quite low, projects designed to share or collect information by mobile can run into additional challenges as related below.

Girls themselves in some places note that despite their interest, boys will physically fight them to access available computers or mock girls who want to learn.

The existence of open and available spaces and platforms (whether virtual or physical) doesn’t automatically mean they are  ”accessible” to everyone, including in many cases, to women and girls.

As wonderful as the idea of ‘open’ is (and don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of ‘open’), ‘open’ can still exclude. Even in purposefully open spaces and frameworks like the Open Knowledge Festival, women lag behind in terms of papers submitted for presentation and women speaking on panels. We lag behind slightly less in terms of doing the legwork of organizing, which shouldn’t surprise anyone.

At the Beyond Access Conference put on by IREX yesterday, I had the opportunity to facilitate a discussion session on Women and ICTs where we got into some of these issues and talked about how libraries can help. The panelists included Thinley Choden from the READ Bhutan project, Danica MacAvoy from Clinton Global Initiative, and Marieme Jamme of Africa Gathering. The session space was filled with engaged and insightful folks who shared their valuable ideas and experiences as well, including:

  • Numbers that showed the big access gap between men and women.
  • Access is not the only measure, however – as the conference notes we need to go “Beyond Access” to look at use, purpose, and many other aspects.
  • Safety is the number one reason that girls and women give for not accessing ICTs.
  • Libraries are often seen as knowledge centers and conceived of as more reputable spaces than Internet cafes for girls and women to frequent.
  • Librarians and community facilitators at library spaces can serve as mediators to help ensure that access to equipment and other materials is equally open to all.
  • Women mentors and role models, eg., female librarians, are an important way to encourage girls and women to spend time at libraries or to be more confident in accessing information and communicating through technology.
  • One of the most important things a library can do is create safe space for girls and women to gather and discuss issues of importance to them.
  • Depending on context, in some places this needs to be a physical space; in others situations, a virtual space can work.
  • Men and boys play a big role in advocating and encouraging girls and women to access information, to communicate, and to come together and participate.
  • If offered space and opportunity, women and girls (and anyone else) can teach themselves to use new technologies.
  • Libraries will be most successful for women and girls if they facilitate access and sharing of information that is relevant and in demand by women and girls, not what outsiders think should be in demand.
  • Low information access is holding back girls and women from advancing in careers such as ICTs and coding, because up-to-date books are not accessible in many places.
  • Supporting people to ‘join the global network’ through uploading information about themselves and their lives can serve as a tool by which community and personal projects can be examined, discussed and shared.
  • What a library is and what one looks like will vary according to context and culture; the key is having a physical or virtual safe space where information and communication can take place.

So even if there are more mobile phones than toilets, the conversation can’t stop there. We still need to talk about access, and we need to go “beyond access” too, as this great gathering yesterday so aptly noted.

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Highlights of the Open Development stream at OK Festival

Posted in development, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, open development, open government, open knowledge, participation, politics, smart aid, social media, transparency, wait... what?, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 24, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

I’m just home after a week at the Open Knowledge Festival in Helsinki (and wishing I could have cloned myself and attended each of the 13 streams!):

Here’s a video summary of some of the highlights of the Open Development stream.

Thanks so much to everyone who organized, supported, funded and attended the sessions!

Also see:

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