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Archive for the ‘ICT4D’ Category

ICTs in Education: some ‘Reality Videos’

Posted in development, education, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, tagged , , , , , on March 21, 2012| 2 Comments »

I went to a great meeting hosted by NetHope and Plan International in Cairo, Egypt during the last week of February. The idea was to get several of the NetHope partners together — both IT companies and INGOs — to discuss ways of working together in the area of ICTs and Education.

I took advantage of the meeting to make some more “Reality Videos”, similar to the mHealth Reality Videos that James Bon Tempo and I did during the mHealth Summit.

1) My Finnish colleague Mika Valitalo asks ‘Really, what’s all the fuss? We just got some equipment and dropped it off in the community and it all worked fine….’

2) Nzila shares what was learned at the workshop and focuses on Grapho Game, a tool to improve literacy in local language.

3) Marcha Neeling says throwing devices at people will not solve any development issues.

4) Mohamed Hussein talks about how ICT4D needs to be led by programs and supported by ICT staff, not the other way around.

5) Maria Berenguer notes that teachers need computer training first if they are to use computers with their students.

6) Chris Bane reminds us that we don’t always need super sophisticated tools. Sometimes very simple ICTs can make all the difference.

7) Edison Nsubega explains that it’s important to base your selection of ICT tools and platforms on the local context and situation that you are trying to resolve.

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Does ‘openness’ enhance development?

Posted in accountability, development, governance, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, open data, open development, open government, participation, wait... what?, tagged , , , , , on March 20, 2012| 3 Comments »

Does ‘openness’ enhance development?

This was the question explored in a packed Room 3 (and via livestream and Twitter) on the last day of the ICTD2012 Conference in Atlanta, GA.

Panelists included Matthew Smith from the International Development Research Center (IDRC), Soren Gigler from the World Bank, Varun Arora from the Open Curriculum Project and Ineke Buskens from Gender Research in Africa into ICTs for Empowerment (GRACE). The panel was organized by Tony Roberts and Caitlin Bentley, both pursuing PhD’s at ICT4D at Royal Holloway, University of London. I was involved as moderator.

As background for the session, Caitlin set up a wiki where we all contributed thoughts and ideas on the general topic.

“Open development” (sometimes referred to as “Open ICT4D“) is defined as:

“an emerging area of knowledge and practice that has converged around the idea that the opening up of information (e.g. open data), processes (e.g. crowdsourcing) and intellectual property (e.g. open source) has the potential to enhance development.”

Tony started off the session explaining that we’d come together as people interested in exploring the theoretical concepts and the realities of open development and probing some of the tensions therein. The wiki does a good job of outlining the different areas and tension points, and giving some background, additional links and resources.

[If you’re too short on time or attention to read this post, see the Storify version here.]

Matthew opened the panel giving an overview of ‘open development,’ including 3 key areas: open government, open access and open means of production. He noted that ICTs can be enablers of these and that within the concept of ‘openness’ we also can find a tendency towards sharing and collaborating. Matthew’s aspiration for open development is to see more experimentation and institutional incentives towards openness. Openness is not an end unto itself, but an element leading to better development outcomes.

Soren spoke second, noting that development is broken, there is a role for innovation in fixing it, and ‘open’ can contribute to that. Open is about people, not ICTs, he emphasized. It’s about inclusion, results and development outcomes. To help ensure that what is open is also inclusive, civil society can play an ‘infomediary‘ role between open data and citizens. Collaboration is important in open development, including co-creation and partnership with a variety of stakeholders. Soren gave examples of open development efforts including Open Aid Partnership; Open Data Initiative; and Kenya Open Government Portal.

Varun followed, with a focus on open educational resources (OER), asking how ordinary people benefit from “open”. He noted that more OER does not necessarily lead to better educational outcomes. Open resources produced in, say, the US are not necessarily culturally appropriate for use in other places. Open does not mean unbiased. Open can also mean that locally produced educational resources do not flourish. Varun noted that creative commons licenses that restrict to “non-commercial” use can demotivate local entrepreneurship. He also commented that resources like those from Khan Academy assume that end users have a computer in their home and a broadband connection.

Ineke spoke next, noting that ‘open’ doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Sometimes power relations become more apparent when things become open. She gave the example of a project that offered free computer use in a community, yet men dominated the computers, computers were available during hours when women could not take advantage of them, and women were physically pushed away from using the computers. ‘This only has to happen once or twice before all the women in the community get the message,’ she noted. The intent behind ‘open’ is important, and it’s difficult to equalize the playing field in one small area when working within a broader context that is not open and equalized. She spoke of openness as performance, and emphasized the importance of thinking through the questions: openness for whom? openness for what?

[Each of the presenters holds a wealth of knowledge on this topic and I’d encourage you to explore their work in more detail!]

Following the short comments from panelists, the room split into several groups for about 15 minutes to discuss points, tensions, and questions on the concept of open development. (See the bottom of the wiki page for the full list of questions.)

We came back together in plenary to discuss points from the room and those coming in from Twitter, including:

  • Should any research done with public funds be publicly open and available? This was a fundamental values question for some.
  • Can something be open and not public? Some said that no, if it’s open it needs to be public. Others countered that there is some information that should not be public because it can put people at risk or invade privacy. Others discussed that open goods are not necessarily public goods, rather they are “club” goods that are only open to certain members of society, in this case, those of a certain economic and education level. It was noted that public access does not equal universal availability, and we need to go beyond access in this discussion.
  • Is openness fundamentally decentralizing or does it lead to centralization? Some commented that the World Bank, for example, by making itself “open” it can dominate the development debate and silence voices that are not within that domain. Others felt that power inequalities exist whether there is open data or not. Another point of view was that the use of a particular technique can change people without it being the express intent. For example, some academic journals may have been opening up their articles from the beginning. This is probably not because they want to be ‘nice’ but because they want to keep their powerful position, however the net effect can still be positive.
  • How to ensure it’s not data for data’s sake? How do we broker it? How do we translate it into knowledge? How does it lead to change? ‘A farmer in Niger doesn’t care about the country’s GDP,’ commented one participant. It’s important to hold development principles true when looking at ‘openness’. Power relations, gender inequities, local ownership, all these aspects are still something to think about and look at in the context of ‘openness’.

The general consensus was that it is important to fight the good fight, yes, but don’t lose sight of the ultimate goal. Open for whom? Open for what?

As organizers of the session, we were all quite pleased at the turnout and the animated debate and high level of interest in the topic of ‘open development’. A huge thanks to the panelists and the participants. We are hoping to continue the discussions throughout the coming months and to secure a longer session (and a larger room) for the next ICTD conference!

Note: New Tactics is discussing “Strengthening Citizen Participation in Local Governance” this week. There are some great resources there that could help to ground the discussion on ‘open development’.

Visit the ‘does openness enhance development’ wiki for a ton of resources and background on ‘open development’!

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ICT4D and Sustainability

Posted in development, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, wait... what?, tagged , , , , , on March 13, 2012| 1 Comment »

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the sustainability of ICT4D initiatives over the past couple months in preparation for a panel I participated in yesterday at ICTD 2012 and due to a good discussion on the topic while at a workshop in Cairo hosted by NetHope and Plan International in late February.

At the Cairo workshop a group of INGOs, ICT corporations and a representative from the Ministry of Education’s ICT section discussed replicability, scale and sustainability in ICT and Education programs at length. At yesterday’s panel, we tackled the more specific topic of financial sustainability with folks from NGOs, contractors, corporations, ICT associations and researchers.

The themes and challenges that came up in both of these discussions were similar, whether looking at more ICT-driven projects (eg., providing computer equipment) or smaller social enterprises or very large government or aid-funded programs that seek to integrate ICTs into other areas like health, education, agriculture, or economic empowerment.

Sustainability is a real challenge for all these kinds of programs. Individuals and organizations are trying to build in sustainability in various ways, from supplementing ICT platforms with advertising to charging end users small fees to seeking funds from corporations and institutional donors to conceiving of ICT initiatives as small enterprises.

Some key points I presented yesterday combined with some points brought up in our discussion group include that:

Financial sustainability should stem from the identification of a real need

The need should be identified by the community. The initiative should be owned by the community and co-created with end users, not designed and parachuted in from the outside. When the benefits of a program (ICT related or not) are not tangible, it may be necessary to do some buy-in work and awareness raising with people to help make the benefits of an initiative more clear to the broader population. It’s important to do a baseline and some monitoring and evaluation to know whether or not the initiative is indeed having an impact. If you have to pay people to participate, you’ve got issues.

Where the market doesn’t work…

The market by nature excludes large swaths of people. At the same time, giving away free stuff usually hurts development efforts because people often do not value that which is ‘free’. (On the other hand, if people are not willing to pay for something, some would say you haven’t identified a real need). Even ‘poor’ people do have some resources, so their contributions to this or that project need to be carefully analyzed and weighed as part of the process.

There are differing opinions around the privatization of services like water, education and healthcare and whether people should be paying for these or whether they are rights that governments need to be held responsible for as duty bearers. Some kind of balance needs to be found here.

Financial sustainability cannot be divorced from other aspects of sustainability, such as

  • political – consider election cycles and government budget cycles and support
  • legal –work within local legal frameworks or the project may fail once it gets going
  • managerial – have the right people managing a program, especially if it’s meant to grow and scale.
  • social sustainability – as mentioned above, ensure local community ownership, interest, buy-in
  • transparency, accountability, good governance are key in all the above

Financial (and other kinds of) sustainability requires creativity and a good understanding of:

  • client (end user)
  • context
  • capacity
  • culture
  • connectivity
  • cost

ICT solutions that save people money and time can be sustainable from within. If the problem can be resolved in a cheaper, simpler way without them, then don’t suggest using ICTs. Start small with scale and sustainability in mind from the very start.

Local, local, local and local… and more local…

For both financial and technological sustainability, it’s important that the technology tools and devices as well as the technical support is local. Local partners should be involved in implementation. Research on impact should also not be exclusively done by those from the outside, but rather should involve local researchers. Local feedback loops can assist with more real-time understanding of how the initiative is faring.

Tension between public, private and non-profit institutions is common

Telecoms and IT companies are looking out for their bottom line. Development agencies and civil society organizations by nature are supposed to be looking out for the most marginalized and excluded. NGOs and civil society will likely resist privatization of areas like education and health. Governments will have their own agendas and self-interests. NGOs will have their own funding interests as well. There are vastly different approaches, paces, deliverables, timelines and methodologies among these three types of institutions who are all involved in the ICT4D space. Trying to harmonize these interests alongside what communities want can be a huge management challenge and can have a strong impact on sustainability concepts and approaches.

In aid-funded and government projects

Often the sustainability plan for projects by INGOs or local NGOs is “the government will assume responsibility” or “the community will assume the costs and management.” This can be a big issue if not properly planned from the start. If every development program plans for the government to take on the costs for the program, but this has not been discussed fully, agreed on or budgeted by the government, there will be real issues with sustainability as there won’t be enough budget to cover the continuation of all these projects and programs. There is a role for greater aid coordination here, for example via the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) and for open publication of government budgets and spending plans. Localization of costs is important. If an INGO is paying high salaries during the initial funding stage and then wishes the government to take on the program costs, the project may collapse.

A few models to look at:

Additional good resources on ICTs and sustainability:

Also check out last November’s huge debate on ICT4D vs ICT4$. It’s worth reading as it highlights elements of the sustainability discussion from a broader perspective and pulls in opinions from several well-known authorities on the topic.

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Panel: Using ICTs to enhance C4D work with adolescent girls

Posted in communications, CSW, development, gender, girls, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, mapping, wait... what?, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 2, 2012| 3 Comments »

If you happen to be in New York City and have a couple of hours to spare, come on by to this panel today from 12-2 at UNICEF’s Danny Kaye Center. I’ll be doing an overview of some research that Keshet Bachan and I worked on late last year for UNICEF.

There will be some fantastic examples from Tostan, Equal Access, New School and UNICEF on creative ways that new technologies can be used when working directly with marginalized adolescent girls. We’ll also discuss how ICTs and communication for development (C4D) can be used in broader outreach aimed at changing mindsets and behaviors to look more favorably on girls and their capacities and improve their access to new technologies.

Update:  Here’s an article and short video about the panel.

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Digital mapping and governance: the stories behind the maps

Posted in accountability, activism, development, governance, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, Kenya, m4D, mapping, open government, participation, politics, social media, transparency, VAC, YETAM, youth, youth media, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 27, 2012| 4 Comments »

This is a guest post from Jamie Lundine, who has been collaborating with Plan Kenya to support digital mapping and governance programming in Kwale and Mathare.

Throughout October and November 2011, Plan Kwale worked through Map Kibera Trust with Jamie Lundine and Primoz Kovacic, and 4 young people from Kibera and Mathare, to conduct digital mapping exercises to support ongoing youth-led development processes in Kwale county. One of the important lessons learned through the Trust’s work in Kibera and Mathare is that the stories behind the mapping work are important for understanding the processes that contribute to a situation as represented on a map. To tell these stories and to complement the data collection and mapping work done by the youth in Kwale, the Map Kibera Trust team worked with the Kwale youth to set up platforms to share this information nationally and internationally. Sharing the important work being done in Kwale will hopefully bring greater visibility to the issues which may in the longer term lead to greater impact.

Sharing stories of local governance

To support their work on social accountability, the Kwale Youth and Governance Consortium (KYGC) mapped over 100 publicly and privately funded community-based projects. The projects were supported by the Constituency Development Fund (CDF), Local Area Development Fund (LATF), NGOs and private donors. As one channel of sharing this information, the Consortium set up a blog called Nuru ya Kwale (Light of Kwale). According to KYGC the blog “features and addresses issues concerning promotion of demystified participatory community involvement in the governance processes towards sustainable development. We therefore expect interactivity on issues accruing around social accountability.” This involves sharing evidence about various projects and stories from the community.

One example is the documentation of the Jorori Water project in Kwale; through the mapping work, the Governance team collected details of the constituency development fund (CDF) project. The funding allocated to upgrade the water supply for the community was 6,182,960 ksh (approximately 73,000.00 USD). From their research the KYGC identified that the Kenya Open Data site reported that the full funding amount has been spent.

A field visit to the site however revealed that project was incomplete and the community is still without a stable water supply, despite the fact that the funding has been “spent.”

Jorori Water Project, built using approximately 6.2 million shillings (73, 000.00 USD)

Read more about the questions the team raised in terms of the governance of CDF projects, including the detailed the project implementation process and some reflections on why the project stalled. This is information on community experiences (tacit information) that is well-known in a localized context but has not been documented and shared widely. New media tools, a blog in this case, provide free (if you have access to a computer and the internet) platforms for sharing this information with national and international audiences.

Addressing violence against children and child protection

Another blog was set up by the Kwale Young Journalists. The Young Journalists, registered in 2009, have been working with Plan Kwale on various projects, including Violence against Children campaigns. The group has been working to set up a community radio station in Kwale to report on children’s issues. Thus far, their application for a community radio frequency has encountered several challenges. New media provides an interim solution and will allow the team to share their stories and network with partners on a national and internal stage.

The Kwale Young Journalists worked with Jeff Mohammed, a young award-winning filmmaker from Mathare Valley. The YETAM project not only equips young people with skills, but through peer-learning establishes connections between young people working on community issues throughout Kenya. The programme also provides young people with life skills through experiential learning – Jeff reflects on his experience in Kwale and says:

Jeff and the Kwale Young Journalists shooting a scene from “The Enemy Within”

“My knowledge didn’t come from books and lecturers it came from interest, determination and persistence to know about filmmaking and this is what I was seeing in these Kwale youths. They numbered 12 and they were me. They are all in their twenties and all looking very energetic, they had the same spirit as mine and it was like looking at a mirror. I had to do the best I could to make sure that they grasp whatever I taught.”

Jeff worked with the Young Journalists on a short film called “the Enemy Within.” The film, shot with flip-cameras, tells the story of 12-year-old girl who is sold into indentured labour by her parents to earn money for her family. During the time she spends working, the young girl “falls prey of her employer (Mr.Mtie) who impregnates her when she is only 12 years old.” Jeff reflects that “early pregnancies are a norm in the rural Kwale area and what the young filmmakers wanted to do is to raise awareness to the people that its morally unacceptable to impregnate a very young girl, in Enemy Within the case didn’t go as far because the village chairman was bribed into silence and didn’t report the matter to higher authorities.” This is a common scenario in Kwale, and the young journalists plan to use the film in public screenings and debates as part of their advocacy work in the coming months.

Jeff and the Kwale Young Journalists shot the film in four days – they travelled to Penzamwenye, Kikoneni and also to Shimba Hills national park to shoot 7 scenes for the movie. Read more about Jeff’s reflections on working with the Kwale Young Journalists on his blog.

Sharing ecotourism resources

The Dzilaz ecotourism team – a group that encourages eco-cultural tourism in Samburu region of Kwale county — also integrated social media into their work. During the last week (November 8th-12th) the group set up a blog to market the community resources, services and products. They also plan to document eco-culture sites and the impact that eco-tourism can have on the community. As of November 10th, 2011 the Dzilaz team had already directed potential clients to their website and thus secured a booking through the information they had posted.

The importance of telling the stories behind the maps

One important component to mapping work is to tell the stories behind the map. The three groups in Kwale are working to build platforms to amplify their grassroots level work in order to share stories and lessons learned. The information documented on the various platforms will develop over time and contribute to a greater understanding of the processes at a local level where youth as young leaders can intervene to begin to change the dynamics of community development.

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Can mobile phone apps prevent violence against women?

Posted in gender, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, mapping, protection, violence, wait... what?, tagged , , , , , , on January 23, 2012| 16 Comments »

In this guest post, Keshet Bachan, gender equality activist and blogger at The XX Factor, questions whether mobile phone applications addressing street violence are an effective way to prevent violence against women. What do you think? 

Can mobile ‘apps’ really prevent or discourage instances of violence against women? This question has been on my mind since a colleague shared this video from Voice of America about a mobile app called ‘Fight Back’, marketed as ‘India’s first mobile app for women’s safety’.

The video sparked an email discussion that raised some interesting questions that deserve a closer examination.

The VOA story provides a holistic view of violence against women and the developers of the mobile phone application admit that they are but one element in a broader system that needs to respond to instances of violence. They discuss the involvement of police and other duty bearers, such as municipal bodies, which need to address reports women make and do more to reduce their risks. I applaud this approach and the way in which the developers acknowledge the limitations of their application, which I find refreshing.

At the same time I feel this application distracts attention away from more prevalent (and deadly) issues. According to the World Health Organization 10-69% of women stated that they had been physically assaulted by an intimate partner at some point in their lives. The WHO also reports that 40-70% of female murder victims were killed by an intimate partner. A recent survey in the UK showed that one in three girls aged 13 – 17 reported sexual abuse from a partner and one in four had experienced some form of physical partner violence. The UK police receive a call for help regarding relationship abuse every minute.

The degree to which this mobile phone application promotes the notion of ‘stranger danger’ distracts attention from the urgent and more prevalent issue of family and intimate partner violence. Moreover, the fact that the application has a GPS tracker to trace a woman’s route home could inadvertently contribute to both increasing women’s fear of violence in public spaces as well as playing into the hands of those who seek to control women’s mobility by pleading the need to ‘protect’ them by knowing their whereabouts at all times.

In this context a colleague commented that a GPS enabled function could allow ‘even a moderately tech-savvy user to trace the woman in question’ – which could serve to increase traditional control over women who dare to step outside the confines of convention (and the home) even further.

There’s a disparity between the actual risk of being molested or assaulted in the street, and the level to which women fear it. One thing this mobile app could help with is mapping the actual instances of violence. This could in fact serve to reduce women’s fear, proving that violence outside the home is not as common or as severe as people might believe. At the same time the app could also shed light on the places where women are more prone to abuse (dark alleys or well lit train stations?) and call for concrete actions like streetlights to improve safety.

The application (as always) leaves it up to women to try protect themselves and does little to tackle the root causes of violence. For instance, research from India (where this application was developed) found that almost all police officers interviewed agreed that ‘a husband is allowed to rape his wife’, while 68% of judges felt that ‘provocative attire was an invitation to rape’ (Khan and Battacharya, 2010). The application would do well to connect its users to a platform for social mobilization and consciousness raising work that could create a critical mass of people who will work together to challenge traditional attitudes around gender.

Some of the other questions raised by this application, and others of its ilk, concern the development of such applications and the development of technology itself.

Does the sex of the person developing the application have an impact on the relevance of the application for persons of the opposite sex (i.e. can men develop useful applications for women)? Is technology itself biased in favor of one gender over the other (i.e. is technology inherently male)? As these questions assume rigid gender binaries the answer must inevitably be ‘no’. At the same time, research has shown that women use technology differently and that they are not well represented amongst technology developers.

Technology can be useful to both sexes and really it is a question of how one applies it that counts. In the same vein, it shouldn’t matter who’s behind developing the application but whether or not the application is answering a real need. (Let us recall that simply being a woman, doesn’t mean you’re more in touch with other women — the CEO of playboy is Hugh Hefner’s daughter).

I’m not convinced that women need a mobile phone application to protect them from strangers on a dark street. If I were asked ‘what do you think would make the streets of Delhi safer for women’, an app is not the first thing that would spring to my mind.

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Mobile tech and child protection in West Africa

Posted in children, development, disaster and emergencies, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, participation, protection, violence, tagged , , , , , , on January 9, 2012| 6 Comments »

Last October, UNICEF West Africa wrote up a nice briefing note on mobile tech and its relevance in child protection programming. You can download it here.

According to the document, pulled together by Mirkka Mattila, ‘This is an area of rapid innovation and new applications are being developed all the time. Telecommunications is one of the fastest growing sectors in Africa and the relevance and reach of mobile technologies for development and humanitarian work is only going to increase over the coming years. Many technical, legal and security aspects of these new technologies remain to be fully addressed and worked out. The dependence on technology, network coverage and electricity supply also mean that mobile technologies cannot be used everywhere.’

The paper includes examples on the use of mobile technologies for:

  • gathering and transmitting data by child protection service providers; including surveys, rapid assessments, case management, family tracing and reunification of separated children, and birth registration
  • self-protection and complaints mechanisms; such as child helplines, violence reporting and community mapping for violence prevention
  • transmitting information and money via mobile; eg, SMS campaigns and cash transfers.
Some of the examples and tools highlighted include: RapidSMS, RapidFTR, Nokia Data Gathering, Child HelpLines, FrontlineSMS, Ushahidi, OSM and Map Kibera, and M-PESA.

It pulls out challenges and advantages of the different use cases and offers some guiding questions to assist in the selection of the most appropriate applications, such as:

  • Is there a need to create new applications or can existing solutions be used?
  • What are the characteristics of the user group and the environment (urban – rural, existing networks and coverage etc.)?
  • What technical expertise is required for installing and maintaining the system?
  • How well will investments in equipment and capacity meet the needs, expected impact, benefits and outcomes in terms of results delivery?
  • What are the potential partnerships for sustainable capacity-building and service delivery? What are the roles of public and private service providers?
  • What are the financial resources needed in the short, medium and long-term to establish and maintain the system?

The document ends with some arguments and counter arguments around the use of mobiles in child protection work. It’s nice to see this paper as there is not a whole lot of research and/or documentation on use of mobiles and ICTs specifically in child protection work.

Download it here.

****

Other child protection resources/posts on Wait… What?:

Child Protection: From emergency response to a sustainable mechanism

Community Based Child Protection

Child Protection, the media and youth media programs

Children in Emergencies: Applying what we already know to the crisis in Haiti

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mHealth Reality Videos!

Posted in ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, mHealth, wait... what?, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 8, 2011| 5 Comments »

I spent the past few days at the mHealth Summit where James BonTempo and I (supported by Plan International USA and MCHIP via USAID) co-hosted the “mHealth Reality Booth,” which we hoped would bring some mHealth practitioner reality to the Summit and offer an opportunity to capture some learning from folks working on the ground and implementing mHealth programs in some of the less cushy environments.

As people came by the booth, we asked them if they’d be willing to do a short video that completed the idea:

“We thought that…. but in reality….” or “Most people think…. but in reality….”

We ended up with some great advice on mHealth design and implementation. Watch below or on YouTube! If you have an mHealth Reality you want to add in the comments or as a ‘video response’ please do!

Here’s our talk-show host intro (why does self-filming always make me look so weird?) and our list of mHealth Realities underneath. Enjoy!

1) Phones do get stolen, so you should involve health workers in determining what the consequences are when it happens.

2) When hospitals are gutted, cell towers are gone and there’s no electricity, for example during the Great Floods in Pakistan, you have to go back to the basics.

3) The technology should be the last thing to think about in the design process. You need to know the what first, and then think about the how.

4) Mobile operators are very interested in exclusivity. This is a challenge if you want your project to reach the entire population.

5) Even if your macro level research tells you that 80% of households have mobile phone access, it doesn’t mean that 80% of women have mobile phone access.

6) There’s literacy, and then there’s ‘mobile phone literacy’. Both are important.

7) If your paper form is crap, your mobile data collection form will also be crap.

8 ) You need policies on lost, damaged, stolen phones, and emergency mobile phone resuscitation training.

9) You will be beholden to traditional funding cycles regardless of how innovative you are, or how sustainable your own business plan is.

10) NGOs just want to come in and do one year pilots, pack up and leave, and come back to do another one year pilot. This is not sustainable. Governments need to be involved. (in French translation pending…)

11) You really need someone who’s available locally to provide technology support and someone who’s good at helping others use and be comfortable with tech.

12) Power is always a consideration. Having it figured out in one place doesn’t mean you have it solved for another place.

13) Things take a really long time. Much longer than you initially think.

14) You might love designing for iPhones and Androids, but if your users don’t have iPhones and Androids, well, that’s not very useful, is it?

15) There are very talented software development firms in places outside of the US and Europe.

16) Every assumption you have about an area or a population is probably wrong.

17) Every country has a different set of mHealth issues and there’s no way of anticipating until you have hands on the ground there.

18) User testing will help you understand what users really want. And NGOs need to ask themselves the hard question: why do we really want to use new technologies?

19) People in low resource settings and with no previous experience really can learn to use smart phones and like it.

Watch all 20 on YouTube.

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mHealth Reality Booth (#131)

Posted in ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, mHealth, smart aid, wait... what?, tagged , , , , , , , on December 2, 2011| 2 Comments »

Some of the top organizations and corporations working in the mobile technology and health space will gather December 5–7 at the  mHealth Summit near Washington, D.C. The summit program offers several tracks and a wide range of sessions and  exhibits  for  just  about  anyone interested in mobile technology and health.

A few months back, James Bon Tempo and I came up with the idea to co-host a “Reality Booth” at the Summit.

Innovative business models are great. New behavior change communication technologies open huge opportunities. Mobile tools to help health professionals build capacity to improve healthcare systems sound like a dream come true. But what happens during implementation? What are the real life barriers and challenges that practitioners face when implementing programs with an mHealth component? Where can you get some honest answers?

The Reality Booth is a place for practitioners working in rural settings or implementing programs in ‘developing’ countries to connect with others working in similar situations and facing comparable challenges. It offers a space to share and learn from peers who implement mHealth programs on the ground and to get advice on resolving the kinds of difficulties that probably won’t be highlighted during the official presentations.

We’ve invited some of the most respected mHealth practitioners to attend the booth for an hour or 2, and are pleased to mention that we’ll have some fantastic folks joining us. (We’re filling our last few remaining slots, so stop by booth number 131 for the full schedule on Monday!)

Come and share your mHealth reality stories, ask your implementation questions and get some practical or strategic advice from:

Monday, Dec 5

11:15-12                Isaac Holeman

12-1                        Heather La Garde

1-2                          David Isaak

2-3.15                      David Cantor

4.30-5.30              Pamela Riley

Tuesday, Dec 6

2-3.30                   David Cantor

3.30-5                   Neal Lesh

Wednesday, Dec 7

10-11                     David Isaak

We’re also planning to make a short video on ‘mHealth Realities,’ so stop on by if you have a ‘reality story’ to share.

The Reality Booth is co-hosted by MCHIP, USAID’s flagship maternal, newborn and child health program, and Plan International USA, one of the oldest and largest children’s development organizations in the world, and co-coordinated by James BonTempo of Jhpiego and Linda Raftree of Plan International USA. Contact James (JBonTempo@jhpiego.net) or Linda (Linda.Raftree@planusa.org) for more information.

In addition to the Reality Booth, we’re hosting ICT4Drinks at Thai  Pavilion from 5.30-7.30 on Tuesday, December 6. Meet and mingle with your fellow mHealth practitioners! Free drinks for the first folks in the door and fantastic Thai munchies for everyone!

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New technology and good governance

Posted in accountability, development, governance, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, participation, politics, protection, technology salon, transparency, wait... what?, tagged , , , , , , , on December 1, 2011| 8 Comments »

Civil society has been working for years on participation, transparency, accountability and governance issues. Plenty of newer initiatives (small and large) look at new technologies as a core tool in this work. But are these groups talking and learning from each other? What good practices exist for using new technologies to improve transparency, accountability and governance? What are some considerations and frameworks for thinking about the role of new technologies in this area of work? What needs consideration under this broad theme of good governance?

Tuesday’s Technology Salon* in New York City focused on those issues, kicked off by our two discussants, Hapee de Groot from Hivos and Katrin Verclas from Mobile Active. Discussion ensued around the nuances of how, with whom, when, why, and  in conjunction with what do new technologies play a role in transparency, accountability and good governance.

Some of the key points brought up during the Salon**:

What is “good governance?”  The overall term could be divided into a number of core aspects, and so the discussion is a big one and it’s complicated. Aid transparency is only one small part of the overall topic of good governance.

The World Bank definition includes aspects of:

  • Participation of citizens in political processes, freedom of expression and  association, free media
  • Political stability and absence of violence
  • Government effectiveness in the delivery of services
  • Regulatory quality, rule of law
  • Control of corruption

There’s a need to look at governments and aid, but also to look at the private sector. Some commented that aid transparency is in vogue because donors can drive it but it’s perhaps not as important as some of the other aspects and it’s currently being overemphasized. There are plenty of projects using ICTs and mobiles in other areas of governance work.

More data doesn’t equal more accountability. Data does not equal participation. Can mobile phones and other ICTs or social media reduce corruption? Can they drive new forms of participation? Can they hold power accountable in some ways? Yes, but there is no conclusive evidence that the use of new technology to deliver data down from governments to people or up from people to governments improves governance or accountability. The field of tech and governance suffers from ‘pilotitis’ just like the field of ICT4D. Some participants felt that of course open data doesn’t automatically equal accountability and it was never the idea to stop there. But at the same time, you can’t have accountability without open data and transparency. Opening the data is just the first step in a long road of reaching accountability and better governance.

Efficient vs transformational. Transactional efficiency within a system is one thing. Transformation is another. You can enhance an existing process from, say, writing on paper to calling on a landline to texting in information, thereby improving accuracy and speed. But there is something more which is the transformational side. What’s most interesting perhaps are those ways that ICTs can completely alter processes and systems. Again, there are a lot of promising examples but there is not much evidence of their impact at this point. One participant noted that current evidence seems to point toward the integration of mobiles (and other ICTs) into existing process as having a greater impact and quicker uptake within large, bureaucratic systems than disruptive use of new technologies. But the question remains – Are the systems good systems or should/could ICTs transform them to something totally different and better or can ICTs help do away with poorly working systems entirely, replacing them with something completely new?

Is open data just a big show? Some alluded to opaque transparency, where a government or another entity throws up a bunch of data and says “we are being open” but there is no realistic way to make sense of the data. Some felt that governments are signing onto open data pacts and partnerships as a fake show of transparency. These governments may say, “The data base is available. Go ahead and look at it.” But it costs a lot of money and high level skills to actually use the data. In addition, there is a need for regulatory frameworks and legislation around openness. Brazil was given as an example of a country that has joined the open government partnership, but as yet has no regulatory framework or freedom of information act, even though the country has a beautiful open government website. “Checks and balances are not inherent in the mobile phone. They need to be established in the legislation and then can be enhanced by mobile or other technology.” Open Data Hackathons can help turn data into information. The question of “what does open data actually mean?” came up also and the “cake test” was recommended as one way of defining “open”.

Is open data an extractive process?  Some at the Salon cautioned that the buzz around Open Data could be a bit false in some ways, and may be hyped up by private companies who want to make money off of nice data visualizations that they can sell to big donors or governments. The question was raised about how much data actually gets back to those people who provide it so that they can use it for their own purposes? The sense was that there’s nothing wrong with private companies helping make sense of data per se, but one could ask what the community who provided the data actually gets out of this process. Is it an extractive data mining process? And how much are communities benefiting from the process? How much are they involved? Mikel Maron wrote a great post yesterday on the link between open data and community empowerment – I highly recommend reading it for more on this.

Whose data? A related issue that wasn’t fully discussed at the Salon is: who does the information that is being “opened” actually belong to (in the case of household surveys, for example)? The government? The International NGO or multilateral agency who funds a project or research? The community? And what if a community doesn’t want its data to be open to the world – is anyone asking? What kind of consent is being granted? What are the privacy issues? And what if the government doesn’t want anyone to know the number of X people living in X place who fit X description? Whose decision is it to open data? What are the competing politics?

For example, what if an organization is working on an issue like HIV, cholera, violence or human trafficking. What if they want to crowd source information and publicly display it to work towards better transparency and improved service delivery, but the host government country denies the existence of the issue or situation? In one case I heard recently, the NGO wanted to work with government on better tracking and reporting so that treatment/resources could be allocated and services provided, but when the government found out about the project, they wanted control over the information and approval rights. Government went so far in another case as to pressure the mobile service provider who was partnering with the organization, and the mobile service provider dropped out of the project. These are good reminders that information is power and openness can be a big issue even in cases not initially identified as politically charged.

Privacy and security risks. The ubiquity of data can pose huge privacy and security concerns for activists, civil society and emerging democracies and some at the Salon felt this aspect is not being effectively addressed. Can there really be anonymous mobile data? Does the push/drive for more data jeopardize the political ambitions of certain groups (civil society that may be disliked by certain governments)? This can also be an issue for external donors supporting organizations in places like Syria or Iraq. Being open about local organizations that are receiving funding for democracy or governance work can cause problems (eg., they get shut down or people can be arrested or killed).

Can new ICTs weaken helpful traditional structures or systems?  Is new tech removing some middlemen who were an important part of culture or societal structure? Does it weaken some traditional structures that may actually be useful? The example of the US was given where a huge surge of people now engage directly with their congressperson via Twitter rather than via aggregation channels or other representatives. Can this actually paralyze political systems and make them less functional? Some countered, saying that Twitter is somewhat of a fad and over time this massive number of interactions will settle down, and in addition, not everyone gets involved on every issue all the time. Things will sort themselves out. Some asked if politicians would become afraid (someone – help!! there is a study on this issue that I can’t seem to locate) to make some of the secret deals that helped move agendas forward because they will be caught and so openness and transparency can actually paralyze them? In other words is it possible that transparency is not always a good thing in terms of government effectiveness? The example of paying Afghan police directly by mobile phone was given. This initiative apparently ended up failing because it cut decision makers who benefited from bribes out of the loop. Decoupling payments from power is potentially transformational, but how to actually implement these projects when they disrupt so much?

Does new technology create parallel structures? Are parallel structures good or bad? In an effort to bypass inefficient and/or unaccountable systems, in one case, private business owners started their own crime reporting and 911 system to respond and accompany victims to report to the police and follow up on incidents. Questions were raised whether this privatization of government roles was taking justice into ones’ own hands, forcing the government to be accountable, allowing it to shirk responsibilities, or providing a way for government to see an innovation and eventually take on a new and more effective system that had been tried and tested with private funds. This same issue can be seen with parallel emergency reporting systems and other similar uses of ICTs. It may be too early in the game to know what the eventual outcomes of these efforts will be and what the long term impact will be on governance. Or it may be that parallel systems work in some contexts and not in others.

***

The Salon could have gone for much longer but alas, we had to end. Dave Algoso covers some of the other ideas from the Salon in his post Technology for Transparency, Accountability and Governance, including how to approach and define the topic (top down vs bottom up? efficiency vs transformation?) and the importance of measuring impact.

Thanks to UNICEF and Chris Fabian for hosting the Salon. Thanks to Martin Tisne from the Transparency and Accountability Initiative for sparking the idea to choose this topic for the first Technology Salon in NYC, and thanks to Wayan Vota for inviting me to coordinate the series.

Contact me if you’d like to be on the invitation list for future Salons.

*The Technology Salon is sponsored by the UN Foundation’s Technology Partnership with the Vodafone Foundation as a way to increase the discussion and dissemination of information and communication technology’s role in expanding solutions to long-standing international development challenges. Technology Salons currently run in Washington DC (coordinated by@wayan_vota) and San Francisco, with New York City as the latest addition, coordinated by yours truly.

**The Salon runs by Chatham House Rules, so no attribution has been made in the above post.

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