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Missionary, Mercenary, Mystic, Misfit: A review

June 17, 2013 by Linda Raftree

M4 Version 5[4]I’ve been looking around for a good read for the past several months and finding myself dissatisfied with the airport bookstore. So I was glad to get a review copy of J’s latest: Missionary, Mercenary, Mystic, Misfit.

I read it in one sitting on the plane home from a meeting about disruption, civil society and the capacity of international development/aid organizations to adapt, so it was through that lens that I consumed the book. It pretty much answered the question “can INGOs adapt?” (Spoiler alert: prognosis is not good.)

And make no mistake: These structural issues are universal. It’s not Oxfam or WAC or Save or CARE. You don’t escape this problem by moving to another organization or taking a different job in your current organization, because this is the nature of the aid industry itself.

J’s description of personal agendas, bureaucracy, competition, jostling for position, stressed local government workers, exhausted staff, and unrealistic demands from donors and headquarters is an insider’s view of why INGOs have a hard time adapting and changing. The book describes the complexity of aid and humanitarian work in detail, bringing in the conflicting push and pull of the different stakeholders.

Rather than complexity encouraging adaptation and organizations that are more “fit for purpose,” however, J’s main characters are trapped in complexity that paralyzes, breeds mediocrity, loses sight of the mission and rewards the “wrong” motives and decisions.

Aid is not broken because aid workers are cynical, hedonistic alcoholics. Aid workers are cynical alcoholics because aid is broken, and further, because they have been repeatedly slapped down by their own leaders for trying to make it better.

J does recognize the conflicts, however, and (with only a little bit of blame and harsh judgment), he shows the demands made on people at all levels of the aid machine:

Management and leadership are the easiest things in the world until you actually have to do them.

J does a good job of humanizing the aid worker and his or her personal and professional struggles within this dysfunctional system. He writes about how the passion for aid work conflicts with the personal choices each aid worker makes, most significantly when the addiction to aid work obliterates the possibility of having “normal” and healthy relationships with one’s family and home country society. The book also highlights the internal doubts and fears of self-aggrandizement that any self-reflective aid worker experiences:

…Suddenly Mary-Anne felt overwhelmed with the feeling that her career in the humanitarian world had thus far been built on so much self-important dishonesty….

….“You come here, you and your foreign friends. You spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to instruct refugees about drinking enough water or where they should shit every day.” He snorted derisively. “These people were mapping the stars and perfecting mathematics while your ancestors were painting themselves blue and dancing naked around fires in the forest…. You children come here to patiently explain to Ethiopians about accountability and honesty… You think we need you to help us know right from wrong. You come here to ‘supervise’ people old enough to be your parents. My youngest daughter is your age. ”

Reading the book was like having a long conversation with J over Skype or beers where he offers you career advice and makes you feel better by acknowledging you that you are not the first person to experience internal conflict and self-doubt. There is a fair bit of J bestowing his wisdom on the reader, but I find that J normally has good insights and offers solid advice, so this did not bother me.

I did feel that the book was half-finished. Several of the characters introduced early in the book were not developed out in the rest of it. Given the “to be continued” on the last page, I assume that their stories will be picked up in the next book in the series. I also would have liked more about the setting and history woven in, and more active roles for some of the “local” characters, as well as a chance to get inside their heads and see their perspectives in more depth. This would have rounded the book out and brought it fully from the tongue-in-cheek harlequin romance novel style of J’s first book (Disastrous Passion) to a more solid kind of “historical fiction”.

Some have criticized the book for being aimed solely at those in the aid and development world and making too many “insider” assumptions. I suspect, however, that J purposely wrote it for “Expat Aid Workers,” and I didn’t find that to be a problem. Simplifying things for a mainstream audience would water the book down, making it less “real” for those working in the sector. This choice means that this book will not become a best seller outside of the industry — but I don’t think it is meant to.

I will note that the fact that I didn’t have a problem with the level of detail-that-only-an-aid-or-development-worker-would-appreciate probably means that I am sitting firmly in the category of “Misfit.” Read the book and you’ll understand what I mean!

Disclosures: I was provided with a free copy for review. I have known J for quite some time and consider him a friend, which may color my opinions about the book.

Posted in book review, development, disaster and emergencies, wait... what? | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Can international civil society organizations be nimble?

June 12, 2013 by Linda Raftree

About 15 years ago, I was at a regional management meeting where a newly hired colleague was introduced. The guy next to me muttered “Welcome to the Titanic.”

In the past 20 years, we’ve seen the disruption of the record, photo, newspaper, and other industries. Though music, photos, and news continue to play a big role in people’s lives, the old ‘owners’ of the space were disrupted by changes in technology and new expectations from consumers. Similar changes are happening in the international civil society space, and organizations working there need to think more systematically about what these changes mean.

I spent last week with leadership from a dozen or so international civil society organizations (ICSOs) thinking about what is disrupting our space and strategizing about how to help the space, including our organizations, become more resilient and adaptive to disruption. Participants in the meeting came from several types of organizations (large INGOs doing service delivery and policy work, on-line organizing groups, social enterprises, think tanks, and big campaigning organizations), both new and old, headquartered and/or founded in both the “North” and the “South.”

We approached discussions from the premise that, like music, photos, and news; our sector does have value and does serve an important function. The world is not a perfect place, and government and the private sector need to be balanced and kept in check by a strong and organized “third sector.” However, many ICSOs are dinosaurs whose functions may be replaced by new players and new ways of working that better fit the external environment.

Changes around and within organizations are being prompted by a number of converging factors, including new technology, global financial shifts, new players and ways of working, and new demands from “beneficiaries,” constituencies, and donors. All of these involve shifting power. On top of power shifts, an environmental disaster looms (because we are living beyond the means of the planet), and we see civil society space closing in many contexts while at the same time organized movements are forcing open space for civic uprising and citizen voice.

ICSOs need to learn how to adapt to the shifting shape and context of civil society, and to work and collaborate in a changing ecosystem with new situations and new players. This involves:

  • Detecting and being open to changes and potential disruptors
  • Preparing in a long-term, linear way by creating more adaptive, iterative and resilient organizations
  • Responding quickly and nimbly to disruption and crises when they hit

Key elements of preparing for and navigating disruption are:

  • Maintaining trust and transparency – both internally and externally
  • Collective action
  • Adaptability
  • Being aware of and able to analyze and cope with power shifts

Organization cannot prepare for every specific disruption or crisis, and the biggest crises and shocks come out of nowhere. ICSOs should however become more adaptive and agile by creating built-in responsiveness. We surfaced a number of ideas for getting better at this:

  • Networking/Exchange: actively building networks, learning across sectors, engaging and working with non-traditional partners, bringing in external thinkers and doers for exchange and learning
  • Trend spotting and constant monitoring: watching and participating in spaces where potential disruptions are springing up (for example, challenge funds, contest and innovation prizes); exit interviews to understand why innovative staff are leaving, where they are going, and why; scanning a wide range of sources (staff, people on the ground, traditional media, social media, political analysts) including all ICSO’s audiences – eg., donors, supporters, communities
  • Predicting. Keeping predictable shocks on the radar (hurricane season, elections) and preparing for them, scenario planning as part of the preparatory phase
  • Listening: Ensuring that middle level, often unheard parts of the organization are listened to and that there are open and fluid communication lines between staff and middle and upper management; listening to customers, users, beneficiaries, constituencies; basically listening to everyone
  • Confident humility: Being humble and open, yet also confident, systematic and not desperate/chaotic
  • Meta-learning: Finding systematic ways to scan what is happening and understand it; learning from successes and failures at the ‘meta’ and the cross-sector level not just the organizational or project level
  • Slack time: Giving staff some slack for thinking, experimenting and reflecting; establishing a system for identifying what an organization can stop doing to enable staff to have slack time to think and be creative and try new things
  • Training. Ensuring that staff have skills to do strategic decision making, monitoring, scenario planning
  • Decentralized decision-making. Allow local pods and networks to take control of decision-making rather than having all decisions weighed in on by everyone or taking place at the top or the center; this should be backed by policies and protocols that enable quick decision making at the local level and quick communication across the organization
  • Trust. Hiring staff you can trust and trusting your staff (human resources departments need strengthening in order to do this well; they need to better understand the core business and what kind of staff an organization needs in these new times)

Culture, management, and governance changes are all needed to improve an organization’s ability to adapt. Systems need to be adjusted so that organizations can be more flexible and adaptive. Organizational belief systems and values also need to shift. Trying out adaptive actions and flexible culture in small doses to develop an organization’s comfort level and confidence and helping to amass shared experience of acting in a new way can help move an organization forward. Leadership should also work to identify innovation across the organization, highlight it, and scale it, and to reward staff who take risk and experiment rather than punishing them.

These changes are very difficult for large, established organizations. Staff and management tend to be overworked and spread thin as it is, managing an existing workload and with little “slack time” to manage change processes. In addition, undesignated funds are shrinking, meaning that organizations have little funding to direct towards new areas or for scanning and preparing, testing and learning. Many organizations are increasingly locked into implementing projects and programs per a donor’s requirements and there are few resources to strategize and focus on organizational adaptation and change. Contractual commitments and existing promises and community partnerships can make it difficult for ICSOs to stop doing certain programs in order to dedicate resources to new areas. The problem is usually not a shortage of innovative ideas and opportunities, but rather the bandwidth to explore and test them, and the systems for determining which ideas are most likely to succeed so that scarce resources can be allocated to them.

Despite all the challenges, the organizations in the room were clear that ICSOs need to change and disrupt themselves, because if they don’t, someone else will. We profiled three types of organizations: the conservative avoider, the opportunistic navigator, and the active disruptor, and determined that the key to survival for many ICSOs will be “dialing up the pain of staying the same and reducing the pain of changing.”

What might an adaptive organization look like?

  • Focused on its mission, not its traditional means of achieving the mission (get across the water in the best way possible, don’t worry if it’s via building a bridge or taking a boat or swimming)
  • Not innovating for the sake of innovation or disrupting for the sake of it – accompanying innovation and disruption with longer-term and systematic follow through
  • Periodically updating its mission to reflect the times
  • Piloting, gaining experience, monitoring, evaluating, building evidence and learning iteratively and at the meta-level from trends and patterns
  • Sub-granting to new, innovative players and seeding new models
  • Open, in the public domain, supporting others to innovate, decentralized, networked, flexible, prepared for new levels of transparency
  • Systematically discovering new ways of working and new partners, testing them, learning and mainstreaming them
  • Keeping its ear to the ground
  • Learning to exit and say no in order to free up slack time to experiment and try new things

Many “dinosaur” organizations are adopting a head-in-the-sand approach, believing that they can rely on their age, their hierarchical systems and processes, or their brand to carry them through the current waves of change. This is no longer enough, and we can expect some of these organizations to die off. Other organizations are in the middle of an obvious shift where parts of the organization are pushing to work under new rules but other parts are not ready. This internal turmoil, along with the overstretched staff, and ineffective boards in some cases, make it difficult to deal with external disruption while managing internal change.

Newer organizations and those that are the closest to the ground seem to have the best handle on disruption. They tend to be more adaptive and nimble, whereas those far from the ground can be insulated from external realities and less aware of the need for ISCOs to change. Creating a “burning platform” can encourage organizational change and a sense of urgency, however, this type of change effort needs to be guided by a clear and positive vision of why change is needed, where change is heading, and why it will be beneficial to achieving an organization’s mission.

After our week of intense discussions, the group felt we still had not answered the question: Can ISCOs be nimble? As in any ecosystem, as the threats and problems to civil society shift and change, a wide array of responses from a number of levels, players and approaches is necessary. Some will not be fit or will not adapt and will inevitably die off. Others will shift to occupy a new space. Some will swallow others up or replace them. Totally new ones will continue to arise. For me, the important thing in the end is that the problems that civil society addresses are dealt with, not that individual organizations maintain their particular position in the ecosystem.

Posted in accountability, development, failure, governance, open development, participation, smart aid, transparency | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

Regarding Humanity

May 20, 2013 by Linda Raftree

Imagery and stories used to frame issues of humanitarian development for advocacy and funding are often sensational and culturally disrespectful, representing those living in poverty as helpless victims in need, rather than as empowered and capable individuals.

Fueled by intense Twitter and blog discussions about this topic (which is often referred to as “Poverty Porn,”) a few years ago a number of us decided to work together to create a space for wider dialogue around issues of representation of the people that aid and development organizations support.

Screen Shot 2013-05-19 at 2.53.22 PM

Today we launch our multimedia platform Regarding Humanity or “Re: Hum.” The platform aims to engage practitioners, educators, and students in discussions on how to represent  communities we work with in relevant and respectful ways.

Re: Hum is a website and blog that explore how the way we see, listen and frame stories of “the poor” often strips individuals of their agency and creates a general sense of hopelessness and disempowerment. More respectful and relevant methods of seeing, listening and framing can help tell more nuanced stories that respect people and their complex realities.

The Re: Hum website will source content from a diverse set of authors and creators in order to bring a global perspective to the issue. It will serve as an educational resource and discussion forum to teach visual literacy, the importance of ethnography, and ways to maintain narrative integrity. We will be expanding to a discussion series, research, and an educational curriculum over time and as resources permit.

We invite you to take a quick look at Re: Hum (which is still a work-in-progress) and let us know your thoughts and suggestions on how to generate constructive conversation and learning on this issue!

Posted in accountability, communication for development, communications, development, disaster and emergencies, education, participation, Re:Hum, smart aid, social media | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

Social media and poverty porn

May 14, 2013 by Linda Raftree

This is a summary of the May 14th Technology Salon in New York city on “Does social media exacerbate poverty porn”.

  1. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    Some RTs from this morning’s #techsalon on #povertyporn w @tmsruge @lksriv @viewfromthecave coming up – courtesy of @nidhi_c

    Tue, May 14 2013 13:31:53

  2. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    MT @nidhi_c: #povertyporn is never about the beneficiary..it’s an org’s attempt to stay relevant. #techsalon

    Tue, May 14 2013 13:32:46

  3. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    RT @nidhi_c: How do we teach orgs & journalists that #povertyporn isn’t necessary to raise $ or awareness? #techsalon

    Tue, May 14 2013 13:34:13

  4. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    Fr my notes on today’s NYC #TechSalon on #povertyporn: Ppl visit Africa like it’s the zoo. Do you know the names of ppl u took photos with?

    Tue, May 14 2013 13:51:49

  5. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    #povertyporn is disempowering both to those it portrays and to those it’s aimed at, bc you only offer one solution – yours. #techsalon

    Tue, May 14 2013 13:54:25

  6. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    Telling only “positive” stories is also not the solution. Life anywhere is not only one or the other. It’s complex. #povertyporn #techsalon

    Tue, May 14 2013 13:56:33

  7. BonnieKoenig

    Bonnie Koenig@BonnieKoenig
    Great question from @meowtree & #TechSalon on #povertyporn – Do you know the names of people you take photos with?

    Tue, May 14 2013 13:57:04

  8. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    Stop hijacking people’s stories by putting your NGO/organization at the center of it. #povertyporn #techsalon

    Tue, May 14 2013 13:58:42

  9. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    transmedia storytelling is one good way to bring in more stories fr more angles to create a diverse narrative #techsalon #povertyporn

    Tue, May 14 2013 14:01:00

  10. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    Don’t need to take the western voice out. We need all the voices. But often the most vulnerable are not included. #povertyporn #techsalon

    Tue, May 14 2013 14:02:33

  11. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    Why do donors demand impact evals for ‘regular’ devt pjcts, but to prove soc med impact they’re fine w likes/clicks? #povertyporn #techsalon

    Tue, May 14 2013 14:05:06

  12. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    Where is the accountability to small individual donors/donations garnered via social media, i.e. for Kony2012? #povertyporn #techsalon

    Tue, May 14 2013 14:06:43

  13. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    Why do ppl from US photo’d during tragedy have name/story, yet ppl from other places are unknown victims? #povertyporn #techsalon

    Tue, May 14 2013 14:09:33

  14. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    Yet also, are we respecting privacy, consent and dignity when we photograph ppl in other countries? #povertyporn #techsalon

    Tue, May 14 2013 14:12:06

  15. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    Why ppl in US portrayed as heroes after tragedy (eg., Boston, 911) but not first responders in other countries? #povertyporn #techsalon

    Tue, May 14 2013 14:13:24

  16. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    How to get influentials w lrge audience (eg N Kristof) to see that external hero narrative not helpful in long term? #povertyporn #techsalon

    Tue, May 14 2013 14:15:43

  17. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    #PovertyPorn not only problem of “white” saviors/Africa. Privileged often view “the poor” this way in their own countries #techsalon

    Tue, May 14 2013 14:17:53

  18. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    Social media does not necessarily reduce the “othering” of #povertyporn. We still create our own filter bubbles #techsalon

    Tue, May 14 2013 14:19:04

  19. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    NGOs send media teams to find pre-conceived #povertyporn stories. Eg: this post by @morealtitude ht.ly/l23yQ #techsalon

    Tue, May 14 2013 14:22:19

  20. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    Diff to change existing orgs/system. But what is being done in schools re global education and media literacy? #povertyporn #techsalon

    Tue, May 14 2013 14:24:11

  21. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    Sites like everydayafrica.tumblr.com can help to overcome the #povertyporn narrative. #techsalon

    Tue, May 14 2013 14:25:14

  22. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    Or google “tumblr” and any country a hashtag (eg., #elsalvador) to find a diverse range of images, not only #povertyporn #techsalon

    Tue, May 14 2013 14:27:23

  23. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    How can we harness social media to show this range of images/realities to overcome the #povertyporn narrative? #techsalon

    Tue, May 14 2013 14:28:24

  24. meowtree

    Linda Raftree@meowtree
    And I’ll stop now – here’s @viewfromthecave‘s summary of this really thought provoking #techsalon on #povertyporn ht.ly/l24sJ

    Tue, May 14 2013 14:30:52

Posted in accountability, communications, development, smart aid, technology salon, TSNYC, wait... what? | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

Glass Houses… INGOs and Walking the Talk on IATI

April 23, 2013 by Linda Raftree

This is a cross-post from Tessie San Martin, CEO of Plan International USA. Tessie’s original post is published on the Plan International USA blog. For more on the status of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) in the US and information on which donors sit where on the Transparency Index, visit Publish What You Fund.

Over 40 governments, along with UN organizations and the World Bank, have committed to a common standard and time schedule for publishing aid information under the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).  There are high expectations for this initiative. The ultimate objective is to increase the effectiveness of donor assistance, making aid work for those whom we are trying to help and contributing to accelerated development outcomes on the ground. IATI is good news for increased accountability, can help improve coordination, and provides a space for engaging donors, communities, governments and the general public in a broader development dialogue.

Secretary of State Clinton signed on behalf of the US Government on November 2011. While US engagement has been very welcomed, US Government performance in terms of actually executing IATI has left much to be desired.  Publish What You Fund, an organization helping to ensure governments are held to their initial aid transparency commitments, ranked only one out of six agencies (MCC) in the ‘fair’ category in terms of execution. Recently, organizations like Oxfam and ONE have rightly questioned the US Government’s commitment and progress, and exhorted the Obama administration to make full compliance with the IATI standard a priority.

But with all the attention focused on how USG is performing, what are INGOs doing about IATI?  After all, governments can only open access to the data they have. Official development assistance is an increasingly smaller proportion of the entire aid flows, so having INGOs — particularly, and at the very least, the largest global INGOs — also committed to this process is vital to the success of the Initiative.

What are INGO’s doing about IATI? The answer is: not much.

Very few INGOs have committed to publishing their information to the IATI standard.  INGOs that have complied are doing so primarily because a donor is requiring it.  For example, DfID, the UK foreign aid agency, has such a requirement and, as a result, the UK has the largest number of INGOs in compliance.  The US Government has not imposed this requirement on US-based INGOs and it is not likely to do so in the future.  It is therefore not surprising that US-based INGOs have not shown much interest in IATI.

This is a lost opportunity for everyone.  Accountability and transparency are as relevant to the private and the non-profit side of development assistance as they are to the public side.

At Plan International, an INGO with offices in almost 70 countries, it is not surprising that the part of our organization making the fastest strides in this area is our office in the United Kingdom.  As an important recipient of DfID money, they were instructed to do so.  In the US, though Plan International USA is not a major recipient of USG funding, we believe that making the investment to comply with IATI reporting format and timelines is good development practice; we are thus committed to publishing to IATI in the next year.  How can we effectively preach transparency and increased accountability to our recipient communities and to the governments with which we are working yet not commit to something as eminently common sensical as uniform formats, comparable data sets and systematic reporting frequencies?

We are not Pollyannaish about the task.  Like all INGOs pondering whether and how to comply with IATI, we have many concerns, including the costs of complying and what it will do to our overhead (and therefore to something like our Charity Navigator) rating.   We have established an internal project code so we can better capture, track and understand the costs involved in this initiative.  And we are evaluating where we draw the line in terms of the size of the projects on which we should be reporting, balancing costs with the desire to maximize disclosure (it is also worth remembering that rating agencies themselves are placing increasing emphasis on transparent reporting, so rating concerns may ultimately support a move towards greater IATI compliance).

As we have moved forward, we have had many issues to address, including privacy concerns, since a fair bit of Plan’s internal documentation was not written with the idea that it would one day be shared with the public.  Publishing some information may pose security risks for minority or political groups being supported.  These situations have been contemplated by IATI already, however, and there are valid exemptions for sensitive data.  We have also learned that there are many resources to help INGOs navigate the IATI compliance waters.  These resources are not well known to US INGOs, and need to be better publicized. Plan in the US, of course, is also benefiting from the research and hard work our UK office has done to comply with DfID’s mandate, allowing us to start off on a strong foundation of organizational experience.

I am convinced that IATI is not just good development practice but also makes good business sense. At the same time, it is worth remembering that IATI is not the entire solution.  IATI is designed to improve upward accountability to donors and taxpayers.  It is not designed explicitly to improve accountability to the children and communities with which we are partnering and whom we serve. And, as the ultimate goal is improved aid effectiveness, data must be accompanied by better information about goals, methodologies and approaches.  We also need to get better at sharing not just successes but failures within our federation and across all development organizations.

Despite all the shortcomings, IATI is a good start.  And as we push the US Government to do better, INGOs need to be pushing themselves to do better as well.

Posted in accountability, development, IATI, monitoring and evaluation, open data, open development, smart aid, transparency | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

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

April 17, 2013 by Linda Raftree

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

Posted in development, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, monitoring and evaluation, wait... what? | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments »

Contest: Innovations in connecting the unconnected

April 8, 2013 by Linda Raftree

CISCO is looking for stories about how people and organizations have used network services (mobile video and gaming, video conferencing, SMS, and social networking) to achieve different social or personal goals. The idea is to find stories not only about how technology developers are inventing things, but also about how different tools are enabling a range of things to happen and helping people to resolve challenges and achieve progress in their communities.

The application process is quite simple – just answer 5 questions through a form on the website to formulate the story. You can also download a form, fill it out, and then cut/paste into the form online if you are on slow internet. Contest and story submission information is here.

According to CISCO, by posting a story on how you’ve developed solutions, or used these services, you will be an inspiration to others and CISCO will help you promote your work through their social media channels thereby increasing your visibility. They hope that the stories help generate more conversation around the impact of Internet services.

They also hope the stories can help answer some questions around the benefits of increased connectivity. For example:

  • How will growth in Internet access impact global economies?
  • How can more communities and businesses take advantage of the significant growth in mobile services?
  • What new opportunities can be created for those least connected?
  • Why are there regional variations in adoption rates of certain networking services?

I know a lot of smaller local organizations – especially some great youth-led organizations – are doing some fantastic things, and a prize like this could help these organizations get to the next level. More information here.

The more academic folks out there may not want to submit stories, but you might be interested in the Virtual Network Indexing Forecast.

Posted in communication for development, development, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, social media, youth, youth media | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment »

Mobile technology and workforce development programs with girls and young women

March 25, 2013 by Linda Raftree

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.

Posted in development, education, girls, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, m4D, mobile, mywd, TSNYC, wait... what?, youth workforce development | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments »

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

March 12, 2013 by Linda Raftree

At the Community of Evaluators’ Evaluation Conclave last week, Jill Hannon from Rockefeller Foundation’s Evaluation Office and I organized a session on ICTs for Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) as part of our efforts to learn what different organizations are doing in this area and better understand some of the challenges. We’ll do a couple of similar sessions at the Catholic Relief Services ICT4D Conference in Accra next week, and then we’ll consolidate what we’ve been learning.

Key points raised at this session covered experiences with ICTs in M&E and with ICT4D more generally, including:

ICTs have their advantages, including ease of data collection (especially as compared to carrying around paper forms); ability to collect and convey information from a large and diversely spread population through solutions like SMS; real-time or quick processing of information and ease of feedback; improved decision-making; and administration of large programs and funding flows from the central to the local level.

Capacity is lacking in the use of ICTs for M&E. In the past, the benefits of ICTs had to be sold. Now, the benefits seem to be clear, but there is not enough rigor in the process of selecting and using ICTs. Many organizations would like to use ICT but do not know how or whom to approach to learn. A key struggle is tailoring ICTs to suit M&E needs and goals and ensuring that the tools selected are the right ones for the job and the user. Organizations have a hard time deciding whether it is appropriate to use ICTs, and once they decide, they have trouble determining which solutions are right for their particular goals. People commonly start with the technology, rather than considering what problem they want the technology to help resolve. Often the person developing the M&E framework does not understand ICT, and the person developing the ICT does not understand M&E. There is need to further develop the capacities of M&E professionals who are using ICT systems. Many ICT solutions exist but organizations don’t know what questions to ask about them, and there is not enough information available in an easily understandable format to help them make decisions.

Mindsets can derail ICT-related efforts. Threats and fears around transparency can create resistance among employees to adopt new ICT tools for M&E. In some cases, lack of political makes it difficult to bring about institutional change. Earlier experiences of failure when using ICTs (eg, stolen or broken PCs or PDAs) can also ruin the appetite for trying ICTs again. One complaint was that some government employees nearing retirement age will participate in training as a perk or to collect per diem, yet be uninterested in actually learning any new ICT skills. This can take away opportunities from younger staff who may have a real interest in learning and implementing new approaches.

Privacy needs further study and care. It is not clear whether those who provide information through Internet, SMS, etc., understand how it is going to be used and organizations often do not do a good job of explaining. Lack of knowledge and trust in the privacy of their responses can affect willingness or correctness of responses. More effort needs to be made to guarantee privacy and build trust. Technological solutions to privacy such as data encryption can be implemented, but human behavior is likely the bigger challenge. Paper surveys with sensitive information often get piled up in a room where anyone could see them. In the same way, people do not take care with keeping data collected via ICTs safe; for example, they often share passwords. Organizations and agencies need to take privacy more seriously.

Internal Review Boards (IRBs) are missing in smaller organizations. Normally an IRB allows a researcher to be sure that a survey is not personal or potentially traumatizing, that data encryption is in place, and that data are sanitized. But these systems are usually not established in small, local organizations — they only exist in large organizations — leaving room for ethics breaches.

Information flows need quite a lot of thought, as unintended consequences may derail a project. One participant told of a community health initiative that helped women track their menstrual cycles to determine when they were pregnant. The women were sent information and reminders through SMS on prenatal care. The program ran into problems because the designers did not take into account that some women would miscarry. Women who had miscarried got reminders after their miscarriage, which was traumatic for them. Another participant gave an example of a program that publicized the mobile number of a staff member at a local NGO that supported women victims of violence so that women who faced violence could call to report it. The owner of the mobile phone was overwhelmed with the number of calls, often at night, and would switch the mobile off, meaning no response was available to the women trying to report violence. The organization therefore moved to IVR (interactive voice response), which resolved the original problem, however, with IVR, there was no response to the women who reported violence.

Research needs to be done prior to embarking on use of ICTs. A participant working with women in rural areas mentioned that her organization planned to use mobile games for an education and awareness campaign. They conducted research first on gender roles and parity and found that actually women had no command over phones. Husbands or sons owned them and women had access to them only when the men were around, so they did not proceed with the mobile games aspect of the project.

Literacy is an issue that can be overcome. Literacy is a concern, however there are many creative solutions to overcome literacy challenges, such as the use of symbols. A programme in an urban slum used symbols on hand-held devices for a poverty and infrastructure mapping exercise. In Nepal, an organization tried using SMS weather reports, but most people did not have mobiles and could not read SMS. So the organization instead sent an SMS to a couple of farmers in the community who could read, and who would then draw weather symbols on a large billboard. IVR is another commonly used tool in South Asia.

Qualitative data collection using ICTs should not be forgotten. There is often a focus on surveys, and people forget about the power of collecting qualitative data through video, audio, photos, drawings on mobiles and tablets and other such possibilities. A number of tools can be used for participatory monitoring and evaluation processes. For example, baseline data can be collected through video. tagging can be used to help sort content., video and audio files can be linked with text, and change and decision-making can be captured through video vignettes. People can take their own photos to indicate importance or value. Some participatory rural appraisal techniques can be done on a tablet with a big screen. Climate change and other visual data can be captured with tablets or phones or through digital maps. Photographs and GPS are powerful tools for validation and authentication, however care needs to be taken when using maps with those who may not easily orient themselves to an aerial map. One caution is that some of these kinds of initiatives are “boutique” designs that can be quite expensive, making scale difficult. As android devices and tablets become increasingly cheaper and more available, these kinds of solutions may become easier to implement.

Ubiquity and uptake are not the same thing. Even if mobile phones are “everywhere” it does not mean people will use them to do what organizations or evaluators want them to do. This is true for citizen feedback programs, said one participant, especially when there is a lack of response to reports. “It’s not just an issue of literacy or illiteracy, it’s about culture. It’s about not complaining, about not holding authorities accountable due to community pressures. Some people may not feed back because they are aware of the consequences of complaining and this goes beyond simple access and use of technology.” In addition, returning collected data to the community in a format they can understand and use for their own purposes is important. A participant observed that when evaluators go to the community to collect data for baseline, outcome, impact, etc., from a moral standpoint it is exploitative if they do not report the findings back to the community. Communities are not sure of what they get back from the exercise and this undermines the credibility of the feedback mechanism. Unless people see value in participation, they will not be willing to give their information or feedback. However, it’s important to note that responses to citizen or beneficiary feedback can also skew beneficiary feedback. “When people imagine a response will get them something, their feedback will be based on what they expect to get.”

There has not been enough evaluation of ICT-enabled efforts. A participant noted that despite apparent success, there are huge challenges with the use of ICTs in development initiatives: How effective has branchless banking been? How effective is citizen feedback? How are we evaluating the effectiveness of these ICT tools? And what about how these programs impact on different stakeholders? Some may be excited by these projects, whereas others are threatened.

Training and learning opportunities are needed. The session ended, yet the question of where evaluators can obtain additional guidance and support for using ICTs in M&E processes lingered. CLEAR South Asia has produced a guide on mobile data collection, and we’ll be on the lookout for additional resources and training opportunities to share, for example this series of reports on Mobile Data Collection in Africa from the World Wide Web Foundation or this online course Using ICT Tools for Effective Monitoring, Impact Evaluation and Research available through the Development Cafe.

Thanks to Mitesh Thakkar from Fieldata, Sanjay Saxena from Total Synergy Consulting, Syed Ali Asjad Naqvi from the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP) and Pankaj Chhetri from Equal Access Nepal for participating as lead discussants at the session; Siddhi Mankad from Catalyst Management Services Pvt. Ltd for serving as rapporteur; and Rockefeller Foundation’s Evaluation Office for supporting this effort.

We used the Technology Salon methodology for the session, including Chatham House Rule, therefore no attribution has been made in this summary post.

Other sessions in this series of Salons on ICTs and 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

In addition, here’s a post on how War Child Uganda is using participatory video for M&E

Posted in accountability, ICT4D, ICTs, mobile and technology, monitoring and evaluation, participation, technology salon, wait... what? | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

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

March 6, 2013 by Linda Raftree

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.

Posted in Benin, children, CoM, communication for development, development, ICT4D, m4D, mapping, VAC, violence, wait... what?, youth | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

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