What if you were in Ethiopia, walking by a school, directing your mobile’s camera to towards it and suddenly you get all the information available about the school, such as the development projects involved with it, the amount invested to build it, and the school’s drop out rate.

How transparent is development aid?

Is it only sciene-fiction? Welcome to augmented reality and the plans to use open data in the future. Owen Barder talked about the exact same idea in a recent podcast at the Center for Global Development. Of course, it is questionable whether concrete information stream is instantly needed; it might easily overwhelm us, but certainly this kind of transparency might have a huge impact on development aid.

Most people agree that the development aid world needs more transparency. It is not easy or almost impossible to get an overview of what really happens in a country or a sector. Senegal alone has 82 individual aid co-ordination forums, but that has not brought the transparency needed, and made it even more complicated, as Owen Barder writes in his thoughtful and provoking post: “The coming collapse of the development system”. A transparent overview on all activities, partnerships and financial involvements, could bring light in this unnecessary complexity.

Small first movers in the development aid world

Many organizations and some governments have started opening up their repositories of data to be accessed publicly, such is the example of the development sector, where first organizations have freed their data. The World Bank has an API to access data, and the UK Department for International Development  (DFID) has a new way to present its project data. Whereas the former offers statistical data, such as development indicators, the latter publishes project information to be monitored. But come on … is that all?

Initiatives to use open data

Ujima Website

Such open data could be used by external initiatives or watchdogs. A good example for development in Africa is the Ujima project, which shows project data from USAid and DFID. Unfortunately, the majority of organizations seem to be only discussing the move to open data, but until now, they rather enclose information. To be fair, many development organizations have a huge challenge – they have various different databases, formats and struggle to get them better connected as well. One example is the challenge around Management Information System.

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Accurate data is key for development work. Opening data sources can enhance transparency and improve collaboration between development projects. Surprisingly, development organizations show few signs of opening up data to create new channels to link information across organizations.

The age of the typewriter: Data exchange in developing organizations

Information exchange is a major activity between development organizations, but unfortunately it is still done manually – typing up data from different sources or, even more advanced, copying figures from an Excel sheet to a Word document. Such is the case of reports, where a great amount of information is gathered. These reports have valuable and high-quality content, but they need huge efforts to be done and time tends to be lost between writing and publishing. This is just one example of how in many cases data is exchanged or used. Each time the wheel is reinvented.

Simulating a project content in real-time

A website can be a report simulated in real-time, which combines data sources across organizations and research institutions. On it, you cannot only see the latest status, but also the latest developments and updates seen from different perspectives depending on various indicators. So, in a health project, a survey taken with nurses from one region is fitted into the system, as well as new results from a scientific research about the latest drop rate of vaccinations. All project actors involved contribute to a common database for better transparency, real-time reporting and potentially better decision-making.

Is that all future music? No.

• AKVO is experimenting with Really Simple Reporting. Gathering data and using mobile phones for real-time (live) reporting.

• Also, you can check my post on open API at the web2fordev gateway with the example of the world bank. A key role can be played by open API (Application Programming Interfaces). A good example is the API of the World Bank, where you can access 114 indicators from key data sources and 12,000 development photos. But of course photos can only be the beginning. Project data is way more important to enable different actors in the same field to benefit from data.

• An Open development camp is taking place in July in Washington.
  “There are a number of emerging activities focusing on improving the transparency of aid and allowing organizations, projects, researchers, practitioners, and clients in developing countries to have improved access to aid information, data on outcomes, knowledge, and tools.  We are getting closer to the day when anyone can easily determine who is doing what, where they are doing it, what they have learned, and who is funding them.”

• Check out data.gov with extensive data from the USA government or the projects of the sunlight foundation.

What is hindering an opening?

• Focus on proprietary closed software environments, which have just discovered open standards. The Sharepoint invasion, thanks to many IT departments, underlines this one way road.
• Internal websites from development organizations are focused on top-down communication. The Intranet represents information silos, where little data is combined.
• There are many playing fields from different departments using all kinds of solutions with little focus on interoperability. Many databases with different standards are often incompatible to work together.
• Development organizations focus more on securing confidential information than looking at the majority of data, which can be offered publicly.
• The disappointment after the hype of the 90′s where information management was a great solution. But things have changed during the last few years in terms of open standards, mashups and API’s.

Consequence: There are huge amounts of valuable data which has been little exploited. Data cannot be exchanged between development organizations and each organization collects its own data and reinvents the data wheel over and over again.

Surely, data alone does not make a project or an organization succeed and does not guarantee transparency. But open data could improve project work and planning a lot. It can certainly improve aid effectiveness. In older times, databases were often difficult to deal with and offered little output. Nowadays, potential for mashing data are different. A first step to take can be easy: Persistently work on offering data openly and work with simple common standards such as RSS. Sometimes it just needs one person: UN Democracy is an effort to give better access for UN Security council data.

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One of the greatest things about the Internet is that you can get in touch with people worldwide. I remember that back on the day I chatted for the first time and read from bluemoon11 that the sun was shining in Sidney. Twelve years ago that seemed breathtaking, but today it is rather amusing. Simultaneously, in the past, time volunteer engagement in other countries was a job quite difficult to tackle. You either knew someone or had friends from within, who were involved in a project, or got convinced by the volunteer in the pedestrian walk to donate money to their organization.

This has changed quite a lot, with fascinating new ways to individually engage on a peer to peer basis. Nowadays you can not only choose your donor, but also get yourself involved and follow the whole project and its outcome (e.g. Globalgiving or Kiva). There are also many more ways to engage such as the global neighbourhood Nabuur, where not everything is just about money, but also about the expertise that thousands of volunteers worldwide bring to the community. The social web has unleashed a huge wave of massive collaboration for social good already difficult to oversee. Being it science without borders, or working jointly on the first open source ecological village, or individually start their own little fundraising project, a small Facebook group, and ask for further action.

That brings up the questions: What organization will and can play in the future? We are slowly moving into ad-hoc peer-to-peer voluntarism independent from organizations. A nightmare for a classical fundraising approach. Certainly, organizations which depend on personal donations and mobilization of members will have a tough time if they do not include their audience.

But lets come back to new ways of volunteering. No doubt it is and will always be difficult to come up with new projects to fund, but there are now many existing projects which developed around all types of volunteer work efficiently. In many of this cases, costs are minimal and the output much higher thanks to all the expertise from participants. This is the case for a project outline not only written by two experts, but in a Wikipedia kind of fashion by numerous volunteers, which highlights all kinds of experiences. Will the chances of success be higher, or is the complexity of the project setting overwhelming? I imagine the more expertise there is, the better the project can be implemented. Look at the Katine project by the Guardian, where suddenly a project is portrayed from all different angles.

Another promising aspect of micro-volunteering can be seen on pages such as microvoluntarios.org and extraordinaries.org. In the first, volunteers can contribute with small tasks, which seems also attractive to companies, who donate the time of their employees. In the second, you can even donate through your mobile phone from wherever you are. Giulio Quaggiotto wrote a nice blog post about it.

Waiting for the bus and have nothing better to do than play around with your phone? Games are no longer the only options – now you can volunteer. The Extraordinaries (hat tip: Chris Kreutz) “delivers micro-volunteer opportunities to mobile phones that can be done on-demand and on-the-spot.” Here’s some examples of what you could do while waiting for your doctor’s appointment: translate micro-finance loan applications (Kiva); transcribe subtitles for human rights videos (Witness) or help immigrants improve their English (Phone ESL). A nice example of tapping into the collective “cognitive surplus” for social innovation purposes.

So, not mass, but micro-collaboration might be next big thing. There are many examples which show that this could have working results even though, so far, only a minority knows about these new ways of engaging. Donating was yesterday, engaging yourself is next.

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As an outcome from the virtual forum on mobile phones by FAO – where I experienced a great exchange with mobile phone practitioners worldwide – I was interviewed by the e-agriculture.org forum. During the interview, I tried to summarize my observations and discussions around mobile  phones for development from the recent months. I have published the interview below:

Describe to us the programme on ICTs, especially the use of mobile phones for rural development, which you are working for. Why do you find mobile phones to be particularly interesting in your line of work?
C.K.: I worked for a project on “knowledge systems in rural areas” for GTZ. I look at the topic from different angles such as knowledge sharing, networking and social change and try to identify new potentials. I don’t glance at mobile phones from an economical point of view only, but consider them as means for different areas in social development. For example activists around human rights are the most innovative users of mobile telephone technology for their causes. The interesting thing about mobile phones is that they are so different from all the other ICTs. First of all this all-purpose tool is in the ownership by a majority of Africans across the continent and its users have created creative extra usages for mobile phones. Second it is a different approach compared to conventional ICT4D projects, which relied often on huge funding and did not focus enough on the users’ perspective. But Mobiles are available for low costs and already are adapted for many purposes.

What positive impacts could you achieve for agriculture, food security and/or rural development? How, in your opinion, can we empower local farmers to really benefit from this application?
C.K.: Mobile phones are such a powerful tool because they fill a gap of prior limited means of communication. We have just started to use the various potential of mobile phones. At first, mobile phones have particularly connected rural with urban areas. Nowadays we witness new forms of information delivery and exchange particular with rural areas for agriculture or health, never before possible like that. There are great examples in Africa of local adapted mobile software solutions (e.g. EPROM) orientated on community needs and dealing with technical constraints. Promising is also the formation of own language spaces and innovative voice recognition solutions to address the illiteracy challenge.

Did it also cause a change in working or living habits or even of the whole culture for the locals? Could you give examples, please?
C.K.: Mobile phones are a communication break through. The interesting question is: What will people make out of it? There are already fascinating examples, how mobile phone users invent on forms to use it particular for business. But the impact of mobile phone usage is not analyzed well enough so far. Studies only focus on some areas such as the famous fishery example. Although it is obvious that the mobile phone has changed a lot in societies, therefore an analysis of local adaptation in different cultural contexts is necessary. Apart from all the possible characteristics of mobile phones for rural development they are still strongest with ordinary communication. Like in Europe in the beginning of integrating mobiles into the everyday life, people want to call their family and friends to talk to them in the first run. Very promising are social mobile applications, which will be very interesting in the next future. What happens if you can deliver information to each mobile phone, but also let users interact in networks or with the web. There are fascinating examples such as Ushahidi or the Freedom Fone. But also money transfers via mobiles are revolutionary. In countries where less than 10% of the people have bank accounts using air time as a way of paying and transferring money has a huge impact on society.

What are the challenges you are facing in your projects? Technically, socially, economically, …
C.K.: Everybody is so enthusiastic about mobile phones for development and, of course, I am too, but you also have to be a little bit critical. There is quite a hype around mobile phones. There is a lot of experimentation happening and too little exchange of experiences. The technology itself can’t solve problems. Mobile phones are only the means that you can use to improve rural peoples livelihoods through the best fit for each situation. I do believe that there is also the danger of forgetting some important lessons learnt from many ICT4D projects, which failed for a lot of reasons. One was the lack of sustainability, and another, that mobile phones can only be a mean to an end. And of course, there are many challenges that the use of mobile phone faces: high costs, illiteracy and in many cases, mobile phones projects still have to prove the benefit for users. There are for example problems concerning gender. In some countries women have difficulties to get access to mobile phones or can’t communicate independently. Also the tremendous costs have an impact on the people. Some substitute a whole meal for mobile phone credit. In study in Africa some mobile phone users became even poorer.

What are your predictions for the future?
C.K.: We have only started to tap upon the potential of this all-purpose tool. It will be interesting to see the role of development organization. There are potentials to use it in different approaches in development projects, but also to improve their own work. The open source water and sanitation initiative lets mobile African reporters evaluate their projects. It is obvious that access to the Internet will happen in Africa in the future mainly through mobile phones. But it will be a challenge to deal with the constraints of little mobile phone screen. Nevertheless the ubiquitous connection through mobile phones has many advantages and particular in rural areas offer a linkage with urban areas not possible before. It will be interesting to analyze these implications. Rural areas suddenly have new instruments to broadcast from or analyze their environment. The mobile phone can be already a sensor rich tool with GPS, to measure the velocity or to analyze blood and detect diseases. It will empower mobile phone users to embrace it for all kind daily needed purposes and for social change. The mobile becomes a research tool to give its user the capacity to collect and share information. Open information repositories can be created for development work. One outcome is increasing transparency. Mobile phones can be the key for collectively contributing to new information systems and receiving all sorts of information. The future for mobile phones will be in this kind of data exchange or network exchange to empower people with knowledge, like Nokia’s weather updates in local languages. Surely, some form of data exchange has to work for that, which still inhibits several challenges. But this form of information exchange and networking will happen – whatever technology is behind it. Tools for information exchange solely relying on SMS prove this is possible for all phones.

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The other day I stumbled over this news piece: “The phone that feels the flu before you do” – a company offers a service, where one can find out how intensive the level of flu is in their area. So, basically, you can get “Open Source Intelligence” via mobile phone. I find this quite fascinating because of the potential it entails for other usages and it also says a lot about the future power of information.

Different to older times when you went to your PC to search for information such as a definition on Wikipedia, in the future you can access it anywhere, and you also: a) get real time information about what happens around you and b) you get to participate collectively to refine information, for example through mobile crisis mapping. So imagine mobile phone users engaging in such a collective information gathering for all kinds of purposes. But who will own the information and could it be guaranteed to be open and reliable?

In the case of the flu alert, the company “will say, for instance, that 8 percent to 14 percent of the people in your ZIP code have respiratory illnesses, representing a “Moderate” risk level.” Personally, it would not influence my decision to leave the house or not. To me, the case of the flu alert highlights the potential to use such services for other purposes also in other areas.  I find the use of widely available valuable information for the public very interesting. All sorts of available intelligence is broad to you on your mobile phone. So is the case of fixmystreet.com, from which I can report damages in my neighbourhood and report it to the responsible person; or I can check product information through a common source written by consumers in the supermarket. More importantly, I could have access to environmental data on the corner I am standing at? I can foresee a lot of potential, but also I am worried about locked information, no clarity of ownership and too little access to information.

In the flu alert example, the company “gets the information on disease levels from Surveillance Data Inc. — which gets its data from polling health care providers and pharmacies.” It sounds almost as a mashup, where you combine different data sources. I imagine the future lies in combining intelligently different open available data resources, for example through RSS/feeds or API to provide open intelligence.  Such steps are some interesting startups around climate change, which offer API (Application Programming Interface) for different sorts of environmental data – it simply means, that you can use their data for your own purposes or services and combine different data streams. For example, the World Bank offers “114 indicators from key data sources and 12,000 development photos” and AMEE, the climate change startup,  offers an “open platform for measuring the energy consumption of everything” (Check www.openeco.org/ for more on sharing data to measure climate change).

Google found a much easier way to publish the flu intensity in an area by simply analyzing and mapping search request for flu related issues. So Google will not only make revenue by advertisement, but through offering various of these kinds of services in the future. But frankly, I am a bit concerned about it since a lot of information resides within companies and it is in many cases not publicly available or cannot be used by nonprofits. In the case of Google, the potential to analyze society behaviour is unlimited. If they focus, for example, on the local level, all kinds of patterns and differences can be found out (e.g. politics, consumerism or health).  It seems to me that the future asset will be this sort of information power. The challenge can be easily seen when you compare OpenstreetMap and Google maps for the cities of Kabul, Afghanistan (Google – Openstreetmap) and Luanda, Angola (Google – Openstreetmap). In both cases the open source approach for maps offers better maps done by volunteers. (Thanks to aidworkerdaily.com for the inspiration!)

I think we have just started to tap on the potential of these rich resources, but also will need a lot of further discussion on what type of information needs to be openly available.

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Most of my readers know how enthusiastic I am about the potential that Internet has; being this either social web, social media, web2.0 or however you want to name it. But if I look back at what has happened in the development field during the last year, I have to say that frankly I am quite disappointed about how little has been happening. I expected the disruptive potential to be more exploited. Particularly in development organizations hardly anything has changed, and the wave of open networks, transparency or the two way conversation is rather a ripple.

Little innovation from development organizations
I remember the participants’ enthusiasm during last year’s web2fordev conference in Rome and I have also seen some interesting initiatives since, but the strong push towards taking advantage of the potential is not there. Critically, you can say that yes, the world bank has been playing a little bit around with blogs, UNHCR celebrates itself with Google map for fundraising, and Eldis has now a community, as well as Development Gateway has now ratings for articles, but here, in Germany, I cannot even find one convincing example from dozens of organizations working in the development field. But I know these are at least some first steps.

What are the reasons?
I think the challenges especially within the organizational context are multi fold. Just to name a few:

• Technical challenges: Almost all development organizations rely on software systems, which do not offer social media tools. Sharepoint is just one example of how it will never work to have an open knowledge sharing environment.
• Being it the communication department, the IT or any other departments – many share their refusal to a participative web. Staff should be offered to decision themselves what to published and which tools to use. No way! – for some people the social web scenario is still a nightmare.
• It is not on their screens! Most key players or management teams have not yet understood the potential of the web in total, although development organizations work internationally and engage in numerous networks. The Internet is still seen as a necessary evil. Generation gap?
• No real commitment for donor harmonization. One key pillar of aid effectiveness should be to exchange knowledge as open and transparent as possible. There are hardly any attempts to open data resources between organizations and for the public domain. Most content is still copyright, although it is for non-profit.
• Adaptation: It simply takes much more time. The learning curve of organization all together is simply really slow. The slower the bigger the organizations are.
• Open knowledge sharing is still not high on the agenda. Information silos are common and knowledge is kept closed north and south of the development field.
• The fear and distress to engage online, plus information overload and too little training for staff to show the potential to publish and exchange knowledge in networks.
• Too little interest to engage in dialogue and recognize the importance of local knowledge. User-generated content means that I also am able to listen as an organization.

What could be different?
A will to go public with the work, knowledge and problems of development organizations. Instead, they sat around in Ghana for aid effectiveness and have achieved so little. One step would be to acknowledge that problems are too complex, open channels of organization and use new ways to work together. Being it a Wikipedia for development or different sub themes such as Water wiki. But knowledge is preserved and kept in organizations. Information sources should be combined from different perspectives, instead, each organizations has its own websites. There is not even an attempt to combine data resources between bigger organizations. If you look for instance, the wisdom of crowd potential is not yet exploited. For project development or problem solution, hardly anything has been tested or experimented. In recent years amazing market and exchange places in all kinds of fields have been established, but the development sector still offers very little.  I will elaborate that further in another post.

An explanation
In my opinion the easiest explanation is that the social innovation within or through the web flourishes best in open autonomous environments. This can be rarely offered in an organizational context. If you look at the most fascinating projects and initiatives of the last year, since the web2fordev conference, you will see that they are all grass root driven – mobile phones in Africa, human rights issues, citizen journalism, mashups or networks for development. So I wonder what could then be the role of development organizations to participate in the social innovation? How do you think web2.0 in development organizations will progress? Do you agree with the above statement or was I too critical?

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Sorry for not having post anything recently, but I have had the opportunity to participate in the Socialcamp and KM4DEV conference, which I will shortly blog about.

Thanks for the interesting comments on my blog post on local knowledge. Meryn Stol wrote a nice comment: “Every person can be a problem solver.” The challenge, however, is to succeed in complex projects. Unfortunately, many development projects are still rather planned than developed within the context. Or as William Easterly puts it, “The development field is still dominated by planers.” Although the best way to solve this problem is to be a “Seeker” rather than a “Planner” and look for small, sustainable programs. To set up projects in a relevant context is a key and means to include as much expertise (actors?) as possible. But here comes quickly the dilemma of how to find consensus and include all the different aspects and get lost in complexity.

I wonder if the social web can offer ways to potentially bring more transparency, collect more, particularly local, wisdom and gain better ways to cope with complexity and lastly achieve better results. Maybe social media, especially in the local context, open new ways for problem solutions in a collaborative manner such as wikipedia. Peter Ballantyne wrote it nicely in a comment:

“I think the newer social media have a huge potential to strengthen the local basis and focus of much development work, by creating and sustaining demands, maybe even small ones, for information expertise and knowledge that is local, for local purposes, by local people.”

However, there is still a lack of knowledge — the importance of local knowledge for problem solving. Alberto Masetti-Zannini approaches this very appealing on his paper “Web 2.0 and International Development NGOs”, in which he argues that “most NGOs still suffer from a deep-seated inability to develop two-way communication systems with those whom they seek to represent, and are still favouring top-down, centralised knowledge-management practices.”

He argues that participation mechanisms are key: “NGOs have struggled for a long time to build effective participation mechanisms in the developing world. Relevant and correct information from the bottom of the development pyramid is necessary to make knowledgeable decisions about their work.”

And is optimistic: “Indeed, Web 2.0 tools are beginning to change this situation, by generating and disseminating local content and knowledge in an open, shared structure. But are NGOs adopting these new technologies in their knowledge management practices?”

I am also sharing this optimism, but I am also fearing for the wide gap to participate in the social web. Thenmozhi Soundararajan had an interesting example back on a re-publica conference presentation, which underlines my concern: In the USA 25 % out of twelve graders graduate without necessary skills in writing – so 75% have not the capabilities to profoundly write and therefore engage in social media.

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Some days ago, I had a talk with a colleague from another development organization about web2fordev. We were asking whether web2.0 can really make a difference in development work? We both agreed it can, but we were unsure whether the organizational culture has to change first or the external pressure will push for openness?

When is the two way conversation coming then?

He made a great point — ‘blogs could provide a dialogue between headquarters of development organizations directly with projects and particular beneficiaries.’ A conversation could start about what has happened, what was accomplished and what do both sides think about it. I asked him how long does he think this could take to become reality, to which he replied, “ten years.”

I disagree and think it could take less time. Why? Because I think the potentials of the web will sooner or later unfold peer pressure. Don’t get me wrong. I do not mean by some small tools such as blogs alone, but the ease of engagement and the new potentials for collective action. The following example show possible implications for the development sector.

The power of mapping

Inspired from a post by Erik Hersman called Activist Mapping I came up with another thought or better explanation for this kind of pressure towards development organization, for example, looking at development results — the impact of foreign aid. Easterly describes it as a key challenge for development aid and monitoring results is high on the agenda of development organizations. Another example is the discussion around aid effectiveness and the Paris declaration.

The great potential of collective action for transparency

So, back to my thoughts. Check out first a project by Erik Hersman, Juliana Rotich and Daudi Were called Ushahidi and take a look at how they made it possible by all challenges that people in Kenya, during the post-election conflict, reported through their mobile phone about the critical situation. This way they collected information from all over Kenya and documented incidents such as riots, deaths, property loss, looting, rape etc. This degree of transparency was hardly achieved by the media and certainly not intended to be publicised by the government.

Bottom up measuring of development results

Now imagine the potential to measure development projects from a grassroot level. Or to collect information about how many governmental services have arrived in villages. This could be possible by harnessing the wisdom of crowd.

• Using mobile phones to collect information.
• Present all information on a website with maps and databases.
• Use the website to connect the people who send information and aim to get more accurate information.

Beneficiaries of projects could collect information in teams, send feedbacks to the platform and create their own map of development projects or their timeline with accurate information on how government services are fulfilling their duties. This kind of transparency should be an all-win-situation.

Some might think this will never happen, but I think it will. It is already happening and to my understanding we are just at the beginning of this kind of collective action. What do you think?

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The world wide web offers a growing variety of expertise on all kinds of topics. This global knowledge, such as the scientific domain, has generic character. The expertise is important, especially to tackle all sorts of challenges, but without including the local context could be quickly useless. Often, the applied knowledge lacks an interdisciplinary approach and disregards local and indigenous knowledge.

The German professor Dietrich Dörner describes it accurately in his book the “The Logic Of Failure: Recognizing And Avoiding Error In Complex Situations.” Problems are seen logic to tackle, but are, in contrary, far more complex than firstly thought.

Faced with problems that exceed our grasp, we pile small error upon small error to arrive at spectacularly wrong conclusions. We too often ignore the big picture and seek refuge in what we know how to do – fiddling while Rome burns. (Book review)

In a simulation for a development project, Dörner proves how this can lead to failure, and in many cases, efforts have no sustainable impact. One key challenge is to solely rely on global knowledge and state of the art expertise and disregard the local knowledge.

Local knowledge is a collection of facts and relates to the entire system of concepts, beliefs and perceptions that people hold about the world around them. This includes the way people observe and measure their surroundings, how they solve problems and validate new information. It includes the processes whereby knowledge is generated, stored, applied and transmitted to others. (Source: FAO)

Indigenous knowledge are traditions and practices of certain regional, indigenous, or local communities. The growing importance of indigenous knowledge and technologies can be seen, for example, for biodiversity conservation.

Therefore, efforts towards knowledge sharing are a key to make projects work. Kingo Mchombu, author of the Sharing Knowledge Handbook has an interesting point in that regard:

credit: angela7dreams

In most cases, the information needs of the urban and rural poor are seldom taken into account when they are supplied with information to solve their problem of poverty. The assumption being that they know very little and that is why they are poor, thus the knowledge system of the urban and rural poor is totally ignored when supplying them with external information.

It is puzzling to see how often a well intended transfer of knowledge is seen as the right way. As Joseph Stiglitz suggested, most learning initiatives in the development sector have tried to scan globally and apply locally. Also Ben Ramalingam argues: “This ‘pipeline’ approach to learning seriously underestimates the complexity of aid work.”

To my understanding, there is a growing need to link the local with the global in development work. Sharing and mixing knowledge is as important as relying on an interdisciplinary approach. To have people and organizations going this path and linking theses spaces are becoming even more important in the future. My hope is that the social web provides a framework for this broad knowledge sharing and collaboration, but this I will describe in my next post.

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It is quite exciting to see that the United Nations and their different branch-organizations are slowly harnessing the potential of the web in innovative ways. I have previously blogged about the idea of a huge interesting UN aggregator project and the UNDP water wiki during the last web4dv conference. To offer openly information sources and especially to visualize information is essential to understand our complex word from different perspectives.

Gapminder is a great example for that. And another one is the tactical technology collective with this booklet: Visualizing Information for Advocacy: An Introduction to Information Design.

It is promising to see that UN organizations such as UNEP follows the same steps and offers the Atlas of Our Changing Environment on Google Maps:

Through illustrations, satellite images, ground photographs and powered by Google Maps, this interactive media depicts and describes humanity’s past and present impact on the environment.

Today also UNHCR announced a mashup with Google Earth Outreach program, “which punveiled a powerful new online mapping programme that provides an up-close and multifaceted view of some of the world’s major displacement crises and the humanitarian efforts aimed at helping the victims.”

Here is the actual site, but you need Google Earth to load it.

Patrick Philippe Meier writes about it: “the next step for an iRevolution is to enable refugees to access this information on a regular basis. This need not require high-technology. The information could be broadcast by radio, for example.” I believe it will become even more effective when refugees themselves can add information and update those visualized contexts from their perspective.

One other excellent source was recently launched, UNdata, with over 55 million records and comprehensive statistics.

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If you want to find decent information about development aid, Focuss.info is a good source to start from. Basically, it works with a customized Google search, which allows you to search only certain websites — in this case, within many websites relevant to development aid. Focuss.info, an initiative by the Overseas Development Institute ISS institute and in particular Richard Lalleman, goes one step further indexing websites from a community of social bookmarkers. So, through my del.icio.us account, I can contribute to the search easily with my bookmarks. Through a RSS feed, all of these bookmarks are added to the search engine.

The other day I got an email from Richard, telling me I was the social bookmarker of the month. Many thanks! To me, social bookmarking is one of the key tools of the participative web, which gives me valuable information. So, if you also share bookmarks and are interested in topics related to development, you should join this community. Send an email to: info(dot)focuss(at)gmail(dot)com.

And to conclude, for more information about the web2fordev conference, Arne Wunder and Paul Matthews gave a presentation about the evolutionary history of focuss.info.

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[Published in the Internationale Politik magazine in December 2007.]

How the participative Web 2.0 challenges development cooperation – and why this is a chance for development organizations 

Adyaka, a village in the heart of Uganda, needs a new trade school. None of the 4,000 inhabitants have the necessary skills to develop a business plan an the government has not been of any help at all. So the citizens of Adyaka have had to come up with a plan. With the help of the Internet they petitioned, literally, the whole world and asked for support for their village. Via the global neighbor network nabuur.com, volunteers worked in conjunction with the villagers to set up a business plan. Adyaka is not alone it its quest for support. 10.000 volunteers, who provide their skills and expertise, are available to help up to 150 communities. This web-based global neighbor network allows people from all over the world to discuss basic approaches, develop concepts and receive immediate feedback regarding the difficulties and the success during the implementation process.

Nabuur is just one of many platforms with innovative players which have emerged in recent years. The plurality of their approaches has one thing in common: each and every one is using the internet to promote and advance new development ideas. The traditional development cooperation is being confronted with a new, and so far, unfamiliar dynamic. The concept of ‘help to self-help’ defines the roles of the participants in an entirely innovative way: The borrowers pick the lenders.

The internet, since its breakthrough ten years ago, has been the subject of constant change. More than a Billion users have transformed it into a complex and multi-layered social network. The catchword “Web 2.0” allows internet users to create new individual realms within networks, users swap their knowledge and work together to create concepts and develop solutions. How can biomass be used to generate energy? The answer is provided by Howtopedia, a platform for applied knowledge, which supplies simple sets of technical instructions. The technology is secondary — the main motors of this spontaneous Internet movement are openness, transparency, networking and a focus on innovation. Cross-national project ideas are developed uniting a wide range of experts, interested parties and above all people in need of support. Cooperation develops via the peer-to-peer principle, directly, world-wide and very casual. In the past past, users exchanged songs in decentralized networks, now they are exchanging concepts for African villages. Organizations are working together with civil societies, individuals and groups form ad-hoc alliances across borders. Charles Leadbetter, author of the book “We Think“, sees an unlimited creative potential in these flat self-organized networks that are no longer in need of a classical organization. A new generation of social entrepreneurs, activists and volunteers are on their way to establish their own definition of international understanding.

This also opens the door for new and innovative approaches of the entire foreign aid field. Globalgiving.org is a platform that guarantees investors that 85-90% of the investment will be used locally and that the project will get off the ground in less than 60 days. The implementation, the successes and failures can be tracked through the entire cycle of the project — available to the public via the internet. A network of ideas, a global exchange for social and innovative projects, has been created. Benefactors are often rich philanthropists who have access to large sums of money, however, small donations still play a role. The main players of these networks are small teams that rely on individual, direct help and the ability of people to volunteer their time. At Kiva.org, anybody willing to do so can participate in financing a fish booth for a woman in Ecuador directly from their home computer. Micro-lending between the lenders and the borrowers is a direct result of the popular micro-financing in the worldwide fight against poverty. Kiva.org has disbursed 13 Million Dollars with an over 99% rate of repayment. The cooperation within local organizations aided in the development of an effective and transparent approach which questions the status quo of traditional foreign aid organizations. The lender will personally get his update from the woman owning the fish booth regarding the progress of the project. The consequences of these networks are highly underestimated, even though the approach has its own dynamic and will change development cooperation.

These platforms have been developed mainly in the North. In the South however, innovative social networks, which are directly connected with the local needs, have emerged. In Egypt, for example, the opposition movement has successfully established a network via the Internet. Human right activists use weblogs to discuss the current political situation, and also a homegrown Arab public forum has been developed alongside the state-controlled press. Activists use the newest innovative instruments for their campaigns such as posting photographs taken by mobile phones in order to document the manipulation of Egyptian elections. Even the Diaspora is using the internet quite extensively in order to develop and propagate ideas regarding business and common public interest. Mukuru.com, for example, is a platform where one can buy products for relatives living in Zimbabwe. As the internet in Africa has been getting connected with mobile phones, articles, such as presents, can be bought by SMS. The migrants do not only support their own country with money transfers, but they also use the internet strategically to turn acquired knowledge into support for development projects. This sort of ‘brain gain’ results not only in innovative business practices, but also in political change. And so is the case of Mzalendo.com, who has “An eye on the Kenya Parliament”. The process of change does not only depend on financial support, but also on the commitment and dedication and the successful networking capabilities of all people involved.

Internet, in developing countries, promote the discussion of political, economical and social change. Often bloggers act as citizen journalists. They shed light on poverty and criticize policies of governments, even the role of donors. Citizen journalism develops in a multitude of ways and in its own pace, but it is, overall, becoming more and more professional. The Nata Village Blog is painting a vivid picture of the daily fight against AIDS in a Botswana village. Due to its local importance, a blogosphere has developed entirely in Swahili. And then there is the worldwide blogger portal Global Voices which is being translated by volunteers in numerous different languages. The press agency Reuters supports the freedom of the press of Global Voices and posts its content on their own website. The rule among activists is that transformation has to come from the inside out, and one’s own initiative is the main force in the process of change.

The formation of these new social networks for change represents a great opportunity for development organizations: participation in these networks opens up opportunities for a common dialog on development political issues. The World Bank just launched its third blog titled “How to end Poverty in South East Asia”. The United Nations, together with the leaders of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and other organizations, have opened up a dialog with development experts and the public. Pierre Jacquet, Chief Economist of “Agence Francaise de Developpement” (French Development Bank, FDB), spoke out on the press conference for the launch of the blog: “The heads of development organizations are sometimes portrayed as inaccessible bureaucrats, who decide among themselves on the faith of the world’s poorest nations. Through this blog the members will openly share their ideas, their doubts and even their frustrations manifesting their interest for dialog with other development professionals, students and the broader public.” These networks open up a previously unused potential in terms of voluntary commitment and expertise. Development organizations such as the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) can increase the efficiency of their work through targeted participation in these networks. The authors of the book “Wikinomics”, Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, believe that only those organizations, which follow the path of networking, change the culture of their communication and benefit from this productivity potential, will survive.

Whoever is willing to contemplate the genuine complexities of project work cannot fail to see the need for a broad range of expertise and an interdisciplinary approach. The public, cooperative development of project initiatives via Wiki websites, whose text can be edited by every user, is technically simple. However, it calls for a new culture of knowledge exchange. The recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) demands cooperative work due to the complexity of the problems, as well as the potential benefits to be gained from an opening up of organizations and companies. Many enthusiasts of the new web believe that the approach of free and open source software of freeware opens up a new way of problem solving. This goes hand in hand with efforts of the ‘open access’ initiative to supply valuable sources of information, like the Conservation Commons Initiative of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and its database about biodiversity with the help of numerous organizations. The question is how development organizations will benefit and take advantage of those new resources and how much they will contribute in order to achieve their goals more efficiently.

The cycles of change on the internet are fast; the opposition, in light of this dynamic, significant. The additional benefit must constantly be under investigation since there is the possible danger of a cacophony of discourses. No one today can say whether the theory of the Long Tail, which sees the niche as a driving force of the Internet, can be successfully applied to cooperative development work. Another question is if the transparency of the internet is adequate protection from financial fraud.

An obvious challenge is the lack of participation. The cost alone for access to the internet in many African countries is higher than the costs in Europe. The lack of technology is just one of many problems; the qualifications of the users another. The mobile telephone plays an important role, providing a bridge to the Internet with Africa and displaying the highest growth rate of any continent. But still only a small number of the citizens in developing countries have access to the internet. However, it is the social entrepreneurs and non-governmental organizations in Africa which have been quick to make use of the new opportunities, developing a range of initiatives and ideas. Development organizations are slowly joining them and they can learn a lot from the horizontal dialog. As Pierre Jacquet remarked at the opening of “Ideas4Development”: “This blog is in your hand let’s begin the debate.”

Download article: network-of-ideas.pdf

This article does not fall under the creative commons license. All rights reserved.

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Continuing with the web4dev conference in Nairobi, I wanted to add some more personal perspectives. During the conference, on the second day, twenty different workshops were offered. We, Nynke and I, gave a presentation that same day, and as with most other sessions, not many people showed up. We highlighted some lessons we had learnt at the web2fordev conference and showed different examples which will be described further in a future post. From my impressions, many tools of social media were presented, but the philosophy of openness and sharing and the implications for a new era of collaboration had not yet arrived to the web4dev conference. Still, there were promising signs such as the water wiki from UNDP.

There were a lot of interesting people, as well as some examples worth mentioning. One interesting workshop I attended was about the idea for a huge United Nations aggregator, “One Source,” collecting information from all UN organizations. All these agencies such as UNHCR, UNAIDS –just to mention a few– have different IT-systems, content management systems, etc. The idea is to develop common schemes (XML) so all information is available in RSS-Feeds. These feeds would be a independent platform for different devices and can be sorted through all the existing ontologies or taxonomies from the different UN-organisations. Quite an ambitious project, which shall be launched in January 2010. One aspect about it that I liked in particular, is that it will allow to localize feeds, which can be nicely done with mashups through yahoo pipes.

Another session, which was also very interesting, was held by Christopher Fabian from UNICEF, whom I unfortunately missed. But luckily he came to our presentation and told us a bit about his interesting projects. It is all about giving young people a voice in developing countries through the web.

These tools “include using mobile phones to collect data from young people, bootable USB sticks that turn any laptop into a radio station, and technologies to allow people with landlines or mobile phones to record stories onto the Internet.”

For that, one great example is “Our Stories,” which is a “collaborative project that leverages new digital technologies to help capture and preserve individual stories from around the world.” They had a nice video showing to many storytellers a flight around the world; unfortunately it is not on the web. Another tool, which was mainly developed with partner organizations in South Africa, is a poll feature that can be accessed and retrieved via mobile phones.

The first day of the discussion was very much about connectivity and the great challenges on which especially many countries in African focus in that regard. But from having different conversations with many different participants, I concluded once again that the situation varies from country to country. Whereas in some countries through competition the prices are very high, in others, such as Sudan, there are four providers competing for low prices and offering the mobile web everywhere in Sudan.

I also met Helene Karamagi and beside from exchanging some iphone hacking tips, I asked her about the ICT4D in Uganda. She gave me some interesting insights I would like to share here. From her point of view, Africa is going to face promising times when it comes to ICT4D. Her sister runs the famous Brosdi example presented on the web2fordev conference. The following three points she highlighted for Uganda:

1. In Uganda, by next year, all local districts will be connected to the Internet. This will enable a new way for information sharing between rural and urban areas.
2. This means that there will be a high demand for web solutions and all sorts of applications that will lead to a rise on new enterprises in that domain.
3. Whereas in the beginning it was to NGOs, slowly the private sector is getting involved asking how to contribute to ICT4D. It is entrepreneurs, who try to develop business models for connectivity and web solution, which make profit and are potentially more sustainable.

Once again, it shows that information and communication technologies develop very different on industrialized countries. Whereas in Germany companies watch out for the best ring-tone business model, many essential, valuable and innovative ICT-solution are on the rise in developing countries. David Galipeau, who I met first on the little barcamp kind of event before the conference, underlines this development and says that it is on the eighty per cent of the south where the future innovations will come from and not the 20 per cent of the north. By the way he just started a foundation called eighty20.org.

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This week two interesting web2.0 projects for development were released. One is a new website from Ebay called MicroPlace, and the other is a new blog called ideas 4 development. Slowly, big players such as development organizations or companies use web2.0 technology to promote discussions around development or to bundle their capacity to leverage the power of micro-financing.

Ideas 4 development
Some days ago I got an email from Quentin Lebègue telling me about a new blog:

I read your post “an overview of blogging for development“. You’re right, there are not a lot of blogs about development. I wanted to present you a new collective and international blog on development: Ideas for development.

At first, I was surprised about the “viral marketing” for such a “top” blog, but then I was also impressed about how people behind it take the blogosphere and its networked conversations serious. I read some of its articles and followed with interest that the posts from people such as Pascal Lamy from the WTO have triggered some first discussions. I could not find any provocative comments or expressions of doubt or frustration as Pierre Jacquet (Chief Economist – Agence Francaise de Developpement) said on the launching press conference:

“The heads of development organizations are sometimes portrayed as inaccessible bureaucrats, who decide among themselves on the faith of the world’s poorest nations. Through this blog the members will openly share their ideas, their doubts and even their frustrations manifesting their interest for dialogue with other development professionals, students and the broader public. We hope that this initiative will be the provider of fresh ideas and a catalyst for improvements in the way multilateral and bilateral organizations, as well as their partners in the south, see development. This blog is in your hand let’s begin the debate.”

I find that the approach of the blog goes in the right direction and this blog will lead to an authentic conversation, if the above taken statement is meant serious. The need for an open dialogue is obvious or inescapable. The discussion will be held anyway and its audience is on the rise, even the old media is following it. Therefore, I wonder why is it limited to the directors of such organizations? I am curious what the outcome would be? Will it then be used as a feedback mechanism? Will the comments be back channelled to the development organizations and lead to change? For example, so far, not a single commenter seems to have an answer, and some blog posts are pretty close to a public relation message.

MicroPlace – Invest Wisely. End Poverty.
The second interesting news this week was about a platform for microfinance called MicroPlace, where according to Ebay “you can make investments that reach millions of hard-working poor people worldwide.” It is an interesting attempt to widen the scope of peer to peer lending, to connect lenders and grant seekers worldwide in a transparent process. NextBillion.net describes in their interesting post the difference between Microplace and Kiva.

Big players – a shift in the web2fordev field?
These two examples show that slowly conventional and rather big actors are harnessing the potential of web2.0 for development. Small agile players such as Kiva.org and many fascinating blogs out there proved the innovative and network potential of web2.0 tools. I wonder whether they will be capable of a two way conversation and whether their work mode is web2.0 compatible, as there is so little about tools and much more about culture. Granting Oxfam and Care, guests commentary fields, are just the beginning. Organizations gradually will have to interact with a multitude of actors ranging from individual activists, groups, NGOs, business and so forth.
So far the most innovative ideas came from individuals or teams, and the Internet helps millions of people to benefit from this ideas. However, in the case of MicroPlace, “a new peer-to-peer lending platform backed by eBay that has gone through all the necessary SEC regulatory hoops that make it possible for investors to invest in these individuals and make a return on their investment.” I wonder to which extend the capacity is needed to get these platforms established. So far, to me, the strength lies in social networks through blogs and all kinds of innovative platforms driven by enthusiasts.

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Thanks to Tom L. and Peter Ballantayne for their very interesting remarks on my post “an overview of blogging for development.” Peter argued that there are a lot different blogs in development aid or international cooperation out there and “must be loads more, just not very visible.” And Tom had a great point:

What’s probably as important as noting the existence of the blogs themselves is tracking the development of the aid-development blogosphere, examining the connections (strength, regularity, theme) between blogs and seeing if there are purposive and deliberate communities building out there. Not many groups are actually taking aggregation a step further and building connections and seeking to create value to the profession from the new-found willingness to share online.

I agree with Peter that there is probably much more of it out there, but I criticize that in most cases it is not linked and therefore has no networks. And as Tom rightly points out, there is little knowledge sharing and discourse between different bloggers, different organizations. I give you three examples how different the approaches are and what is behind them. I analyzed all three blogs with technorati.com and aiderss.com to find out about their network and discussions.

Blog World Hunger
This blog is from the International Food Policy Research Institute. They also presented their web2.0 approach on the web2fordev conference. They have been experimenting with blogs internally for knowledge sharing for already some years. This internal blogging seemed to me quite vibrant since it involves a lot of staff. However, when you look at the external blog, you have a complete contrast. Six posts and seven comments in 2007. I wonder why they even use a blog and not a normal website. In Technorati, it has 9 blog reactions in 2007 (other blogs linking to it), and in del.icio.us it has been bookmarked only one time (from me!).
Certainly not a blog to network nor discuss the issue of world hunger with a broader community. For example it does not link to any other blog. It seems to be a place to just drop various documents and articles.

The following two blogs are very different in which one is grassroot driven and the other from the World Bank.

William Kamkwamba’s Malawi Windmill Blog
This is a blog about William Kamkwamba, the 19-year-old self-taught engineer who built a windmill power system for his family’s home in Malawi. His story was broadcasted at the TEDGlobal 2007 in Tanzania. (Check out all the other great presentations). His blog, which started back in June, got over 222 blog reactions according to Technorati. It has been commented 52 times and it has been bookmarked 48 times in del.icio.us. No doubt that that blog is a great storyteller and invites to read and interact. It also clearly is meant to support William in his eduction. Furthermore, it has been nicely embedded into the wider blogosphere and the result is remarkable. It has big attention.

End poverty in South Asia
This is a blog run by the Shanta Devarajan, the Chief Economist of the South Asia Region at the World Bank. His statement “End poverty in one generation. It can be done in one generation” makes the goal clear. It is quite an offensive approach for an organization such as the world bank in my opinion. This has triggered already 49 comments two 12 posts since it started in September, and it has aroused over 20 blog reactions so far. Similar to William’s blog and in contrast to the world hunger blog, it gives a personal perspective, and evokes feedback. However, I am curious to see how an organization such as the world bank will keep such an open discourse and how it can contribute:

This is why I am starting this blog. To contribute to the debate (sometimes, to start one) with ideas, analysis and evidence so that South Asians—and people who care about South Asia—can have a dialogue on these critically important issues, so that together we can end poverty in South Asia. (Shanta Devarajan)

In conclusion, I think blogs are used in more and more different ways. However, blogs are often not part of networks nor refer to each other. The communication is a one way street or the discourse is not happening in a social network of blogs. And interestingly there is still a wide gap between the many piles of documents for development themes and the few pioneers tempting to have a two way conversation about development.

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I was interviewed by the Deutsche Welle (German version) last week during the web2fordev conference. As a result from the interview, an interesting article was published (Entwicklungshilfe 2.0) in which not only the potential of web2.o in the context of development is discussed, but it is also questioned whether web2.o will do a shift to development aid in general. Interesting point I thought, and a bit visionary. “With the access to information,” the author writes, “development aid can come closer to its goal to help for self help.”

The articles also describes a bit the work of Kabissa in Africa, and emphasizes the potentials for organisations to network more effectively and share knowledge. I know, from my working experience with civil society in Egypt, that cooperation between civil society is a key factor, therefore I am very curious to see how this will develop within the next years. Right now it seems to me that it is often driven by the diaspora or development agencies although there are many great grassroot initiatives.

The article in general does not grasp exactly the implications of we2.0 for development aid. It mixes up different notions of development. But, on the other hand, it highlights the two way conversation for development and what it could mean for development organizations to be much better connected with beneficiaries and obtain direct feedback. But as I questioned before on a panel of the web2fordev conference, “Web2.0 offers and relies on open communication and knowledge sharing. Therefore it has great potential for participation and innovation. But are development organizations ready for this kind of openness?”

Full article translated by google

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A great first day on the web2fordev conference lies behind me. I arrived on Sunday and already had the pleasure to sit around with my fellow bloggers – journalists from Africa. Lately they already made some very interesting podcasts and during the conference we will have video interviews, but also direct video coverage from selected sessions. It is so far a great atmosphere with people from all around the world as far as the Fidschi, South Sea. Today we focused on training for web2.0 beginners. I did two presentation on blogging and tagging together with Tobias Eigen, Karel Novotny and Pier Andrea Pirani and many more were involved.

We are the FAO headquarter in Rome and we already had interesting discussions on web2fordev. I really liked a presentation by Janyanta Chatterjee about Sharing farmers knowledge through audioblog, which shows the impressive potential of these new technologies. And it will become even more effective ones it goes over mobile phones.

I really liked the openness and high interest of all participants, which was very motivating as a presenter. Once again I experienced how complex web2.0 is and how many facets it has. Blogging was fairly easy to present, whereas the different purposes of blogging are often not known. I presented the personal blog approach, a perspective on an internal group blog, the Nata village blog and the Voices of the field blog.

Very intriguing was a discussion during our tagging presentation. Even though tagging sounds in general easy, I experienced once again, how different tagging is used and therefore how tricky it is to explain it. Nevertheless the interest by audience showed to me that many sense the power in it. I will write the next days more posts from the conference either here or at the web2fordev blog.

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Background
As some of you might already know I work for GTZ (German Technical Cooperation), and I am of course very interested in the potential of the web towards development aid and international cooperation. Surprisingly–and correct me if I am wrong!–but to me, it seems there are not many blogs out their in this field yet. There are of course a lot of portals –and two of the big ones are the development gateway or eldis.org. However, in my opinion, the development sector has yet not grasped the potential of web2.0. I already argued in a post that the result is that this shift, so far, is challenging traditional development agencies.

What is there in the world wide web?
One interesting website is aid worker network, which contains personal blogs from all around the world. There are also individual blogs that describe in an authentic and provoking way how it is to work in this field. Check out these examples from Afghanistan and Sudan.
The science world is also blogging, and such is the case of Oversea Development Institute or professors such as Dan Rodrik for international political economy, or John Daly for knowledge for development. But once again, I am surprised that for such an international topic, blogs are not used in a wider scale. For example, why aren’t there any more professors having blogs? And why so few development organizations offer blogs? Some organisations in this field have started experimenting with it (Worldbank) or using it as a first step internally (GTZ, UN etc.).

Blogs for storytelling
As blogs can have different purposes and styles of expression, in the humanitarian relief field, they seem to be quite successfully used. The Guardian issued an interesting article (not online available) a few weeks ago, which highlights the potential for blogs and how organisations such as Oxfam or the International Rescue Comittee (IRC) use them as an strategic communication tool. Other examples are “Voices from the field“, representing the work from IRC and impressions from all around the world; and Ian Bray from Oxfam blogging for BBC about the recent flood in India.

In old times, it took weeks to get information form disasters into the global media and “now we can get blogs or photos up in just hours, which are able to get voices of ordinary people heard by a potential audiences of millions and can really press home the desperation and emergency situation happening on the ground.” So, in a way donors can read from the beneficiaries about what has happened to their money. The article continues, especially the Tsunami “revolutionised the aid world’s use of digital media”, being it the above described as different communication or the direct funding over the web. Blogging itself opens new fast ways of coverage, but even more importantly, an individual perspective from persons concerned.

The difference technology made
The economist argues in a recent article, “technology is transforming humanitarian relief—and shifting the balance of power between donors and recipients.” The article describes how Internet and mobile phones offer new instruments to coordinate more efficiently disaster relief. Relief Web is a portal to coordinate these efforts. It describes also that communication is not a one way street, through more cheaply available technology such as mobile phones, also small NGOs or even individuals can engage. So, “technology completely alters the way humanitarian work is done.” “In the humanitarian operation of the future,” says Save the Children’s Mr Porter, “beneficiaries of emergency aid will use technology to tell us what they need—cash, food, or education—find out from us what to expect, and track its arrival, just as we can track an order from Amazon.com now.”

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• Advocacy2.0: Network-centric advocacy
  A nice presentation about new potentials for activism over the web.
• GlobalGiving Decision Markets
  GlobalGiving is a platform to initiate projects and find partners for them. In August, they started a kind of stock-market experiment to speculate about which project has the greatest chance of succeeding on GlobalGiving.com (via Giulio)
• How wiki software is changing communication
  Although I think it is the people and not the software who change communication, this great articles describes how the United Nations use wikis, internally and worldwide, to discuss on development. “Imagine millions of people connecting with world leaders and thinkers to discuss, debate and collaborate on everything from global politics to climate change.”
• Focuss: Search engine for the development field and international cooperation
  Focuss is an effort to collect different information sources over social bookmarking and google custom search. I tested the search engine and the results were okay. However, I am, in general, not convinced about the advantage of google custom search. Does it really give better search results than a conventional google search?
• Knowledge worker2.0
  “Knowledge management (and therefore knowledge work) is largely stuck in the past, with a focus on process and tools.” A great presentation about the social and technological shift of knowledge management.
• Office 2.0 Database
  I have not seen yet anywhere else such a comprehensive list of web2.0 software for the office: From bookmarks, over group manager and presentations, to web conference.

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I have already written before about the concept of open source, but this time I want to highlight the potential of free and open source software (FOSS). I attended a while ago an interesting presentation on free and open source software by Andrea Götzke and Balthas Seibold. What I found most interesting about the presentation were the manifold effects of FOSS:

• Economy
  Cost savings from purchasing software. The market barrier is low for new businesses, but the overall added value is higher because the software can be developed locally. With services for hardware and the web, FOSS offers local employment and development of software and generates though more income locally.
• Education
  FOSS offers universal access. The freedom to study the code of software. In Venezuela, for example, FOSS gave access to education because the whole infrastructure is much cheaper there and own training capacity was built. FOSS can act as a free knowledge transfer and create human capital e.g. through software development. It, therefore, can lead to a “brain gain”. FOSS allows and needs a complete different approach of collaborative work project with high value on common learning.
• Culture
  The development and usage of FOSS can contribute to the country cultural heritage. Own developed software products can be better adapted to local needs and offered in many languages. Own software solutions open new venues of knowledge sharing and learning.
• Law
  Open source software is freely available and guarantees legal security. FOSS offers a sustainable technological independence.

Free Open Source Software represents certain values – sharing, collaborating, community and social development. These values have deep roots in human nature and could be found in all societies at all times. They believe this model – developing software by a community of peer reviewed activists, participants, employees and gifting the results back into the community to be further developed by others thus extending the cycle – could be extended to economic and social development in Africa. It is in this context that the FOSS model emerges as a powerful model for African development. From Brenda Zulu

Challenges

• For a high reliability on FOSS, a critical community is needed, which constantly tests and changes the source code. It needs open culture, which is not always prevailing.
• Proprietary software is also available illegally and cheap, so it offers no incentive to switch to FOSS.
• In many countries the FOSS community is very small and the interaction in a network needs the web and therefore connectivity, which is often not available.
• Much has been done in translating software, therefore many web software is available in different languages. But that is not the case with document material.
• In many countries a whole training infrastructure has to be build to switch to open source software. For example, the Venezuelan Government decided to adopt open source some years ago, and build with it many resources, own training and development infrastructure.

I often got the feedback from practitioners that it also depends on the needs of each particular case. Proprietary software can be a better solution or is anyway the only one available. I am sure I missed many points and factors, but I will continue later on with that topic.

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