ICTworks by Inveneo

Women of Uganda Network (WOUGNET) is a non-governmental organization initiated in May 2000 by several women’s organisations in Uganda to develop the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) among women as tools to share information and address issues collectively. The WOUGNET Junior ICT Expert is a dynamic, self-motivated, and innovative person who is passionate about the use of ICTs in improving the lives of women and youth in Uganda. Under supervision of the Senior Program Officer - Technical Support Program, the Junior ICT Expert will undertake activities in the area of ICT for development, particularly in the implementation of WOUGNET programs and initiatives.

More details: http://www.spidercenter.org/node/392

In May 2010 the Ushahidi blog posted an awesome post fromChris Blow which was highlighting the importance of working through a Ushahidi project by thinking that the tool is only 10% of your project.

I loved that blog post and still think it is a very actual problem not only with Ushahidi deployments around the world, but in general with the increasing use of technology for development or human rights.

Working as New Media consultant for several project in information management based on the use of FOSS I have been encountering this problem several times, and I think that there are several misconception tat lead to the fact that we can see and increasing use in technology but not always this leads to an increase in the efficacy of those projects.

I will highlight here some of those misconceptions:

1. If it is free it is easy.

There is an incredible growing development of free open source software that is free and available for everyone in the net, like FrontlineSMS, Ushahidi, Freedom Fone etc. The fact that those tools are free makes organizations and individual that wants to use them think that they are easy to use. On one side this is true, but on the other side the fact that the tools is free doesn’t mean that the use of the tool is free, or that the project design based on this tool will be free. You can use volunteer as much as you want, but a project to work needs to be based on professional work and professional approaches. The tools is free, the professionalism behind the project is not.

2. Tech is difficult, non tech is easy.

If you are not a tech person everything that is tech seems very obscure and difficult. I myself cannot get around a Ushahidi installation without swearing a lot, calling friends to help me, getting 100 errors and finally get it done after 8 hours of work. A good developer gets it done in not more than 20 minutes. For this reason I was the first one thinking that the tech part of any technology based project is the most important one. Ones I started working on this I realized that this is really not the case. I don’t want to take out any merit to the awesome job that web developers and programmers do, but their job still is and will be 10% of any project if not less.

An example of this is the Ushahidi platforms done in Egypt for the Parliamentary elections: 5 platforms were set up to monitor the elections. The only one of them that was a huge success in terms of report gathered, quality of information, verification process and structure was the U-Shahid one. Why? I would love to say that this is because I worked on it (conflict of interest?) but the true is that in that project the tech part was really only the 10%: the project was a 5 months projects, with massive trainings, a month of project design, evaluation and monitoring system set up, sustainability study on the systems already present in the country.

The project was a success because of everything that you cannot see in the platform and that was the real difference in that project and the others: the massive investment in terms of time, money and human resources that the project deployed. Tech is not easy but either is the non -tech part of the project.

3. The use of technology is an end in itself.

Lots of people are getting increasingly excited with the use of technology. And with reasons: developing and poor countries as well as repressive regime are witnessing the emergence of new phenomenon of digital activism that are changing the political and social landscape and even if the debate on their efficacy or not is still going on, there is no doubt that those technologies are having an effect. But there is also a decreasing number, in my opinion of understanding of what is success in a technology based project: I am witnessing more and more a quantitative approach to the use of technology and less and less a qualitative approach.

The Ushahidi platform in this is a good example: people mostly look at the number of reports in a platform, or how many time has been used or viewed at, but not at what the reports are saying, who is following up on the reports, what the effect of the use of the platform is. Technology is still most of the time an end in itself and not just a way to develop a project. This can be very problematic because technology is not a panacea, and it cannot be the goal: sometimes thing are better without the use of technology or sometimes it is just not the right tool for that problem.

Not everything will be solved with the use of technology. But if you know when and how to use it, how to integrate with local systems, how to make it meaningful in the context of operations: if you know what your goal is and the technology is only one of the means to achieve it, and you are not afraid to sacrifice the toll for the goal, than you may succeed.

4. If the technology works the project works.

Doing a project based on the use of technology sometimes leads to the fact that ones the tech part is done and the technology is working people think that this will solve all the issues related to that project. In November I was at an Oxfam conference and doing my presentation on the only tech panel of the conference a guy did an intervention highlighting the fact that he couldn’t see how the use of technology for human right monitoring could have prevented or helped during the Sri Lankan conflict, and how technology is not helping in solving political issues. His intervention was the result of the fact that he was expecting technology to be the ultimate solution: if you use digital technology you may achieve more information, more accurate information, you may spread the world and make things more visible, but you will not solve all the problems.

Lets’ take the example of Sudan Sentinel: everyone is really excited about that project, and I think it is a great idea. On the other side, it is really going to change anything? I mean, do we really need that to know that there are mass atrocities happening in Sudan? Don’t the UN Security Council receive monthly reports from the UN mission there on the situation? Don’t all the NGOs and agencies working there spread the voice about what is going on? Didn’t the ICC already issue an arrest order on Bashir because of the mass atrocities? So why the hell to spend 750.000 dollars for a website that will tell us what we already know???

The reason is that the technology may be working perfectly, but what will make this project successful is if the use of this technology will lead to more awareness of the situation, to more people pushing their governments in doing something, to more visibility on the issue in terms of public opinion and the impossibility to say: I didn’t know. Will this be achieved? We will see, but we need to consider the fact that even if the technology is working, the project may be a complete waste of money and time. And also, we want also to consider that fact that maybe those 750.000 dollars would have achieved more if used to sustain local actors and local driven peace-building projects, but those are speculations of course…

As Chris said “Systems like Ushahidi have turned enormous communication barriers into a trivial installation and training process. But there is a whole other 90% of real work”. If you think that hiring and paying lot of money for a developer to install a platform and customize it will make your project works, you are wrong. It will make the technology works, meaning you still have to work on the other 90%.

This post was originally published as Why Technology is 10%

The Free and Open Source Software Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA) in cooperation with InWEnt Capacity Building International, Germany, invites to participate in a Linux administration Training of Trainers (LToT1) workshop in Nairobi, Kenya as well as in Johannesburg, South Africa.

This course prepares participants for Linux Professional Institute (LPI) certification Level 1 as well as to become Linux trainers in their own right. After the training, the trainers will sit for examination to be certified as Level 1 Linux professionals. LPI is a distribution and vendor-neutral standard for evaluating the competency of Linux professionals

Participants will receive intensive training on LPIC-1, and will also commit to book and sit the exams at the end of the training. They will also receive pedagogical training and how to effectively train others in the subject, as well as training materials that will be developed under the project.

Apply Today!

The 1st Regional Training of Trainers in Nairobi, Kenya will take place from 1st - 12th November 2010 (following an online learning phase from 4-29 October). It is part of the ict@innovation programme which aims at building capacities for African small and medium ICT enterprises to do business with Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).

The 2nd regional training of trainers will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa and will take place between 14th and 25th February 2011, following an online e-learning phase between January 10, and February 4, 2011. The application deadline for the 2nd ToT is November 15, 2010.

We seek professionals and institutions, who have firm plans to make trainings on FOSS Certification a part of their regular business and/or teaching activities or upgrade existing certification efforts. Successful applicants will convincingly demonstrate how they plan to carry out at least three trainings on the subject in their own country during 2011-12, and make LPI Certification training a permanent part of their business and/or teaching activities in the future.

Why become an LPIC trainer?

A major barrier against adoption and deployment of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in sub-Saharan Africa is the lack of human resources with FOSS skills. This programme aims to address the problem by qualifying trainers, so that these trainers in turn will be able to multiply their expertise for a self-sustaining development of FOSS human resources.

The training of trainers is offered to institutions with a strong commitment to introduce the knowledge of Linux to their staff members and communities. This should be done by implementing trainings by the LPI 1 certified representatives within three months after this programme.

Congrats to ict@innovation for launching the first East African Regional FOSS Business Models Course that seeks to answer the key question of "How can African IT-businesses make money with Free and Open Source Software?"

This advanced course will bring together over 20 experts from universities, training institutions and private sector in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda. Its main goal is to form a corps of trainers and advocates who are equipped to spread the word on Free and Open Source and its potential for IT-companies in Africa. The course inter alia builds on more than eight practical case studies of African IT companies, who use FOSS to generate income drive innovation, add local value and provide legal, low-cost and high quality software solutions to businesses and administrations in their countries.

Inveneo Certifed ICT Partner, James Wire of Linux Solutions was moved to tears by the opening ceremonies:

"On August 31st 2009, on a good Ugandan monday morning, I was invited to address the participants as the General Secretary of the Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa, I could hardly hold back my tears of excitement. Not only did I appreciate how far we have come, I also quickly made a mental comparison of how we used to previously confine our Open Source discussions to evening drinking sprees in dimly lit dingy pubs and now here we were in a state of the art four star hotel with Open Source being the reason. The two weeks training has brought together participants from Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi.

The most unique aspect about this training is that all the content was prepared by Africans with African experiences in mind. This was intentionally done to ensure that the skills and knowledge passed on does not become a white elephant for the participants. With many African countries having lots of similarities in terms of society setup and management, I believe a lot of fruit will come out of this training."

See more about FOSSFA and InWEnt launching first East African regional course on Business and Open Source in Kampala, Uganda