ICTworks by Inveneo

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%

At mHealth Summit 2010, Inveneo is running a live conference SMS system where you can participate in both an SMS Demo and Live Debate from anywhere in the world.

mHealth SMS demo in action

Live Debate

Leading up to the Live Debate Session, you can vote your opinion. Does mHealth extend or disrupt modern mHealth systems?

Voice your opinion by texting the keyword EXTEND or DISRUPT and your opinion to +1.202.506.0148 from anywhere in the world. Your vote will be added to the debate and you can follow the action on the mHealth Summit tweet feed.

SMS Demo

Inveneo has teamed with Frontline:SMS to show how text messaging can extend the reach of rural healthcare services using energy-efficient computing and SMS automation software.

Interact with the demonstration by texting the keyword MHEALTH to +1.202.506.0148 from anywhere in the world. You'll then see how texts can help in child planning, pregnancy, child birth, and HIV testing.

Welcome to the ICTworks bi-weekly ICT4D Retrospective, where we condense the last two weeks of news into a succinct list of links for your perusal. If you want your news to be featured, email them to ritse [at] ritseonline [dot] com To get these links faster, follow me on Twitter: @RitseOnline

Motivation by Curiosity: "A teacher who can be replaced by a machine should be", says Arthur C. Clarke. Do you agree? Education scientist Sugata Mitra discusses the results of his experiments in child-driven education using computers during a talk given at TEDGlobal 2010.

Slashed: The price wars that have agitated Kenya’s mobile market take a new turn as Safaricom slashes prices by 94%. Will this activity hurt investment within the industry?

Rent-A-Computer, Government-Style: The government of India seeks to overcome cost barriers to computer literacy by providing computer rental options in rural areas. Learn more about this pilot project.

A is for Android: Google and Huawei launched the relatively affordable IDEOS Android Phone in Kenya last week, will this fragment ICT development in Africa?

Distance Matters: Ken Banks offers some thoughts on the problem of distance between ICT4D problem and ICT4D problem-solver.

A Gender Myth-Buster: According to a recent study, mobile ownership rates of women have surpassed that of men...in South Africa. Is the gap finally closing?

In The World of Academia: Ismael Peña-López lived-blogged the just-concluded IPID Postgraduate Symposium, where masters and doctoral students presented their research on a variety of topics within the field of ICT4D - Day 1, Day 2

Job-Hunting for the Unlettered: Microsoft Research India and Babajob have collaborated on an innovative text-free UI that allows non-literate people use computers to find jobs. This development seems to hold some promise for the non-formal education sector.

Got A Question about Mobile? MobileActive.org continues to be the go-to spot for most anything on mobile. Check out their new resource guide on using mobile for data collection.

Get a Job in ICT4D
IREX (Washington DC, USA): Program Associate
Tactical Technology Collective (Bangalore, India): Info-Activism Programme Coordinator

Finally…the ICT4D Spotlight of the Week: FrontlineSMS:Legal
This new iteration of the vastly popular FrontlineSMS product is focused on helping its users "bridge the distance between communities and the legal services they need most, using low-cost mobile tools".

Sending MMS your way: On August 26, the good folks over at FrontlineSMS, upped the ante with the addition of MMS capabilities to the latest release of their software. Imagine the doors this will open up for health-care delivery, disaster management, eLearning...

Facebook is the mobile internet

The Facebook Factor: According to a recent report, the mobile penetration rate in Africa stands at 47% and there seems to be a significant growth in the number people accessing the web...to use Facebook! Do you see a correlation between Facebook use and mobile web adoption rates?

eDevelopment Defined: Are you working with "ICTs for development" or working for "development with ICTs"? Read IICD's take on the matter.

Quality Assured. Genuine Product: The war against the proliferation of fake medicines could take a new turn with the introduction of a new service that allows people confirm the authenticity of a drug via SMS. Learn more about .

Techno-Optimism: The ICT4D Jester speaks once again.

1,000 Telecentres in Rwanda by 2015? Paul Barera, Executive Director of Rwanda Telecentre Network (RTN), hopes to reduce the digital divided by deploying 1,000 telecentres by 2015. An upcoming handbook provides a case for why and how this ambitious goal will be accomplished.

e-Voting boosts economies: African ICT firms are reaping economic benefits from the transition to e-voting.

m4D. Apps4D. ICT4D. Confused, yet? This Venn diagram provides some clarification.

Finally...the ICT4D Spotlight of the Week: The Talking Book
The Talking Book is a programmable audio computer that shares locally-relevant knowledge and improves literacy. While many of you are already familiar with this project, they've had a pretty busy summer.

P.S. We would like use this spot to plug people, projects or organizations that are using creative yet appropriate ICTs in the field of international development, please leave us a comment if you would like to be highlighted.

To get these links faster, follow me on Twitter: @RitseOnline