How to Buy M&E Software and Not Get Bamboozled
While there is no way to guarantee that M&E software will solve all of your problems or make all of your colleagues happy, there are three things you can...
How We Can Improve Open Source Software Projects
Next year will mark 20 years since the term “open source software” was officially coined, and the “free software” movement has been around even longer....
What About Facebook Messenger Chatbots for Development?
Bolsa Familia is the Brazilian Government program for conditional income-transfers serving 14 million families living in poverty throughout the country.
However,...
5 Lessons Learned in Creating Webmaker, a Mobile Content Publishing Platform
Recently, the Mozilla Foundation product development team set off to design a new, general purpose content publishing platform that could enable creativity among...
3 Tensions with Software Sustainability in ICT4D
At the Software Sustainability Institute, we are dedicated to making software a bonafide research output, and we argue that good software practices create better...
Do You Eat Your Own ICT4D Dog Food?
In software development, there is a term called “eating your own dog food” – meaning using your own software to better understand and address your...
How to Navigate Open Source Decisions Like a Techie
Much has been said about the power of open source software for ICT4D, but there’s seemingly little on how to navigate the decisions around how to use, build,...
9 Tricks for Hacking Google Sheets for Better M&E
Google Sheets can be a powerful tool for real-time monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning. But how can you optimize your setup to work with data that is...
5 Reasons Why Platforms Are Better Than Bespoke Technical Solutions
For many organizations, the struggle to choose between platform and bespoke solutions is becoming more and more unwieldy as technology choices increase exponentially....
How Can Open Source Software be Sustainable in International Development?
Recently Chris Fabian made the very interesting declaration. Since the UN’s charter is to produce public goods, he says “we do everything Open Source and Public...