Crowdsourcing: Fix my road

Written by on July 18, 2011
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Imperfect information on the delivery of basic services make its difficult for policy-makers to manage principal-agent problems in the delivery chain and for recipients to hold their governments accountable. Crowdsourced information can help to fix feedback loops and new technologies and apps are making this feasible. I wanted to test out one of the most talked about platforms–Ushahidi. So before a recent trip to PNG I set up the FixMyRoad website using Crowdmap–a web-based version [...] Read more »

Virtual frontline for emergencies

Written by on September 2, 2010

Getting reliable and up to date information on humanitarian emergencies and conflicts is a major challenge for development agencies. Often, global crises are met by too little, too late.  News of events on the ground become lost and we are left learning lessons for the future rather than tackling the causes of the crisis. The rights of those in the centre of crisis and conflicts are often pushed aside and innocent people are killed or [...] Read more »

How can beneficiaries monitor aid projects?

Written by on May 23, 2010

Monitoring it happen There is a growing movement among NGOs to use technology to involve communities in the monitoring of projects, so that people can hold donors and governments accountable for the delivery of services. Owen Barder highlights a promising approach by Daraja in Tanzania which is going to use SMS messaging to provide feedback about which water points are working. GlobalGiving is using Ushahidi and working with Map Kibera. They’ve been training volunteers to collect stories [...] Read more »

More mobile phones, better apps

Written by on April 17, 2010

We’re big fans of mobile technology for development, so it’s great to read about some good apps. It is well known that India now has nearly 600m mobile phones. But is this technological revolution reaching the poorest parts of the country? We’ve gone through the data on mobile phone subscriptions and found that the poorest states are experiencing the fastest growth in connections. There were 150m mobile phone subscribers in India’s four poorest states (Bihar, [...] Read more »

Bihar leads on mobile phone growth

Written by on February 21, 2010

It is well known that India now has more than 500m mobile phones. But is this technological revolution reaching the poorest parts of the country? We’ve just gone through the TRAI data on mobile phone subscriptions and found that the poorest states are experiencing the fastest growth in connections. There were 130m mobile phone subscribers in India’s four poorest states (Bihar, Orissa, Madyha Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh) as of end Nov 2009). Growth of subscriptions [...] Read more »

Vote report India

Written by on February 13, 2010

Imagine being able to gather data on service delivery, direct from the client. eMoksha’s ‘crowdsourcing’ tool is an exciting way to do just that, as shown in their election monitoring work in India. Read more »