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More Tech Salons About data collection

  • sensitive services

    9 Considerations for Designing Safe Digital Solutions for Sensitive Services

    New York | By on March 28, 2023 | Comments Off on 9 Considerations for Designing Safe Digital Solutions for Sensitive Services

    As the world became more digital in the wake of COVID-19, the number of mobile applications and online services and support increased exponentially. Many of these apps offer important support to people who live and move in contexts where they are at risk. Digital apps for sensitive services (such as mental health, reproductive health, shelter…

  • Bigger, Better Data and Resilience: What’s the Link?

    New York | By on May 15, 2014 | Comments Off on Bigger, Better Data and Resilience: What’s the Link?

    The NYC Technology Salon on February 28th examined the connection between bigger, better data and resilience. We held morning and afternoon Salons due to the high response rate for the topic. Jake Porway, DataKind; Emmanuel Letouzé, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative; and Elizabeth Eagen, Open Society Foundations; were our lead discussants for the morning. Max Shron, Data…

  • Who Does Monitoring and Evaluation and Uses the F-Word?

    Washington DC | By on February 11, 2014 | Comments Off on Who Does Monitoring and Evaluation and Uses the F-Word?

    33,000 stores, 61 years of business, and more than 1 billion served. Can you guess which organization these numbers are associated with? McDonald’s. Imagine if development organizations had these kinds of statistics. Imagine if they could track results to this degree. Would programs save money? Be more efficient? What would it take to harness data…

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  • 8 Tips to Publish Open Data in Preparation for IATI

    Washington DC | By on December 3, 2013 | Comments Off on 8 Tips to Publish Open Data in Preparation for IATI

    Siobhan Green, the founder of Sonjara attended the Technology Salon exploring “How Can USAID Development Partners Implement IATI?” and was inspired to define 8 steps to publish Open Data to prepare for the day when we all will need to be compliant with the International Aid Transparency Initiative standards. Here is her list:

  • How New Technologies Can Make Every Voice Count in Government

    London | By on July 15, 2013 | Comments Off on How New Technologies Can Make Every Voice Count in Government

    Ten years ago, leveraging information and communication technology for development was all about getting people an email address. Today, there is an explosion in access to ICT thanks to mobile technologies – the CEO of Ericsson recently predicted, 92% of the world’s inhabitants will live in an area with mobile reception coverage by 2018 (see…

  • Why Information Security Matters in ICT4D

    Washington DC | By on April 2, 2013 | Comments Off on Why Information Security Matters in ICT4D

    The Technology Salon on Why Does Information Security Matter in International Development? was a predictably raucous debate on finding a sane balance between using 30-character passwords with symbols, numbers, and mixed-case letters that must be changed every month for your time sheet systems… and taking basic security measures to protect super-private data.

  • A Computer Can Do Your International Development Job Thanks to Open Data

    Washington DC | By on February 21, 2013 | Comments Off on A Computer Can Do Your International Development Job Thanks to Open Data

    At a recent Technology Salon on “How Can We Make Data Useful for Development,” one of the participants put forth an interesting question to the group: Could computers make better international development decisions than humans?

  • How to Use ICT for Citizen Participation

    Washington DC | By on February 11, 2013 | Comments Off on How to Use ICT for Citizen Participation

    The model citizen participation process has citizens holding their governments accountable to deliver quality public services in a transparent and responsive manner. At the recent Technology Salon on How Can ICT’s Support Citizen Engagement with Governments? around 30 thought leaders debated the best ways to empower citizens and governments to define what a government should…

  • The Top 6 Technology Challenges in International Development

    Nairobi | By on December 3, 2012 | Comments Off on The Top 6 Technology Challenges in International Development

    Let us be honest with ourselves. Most of the shiny, flashy new technology is not designed for the developing world we care about. Technology is designed for the rich Hardware designers in rich countries are turning out super light laptops and tablets of glass to impress their rich peers. Software developers are creating apps for…

  • The Best Mobile Data Collection System Exists: Choice is the Challenge

    Washington DC | By on September 24, 2012 | Comments Off on The Best Mobile Data Collection System Exists: Choice is the Challenge

    You might think that the topic of collecting data via mobile devices would be a rather dry discussion of data management and statistical methodology. You would be very, very wrong. The Technology Salon all but came to blows as we wrestled with privacy issues, total costs of ownership, and other elephants in the room. When…

  • 12 Lessons Learned with ICTs for Monitoring and Accountability

    New York | By on August 17, 2012 | Comments Off on 12 Lessons Learned with ICTs for Monitoring and Accountability

    New technologies are opening up all kinds of possibilities for improving monitoring and evaluation. From on-going feedback and crowd-sourced input to more structured digital data collection, to access to large data sets and improved data visualization, the field is changing quickly.

  • How Will IATI Impact US-Based Development Agencies?

    Washington DC | By on June 15, 2012 | Comments Off on How Will IATI Impact US-Based Development Agencies?

    The Technology Salon* hosted at IREX on Thursday, June 6, focused on what the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) would mean for international development, especially for US-based NGOs and government contractors.

  • How Can ICT Improve the Lives of Children and Youth Living in Cities?

    New York | By on April 9, 2012 | Comments Off on How Can ICT Improve the Lives of Children and Youth Living in Cities?

    At the global level, a very small percentage of development funding goes to urban spaces, yet hard-hitting issues impact many of the urban poor: lack of tenure, lack of legality of land, informal settlements, lack of birth registration and civil registration in general, waste disposal, clean water, politicizing of local authorities and more. Can new…

  • One of the sad truths that emerged at the Technology Salon on ICTs and M&E was that failure in development is rarely about the project performance, but about winning the next contract. This means that monitoring and evaluation is less about tracking and improving progress towards social change and more about weaving an advertising pitch….

  • How to Build Effective ICT Tools for Quality M&E?

    Washington DC | By on July 28, 2011 | Comments Off on How to Build Effective ICT Tools for Quality M&E?

    Last month, the M&E for ICT4D Technology Salon noted that we lacked quality tools to measure outcomes. We all intuitively know that ICT could be the basis for great M&E tools, but what about taking that feeling into action?

  • What Are Best Practices in Measurement and Evaluation of ICT Projects?

    Washington DC | By on July 11, 2011 | Comments Off on What Are Best Practices in Measurement and Evaluation of ICT Projects?

    Everyone talks about measurement and evaluation (M&E) like it matters. Yet, few of us do it well or even at all with ICT projects. So why should we measure and evaluate? How can we go about it? And what are the industry best practices, applied to the uniqueness of ICT? Our goal is to explore…

  • Where the last SMS4D Technology Salon reminded us of the unique gift of mobile technologies to be implemented in the field, The Cloudy SMS4D Salon really drove home mobile phones as a multifunctional tool whose true impact is tied more to the usage than the technology itself.

  • The SMS4D Technology Salon focused on the power of Short Message Service (SMS) text technology to create scaled impact, starting at the local and regional level. We went through an inspiring round of implementations and use cases of on-the-ground efforts using FrontlineSMS in cross-sector development situations.Throughout the examples, we were constantly reminded that mobile phone-based…

  • As I listened to Mike McKay, former country director of the Baobab Health Partnership, speak about how his organization is improving patient care with ICT in Malawi, I was struck by four key themes in Baobab’s solution:

    Mike McKay
    Mike McKay of Baobab Health
    1. Start with Patient Data
    2. Keep Technology Easy to Use & Modify
    3. Always Build Local Capacity
    4. Project Poverty is an Advantage

    Now neither Mike, nor Baobab’s founder, Gerry Douglas, made all these points explicitly, but they are the takeaways we can learn the most from.
    Start with Patient Data
    Knowing a patient’s past medical history is critical to continuity of care, particularly for patients with chronic illness. Do you know if the patient in front of you has tuberculosis? Or HIV? Or both plus malaria? Or is on any other medications or has any peculiarities you should know about them before you diagnose or treat their current ailment? If you had their medical records, you may.

  • In last month’s Technology Salon, we looked at Health Information Systems that improved reporting systems for governments. But what about improving patient care? Giving clinicians support and feedback at the point of care can bring about immediate changes in diagnosis and treatment, and start the reporting process with high-quality data.