More Tech Salons About Open Data
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Pop Quiz! Name all 9 Principles for Digital Development. Try to name them all right now and from your memory. No fair looking at the official list until you’ve exhausted your attempts. This is how we started the recent Technology Salon that asked, “Can the Principles for Digital Development be Improved?” The Principles for Digital…
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We in the international development sector often have this perception that the private sector is way more advanced than we in the collection, analysis, and use of user data. That somehow Facebook, Google, and every Mobile Network Operator has a God-like dashboard that instantly displays every data point and trend imaginable, at the touch of…
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Traditional development evaluation has been characterized as ‘backward looking’ rather than forward looking and too focused on proving over improving. Some believe applying an ‘agile’ approach in development would be more useful — the assumption being that if you design a program properly and iterate rapidly and constantly based on user feedback and data analytics, you are more likely…
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Geodata is popping up everywhere. Companies, agencies and organizations now dazzle audiences with beautiful graphics that are supposed to represent what’s happening in a given industry, geographic area etc. Uber, the car service has maps that show the location of every Uber driver across the world, in what they call “God View.” At the February…
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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:
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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…
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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?
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The February 5 Technology Salon in New York City asked “What are the ethics in participatory digital mapping?” Judging by the packed Salon and long waiting list, many of us are struggling with these questions in our work.
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I am Amos Cruz and below are my thoughts around a recent Technology Salon on “How Can We Make ‘Cloud’ Solutions Relevant in the Offline World” with a cohort of though leaders and decision makers in information technology and international development.
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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…
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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.
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Civil society has been working for years on participation, transparency, accountability and governance issues. Plenty of newer initiatives (small and large) look at new technologies as a core tool in this work. But are these groups talking and learning from each other?
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In theory, making information open and available leads to more transparent decisions of governments, aid agencies, corporations and other such institutions because stakeholders at different levels push for accountability and better governance. That is why civil society actors have been working on transparency, accountability and good governance for years. Now new actors on the scene…
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Access to information has been part of the development discussion since the Internet arrived. Previously, many saw community telecenters as the way to bring technology to the developing world. Yet telecenters are not sustainable without donor funding and the concept of public access hasn’t kept pace with advancing technology.
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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….