Agriculture, Cross Cutting, Democracy & Governance, Economic Growth & Trade, Education, Environment, Environment, Health, Humanitarian Assistance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Apps for Development

Apps for Development.

Voting is open for the World Bank’s apps for development competition.

“The Apps for Development Competition aims to bring together the best ideas from both the software developer and the development practitioner communities to create innovative apps using World Bank data.”

I like the idea. But many of the apps appear to be solutions looking for a problem, probably due to the requirements that entries use World Bank data and address the Millennium Development Goals. Many entries were not meant to address field-level development needs, which is disappointing. But it is a great initiative, which can be adjusted in future efforts.

The Microsoft sponsored ImagineCup 2011 student IT competition is under way too. Its theme is imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems, also based on the Millennium Development Goals. Deadlines loom so pass the word to interested students.

It will be very interesting to see what comes out of these contests, and if someone can analyze them, see what we can learn about ramping up efforts to develop technologies to solve real-world problems.

Personally, I would like to see the GBI portal become a clearinghouse for practical apps for development – an app store for development, if you will.

March 1, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Cross Cutting, Environment, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Top 7 Reasons Why Most ICT4D Projects Fail (video)

Top 7 Reasons Why Most ICT4D Projects Fail (video) | e-Agriculture.

I’m sure that it is true that many ICT4D projects fail, as this sobering video alleges. To expect the majority to succeed, I would hasten to add, is unrealistic. Innovation in the use of technology demands a certain amount of failure in order that learning take place. In this sense failure is not necessarily bad. But for the most part, the examples given here have nothing to do with technology, and everything to do with the unrealistic expectations and naïveté of ICT4D proponents. Perhaps we should think of this as Development 101 for the tech crowd. I think that it should be required viewing.

February 23, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Biodiversity, Cross Cutting, Environment, Environment, Natural Resources Management, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Policy Development

Informatics, intellectual property and indigenous communities

One barrier to the use of all-important traditional ecological knowledge in the sustainable use and conservation of biodiversity is differing understanding of intellectual property. Just as people from the western legal tradition often make the mistake of interpreting apparently untenured land as terra nullius and available for appropriation (a justification for land claims by colonial powers), so too, patent laws have been used to lay claim to private rights on what had previously been a public good – a US patent on turmeric as a medicine for example. The differing approaches engender distrust, and impair cooperation on globally important issues.

I’m posting about this issue both as a cautionary tale about indigenous knowledge and informatics, and as one example of how ICT can be used to overcome barriers and promote cooperation.

A recent development aims to provide an interface between “source communities” and institutions that collect and manage data that can smooth the way towards the exchange and use of data. Mukurtu is an open source community archive platform that allows indigenous communities to manage their information and tag it. It began as a project of the Warumungu Aborigional community in central Australia. The platform is now being expanded to meet the needs of indigenous communities everywhere. As the Mukurtu archive explains:

Mukurtu is the Warumungu word for ‘dilly bag.’ Warumungu elders used to keep sacred items in dilly bags to ensure that they were kept safe. The elders were responsible for the safe keeping of the items as well as the knowledge that accompanied those items. Elders taught younger generations and opened the dilly bag when it was proper.

The Mukurtu Wumpurrarni-kari Archive is a ‘safe keeping place.’ The archive uses the cultural protocols of the Warumungu people to arrange, sort, and present content. Any piece of content that is not marked “open” (and thus viewable by the general public) is tagged with a set of restrictions. For example, Warumungu men and women can not view the same ritual materials. So any item restricted to women only would not be viewable by a male member of the community.

Mukurtu is potentially hugely important in protecting the integrity of sacred indigenous knowledge, making it available in appropriate ways while tagging it, in a way roughly analogous to a Creative Commons license, so that it can’t as easily be misappropriated. Mukurtu can help to improve ecoinformatics by making it more inclusive of cultural protocols. It also has potential as a tool for participatory planning by indigenous communities – especially those in a race for cultural preservation, like many Pacific island communities.

BBC interviewed Mukurtu founder Kimberly Christen in a podcast available here:

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/digitalp/digitalp_20110222-1032a.mp3.

The interview begins around the 7:45 mark.

February 23, 2011/by actualize