Category Archives: Tech Tools

Wildlife Crime (prevention/response) Tech Challenge

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As demand for products from wildlife has skyrocketed, criminal networks and corrupt officials exploit porous borders and weak institutions to profit from wildlife trafficking. These syndicates are more organized, sophisticated, and technologically advanced than ever before.

Are you a mobile developer, conservation biologist, engineer, forensic scientist, social media analyst, or entrepreneur with a great idea? USAID’s Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge will reward the most innovative science and technology solutions—at any stage of innovation, from anywhere in the world, and from all areas of expertise—that can be scaled to address one or more of the four issues identified on the page: detect transit routes, strengthen forensic evidence, reduce consumer demand, tackle corruption.

Follow on Twitter at @wildlife_tech

Call for papers for FOSDEM: Free & Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting

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Call for papers for the Conference: FOSDEM 2015 Conference, which will be held in February 2015 in Brussels, Belgium
Paper deadline: 1 December 2014

FOSDEM is a Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Developers’ European Meeting, a free and non-commercial two-day weekend event that offers open source contributors a place to meet, share ideas and collaborate. This year, there will be a design devroom at FOSDEM: a full day of talks around design work on free, libre and open source projects. The Open Source Design devroom will be Sunday, February 1st.

“We mean ‘design’ in the broadest sense, from user research, to interface and interaction design, typography, and usability testing – all in the context of open source projects, which we believe introduces unique challenges.”

It is quite likely that the talks in the Open Source Design devroom will be audio and video recorded. By submitting a proposal you consent to be recorded and agree to license the content of your talk under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.

Submissions should be for a 30-minute presentation, with 15 minutes for questions and discussion. All submissions are made in the Pentabarf event planning tool. When submitting your talk in Pentabarf, make sure to select the ‘Open source design devroom’ as the ‘Track’. If you already have a Pentabarf account from a previous year, please reuse it: create an account if, and only if, you don’t have one from a previous year. If you have any issues with Pentabarf, do not despair: contact belenbarrospena at gmail dot com

UN innovation events show how far they’ve come re: ICT4D

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The change is stunning. And welcomed.

Back in 2001, my first year working as an employee of the United Nations, I was a part of a little department of six people (and various interns over the years) within UNDP/UN Volunteers, managing two projects: the Online Volunteering service (then part of NetAid) and the Secretary General’s United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS). Our team could not have been more excited to talk about virtual volunteering, technology for development (ICT4D), ICT4D projects by volunteers in the field, handheld computer technologies in community service/volunteering/advocacy, citizen-designed tech solutions, using tech to work with remote volunteers, crowd-sourcing for development (though we didn’t call it that then), south-to-south knowledge exchange ONLINE, hacks 4 social change (though we didn’t call it then), and other tech4good activities to anyone who would listen! It was an incredible four years of my life.

Unfortunately, many of our UN colleagues never understood our projects – or our boundless enthusiasm for such. Despite our events, workshops, one-on-one meetings, online resources, singing and dancing, drums, support from the Secretary General, Kofi Annan, whatever else we could think of, our activities were met with eye rolls by many of our colleagues. By the time I left that assignment, the new head of UNV (now long-gone) was proudly proclaiming that most of our initiative’s activities, save the online volunteering service, were finished – not because they had met their goals, but because they weren’t needed, and never had been. Even the UNITeS web site was taken off-line for a few months (hence why I keep a version here). Our team went its separate ways.

UNDP innovation logoNow, 13 years after we came together in Bonn, Germany and tried to get the rest of the UN excited about our crazy ideas, and nine years after most of our activities were ended, it’s fascinating to see UNDP in particular fully embracing those ideas: The UNDP SHIFT campaign, focused on innovation (and many of the ideas we tried to promote back at the start of the century – see graphic at left), is the week of 22 September 2014, headquartered in New York City (the “Social Good” summit) but happening all over the world, including here in Kyiv, Ukraine (details soon!).

We can’t take any credit for this change happening, of course. But my colleagues can feel good to know that we weren’t quite as crazy as people thought we were – we we really were on to something worth pursuing by the UN. We were just a decade or so early!

(although… we were pretty crazy…)

Somewhere, Sharon Capeling-Alakija is smiling.

where are the evaluations of hacksforgood/appsforgood?

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Just found this out: the city council of Ivano-Frankivsk, a municipality in Western Ukraine, initiated a project for the creation of a mobile app to improve service delivery and expand opportunities for collecting the public’s feedback. On 18 January 2014, UNDP help to launch the app, making it available for free on Google Play. “Containing information about the city, its executive authorities, and a useful telephone directory of 500 contacts of relevant public authorities, the app also provides easy access to municipal emergency services. Crucially, it also allows citizens to report cases of corruption via 14 different anti-corruption hotlines at local, regional, and national levels. The claims and petitions filed will be addressed within the legally established timeframe of 30-45 days.” Here’s the official story from UNDP Europe and Central Asia.

Ukraine really is quite a tech-savvy country – as I mentioned earlier, re: the late Ukrainian journalist Ihor Kostenko, who was killed earlier this year in a Euromaidan protest, being named Wikipedian of the Year for 2014. And, as you may recall, I blogged earlier about the development of a citizen reporting system for post-conflict areas in Ukraine, one that could be accessed by a computer or a smart phone, where citizens could report on a particular issue, and these reports could be mapped and shared, etc.

But with all that said, just as with app launches and hackathons / hacks4good in the USA, there seems to be no followup. Are any of these apps4good projects sustainable? Are there more users of the apps now? How many cases of corruption have been reported to date with this particular app that was launched earlier this year? Has the app – or any apps six months later – been improved in any way? Has any hackathon products or apps4good had any evaluation yet and, if so, what are the results?

I’ve been trying to find examples of citizen reporting apps being used by governments to respond to citizen reports – about illegal waste dumps, infrastructure issues, misuse of official vehicles, whatever, in any country. And so far… I’m finding only stories about the launch of the app. Like this one in Montenegro. In addition to getting answers to the questions in the aforementioned paragraph about all these apps for good, I’d like to read a success story about the government being responsive to the data generated. It seems to me some of the requirements for this to happen would be:

  • the government designating an office and at least one staff position as being responsible for reading every submission, evaluating it, passing it on to the appropriate people for action, and following up to make sure action was taken – and if not, getting back to the reporting citizens as to why not.
  • the office and staff people assigned to be responsible for reading and responding to the data generated by the citizen reporting app being evaluated regarding their performance in responding to the information, and that evaluation being made public.

I did hear of one project in Kyiv, where citizens can report housing problems via a web site, and, according to the person that referred such to me, it is actually working: “There is a system that a person leaves a request (reports a problem), the housing department employee checks it, and fixes the problem and reports back on it.” So it seems to be working exactly because it’s addressed the two aforementioned bullet points – or, as my colleague put it, “such a system can work only with local authorities, who will implement the projects, and have access to the ground, and resources.”

It’s wonderful to see so many tech4good / apps4good / hacks4good initiatives anywhere in the world, Ukraine or otherwise, but I fear we’re spending all our attention on their launch, and not nearly enough on their impact and sustainability. And if we don’t focus on those things, then they are just tech fluff.

Greetings from Ukraine.

Apps for good – two things I learned in Ukraine this week

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This week, I sat in on a presentation by a tech company here in Ukraine regarding the development of a citizen reporting system – one that could be accessed by a computer or a smart phone, where citizens could report on a particular issue, and these reports could be mapped and shared, etc. You’re probably familiar with these in other countries: where citizens can report pot holes, infrastructure problems after a disaster, incidents of corruption, incidents of street harassment, etc. Like in Chilé or Egypt.

The presentation was the best I’ve ever sat through on this topic, better than anything I have ever experienced in the USA.

Why?

The vendor used the language of the UN – and used it with real familiarity. He didn’t try to use some new snazzy jargon that’s big in the IT world now to talk about ideas we all understand: goals, clients, etc. In other words: he respected the audience to whom he was speaking as experts, and demonstrated that respect by being well-versed in the words they use and how they communicate. So, for instance, the representative talked about people’s capacities and the time and expertise needed by his staff to develop the tool – he didn’t substitute the word “bandwidth” for that.

He also talked to us, making eye contact, without constantly turning to his computer to show something shiny or colorful or otherwise just distracting. His slide show presentation was just background. He was there to connect, to help us understand. He was human – for a very human project. He completely understood that this isn’t a tech project – it’s a civic engagement project.

What a different experience it is to be in a meeting like this. Seven years ago, in 2007, no one talked about such a tool in Afghanistan in the government office where I was working, supported by UNDP – despite these tools already existing, despite the permeation of cell phones throughout the country, despite the golden opportunity to use such a tool in some way. Using tech in the field, even in the most remote of areas, to gather information and report it back somewhere in a centralized place as a part of humanitarian, environmental or other aid or development-related efforts has been a phenomena since before the new millennium – I wrote one of the first papers reporting on such efforts, for the UN, published online in October 2001. Back then, the UN yawned. I’m so glad things have changed!

Another great day on the job in Ukraine. Less than seven weeks to go.

UK Government adopts Open Doc Format for all sharable docs

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The Government of United Kingdom has adopted Open Document Format (ODF) for all sharable documents. That means government offices and employees must use PDF/A or HTML for documents that are to be just viewed (but not edited), and ODF for sharing and collaborating on gov docs.

It doesn’t meant that anyone has to give up Microsoft Office, but it does mean that, when creating a file in that office suite, it has to be saved in an ODF format:

.odt and .fodt for word processing (text) documents
.ods and .fods for spreadsheets
.odp and .fodp for presentations
.odb for databases
.odg and .fodg for graphics
.odf for formulae, mathematical equations

If any of those employees are, like me, using open-source office suites as LibreOffice and OpenOffice, they can stop having to save files as .doc (Word), .ppt (PowerPoint) and .xls (Excel).

From the ZDNet article: “All office-suite programs, which do not support ODF, such as Google Docs, must add support for the standard. Without it, they will find themselves unable to compete for UK government business now. And, in the future, they may find themselves unable to compete for other office contracts that will require ODF.”

Now, if I could just convince the United Nations, and all of the NGOs and nonprofits I work with, and all the local government offices in the USA, to do the same…

mobile devices, mobile apps, texting & volunteers

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A recent blog post by VolunteerMatch on 5 Ways to Use Your Mobile Device for Your Volunteer Program, which has some good, basic advice as well as some comments regarding how to send a text to multiple people at once, reminded me of how often that this topic has come up on the TechSoup community forum in some shape or form.

So I have done my best to compile these previous TechSoup threads here:

mobile time tracking – for volunteers to track service hours?

What mobile apps do you promote to clients, volunteers, supporters, staff?

Mobile apps: what do managers of volunteers *want*

anyone using these mobile apps as part of their work?

Sending text messages to 50 non-smart phones

FrontlineSMS – FOSS management for text messages

Texting from a computer

Planning for handheld tech

Handheld Computer Tech in Community Service/Volunteering/Advocacy

Feel free to comment on any of these threads over on TechSoup with additional questions, experiences or comments!

Freaking out over Facebook privacy?

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Facebook announced this month that it is removing the privacy feature that lets Facebook users hide from the social network’s search bar. That means that, if you use your real name on Facebook, anyone can find you. It doesn’t mean anyone can “friend” you, or see what you have posted to Facebook, if you have your privacy set to “friends only.”

A lot of people are freaking out over this. I’m not. Facebook doesn’t belong to me; it belongs to a for-profit company. The goal of that company is to make money. Facebook makes money two ways: by selling advertising and by selling information about you – information that you have voluntarily, freely, willingly, inputted into the system. I’ve known that from day one. I’ve known that about every online system I’ve used. Maybe it comes from being trained as a journalist – when I write something online, I think of it as publishing.

Short of deleting your Facebook account altogether, what can you do to protect your information on Facebook from being accessed by people and companies you do NOT want to see it?

  • Use your privacy settings to make your Facebook posts viewable only by friends, or at most, friends of friends. And remember that you can always do a “custom” setting, where a post is viewed only by specific people you choose – or NOT viewable by certain people of your choosing.
  • Every time you post, make sure, next to the “post” button, the option says just “friends.” If it doesn’t, change it!
  • Alter your name so that it isn’t exactly your name. Add an extra “s” somewhere. Or three “a”s where just one should appear. Or a Q as your middle initial. That can help confuse companies that are sold your information by Facebook regarding who you really are.
  • Create an email address to use only with Facebook. Yahoo or Gmail are but two options you could use. Change this under your “about” page (under contact info). Never, ever use this email for anything but Facebook. That’s another thing that will confuse computer programs trying to match your data with other information online.
  • Take your birthday off of Facebook. I know – it’s so much fun getting all those birthday wishes from your friends! But your birthday is precious information that should never be inputted into a social media database – it can be used for identity theft. You can still post “It’s my birthday!” in a status update if you want those birthday wishes!
  • Do not use Facebook to sign into ANYTHING other than Facebook! When you create an account on some web site, and it asks if you want to sign in with Facebook, DO NOT DO IT.
  • Don’t acknowledge all of your family connections through Facebook’s “relationship” feature. For instance, many credit card and bank accounts ask you for your mother’s maiden name, and if you have linked to your maternal grandmother on Facebook via the “relationship” feature, I can figure out what that is. You can still talk about and to your grandmother on Facebook – just take it out of the Facebook “about” database (a database that Facebook SELLS).
  • You could create two Facebook accounts – one that is the public, professional you, where you post things you wouldn’t mind anyone seeing and knowing, where you “friend” co-workers and classmates, etc., and one that is the wacky, snarky, political, outrageous you, where you “friend” only your close friends and family. That’s a violation of Facebook’s user policy, and if they catch it, they will make you delete one of these accounts. To avoid detection: make the names at least slightly different, do NOT use the “relationship” feature exactly the same way on both, don’t input the same hometown and employment information, and don’t friend the same people on these accounts.

If you are one of the people that has freaked out over Facebook’s announcement, it’s time for you to sit down and really think about how you use online social media. Who is the “online” you? You have control of that – so what’s going to be your strategy for the online you?

Also see: Why You SHOULD Separate Your Personal Life & Professional Life Online

Open Air Hackathon – Nonprofits Get Web Sites, Designers Get Accessibility Training

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The Accessibility Internet Rally is a community hackathon with a unique twist – Internet accessible for everyone, including people with disabilities.

AIR benefits nonprofit organizations and schools in any community by providing them with free, professionally designed, accessible websites.

AIR benefits participating volunteers, who are web designers, by providing them with increased awareness of the tools and techniques that make the Internet accessible to everyone – including people with disabilities – thereby increasing skills they can take back to their work places.

The result: dozens of professionally designed, accessible websites for nonprofit groups, and web designers with new skills and understanding regarding accessible design and usability.

Open AIR Registration for both nonprofits that want web sites and teams is NOW.

The competition – the hackathon — begins October 23, 2013 (& and lasts a month).

If you are a web developer, professional or aspiring (but with the needed skills), sign up a team of three to six members via the online developer registration. Besides helping nonprofits and learning new skills, you will also get the opportunity to win tickets to SXSW Interactive 2015 in Austin, Texas.

As a participant and competitor you will:

  • Be matched with a non-profit organization, budding artist, or worthy community organization (though you can also help a nonprofit register and be asked to be matched with that particular nonprofit)
  • Create an exciting, interactive web experience that is accessible to everyone.
  • Network with area artists, web professionals, and other really cool people.
  • Get to complete your development project in a more relaxed time frame – unlike past events that happened in one day, onsite, the development cycle is 30 days for Open AIR and can be done from your own location, giving your team the opportunity to create something really special fromanywhere.
  • Have access to training worth over $4,000

Don’t have a team to register with? Submit an individual registration and we will work to place you on a great team. Knowbility recommends a $25.00 donation to support the Open AIR program in lieu of a team registration fee for individual registrants.

Fees are $100 for the first 4 team members, $125 for teams of five, $150 for teams of six.

For nonprofits: register for free and if you are selected, a $100 registration fee will be due.

The Accessibility Internet Rally is open to participants in three categories:

  • Community Organizations: to qualify in this category, entities must be either a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization or an entity that exists for community benefit such as a church group, an arts organization, or a performance organization, to be decided at the discretion of the Organizer.
  • Web design team: to participate in this category, a group of up to 6 web and related professionals sign on as a team. Each web design team shall be considered a single Entrant. No person may enter more than once, either individually or as part of any team. If an Entrant uses the name of a corporation, partnership or other legal entity, the Entrant certifies it has the permission of the entity to do so.
  • Individual web professional: Individuals may sign on to participate and will be matched to other individuals at the discretion of the Organizaer to create a Web Design Team.

All Entrants must be officially registered to participate in the competition.

Entrants will be given access to a collection of online resources (training) to help them build accessible Web sites. Entrants will be expected to read and familiarize themselves with these resources prior to the Rally.

Entrants are required to submit their Entries in accordance with a mechanism determined by the Organizer This mechanism shall include instructions for preparing files for upload, file specifications including file type and file size and location for uploading.

Here are the complete details of participation, including team commitments.

Here is registration info for both teams and nonprofits.