ble tools for incorporation or substitution into the platform. One of the key drivers behind this is trying to make GATHERdata easier for end users to employ in their projects,” Satellife’s Associate Center Director Andrew Sideman tells Spike. Training the end user to use a system has proven to be a challenge in any attempt at imposing new software in development projects. Even the least complex programs are difficult to adapt by health workers or citizens who have often never used a computer or mobile phone before in their life. Making systems simpler means less necessary training, ergo less time and less money spent. Andrew, who has led the development of GATHERdata, found that training was necessary even though the system is virtually the same as a paper-based version.
“There are invariably differences of interpretation on the part of end users. We always hope that pre-testing of the form will have resolved any questions related to language, as in what the questions on the form are actually asking for, and logic, like how the questions are ordered.”
GATHERdata involves built-in business intelligence modules, which are used to automatically send messages to authorities to alert dangerous situations – a vital feature to prevent often occurring pandemics. Software like this can be implemented in many other areas than ‘just’ health care. Like it has been used in Mali, to track school construction projects as part of an education system decentralization program. Or in Liberia, to survey school facilities and assets. Working towards constant improvement, GATHERdata is fully exploiting what java-rosa based forms make possible.
“We are developing and will deploy in Bangladesh a system using SMS to notify end users that a form is available for their use with a link to a web page,” says Andrew. “End users will access the form and use their mobile phones to fill out short web-based forms. Data will be stored in the GATHERdata back end to allow aggregation with data gathered or integration with other data sets.”
What mobile networks in combination with simple Java software have achieved is impressive on its own. Compared to the technologies available to us in the western world it is, of course, ridiculous.
How long until we bridge the digital divide in internet usage and use the technology we have to create a connection between all parts of the world, allowing access to the same network of information to everyone? It seems like the obvious next step after the mobile phone wonder. Making e-readers available in schools with the possibility to download books, sending and accessing health data via WiFi, are just two concepts which could make current efforts easier, faster, richer in information. The Web Foundation believes that making certain information available could enable local entrepreneurs to build up businesses relevant to their country, or help farmers trying to grow vegetation in harsh environments. The latter became the Web Alliance for Regreening Africa project, an attempt at growing trees and crops in the desert by spreading the knowledge to do so to thousands of farmers. This knowledge is mostly local. When serious droughts severely damaged farming conditions in many rural communities in West Africa in the 1980s, a number of innovative locals in Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali developed techniques to rehabilitate large areas of degraded land. With this kind of knowledge already existing, it is the sharing of it that comes as a challenge. The project tries to achieve an efficient sharing of ideas by exploiting the available infrastructure of internet cafes in larger towns, mobile phones and radios.
Is this the way to use information technology in development work? For now, yes it is. Making good use of the technology already available to share information is the most efficient way to make an impact. It is basically the spreading of knowledge that is successfully fighting some of the developing world’s most urgent challenges. Diseases, fought by aggregating health data. Bad education, fought by providing the invaluable conte