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This is the World Bank's blog on governance and anti-corruption. It aims at providing a space for debate and knowledge sharing on this critical field of development. | Learn more...

mobile technology

Mobile Innovations for Social and Economic Transformation: From Pilots to Scaled-up Implementation

Submitted by Alfredo on Mon, 2009-09-14 08:29

On Wednesday, September 16, the World Bank's e-Development Thematic Group will host the workshop "Mobile Innovations for Social and Economic Transformation. From Pilots to Scale-up Implementation."  The workshop features six sessions that will touch on the transformative role that mobile technology can play in five thematic sessions, including governance.  We have blogged before about examples and the potential of mobile phones for advancing the governance agenda in the development community, so the workshop will be an interesting opportunity to continue this dialogue.

You can follow the event via live webcast.  You can register for the webcast here.  Below you can find more details about the event. 

 

Empowering citizens to report crime via SMS... what else can they do with mobiles?

Submitted by Alfredo on Fri, 2009-08-07 16:27

In a previous entry, I blogged about how mobile technology has been used to address some governance issues.  Crime denunciation was among the activities mentioned in which mobiles have empowered people by giving them a tool to report crime and violence outbreaks as they happen. 

Because a video is worth more than a thousand words, I'll share with you the case of CiviRep, an application that will allow citizens of Caracas to report crime via SMS.  Very similar to Ushahidi's platform, CiviRep aims at capturing on-the-go feedback from citizens to then map it with the help of Google Maps (see here Ushahidi's original example in Kenya).

 

CiviRep Team Video Spring 2009 from nextlab on Vimeo.

 

"140 chars is a novel when you're being shot at"

Submitted by Tanya on Wed, 2009-07-01 09:20

-courtesy: @chadelund Quote of the day- #iranelection

In a previous blog entry, I wrote about how Web 2.0 is improving governance, with or without the help of the government in question, and irrespective of whether the country is developed or not.

Throwing traditional wisdom to the winds, the Web 2.0 story is continuing to unfold in a way that was not predicted by researchers and experts of the development community and outside.   When I last wrote my blog entry on this issue, it was specifically to explore how Bangladeshi citizens, independently of the government, NGOs, or media were sharing their experience of the BDR mutiny and its results.  This shone a light into the situation in Bangladesh to many who would have been otherwise left in the dark about the BDR revolt.

Then Iran happened.  The situation in Iran has many interesting parallels with Bangladesh and the BDR revolt – both related to the citizen-fuelled proliferation of news, occurring independently of the Government, and in Iran, even inspite of the opposition of the Government.

Promoting rural youth engagement through radio and cell phones in Burundi

Submitted by Susana on Tue, 2009-05-26 11:57

For several weeks, local radio waves transmitted an unusual program in Burundi. This time, by combining radio and cell phones, the marginalized youth from rural Burundi received a chance to express their views on a series of issues that affect their daily lives. A rap song, composed with key findings of the study “Voices of the Youth” and the "Governance Survey," served as background of this pioneer and different approach, transmitted by Radio Publique Africaine.

Cell phones and radio were a way of outreaching places where information hardly makes its way, as well as to engage leaders in rural communities in debates about information obtained through studies that are hardly disseminated among the locals.

From m-euphoria to m-governance, thinking about the potential of mobile technology

Submitted by Alfredo on Fri, 2009-03-27 10:55

The hype about mobile technology for development work is going on the rise.  It's not for granted.  More than four billion worldwide mobile subscriptions -with the fastest growth trend in developing countries-, sounds like a great opportunity to reach and interact with broader groups of people, including the poor.  Actually, mobile penetration in Africa has expanded from about 2 to 28 subscribers (per 100 inhabitants) since 2000 (see graph at the bottom). 

This looks like a great scenario, but putting aside the m-euphoria let's explore the role for mobile technology in the field of governance.

GonGo for democracy: how mobile technology is changing the way grassroots organizations monitor elections

Submitted by Alfredo on Thu, 2008-07-24 14:35
The idea of GonGo (Governance-on-the-Go), raised a few days ago by Dani Kaufmann, has generated interesting comments and discussion. GonGo is also influencing the way people monitor elections in developing countries where weak capacity and the lack of freedom of speech and political will prevail. My initial thoughts are that there is a lot of potential to bring accountability and transparency to elections and democracy where civil society and simple technologies intersect.
 
A recent report of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) presents the cases of Indonesia, Palestine, Monte Negro, Albania, Bahrain, and Sierra Leona, where local organizations received “GonGo assistance” to monitor the voting-process. A combo of (i) cellphones, (ii) software of massive text messaging communication, and (iii) a lap-top empowered citizens to report on-the-go about the electoral outcomes, anomalies and fraud.
 

‘Governance-on-the-Go’, or GonGo: the citizen at the center of an IT-enabled governance breakthrough?

Submitted by Kaufmann on Tue, 2008-07-22 10:37

I am now at the Fortune BrainstormTech, which aims to relate innovations in technology to larger world problems it can solve. The event just started, featuring fascinating evening panels with tech leaders (here). One of the sessions I will co-lead tomorrow, with Ross Mayfield of Socialtext, is on governance. In this forthcoming interactive lab we will try to advance the discussion on the interface between ICT, governance and government. One contribution I will try to make is to distinguish between e-government and m-governance, and to ask for ideas on how m-governance can be taken to the next stage. 

For many years already, the IT revolution has brought about innovation supporting the modernization of the public sector, in industrialized and developing countries. The major advances took place into what’s called e-government, namely electronic government, or the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) by government agencies in the provision of public services and in interacting with their constituencies.