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

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.

 

Beyond the implicit benefit of instant and more extensive coverage, the costs of using SMS technology seem to be accessible. For example, in Albania, where about 41,000 messages were sent back and forward, the reported cost was $2,400 dollars. In Nigeria, the Network Mobile Election Monitors (NMEM) coordinated the observation using FrontlineSMS, a free text messaging system that allows instantaneous two-way communication on large scale.

 

In environments of censorship, GonGo can also empower citizens along the entire process (not only during the voting-day) by giving them voice and information. This was the case of SW Radio Africa, a Zimbabwean station located in London that decided to send short SMS headlines to people in the country after it was jammed (see article).

 

Another case in Zimbabwe is Kubatana.net, a NGO that among other online initiatives established a SMS election service to send subscribers updated information on the elections and its results. Kubatana has also used its blog to publish messages received from the field. An example is the campaign “what you want in a new Zimbabwe,” which captured emails, SMS text messages and blog comments and aspirations such as: “I desire everything to be in order - no corruption” or “I wld want a new constitution that doesn’t give 2 much political power to an individual. There should be guaranteed freedoms 4 citizens.” More recently (actually yesterday!) a new wave of comments was posted in relation to what Zimbabweans think about ZPF and MDCs agreement to talk to resolve the crisis.

 

The reports from Zimbabwe have also reached the world of micro-blogging. Sokwanele, a grassroots movement with an interesting website, created a group on Twitter, in which even a few exit-poll results sent via SMS were published. Another promising tool to make web content more mobile is Feed2Mobile, which can bring online content of website and blog to the powerful hands of citizens.

 

Whether m-governance can deliver major achievements remains to be seen. However, I think that some of these improvements –even as simple as they look– became real stories thanks to mobile technologies. Beyond the positive agreement or disagreement on this, I see a few challenges ahead. One is to follow-up and to strengthen these exciting grassroots initiatives; while another is to thinks how larger international organizations and donors can embrace technology to perform better in their promotion of democracy and good governance.