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The intersection of the web and the World Bank.

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Inside the Web is a blog exploring the intersection of the web, international development, and the World Bank, written by Bank staff that work on online strategy, editorial, content, governance, and technology.

The World Region

Development Marketplace goes social (media)

Submitted by Sameer Vasta on Wed, 11/18/2009 - 11:38

Shooting video at the 2009 Development Marketplace

This year's Development Marketplace global competition did more than just find ideas to save the world: it shared the ideas and the people who make them happen with the rest of us.

Previous events at the World Bank have incorporated elements of online social engagement before, but this year's Development Marketplace — an event that took place last week at the Bank main complex in Washington DC — pushed the boundaries, for the better.

The Development Marketplace blog is the place to catch up on all the things that were done before, during, and after the event, but here are a few highlights:

  • The Development Marketplace had an extensive presence online, posting regular updates to the blog, uploading photos to Flickr, hosting a conversation on Twitter, sharing experiences on Youtube, and more.
  • Attendees of the event were able to borrow Flip cameras on site and post a video outlining their experiences on the event's Youtube channel. Over 150 videos were posted to the channel.
  • Video content is available in Russian, Hindi, Arabic, Spanish, and 10 other languages other than English. 90% of all people engaging with the event online are from outside the United States.
  • All winners of the contest were given a Flip camera to post regular video updates on their projects, ensuring consistent and sustained engagement.

 
The efforts taken by the Development Marketplace team are an excellent example of how the Bank can continue to engage with stakeholders and audiences that aren't in DC, or don't have direct access to Bank events and projects.

Of course, there's a long way to go, but this is a good first step. If you're interested in learning more about the Development Marketplace and what it does, I'd recommend checking out their homepage and the blog.

What do you think? Is this something that should be emulated by other Bank events? Is the video component something that can be emulated in other Bank projects around the world?

(Photo by jamesq68 from the DM2009 photo pool.)

WorldBank.org/Slideshows

Submitted by Molly Norris on Mon, 11/09/2009 - 11:54

The human toll of natural disasters in Vietnam… entrepreneurs in Rwanda… wind power in Egypt… an infant with jaundice in Nepal… World Bank slideshows connect users with diverse people and places through the open window of a computer screen.

worldbank.org/slideshowsSlideshows already compliment content across WorldBank.org, but now the most recent additions to the collection are hosted together at WorldBank.org/Slideshows.  Here, visual stories from every region in the world collide in a list intended for browsing.

Slideshows are posted in English and link to versions available so far in Spanish, French, Arabic, Vietnamese and Turkish. Keep an eye on what’s new and what’s popular.

What do you think of World Bank slideshows? And how can the Web be a better steward of a growing collection based on collaboration with development practitioners all over the world? Also, got pictures and a pressing story to tell? We’d love to hear it.
 

YouTube and World Food Programme work to raise "A Billion for a Billion"

Submitted by Livia Barton on Wed, 10/21/2009 - 14:19

Last Friday, on World Food Day, YouTube featured this video from the World Food Programme on its home page. 

The Goal: To get the online billion to help feed the billion hungry people in the world.

The Results: Donations through the video helped to give school lunch to close to 140,000 children. And the donations are still coming in.

WFP is so thrilled with efforts of the online billion that their Executive Director Josette Sheeran recorded this special thank you message to the YouTube community.

Pierre Guillaume Wielezynski, WFP's Head of Online Communications, commented that "It is heartening to see the YouTube community step up and help. We often forget about the billion people who go to bed hungry. If every web user does a little, we can achieve a lot."

Blogging for climate change awareness

Submitted by Sameer Vasta on Thu, 10/15/2009 - 13:36

Today is Blog Action Day, and this year, blogs around the world will be talking about climate change.

Blog Action Day 2009Here at the Bank, we've already spurred a lot of discussion about climate change so far, and hope to continue the discussion on climate-smart development in the future. You can learn more about our efforts and research on the topic by visiting the newly-redesigned and re-structured Climate Change site.

In addition to the topic site, the Development in a Changing Climate blog has been hosting a discussion around the issue for a little over a year now, and the recently-released 2010 World Development Report focuses on how both low- and high-income countries need to work together to address the issues of climate change.

(The East Asia & Pacific on the rise blog posted their own Blog Action Day post today as well, and there's some really great thoughts leading up to Copenhagen15 on there. Do be sure to check it out.)

 

 

We'd love to hear your views on climate-smart development and climate change, so be sure to visit the Climate Change site and Development in a Changing Climate blog if you have any thoughts.

And if you have your own blog, think about participating in Blog Action Day and help kickstart the discussion on global climate change.

Sustaining a multilingual web presence

Submitted by Sameer Vasta on Wed, 10/14/2009 - 11:45

We get quite a few questions about how the World Bank manages to coordinate its web presence in a multitude of languages and still keep most of the multilingual content up-to-date and relevant.

Valerie Hufbauer, the head of the World Bank Multilingual Web Team, will be answering some of those questions at the next Web Managers Roundtable in Washington DC taking place here, at the World Bank, in two weeks.

From the event site:

We’ll look at the case study provided by The World Bank, a global web leader that wrangles 59 languages and users from more than 67 countries with a site in another language other than English. Our examination will take us from the content and process strategies they’ve developed to the trends they’ve identified for 2010. We’ll see how they’ve established and sustained their multilingual web presence, how they decide what to translate, how they manage these translation needs, and how they maintain brand consistency and content accuracy across dozens of sites.

If you can't make it to the Web Managers Roundtable this month and have questions for Valerie, leave us a comment and I'll do my best to get them answered here.

Graph Remix: Visualizing the path of countries that consistently reform

Submitted by Molly Norris on Wed, 09/09/2009 - 21:34

Moving up the rankings never looked so good.

This week Doing Business showed us riveting new numbers on the country-by-country progress of business regulation reform during last year’s tough economic climate. The annual report ranks member countries from 1 to 181 on the ease of doing business and then splices up and analyzes the master set into sub-rankings, including the much-anticipated Top Ten Reformers. These sprinters impress, but often they represent marathoners in a good stretch. For this reason, the web editorial team chose to show the movement up the ranks of consistent reformers.

 

Consistent Reforms Climb the Ranks of the Ease of Doing Business

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Source:
DoingBusiness.org
Feature Story - Doing Business 2010: Reforming through Difficult Times

Essay competition: youth entrepreneurship and the web?

Submitted by Sameer Vasta on Tue, 09/01/2009 - 08:52

As part of the lead-up to the Y2Y Global Youth Conference to take place here in Washington DC in October, the World Bank Youth-to-Youth Community is launching an essay competition on youth entrepreneurship in times of crisis.

The contest is open to all young people aged 18-30 around the world and shortlisted essays will be featured on the World Bank Y2Y website.

For those young people that are reading this and interested in the web, I'd recommend you look at the essay questions and see how the web has facilitated entrepreneurship, particularly in a time of crisis. After all, many of the largest and most influential web properties today were created (and are still managed by) young people around the world: Facebook, Tumblr, TakingITGlobal, to name a few.

And what shall I write by tomswift46

The questions for the essay competition don't directly address the role of the web in business and innovation, but the connections can be easily made:

  1. What impedes young people in your country or community to start their own business or organization? Think about the constraints in terms of socio-economic conditions, culture, education & experience, access to finance & infrastructure, contacts & networks, and regulations. In how far are these constraints specific to youth compared to adults?
  2. Did the global financial crisis reinforce some of these constraints? If yes, what are the dynamics?
  3. What do you think governments can/should do to strengthen youth entrepreneurship in your country, town or local community? Think about the solutions in terms of the constraints identified above.

 
If you decide to submit an essay to the competition that talks about the web's role in youth entrepreneurship and want to share it with the readers of Inside the Web, let us know in the comments. We'd love to share your ideas.

You can find more details about the rules and prizes on the essay competition webpage. I'm looking forward to hearing more about your ideas and solutions.

(Photo by tomswift46)

How Web design can show the forward march of gender in project design

Submitted by Molly Norris on Fri, 08/28/2009 - 16:45

Fighting poverty means helping women not as an afterthought, but as forethought. Women’s disproportionate share of the poor makes them a special demographic. And we’re targeting them more and more.

Last year, 45 percent of lending operations looked through a gender lens when planning their projects -- up 10 percent from the year before. Project planners ran gender assessments, set aside resources for gender initiatives and broadly incorporated gender into project components.

Enter the Web. Mouse over the infographic below to take a look region-by-region.

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  Total Projects Projects with Gender 2-Year Trend
Africa 230 101
-4%
East Asia & Pacific 107 46
+15%
Europe & Central Asia 204 49
+8%
Latina America & Caribbean 109 60
+27%
Middle East & North Africa 40 19
+16%
South Asia 75 44
+1%

 

Source:
Feature- World Bank Increases Gender Support and Lending in Developing Countries
Report- Implementing the Bank’s Gender Mainstreaming Strategy: FY08 Annual Monitoring Report (PDF)
 

Hearing the call for open data.

Submitted by Sameer Vasta on Fri, 08/28/2009 - 09:34

In his most recent TED talk, open data advocate Hans Rosling blasted the World Bank (and lauded the US government) on data sharing practices. Rosling said that while we at the Bank have some of the best researchers and the best access to data, we're not doing enough to share that data openly, and for free.

I've embedded the video below so you can not only see what he has to say about the Bank, but also hear about some of the great ideas he has about datasets and mindsets.

Of course, it looks like Rosling may have ignored some of our more recent efforts to get our data to the hands of the people: efforts like our recently revamped API, and even the new data section (with great visualizations!) of the new World Bank Climate Change beta site.

But Rosling does have a point: we need to be doing more to share our data in open and usable formats. The question is, how do we do that?

While we've had some interest in our data visualization tools and our API, use of these tools is still low, making it hard to justify spending more resources on data sharing. Sure, there's a hunger for it, but how do we make sure we're feeding the right appetite?

There are a few questions that I have — questions where the answers will probably help me make a stronger case for increased emphasis on open data:

  1. What kind of data is the audience looking for?
  2. What does the audience want to do with this data?
  3. What are the best formats in which to release this data?
  4. What can we do to make it more enticing for people to use — and share — our data?

 

Mr. Rosling: we hear your call for open data. And while we hope that some of the steps we've already taken are helping address the world's data sharing needs, do know that we're working on sharing even more.

We just need the community's help — not their derision — in answering some questions so that we can make it better.

Should the World Bank care about net neutrality?

Submitted by Sameer Vasta on Thu, 08/13/2009 - 15:10

Net neutrality is a hot topic right now in various countries around the world, with the debate over its value and its feasability being tied to discussions about broadband penetration and service delivery over the internet.

For a quick definition of the concept, here's an excerpt from Wikipedia:

A neutral broadband network is one that is free of restrictions on content, sites, or platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and on the modes of communication allowed, as well as one where communication is not unreasonably degraded by other communication streams.

In essence, net neutrality advocates argue that internet service providers (ISPs) should not be able to discriminate against certain kinds of internet transfers and lower quality of service or access based on that discrimination. The concept of net neutrality says that ISPs don't have the right to restrict access or limit traffic or speeds to certain kinds of sites or certain types of activity — in the end, the user should be in charge of what they do once they have paid to access the network.

Computer wire by Don Solo on Flickr

Seems like a no-brainer issue to most, but that hasn't stopped hot debates around the world about the power of ISPs to control the content that their customers can access, and why they should or shouldn't be allowed to exercise that power.

My question today: should the World Bank care?

The World Bank's recent IC4D 2009: Extending Reach and Increasing Impact report found that access to high quality mobile phone and internet services enabled development across all levels of the economy. It also claimed that access to broadband completed the information foundation for a modern economy and called for this access to be a priority in national development plans.

If good and widespread internet access is so integral to economic growth and development, does the Bank have a responsibility to ensure that this access is open, unfiltered, unshaped, and not throttled by ISPs? What is the risk in allowing traffic shaping to occur in developing economies?

All questions I don't have answers to, but that have been weighing on my mind for quite some time. If you have any ideas about net neutrality and the role that the Bank may have in the debate, let me know in the comments below.

For more information, check out the Wikipedia article on net neutrality, the FAQs on SaveTheInternet.com, and a multitude of other places around the web that have chimed in on the topic.

(Photo by Don Solo.)