Development 2.0
(Musing on the margins of a Web 2.0 conference...)
So, if Web 2.0 is meant to be the era of the long-tail, mass-customisation and the wisdom of the crowds, let's imagine, just for fun, what the big players in the Development 2.0 world could look like:
• D-oogle.com: the ultimate search engine for development data (maps, images, news, you name it). NGOs, financial institutions and universities open up their archives to be indexed by this powerful search engine. Development professionals and the public at large are proactively encouraged to build their own mashups. Imagine, for instance, combining Google maps with crime data, just like Chicago Crime does, to help police authorities and citizens in developing countries.
• D-ebay.com: a place where demand and offer for the long tail of development products meet. Aid agencies, financial institutions, NGOs, entrepreneurs, individuals put on offer their development products. Governments, communities and individuals in developing countries bid on them. They can also opt to pick and choose features from the various "sellers" (say, e.g. some technical assistance from SIDA with a microloan from Grameen Bank and, why not, advisory services from IFC) to customise the products to their needs. Like GlobalGiving and Kiva - except the poor are the buyers, not the sellers.
• SecondProject.org: a SecondLife for development practitioners and aid recipients, a place where donors and recipients collaborate to build a virtual version of a project which meets the needs of both, and then implement it. Or, perhaps, a "database of aspirations" where communities in developing countries can virtually imagine their ideal life, and sponsors can finance its implementation.
• Dev-linkedin.com: a place for, say, rural communities or members of a supply chain to connect with each other. Social network mapping software, mashed-up with Google Maps, provides a way for the various actors to visualise their networks. See here (pdf) for an example of how visualising networks can build capacity in rural communities, or here for a (still clunky) application of social mapping to socially responsible investment.
• Dev-ikipedia.org: a place where members of the development community (including aid recipients) collaborate to find common definitions for terms such as "technical assistance", "capacity building" and "monitoring and evaluation". We're not getting rid of aid jargon any time soon, so we may as well speak the same language.
Okay, enough daydreaming… time to get back to the Development 1.0 world. But if you enjoyed the fantasy game, please add your ideas below.
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Indeed, the combination of GIS software such as google maps and crime data is just the beginning. The US Census Bureau has put together sophisticated data tools in the form of the American Community Survey's (ACS) thematic maps, and the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics' (LEHD) "On the Map" tools, where a user is able to display a wealth of information topics graphically down to the neighborhood level. Imagine the applications of these data tools for the development world, especially for potential investors and businesses looking for market information.
http://lehdmap.dsd.census.gov/
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DatasetMainPageServlet?_program=ACS&_submenuId=&_lang=en&_ts=
Posted by: Aaron Flaaen | Feb 6, 2007 11:55:46 AM
I guess some naming conventions. "Dev-ikipedia" could just be devpedia. But I digress...
There is a group in Sweden called Gap Minder (gapminder.org) that is trying to find new ways of playing with development data, especially in an historical context. Google made a live demo of the ideas here: http://tools.google.com/gapminder/
And a longer video of the group itself discussing how such data can be used is here.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7996617766640098677&q=google+tech+talks
So, it might not be as far off as you think.
Posted by: Joshua Foust | Feb 6, 2007 3:09:08 PM
I can see I might regret this, but -it's already happening!
Here's something using Google Maps that I put together with some meteorologist and climate scientist friends http://www.wepoco.com/maps/observations.php It shows current rainfall for Africa and once we get our seasonal forecasts and climate variability products, and the rest, it might just help small scale and subsistence farming. Ok, so they don't have access to the web yet, but then we use cell phones, radio, newspapers, whatever.
Taking the output from big science multi million dollar satellite and climate programmes and then changing the world of nomads, coffee farmers, and the like - isn't that what this generation of scientists were born to do? It feels like it, so it must be so.
Posted by: Michael Saunby | Feb 6, 2007 3:22:52 PM
One very cool site, currently in beta but worth bookmarking, is socialchange.org Developed with funds from “friends and family” by a bunch of talented 2.0 dreamers at Stanford, this is a social networking interface for do-gooders of all stripes. The front page features a search tool asking you to name your cause, and a tag cloud featuring popular searches such as “global warming” and “fight hunger.” In addition to interacting with each other in cause-specific communities, members also get a blog and a profile page. The creators have uploaded profiles for, get this, ONE MILLION non-profits. Social networking may be 1.0, but this kind of scale is very 2.0. Now, if they would add some tools to build mashups....
http://www.change.org
Posted by: Hasan Jafri | Feb 7, 2007 7:13:15 AM
This is a really interesting idea. With specific regard to data + map mashups, as this gets more sophisticated with early users, it hopefully will inspire others to extend this globally as you suggest. One example of this by a non-profit in NYC that is looking at race/ethnicity density and hospital closures:
http://www.healthcarethatworks.org/maps/nyc/
One of the key pieces of this is having the data/information available to do this sort of thing. For health issues, that is partly where the WHO Health Metrics Network comes in - http://www.who.int/healthmetrics/en/
Posted by: Aman | Feb 7, 2007 6:24:51 PM
Thank you everbody for the great pointers!
Aaron: I am a great fan of Gapminder, too. See my previuos post at http://psdblog.worldbank.org/psdblog/2007/01/mind_the_visual.html
Michael: keep us posted on the progress of your project. We need more of those...
Giulio
Posted by: Giulio Quaggiotto | Feb 8, 2007 7:05:36 PM
Great ideas - both D-oogle and D-ebay. The data group in DEC with the help of some country offices can start building a beta version of D-oogle for South Asia (data availability). Resource requirements - perhaps $2m over two years. On D-ebay, IFC SME program could take a lead, first defining what "development products" are. Online commerce across and within developing countries, outside of the aid business, probably has much greater commercial potential (and efficiency benefits) than what aid agencies and NGOs produce (other than reports that the poor have no need for). Who knows, with increasing amounts of aid in SSA going via budget support, government procurement systems across countries could be linked as well. (I vaguely recall there was an application for funding from Development Marketplace about five years ago on government procurement systems - some Indian guy with first name Krishna; all I remember is that he used to be LAC Infrastructure Sectot Manager.)
Haven't thought about the other ideas.
Posted by: Nikhil Desai | Feb 15, 2007 2:57:24 PM