Doing Good with ICT

Transcript

1. Doing Good with ICT Aaron Ciaghi Mar. 26, 2014 ict4g http://ict4g.fbk.eu @a2ronsama aaronsama
2. The Dreaded Outline • About Us • ICT for D/G primer • Agile in a Nutshell • Some examples
3. About Us • Our goal: find new ways to use technology to stimulate socio-economic development, in particular in areas with low ICT penetration and marginalised communities! • Main Projects: BringTheFood, ComeButta, SAMo & Maputo Living Lab aaron pietro andrea adolfo lorenzo roberto ilse damiano giulia ali andrea martino giulio
4. ICT for What? ✕
5. ICT for Development • Development = improving the quality of life by increasing the choices people can make (one of many definitions) • Address social, economic and political issues • access to information, literacy, education • access to resources and services (e.g., healthcare) • accountability/transparency • gender issues • …
6. ICT for Whom? • Beneficiaries: Marginalized/rural communities • Base of The Pyramid = ppl living with 1$ to 5$/day • Low literacy, unemployment, low education level • Governments, NGOs and traditional power structures
7. “They don’t have mobile phones in Africa” (and no Internet)
8. – James Mwangi, CEO of Kenya’s Equity Bank “Africa is better positioned to adopt the next generation of technology than anybody else because it’s not tied by a legacy system . . . the cost of moving forward is much cheaper”
9. Challenges • Beneficiaries sometimes not end-users • Unclear and unmeasurable goals • Deployment constraints/sustainability • Limited resources and infrastructure • Low maintenance (deployment in remote areas) • Illiteracy & Computer illiteracy • Cultural divide(s) between devs and beneficiaries • Unusual usability requirements • ….
10. Appropriate Solutions • Simply exporting what works in the “West” doesn’t work • How do the beneficiaries live? (baseline) • What do they need? • What are the barriers to adoption? • How do people exchange information? (indigenous knowledge)
11. Where do you start? • Change Management • Make contact • Spend time with people and learn about their culture, customs, past, … • Become facilitator of change • User Experience • …which is not UI design • User + Product + Culture + User Actions + Context + … + Motivations
12. people > technology
13. Not just about Africa
14. Social Challenges • Violence and abuses • Accountability • Poverty and waste • Environmental risks (climate change) • Human rights • Healthcare • Immigration and emigration (discrimination) • Disability • International cooperation/intercultural dialogue (source: EU Commission)
15. Agile in a Nutshell
16. Agile is about… • Customer satisfaction • Working software delivered frequently • Working software is the principal measure of progress • Late changes in requirements = no problem • Close, daily cooperation • Face2Face & Co-location • Projects built around individuals • Attention to technical excellence and good design • Simplicity • Adaptation
17. Some Methodologies • SCRUM – iterative • XP – traditional practices to «extreme» levels • SCRUM+XP! • Feature-driven – iterative, driven from a client functionality perspective • Test-driven – short iterations based on test cases • Lean – eliminate waste
18. Scrum in One Slide
19. Where to start? • Who are your users? • What are their goals? • How are you going to help them achieve those goals? Looks familiar?
20. What to do in practice? • What is your project vision and value proposition? • Make a product backlog! • Write user stories • Estimate them • Prioritize them (hint: probably user model is not your top priority) • Plan sprints / Plan Working Increments • Make a sprint backlog • Select user stories for your MVP • Assign tasks
21. Best Fit for ICTD/G • Agile better responds to change • Working increments can be tested with the end- users/beneficiaries earlier • Interaction among people is valued more than documentation • Caveat #1: who is the user? • Caveat #2: what is most valuable for the user?
22. Some Examples
23. BringTheFood in collaboration with
24. BTF at a Glance • Quickly publish food donations with surplus food • Discovery of all nearby food donations • Easy management of the network of donors and beneficiaries • Actors: • Small/medium food stores, restaurants, hotels, catering services • NGOs redistributing food • Private Citizens (food sharing)
25. It All Started at a Hackathon Version 1 (June 2011)! • Prototype mobile app • Sencha Touch client - PHP server
26. Current Stage
27. Development • Currently 8 part-time developers • Unstructured during the first part • (a variation of) Scrum+XP from ~ May 2012 • Pair Programming sessions • Project Management Tool: Kunagi
28. Reimplementation • Reimplemented from August 2012 in Rails • Android app reimplemented in 2013 • JSON API came almost for free thanks to Rails • “Easier” deployment with Capistrano
29. ComeButta in collaboration with
30. ComeButta at a Glance • Community-based waste separation • Android app to ask how to dispose of an item • The community + ML algorithm responds • Support from AMNU (Alta Valsugana) to verify data • Educational game for high school students
31. Hackathon Project • First prototype developed at RHoK Trento 1212 • 2 developers • “Pitch Oriented Programming”
32. Current Status • Just deployed DoveButta • Developing ButtaMale • Starting a new initiative with high schools
33. Development • Presentation-oriented at first • Currently 3 developers (1 Android, 2 Rails) • Scrum (with Kunagi)
34. SAMO Social Accountability in Mozambique
35. SAMo at a Glance ▪ Collaboration among Maputo Living Lab, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Center for African Studies (Eduardo Mondlane University), and the World Bank with the support of the Ministry of Education of Mozambique ▪ Goals: - use new technologies to simplify data collection, analysis, and management - perform a data collection experiment to collect procurement performance indicators about schools in the Moamba region - understand issues and problems related to a wider deployment of the solution - evaluate possible exploitations on a bigger scale
36. Workflow Define Campaign ▪ Goal ▪ Indicators ▪ Targets ▪ Assessors Interviews ▪ Advertisement on local radio ▪ Involvement of local leaders Results ▪ On the web ▪ Feedback to citizens ▪ Open Data Manager Assessors Citizens
37. Architecture SAMo Server App Data Input Data Presentation Campaigns Targets Questionnaires Results Admin Interf. SAMo Android Client Offline Storage
38. Development • 2 Rails developers, 1 Android developer • Scrum methodology • 30 days - 4 sprints • Excel spreadsheet for tracking
39. the thank you slide questions? ict4g http://ict4g.fbk.eu @a2ronsama aaronsama