MobileActive.org

What prevents humanitarian non-government organizations (NGOs) from adopting technology that can potentially improve their operations and response time? Global Relief Technologies, a producer of handheld data collection devices, asked a New York University Capstone Team to research the barriers to NGO PDA adoption. The Capstone Team conducted 17 interviews with nine organizations, from animal welfare to humanitarian relief, to discover the financial, technical, and institutional barriers preventing groups from implementing technology into their field programs. The Team also conducted two case studies of groups currently using PDA technology, one domestic and one international, to explore in depth the factors that went into the decision making processes these groups followed in their technology acquisition decisions.