Mobile technology is transforming the way advocacy, development and relief organizations accomplish their institutional missions. This is nothing new to readers of MobileActive. Our recent report Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in NGO Mobile Use, released today by the United Nations Foundation and The Vodafone Group Foundation, brings this point home.
Wireless Technology for Social Change: Trends in NGO Mobile Use was written by Sheila Kinkade (ShareIdeas.org) and Katrin Verclas (MobileActive.org), and commissioned by the United Nations Foundation-Vodafone Group Foundation Technology Partnership. The report examines emerging trends in “mobile activism” by looking at 11 case studies of groups active in the areas of public health, humanitarian assistance and environmental conservation.
Among the programs highlighted are two conflict prevention projects, both active in Kenya. Oxfam-Great Britain and the Kenyan umbrella group PeaceNet created a text messaging ‘nerve center’ that collected alerts about violent outbreaks during the recent civil unrest and mobilized local ‘peace committees.’ The project served as a vital tool for conflict management and prevention by providing a hub for real-time information about actual and planned attacks between rival ethnic and political groups.
The GSM Association, together with a handful of non-profit and private sector groups in Kenya, developed another conflict prevention project that allows farmers to preserve their crops while protecting wildlife. The program monitors instances when elephants approach farmed land, and provides an early warning system via mobile that is reducing the incidence of human-elephant conflict in an area where as many as five humans and 10 elephants are killed each year.
The report, the second in the Access to Communications Publication Series, produces studies that give governments, NGOs and the private sector research and recommendations on how to use technology and telecom tools to effectively address some of the world’s toughest challenges.
The report also highlights the results of a global web-based survey of NGO mobile technology use developed by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, and distributed via the email networks of eight partner groups reaching a geographically and thematically diverse group of NGOs: Idealist.org, InterAction, International Youth Foundation, MobileActive.org, New Tactics in Human Rights, OneWorld, SANGONeT, and ShareIdeas. Responses were collected December 10th, 2007 through January 13th, 2008, and generated 560 surveys completed by representatives of NGOs working in all parts of the world.
The global survey found that 86% of non-governmental organization (NGO) employees use mobile technology in their work, and 25% believe it has revolutionized the way their organization or project works. While the most common uses of mobile technology by NGO workers are voice calls (90%) and text messaging (83%), more sophisticated uses, such as mapping (10%), data analysis (8%) and inventory management (8%) also were reported.
Please download the entire report here. For individual chapters and more information, please also visit the UN Foundation/Vodafone Group Foundation site.
Full survey results are available here: Executive Summary and Memo and Presentation with highlights.
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Good news ... but will there be good results?
Technology has progressed quite amazingly over the past several decades ... but socio-economic impact globally has been quite modest. Why?
It took mainframe technology several years before it produced a net gain for corporate performance. In the case of PC (personal computer) techology it was several years again before there were productivity increases ... some called it the PC paradox. In recent ICT experience, the increase in technological performance has been used much more to improve the telco profit performance than to optimize socio-economic performance.
This is what the present state of "market information" demands. The only metrics that are used by capital market investors are those that relate to corporate profit and stock value ... there is nothing that relates to the associated value destruction or value creation in society as a whole. Why not?
After several decades of MBA style education, there is a huge community of people with expertise in corporate accountancy and profit optimization ... and very few with an appreication of how these techniques can be applied to society as a whole.
The latest developments in mobile technology have the potential to make it possible to establish data flows at very low cost ... and modern relational databases and the web make it possible for these data to be aggregated and analyzed in very informative and useful ways. Now it is possible to have cost effective accountancy for society rather than just the corporate entity ... and it will be interesting to see what this shows.
This is what Tr-Ac-Net's Community Impact Accountancy (CIA)does. I hope it will be possible for the mobile industry to facilitate this initiative ... but I am not holding my breath. CIA uses all the basics of corporate accountancy and management information, but applies it to the commuity as the reporting entity rather than the corporation, and does not limit itself to money expenditures and revenues to determine performance (profit) but also includes, the related value destruction and value creation that impact the community and society as a whole.
As a former CFO, I am aware how little operating managers want independent accounting ... so why should society at large be any different, or the not for profit community, ... or government decision makers? CIA does not aim to be popular ... it does, however, intend to be effective.
Sincerely
Peter Burgess
www.tr-ac-net.org
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