Tag: software development

Students to debut FrontlineSMS on Android?

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CS210 is a project-based Computer Science Innovation & Development course at Stanford University where students work with faculty and staff to build on the spirit of innovation and excellence at Stanford and the larger Silicon Valley area. As part of the course this year, Karina Qian and David Gobaud are working with the Computer Science Department and the Haas Center for Public Service to create Masters and Senior project classes. Here, Karina talks about one project which hopes to create a Google Android version of kiwanja’s FrontlineSMS system

Students in CS210 usually collaborate with corporate liaisons on software challenges presented by global corporations that require innovation. Teams take projects from concept to completion, which includes defining requirements, iterating through ideas and prototypes and, ultimately, producing a finished work product. To reflect the growing importance of collaboration with the NGO sector, David Gobaud and I are working on allowing students to collaborate with non-profits on software challenges that require innovation, and would expose a new generation of programmers to the possibilities available in applying technology to social problems.

In CS210, a team of 3+ creative, bright Stanford Master’s level Computer Science (CS) students tackle one project over two quarters – for a total of six months – starting in January. The final product will be showcased at the Stanford Software Faire held in June.

Right now a group of students are interested in a project that would build a comprehensive all-mobile mass text-messaging program on Android. (For those of you interested in the technical detail, students would essentially impose a REST architecture on top of SMS, basically using SMS as a form of HTTP. Each SMS message would represent a 160 character mini-webpage that would serve as an information architecture for any kind of project, from election-monitoring to rapid disaster relief).

As a first step the project would involve porting FrontlineSMS and other, existing mass text-messaging platforms (like InSTEDD’s GeoChat) onto Android. The program would then be expanded to create a larger suite of features that would also allow users to process, manage, and respond to data using different software and display data using varying web-based interfaces. It would be open source, allowing users to adapt the program by mashing in other applications as needed.

This project would create a cheaper, more flexible, and more adaptable platform for managing SMS by virtually eliminating the need for computers, and even Internet, in the field. Large chunks of crowd-sourced data can be aggregated in a server in the urban areas, and uploaded onto the web for dissemination and/or further parsing. Crucially, users will no longer need computers to set up a mass SMS platform, only an Android-enabled phone and a phone plan with (unlimited) text messages. The decreased cost of operating SMS-based networks would have a significant impact on non-profit mobile projects.

The class is a great opportunity for a team of 3+ software engineers to devote themselves to the completion of this project for twenty weeks. Students would work in consultation with InSTEDD and FrontlineSMS. However, despite being a non-profit project, the class is primarily directed toward industry and this requires an unrestricted donation of $75,000. We are actively seeking funding to cover this. Thank you.

Karina Qian is co-founder of techY, a Stanford on-campus initiative which aims to engage students in global NGO technology issues

If you, or anyone you know, is interested in helping fund this innovative and exciting project, please contact Ken Banks through the kiwanja.net website. (FrontlineSMS has already been integrated into a human rights monitoring system in the Philippines – blog post pending – and work continues on its integration into the new Ushahidi crowdsourcing platform. Further work is pending on a number of other projects, including with the team at InSTEDD)

Social mobile: Doing what it says on the tin

About a year ago I was asked to give an interview to the Africa Journal. They were looking at ICT innovators and entrepreneurs in Africa and I agreed, despite being mildly uncomfortable being labelled an ICT innovator or an entrepreneur (and an African one, at that). At the end of the interview, however, they captured a brief moment which beautifully encapsulated what FrontlineSMS is all about. The interview ended:

FrontlineSMS provides the tools necessary for people to create their own projects that make a difference. It empowers innovators and organizers in the developing world to achieve their full potential through their own ingenuity

FrontlineSMS has always been about empowerment. It’s never been about telling people how to use mobile phones to monitor elections, to increase market transparency, or help raise awareness around HIV/AIDS issues, even though it’s been used for these things and many more. At the end of the day, it’s a tool which allows organisations to figure out how to do these things for themselves. Combine that with a connected community and you have the makings of something quite powerful.

The decision to build a platform – and not a specific solution to a specific problem – has turned out to be one of the key strengths of the software. The new functionality we’ve added to the latest version takes this one step further allowing, for example, St. Gabriel’s hospital in Malawi to figure out how to do automatic remote top-ups of their health workers’ phones, or CP-Union in the Philippines to share incoming SMS data – human rights reporting in this case – with their own K-Rights Monitoring software. When users start adding contacts, keywords and actions in FrontlineSMS, or integrating it into existing systems, they’re essentially creating something new, something from scratch, a communications environment all of their own making.

In ideal circumstances platforms become something of a blank canvas, and the brushstrokes the user-generated ‘content’ (actionable ideas, in this case). Not only does this encourage a culture of do-it-yourself thinking, it also creates instant engagement and ownership. Combine these with the local knowledge and level of engagement many NGOs already have with their stakeholders, and you’re half-way to a positive outcome. Approaches which allow initiatives to grow from the ground up, focusing on technology as the enabler (not the owner) generally have the greatest chance of success. The uses of FrontlineSMS, for example, are bewildering, and they’re growing all the time. Few, if any, were anticipated. Lower the barriers to entry and all sorts of things can happen, it seems.

Local ownership, the use of appropriate technology, ease-of-use, high replicability and accessibility, and a low barrier to entry should be among the key ingredients of any grassroots-focused social mobile tool. If we’re to make real, tangible progress then the tools we create don’t only need to set out to empower, they need to empower. In other words, they need to do exactly what they say on the tin.

Future FrontlineSMS

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Today has turned out to be rather significant for FrontlineSMS. Two months and two days since we released the new version we’ve hit our 500th download request. Although I didn’t set any targets back on launch day, by all accounts we’ve done incredibly well and FrontlineSMS is now likely the most widely adopted non-profit text messaging platform around.

Of course, many of those 500 users will probably never do anything significant with it, but at least they’re thinking about how they can apply mobiles in their work, and at least there’s a tool they can turn to as they begin to explore their mobile world. And for those who are beginning to use it, we’re slowly building a powerful picture of how it’s being adopted in the field. Here’s some feedback from just a few of our new users.

Mercy Corps, Indonesia – agriculture: We have been using FrontlineSMS for about a month sending weekly information on commodities such as plant, fish, fertiliser and pesticide prices, and weather forecasts (pictured). In the longer term we plan to send SMS-advertisements as well. Right now we have around 350 subscribers consisting of internal staff, farmers, buyers, government staff and other organisations

FrontlineSMS is also central to a UNDP pilot project where it is being used to provide coffee prices and other related agricultural information to 150 smallholder farmers. This project was previously covered here.

Open University project, UK – election monitoring: We are working in Mozambique where we are setting up coverage for local elections in 43 municipalities on 19th November. We publish the Mozambique Political Process Bulletin and during election periods we do a daily newsletter. We will be running FrontlineSMS with four lines – two for each of the two mobile phone companies. One line will be our fifty correspondents in the field – largely local radio and local newspaper journalists who will also string for us. We did this in the 2003 and 2004 elections and the only change is to use text messages that can go directly into the computer for basic information. The other line will be open and we are experimenting, for the first time in Mozambique, with an open request for citizen correspondents to send us text messages on the conduct of the election

FrontlineSMS first hit the headlines last April when it was used to monitor the Nigerian Presidential elections. This story was picked up by the BBC, among many others. The software has also been used to co-ordinate election monitoring in The Philippines, and is being lined up to help monitor the forthcoming elections in Ghana, Guinea and Cote D’Ivoire.

mPedigree, Ghana – health: We intend to use FrontlineSMS for the “rapid prototyping” of creative mobile health services related to drug authentication, and to help us with our surveying and administration on the prevalence of fake drugs. Based on the work we’ve been doing here in Ghana since 2007, we’re convinced there is room for FrontlineSMS in various e-government initiatives, health included

One of the early higher-profile projects making use of the latest version of FrontlineSMS is “Mobiles in Malawi“, where it has been implemented as the central communications hub for 600 community health workers in a rural hospital. Plans are already underway to replicate this work in places such as Kenya and India. The work in Malawi was covered here back in June.

National Democratic Institute, USA – election monitoring: Thanks for all your (collective) work in bringing such a quality product to market. As you may know, NDI has done a lot of work using SMS to collect and broadcast data via SMS in a number of elections around the world over the past two years. The latest version of FrontlineSMS is quite impressive, and much more accessible for non-technical users starting off in the SMS world. Although it can’t replace the custom coding we do through other methods, it’s a GREAT tool for international development partners who don’t have a lot of technical expertise but who want to stick their toe into the world of SMS. FrontlineSMS is now on our radar and something that we will always keep in mind when giving recommendations to partners

Anonymous media organisation, Iraq – news dissemination: We had been in contact with a number of local mobile operators hoping to negotiate the launching of a news alert service. While progress with local operators was relatively slow we started to look for a technical alternative and that was when we found out about FrontlineSMS. The team came to realise, during FrontlineSMS testing and evaluation, that the program was a fantastic way to deliver our content. A user-friendly program, three of our staff were trained to use it within the context of few hours. The effectiveness of FrontlineSMS is evident as we can create, manage and update the profiles of the clients’ groups we created. We now send messages to at least eight countries using different operators in Europe and the Middle East, with the messages delivered to all the numbers at the same time. We are keen to continue using FrontlineSMS as we predict that the demand for our services, via the software, will grow in the future

A significant number of rural radio stations have requested the latest version of FrontlineSMS as a method of sourcing audience-feedback, and we’ll bring further information as we get it. Use of the software continues in Zimbabwe, however, where it is being used to keep members of the public updated on news and current affairs, and to provide them with a channel to air their views.

Watch this space for further stories and case studies, particularly as our outreach efforts expand and we prepare for nine conferences in three months, not to mention an exciting engagement with the Clinton Global Initiative in late September.

Three is not the magic number…

It’s 1.4.7…

One month ago the new version of FrontlineSMS was released. Well over three hundred NGOs responded and downloaded the software, and over a hundred of them have joined the new online community. Apart from the excitement surrounding the software itself, the new community is already proving its worth. I’d easily have settled for a hundred members after one month – hopefully the other two hundred will also see the value and sign up and engage soon.

I’d also have settled for the level of enthusiasm among the practitioner community. As you’d expect, many of the smaller NGOs won’t have had a chance to do much with FrontlineSMS in such a short space of time, other than get familiar with the software and maybe run a few internal tests and trials. Some of the larger or better resourced projects have made some headway, however.

One of the most active users is Josh Nesbit in Malawi, who’s using FrontlineSMS to drive field communications between a local hospital and its six hundred roaming community health workers (CHWs). He’s also managed to set up a number of innovative services, such as automatic cellphone top-ups and a facility which allows CHWs to text in drug names and automatically receive responses on recommended uses and doses. A lot of people seem to be watching what Josh is doing very closely. What makes it so exciting is the fact that it’s so highly replicable, not to mention the immediate impact it’s having on the hospital and the community it is seeking to serve.

In one of the first microfinance-related applications of the new version, FrontlineSMS is being used by Grameen in Uganda to open up text-based communications with their Village Phone Operator (VPO) network. According to the project:

… We have been using FrontlineSMS to survey VPOs on their experiences at our training sessions and events, distributing information to them ranging from airtime to announcements to outages, and inviting feedback on other selected items through SMS. It really makes our lives easier by giving us a clear record of what’s been sent and responded to that can be reproduced and re-used elsewhere. It also helps us promote a culture of SMS use for communications

FrontlineSMS is also being lined up by the Cambodia Crop Production and Marketing Project (CCPMP). Funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, their aim is to improve agricultural value chains as a key to sustainable growth and poverty reduction in Western Cambodia. CCPMP plan to begin workshops and trials of FrontlineSMS in August and September. Further details are available on their project wiki. (FrontlineSMS is already being used to provide coffee prices to smallholder farmers in Aceh, something I blogged about a while ago).

Another project considering FrontlineSMS implementation is a text-based SOS/distress facility for Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs). The programme attempts to maximize the widespread ownership and use of mobile phones by Filipinos at home and abroad, and provide a 24/7 service in case of emergency. Incoming SOS text messages will be forwarded to numerous organisations and agencies capable of responding to various emergency situations. The project has just completed a round of comprehensive testing on the latest version – 1.4.7 – and posted the results on the FrontlineSMS community web pages.

Finally, Ushahidi have just completed their own period of FrontlineSMS evaluation, and are now putting together plans to integrate the platform into their web-based “crisis alert system”. Ushahidi was recently listed as one of “Ten Web Startups to Watch” by MIT’s Technology Review.

Behind the scenes there’s also considerable activity, and we’re working with a number of large donor organisations and academic researchers to help them understand the FrontlineSMS user base. Expect some interesting field-based research in the coming months. And in a couple of weeks or so we’re releasing the software source code, with a number of developers looking to build on the work we’ve already started.

I’ve always believed in the immense value of building an NGO community around a single powerful, shared, open, flexible mobile-messaging solution. After a couple of years it finally looks like it might actually be happening.