The Kabul Innovation Lab (Jan 23-26) in Kabul was a rare privilege for me to attend. I was invited to the event by Internews, with whom I have been engaging since deploying Swara at RuaiTV in Pontianak, Indonesia.
Rachel Maher and the lab team from International Synergy Group did a fantastic job in bringing together some of the best young minds from Afghanistan as well as social tech experts from around the globe. The result was 4 days of brainstorming, designing and hackingto come up with innovative solutions to some of the challenges that Afghanistan is facing today, several of which are relevant in other developing countries as well.
The three day event kicked off on the 23rd of January. I missed day 1 on account of the Kabul airport being snowed in but made it to Kabul just in time for the actual work of design and implementation.
The participants grouped themselves into x teams based on their focus areas, i.e. Education, Media, Healthcare, Governance, Crisis Response and Agriculture.
Each team picked a challenge that they would address during the workshop. Here is a list of the challenges: http://kabulinnovationlab.com/projects/
The experts at the lab were no less distinguished: http://kabulinnovationlab.com/digital-lab/.
Over the three days of the lab, the experts led sessions about social tech tools and IT best practices for development and social change.
Schuyler provided valuable insight into why OpenStreetMaps is a freer alternative to closed source mapping platforms. He also showed how users can upload their own GPS tracks to OSM to map areas that other mapping platforms may not cover. I did download the OSMAnd app and I’m now baking it off against Google Maps…will post about that experience some day.
Bobby introduced FrontlineSMS and demonstrated how to get up and running with it in a really short time. The organizers had several GSM modems handy to use with FLSMS so this was an instant hit with the participants.For some reason my 64 bit Fedora box and FLSMS don’t seem to like each other because FLSMS kept segfaulting every time I tried to attach the GSM modem. I suppose it’s just one more signal that it’s time to move back to Ubuntu.
I introduced the Swara IVR platform and was very happy to see that IVR as a platform is already being explored quite extensively in Afghanistan. We talked about the hyperlocal approach as an alternative to centralized deployments and I could see the economics of it seemed to make sense.
Anahi talked about Ushahidi and how different map sources can be used to visualize statistical data in reference to geography. I had heard so much about Ushahidi that I was sure it would be very tough to deploy. However I was able to get it deployed and linked up to the Swara RSS feed on the same machine fairly quickly. The only thing that remains is to use the calling circle to roughly geolocate the report and then have a human moderator enter teh lat long coordinates. There is probably a way to scrape that from an online source as well…my next rainyday project 🙂
The sessions were spread over three days and Bobby came back on day 3 to deliver a jaw dropping session on basic security on social networks. He opened the session by showing 3 of the participants the insides of their Facebook and YouTube accounts…driving shanghai home the need to encrypt your FB transactions, by switching to the HTTPS protocol, particularly on public networks.
The participants put what they learned in the sessions to immediate use, with FLSMS, Ushahidi and Swara deployments quickly taking off on every table.By the end of day 1 of the lab, several participants had their basic platforms deployed and were already working on plans to customize the platforms to their particular project ideas. Day 2 saw most of the participants either hunched over keyboards fervently hacking away to get the projects just right or brainstorming communication strategies and project budgets with the experts chipping in with advice, criticism and code as needed.
By day 3, most of the projects were nearing completion, either with a live demonstration or a detailed presentation. Adrenaline was high as experts and teams started to fine tune the projects looking for gaps and holes to fill and demo and presentation strategies. The winner of the lab would get to pitch their idea to the World Bank, as well as representatives of the Government of Afghanistan.
I was thrilled to see that several projects were considering using IVR as an interface either immediately or as a future option. The Governance group was using as a means to streamline the Hajj registration process.
Every year thousands of people apply to the Afghani Ministry of Hajj to go on the holy pilgrimage to Mecca. The number of applicants selected is limited by a quota and the selection is by lottery. The procedure requires people to travel from remote areas to the provincial Hajj committees office to apply. If they are selected, then they have to travel all the way back to submit their documentation and follow through. At the moment most of the records are kept on paper. The entire process is a logistics overhead for the government, besides being expensive and time consuming for the citizens.
The EasyHajj project would utilize an IVR based system to collect at least the tier one entries and then only call those people for further processing who actuallyc leared the first round of lottery.
The system would provide updates to users on the application status via FrontlineSMS and the IVR system.
The agriculture group was looking at using IVR as a means to have farmers access weather and price information.Almost every group had an innovative or out of the box idea to solve social problems that had clearly started to become chronic.
Finally….presentation time! Each of the teams presented the work they had done over the last few days, presentations here: http://kabulinnovationlab.com/projects
I was truly impressed to see that almost every team had a working prototype of their project. The teams had clearly put heart and soul into their work during the lab and the presentations spoke to that effort.
Of course, in collaborative events like hackathons and code jams, everyone leaves a winner simply because the pleasure of solving a problem innovatively is a victory in itself. Even so I was pretty thrilled when the judges came back with EasyHajj as the choice to pitch before the World Bank.
I wish the Easy Hajj team all the best and look forward to seeing the project live and in action!