New team member for FrontlineSMS

Promoting FrontlineSMS has, up until now, been a slow and patient process. Over the past four years we’ve relied on the good will of many friends from many disciplines to help us get word out. It’s been a great joint effort, and it’s clearly worked as we hit our 3,500^th download last week. But, as from today, things are going to receive a welcome boost and become a little more proactive.

Thanks to the joint support of the Open Society Institute (OSI), and first-time donor Hivos, we’re bringing on-board a new team member to help accelerate adoption of FrontlineSMS, and to begin developing targeted materials and outreach for a range of key sectors where the software is proving particularly strong. These include – among many others - health, the media, agriculture, human rights and election monitoring. As always, it's been the users who dictate where we concentrate our efforts.

For those of you familiar with FrontlineSMS, our new team member isn’t so new after all. It’s Josh Nesbit, the brains behind FrontlineSMS:Medic and Hope Phones. Josh was the original inspiration behind the creation of targeted FrontlineSMS communities of practice when he started applying the software in health, making him the ideal candidate for what we’re calling the FrontlineSMS Ambassador Programme.

We're incredibly excited to have Josh on board. He's achieved amazing things in a very short space of time, and his ability to motivate and inspire others is going to be key in encouraging and fostering the creation of further communities of practice. There are already two more underway, and Josh will report on these as his - and their - work progresses.

Josh is also looking forward to the challenges ahead:

I couldn't be happier. It's now in my job description to interact with FrontlineSMS users, who I've found to be some of the most inspiring people on the planet. I'm also very happy that this grant will let me continue work with FrontlineSMS:Medic, which has shown me how FrontlineSMS could be applied to and shaped for the field of healthcare. I know that users in other fields will rally around the software, and I'm here to help facilitate those communities

Josh will be working with us initially for two years, thanks to the incredible support of OSI and Hivos. This work also represents the starting point of our Clinton Global Initiative commitment made last year in New York. Josh will regularly write and blog about his progress, either here on the kiwanja.net blog or over at his own site at Jopsa.org

From everyone in the FrontlineSMS community... A very warm o/ welcome, Josh!

About Hivos. A fair, free and sustainable world – that is what Hivos, the Humanist Institute for Development Cooperation, wants to contribute to. Together with local organisations in developing countries, Hivos strives for a world in which all citizens – both men and women – have equal access to resources and opportunities for development. On the web at www.hivos.nl

About OSI. The Open Society Institute works to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens. To achieve its mission, OSI seeks to shape public policies that assure greater fairness in political, legal, and economic systems and safeguard fundamental rights. OSI places a high priority on protecting and improving the lives of people in marginalized communities. On the web at www.soros.org

Scale, FrontlineSMS and the local

What follows is the fourteenth in our series of FrontlineSMS guest posts. Here, Kelly Sponberg - a Project Manager at RANET - discusses the challenges of 'local' and 'scale', and the potential his organisation sees for FrontlineSMS in their work

"For about a decade now I have been fortunate enough to work on a small and niche-focused program called RANET (Radio And Internet for the Communication of Hydro-Meteorological Information for Rural Development). The program has a simply stated goal to make meteorological forecasts, warnings, and observations more readily available to rural and remote communities.  It does so through a variety of training, system development, and site deployment activities.

The technologies utilized by RANET have ranged from satellite broadcasts, to satellite telephony, to FM community radio, include HF e-mail networks, a variety of web based applications, and of course mobile phone messaging and data services. We recently began experimenting with and using FrontlineSMS to scratch a particular itch.  If you will bear with me, I'll try to describe the challenge and problem FrontlineSMS uniquely addresses well.

RANET began with the notion that rural communities are often most affected by and vulnerable to environmental changes and variability, yet the information products communities may find beneficial are not easily distributed outside of major cities in developing regions.  The quote that somewhat launched RANET came from an Algerian nomad who said when interviewed, "Just tell me where it has rained, and I'll know what to do."

A story about a nomad

Such a simple statement is loaded with insights and information.  Think of the challenge.  The nomad is constantly on the move in remote desert areas to shepherd his herd to food and water.  Under the best of circumstances, it is a difficult technical challenge to deliver information to this individual in a timely and sustainable manner.  Beyond the physical delivery of information, there are barriers related to language and perhaps literacy.  But moreover his statement counters assumptions about what information is valuable.  Most meteorological services try to improve forecast quality and generally the science behind weather products.  This hard work and dedication often leads to the conclusion that forecasts and newer products are the most valuable to an end user.  Indeed this is probably true for most end consumers of meteorological products and services.  In this application, however, the nomad wanted a simple observation of where it has rained as that is where there will be fresh water and new vegetation.  He cannot afford to follow a probabilistic forecast, no matter how accurate it might be.

The story of the nomad touches on the challenge of scale, which I suspect arises in all ICT4D programs.  Scale is the tension between macro and micro.  It is regional versus local.

What do I mean here?  If you abstract out why we do ICT4D projects, it comes down to solving 'problems' of information access and inequality, data management for efficiency, and letting individuals and communities speak in their own voice.  In the abstract, the development community, be they foreign or indigenous, wants to be able to replicate local successes across regions, countries, and continents where other people have similar needs.  Resources are simply too scarce to not strive for scalable solutions.

Scale vs. relevance

There are two major problems of scale here.  One is content, information, or the 'byte'.  If you have a network that can distribute across a region, country, or even continent, the information distributed or shared often becomes less locally relevant and powerful the more widely distributed it is.  (The exception to this is of course sports scores.)  Certainly, technical or science based information does not change all that much.  Information on disease prevention is not going to change in substance from one locale to another, but it will necessarily need to transform how it is portrayed to fit within local cultural, religious, language, education/literacy, economic, and even political contexts.  To me the 'what' of information in ICT4D is perhaps the most challenging.

I work mostly on the 'how', which is simply the movement of information from point A to B in its most basic description.  Nonetheless, 'how' needs to be cognizant of the 'what', and as a result faces its own issues of scale.  Communication platforms that cover large geographic areas are often broadcast in nature, and therefore diminish the ability to target or carry information tailored to local needs. Of course broadcast systems are easier and more affordable to deploy than many networked systems, but with a broadcast you lose the ability to receive timely feedback or foster sharing / local production of information.   Many point-to-point or networked systems operating over large areas face regulatory challenges, are extremely expensive to operate, or require significant technical competence.  Community based systems, such as information centers and FM radio, require significant upfront investments and require considerable maintenance and training costs as well.   And these may not be connected such that local information and knowledge can benefit others.  When done right the results are clearly amazing, but the initial investment and time required to effectively establish such sites often prevents widespread deployment throughout a country; to say nothing across multiple countries.

All of this is to say its easy to find a communications solution that is sustainable and meets the needs of a small community or area.  Demonstrating success at this scale is easy.  Identifying something that suits local needs yet can be replicated elsewhere (often with an expectation of decreasing cost) is not so simple.

Enter the mobile

Mobile phone services offer a potentially interesting solution.  With rapid growth of networks in even the most remote of locations, there exists a standard and geographically expansive platform; even if operated by many different service providers.  Because of the point-to-point nature of the network, it manages to cater to local information needs and interests. In fact I would argue that in areas where the Internet has not penetrated, mobile phones change the expectation of how and what information is transmitted.  Even in comparison with a community FM station, a mobile device is inherently more local and simply intimate.  I believe this creates a new expectation for ever more tailored or individualized information.  And of course the basic economics of mobile, as well as the form factor, makes it ease to deploy.  Messages can be sent for mere cents, and as it is in the interest of commercial providers to make durable and easy to use devices, many deployment headaches are assuaged.

Clearly, mobile is not new.  There are hundreds of ICT4D projects out there utilizing mobile to collect and disseminate information.  But, there still remains a scale challenge I believe.  To process messages for collection of field data, reporting, or to distribute information beyond a small social circle or region of a country, you need some automation.  Creating these scripts and programs on a computer/server to interface with a mobile network is not always straight forward.  It requires expertise and funding to do so.  This unfortunately represents a barrier to scaling and replication.  If you examine many mobile messaging projects underway, many are either still pilots or very geographically limited.  At times it really is the content that limits scaling, but I also believe that as the technical basis for the local system is so highly tailored, it can't be easily transferred without starting with a whole new reinvestment in setting up servers, programmer time, etc.

As a program working in multiple countries across Africa, Asia, Pacific, and recently Central America, RANET has been struggling with this issue for some time.  Do we help our country and community partners develop highly customized mobile messaging applications, but then be unable to transfer this effort to other countries?  Or, do we develop some generic data management and messaging interface that while feature reach is unwieldy or lacks the specific function needed in a local circumstance?  Frankly, we have experimented with both, and we have experience of success and failure with each approach.

FrontlineSMS and the local

In the last year I came across FrontlineSMS, which I believe represents an interesting genre of tool.  The desktop application prepackages most of the basic messaging features a small social group might want in order to exchange messages.  But the ease of use extends into more advanced applications.  The more RANET experimented with automation tasks and keywords in FrontlineSMS, the more amazed we frankly became.  Want to automatically collect field data and filter for keywords, users, etc.?  Not a problem. Want incoming messages to auto-respond?  Simple.  Have a database half way around the world you want to store incoming messages or use to feed an auto-response sent as SMS?  Easy.  Did I mention it is free?

Many reading this have probably experimented with or used FrontlineSMS, so I don't pretend this is news.  But, I have also used other commercial applications that cost thousands of dollars and have half the features.  Some applications are feature rich and enterprise in scope, but these then require considerable technical expertise to use and maintain.  The FrontlineSMS team has done the hard job of creating an easy to use application that can be used to meet local community needs, but it also performs well for scaled applications that at the end of the day connect and replicate successful local implementations.

RANET has only begun to introduce FrontlineSMS into its country programs, but I already see the possibilities.  To help showcase some of the capabilities, as well as provide our community with baseline training, a few tutorials/discussions were added to our relatively new 'Weaver' series.  The articles on FrontlineSMS are available in English, French, and soon Portuguese.  In the near future we plan to add some video tutorials and discussions, and after that hope to start sharing some of our experiences on how FrontlineSMS has been used for collection of data, 'broadcasting' weather information, and even allowing on-demand and automated information requests.  We are looking forward to utilizing this application, as well as learning how others might be using it in earth science and services applications".

Kelly Sponberg Project Manager, International Extension and Public Alert Systems (IEPAS) / RANET Joint Office of Science Support (JOSS) University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) www.ranetproject.net

FrontlineSMS wins prestigious Tech Award

Yesterday the Tech Museum at Santa Clara University announced the 2009 Tech Awards Laureates. The Tech Awards is a prestigious international awards program that honours innovators from around the world who are applying technology to benefit humanity. FrontlineSMS / kiwanja.net was one of three Laureates honoured in the "Equality" category, and one of only fifteen in total. Established in 2001, The Tech Awards recognises Laureates in a total of five categories - environment, economic development, education, equality and health. Laureates are recognised as having developed new technological solutions or innovative ways to use existing technologies to significantly improve the lives of people around the world. The Awards are sponsored by a wide range of partners which include Nokia, Intel, Microsoft, Accenture, eBay and Google.

The fact we knew about our Award a couple of weeks ago didn't make Tuesday's announcement any less exciting. It's always a great feeling to have your efforts acknowledged, and if anything this shows, at the very least, that we're heading in the right direction. A lot of work has gone into FrontlineSMS, and this Award is very much down to the efforts of a fantastic user base of NGOs big and small, incredible donors - the MacArthur Foundation, Open Society Institute and the Hewlett Foundation - an amazing team of developers at Masabi, the inspiring work of spin-off organisations such as FrontlineSMS:Medic, the faith and belief of the many bloggers who regularly write about and promote our work,  the efforts of talented designers, and unlimited encouragement from friends and supporters in the social mobile space.

This Award is for all of you.

Thanks also to the person who nominated FrontlineSMS, whoever and wherever you are, and to the judges and organisers of the Tech Awards for putting their faith in our work.

Empowerment

I've always maintained that it's not technology that excites me, but what happens when you put technology in the hands of people. If it wasn't for the tireless work of increasing numbers of NGOs - each of whom has adapted and applied FrontlineSMS in their own unique way - we'd simply be sitting on thousands of lines of benign code.

FrontlineSMS has always been about empowerment, about lowering barriers to entry and giving people the tools they need to carry out their own social change work. This 2007 quote from the Africa Journal still spells out the ethos of FrontlineSMS better than anything:

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

Of course, it's also helped that we've been patient - the software has been over four years in the making, and remains very much a work in progress. We know more than anyone that there's still a very long way to go. What's also key is that we've remained totally focused in an industry which innovates at such a rate it's easy to be distracted. Back in 2005 we picked a specific problem and set out determined to solve it. It's fair to say that we never quite expected things to take off as they have, and today's announcement is yet another highlight in what is becoming an incredible journey.

But the work goes on, and it's all eyes back on the next big release, due out later this month. In the ICT4D world, complacency is a killer.

Finally, it goes without saying that congratulations also go out to the other fourteen Laureates. I'm looking forward to meeting them in November, and seeing what we can all learn from each others work. It promises to be an inspiring week.  o/

BBC: Web tool oversees Afghan election

Mr Conley hopes "hundreds of thousands of people" will use the system, which has been promoted by distributing "thousands of leaflets" and radio reports.... In addition, he said, each text message is relatively expensive, costing the equivalent of two minutes of talk time. "Even though that is the same amount of money it costs to buy bread for your family people have told me that some will be willing not to eat that evening [in order to be able] to tell the international community what is going on in the country."

Read more on the BBC News website.

Outreach, health and SMS in Ukraine

Earlier this year, IATP Ukraine launched three pilot projects using FrontlineSMS. In this, the thirteenth in our series of FrontlineSMS guest posts, Yuriy Selyverstov - the Dnipropetrovsk Representative from the Internet Access and Training Program (IATP) - describes two of the projects Tamarisk, a Ukrainian NGO,  plays the key role of resource center for local third sector organisations in the Dnipropetrovsk region. It organises and conducts training for NGOs, and hosts joint round table events for mass media, local authorities and other NGO representatives. Because of this it is important that Tamarisk be able to inform their target audiences about upcoming events. E-mail lists, a web portal for local NGOs, phone calls, and personal contacts have been traditionally used for this purpose.

In March this year, Tamarisk - in co-operation with the IATP program - launched a pilot project that uses FrontlineSMS to disseminate information to target audiences via SMS. By June there were over a hundred NGO subscribers with additional numbers being added regularly. Subscribers are organised into several groups depending on the field of their activities, and since the start of the project over 300 messages have been sent. The effectiveness of SMS sending is well illustrated by the International Renaissance Foundation, who held a presentation at the Tamarisk offices in April. About 60% of the participants found out about the event via SMS.

The following conclusions were drawn after the first three months of using FrontlineSMS:

• Almost all SMS messages were read compared to e-mail, which is not checked regularly by many NGOs
• Bulk SMS sending saves time in comparison to phone calls or personal contact
• SMS did not exclude other traditional tools for disseminating information, but complimented them very effectively

Tamarisk now plans to increase the use of FrontlineSMS in its work.

In the second project, "Doroga Zhizni" (Road of Life) applied FrontlineSMS in the field of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis transmission prevention and treatment. The target audience are injecting drug users and former prison inmates.  "Doroga Zhizni" is part of the all-Ukrainian "Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS".

For two months starting in March 2009, a pilot group of users with mixed HIV/TB diagnosis received scheduled text messages twice a day reminding them to take their pills. After the two months were up, feedback was collected from the group asking their opinion about the effectiveness of the service. In total, 90% of the group replied that SMS effectively helped them not to forget to take their pills, and that they wanted to receive SMS in the future. Only 10% said SMS was not helpful. Overall, 50% of the group noted positive psychological benefits - the messages made them feel that they were not alone and that somebody cared about them. The project concluded that FrontlineSMS was effective in improving patient adherence to prescribed treatment.

“Doroga Zhizhi” now plan to recommend using SMS reminders with all of its clients, starting this summer. To make this scaling possible they plan to request additional funding from their donor to cover the cost of the messages.

IATP is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by IREX, an international nonprofit organisation that delivers cross-cutting programs to strengthen civil society, education, and media independence in more than 50 countries

Yuriy Selyverstov Dnipropetrovsk Representative Internet Access and Training Program (IATP) www.ua.iatp.net

Taking on the grassroots challenge

Over the past four years FrontlineSMS has taught us a lot, and I write about it frequently (see my recent misconceptions and observations posts). One of the biggest - and most underestimated - challenges is outreach. If you're building a tool for grassroots NGOs, particularly those working on the margins, promoting social mobile tools to them is inherently tricky. Over the past year, and over the past few months in particular, increasing numbers of local, national and international NGOs have begun promoting FrontlineSMS themselves, to their own field offices, partners and NGO friends. This is hugely significant for us, amplifying our own efforts considerably. This short video, courtesy of United Methodist Communications (UMC), shows a handful of delegates at a recent crisis management conference talk briefly about their thoughts on the software.

They may only be a few words, but for us they speak volumes. We took on the grassroots challenge, and it's great to see others joining in to help us.

After all, it doesn't matter how good your mobile solutions are if no-one knows they exist.

Update: Domestic violence - An SMS SOS

This update is the twelfth in our series of FrontlineSMS guest posts. Here, Anthony Papillion - Founder of OpenEMR HQ - shares the latest news on its use in his Oklahoma home town, where the software is helping provide relief to women suffering domestic violence "In late May of this year, I assisted a local crisis center in deploying a solution we've now dubbed "FamilyFIRST". FamilyFIRST is an SMS based system that allows victims of domestic violence to reach out to police, crisis counselors, and to document abuse incidents all via simple SMS messaging.

When the project first began, neither I nor the agency involved were sure how it would be received or if it would even be used. Educating victims to think pro-actively in crisis situation is a difficult thing. Their first reaction is to simply hide or get out of the situation if possible. This often means running without a purse or mobile phone.

So the agency decided to tackle the deployment in two phases: Technical and marketing. Technical, thanks to FrontlineSMS, was incredibly easy. By integrating the software along with a bit of custom software written by me, I was able to get a working system up and running bug free in less than a week. It includes message routing and archival, and is structured in such a way that the evidence stored inside of it has been deemed acceptable by the court.

Then, came the marketing side. Obviously, the agency didn't have a lot of money so doing a huge PR blitz was out of the question. So they went about spreading word about the system in local PSA's, victims groups, in seminars, and through area counselors working with the abused population. Because this was all very grassroots, they were able to accomplish this with a near zero budget and we were all totally shocked by the response it received.

In the last two and a half months, FamilyFiRST has processed over 4,000 messages from victims of violence, not only in our local area, but around the state of Oklahoma. Evidence stored in the system has been used to help successfully prosecute 9 offenders and has resulted in combined sentences of over 110 years being handed down in those cases.

All in all, the system is a success and it couldn't have happened without FrontlineSMS. Even though I'm a software engineer by trade, I wouldn't have had the time or knowledge to build such a robust system from scratch and FrontlineSMS reduced 'building the system' to writing a few pieces of tie-in software and setting up a database.

Our future goal for the system is to work with other agencies in deploying in in health care (our core competency), domestic violence, and education. Thanks to this experience with FrontlineSMS, I'm confident that a robust system can be built quickly, easily, and very affordably (under $700 USD).

Thank you Ken and all the developers of FrontlineSMS. You're helping to change the world, one download at a time".

Anthony Papillion Founder OpenEMR HQ www.openemrhq.com

(This post is also available on the FrontlineSMS community pages. Anthony's original FrontlineSMS guest post, which describes the thinking behind the project, is available here. Congratulations to everyone at "FamilyFIRST" for such a great, inspiring and hugely valuable initiative)

SMS registration for Maker Faire Africa

Attendees of next month's Maker Faire Africa will be able to register their attendance by text message, thanks to a clever hack by  Henry Barnor and Henry Addo, two Ghanaian developers. In the true spirit of Maker Faire, the two Henry's have built the system using a phone with a Zain SIM card connected to a laptop running FrontlineSMS. When the software receives an SMS it sends the data via HTTP to a python web application running on Google’s App Engine infrastructure, where it's processed and a registration code sent out to the originating handset. It's another great use of the software and kudos goes out to the guys behind it. You can read their full post here.

Maker Faire Africa (MFA), a celebration of African ingenuity, innovation and invention, will take place between August 14th and 16th at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT in Ghana's capital, Accra. Wish I could be there.  :(

The Million Dollar Homepage

Some of the best ideas are so incredibly simple that, after-the-event, we're all left wondering why we never came up with them. When I first heard of The Million Dollar Homepage back in October 2005, that's precisely how I felt (like millions of others, no doubt). Alex Tew was a student trying to figure out how to pay his way through university. Short of money and short of socks, he scrawled "How can I become a millionaire?" on a notepad and, twenty minutes later, The Million Dollar Homepage was born. The concept was simple - create a website and charge people a dollar-a-pixel to place an image on a grid a thousand pixels wide by a thousand high. 'Selling' all million pixels - if he could pull it off - would net him a cool one million dollars.

Launched towards the end of August 2005 the idea was so novel, quirky and brilliant, the least I felt I could do was part with a little of my own hard-earned cash and buy up a few in a show of support. At that time the site was far from full, and it was still unclear whether or not all the space was going to sell. Today, the completed image is something of an internet icon.

Around the same time Alex was raking in the dollars, I was putting together the final touches of a little project of my own. Somewhere in those million pixels you'll find a couple of hundred dedicated to FrontlineSMS (no prizes, but see if you can spot them). Like Alex, I had no idea back then whether my idea was going to get any serious traction.

Looking back, neither of us needed worry.

On a mission to aid farmers in Latin America

This is the eleventh in our series of FrontlineSMS guest posts. Here, Jorge Alonso - a veterinarian turned ICT4D practitioner - discusses his thoughts on the application of the software in agriculture in Latin America "I am a veterinarian by qualification but, as often happens in life, ended up working with information and communication technologies... applied to agriculture. And I have no regrets. For some time I have been interested in the application of technology in agriculture, and these days I am particularly excited by the potential of mobile technologies in helping small producers improve the marketing of their products.

Over the past ten years I have managed a regional potato network (in Spanish). As its content manager my duties included searching for useful information to distribute among subscribers, and it was here that I first came across FrontlineSMS. My first, initial thought was how it could be used to spread potato prices among my group.

Since last year I have been thinking more about how FrontlineSMS could help small-holder farmers in San Juan, my province here in Argentina. I participated in two e-forums organized by FAO on Mobile Telephony in Rural Areas (which were held in both Spanish and English) and I paid particular interest to the experiences of participants using text messaging in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It was a hugely beneficial exercise, and I think I found what I was looking for.

Based on the findings of my research I designed a process through which small producers could exchange information by SMS with organisations, with the end result being improvement in the marketing of their produce. What do organisations need to do this? A computer, a cell phone (or modem) and a copy of FrontlineSMS. Most organizations have a computer and cell phone. According to recent statistics, in Argentina there are 102.2 mobiles phones per 100 habitants. What's more, 91% of mobile users in the lower income bracket have used SMS services. Using readily available and familiar technologies, my idea could be adopted by many institutions including associations, co-operatives, NGOs, independent and community radio stations, as well as rural and indigenous organisations.

I recently wrote a comprehensive article in Spanish which talks about mobile telephony, the global food crisis, what makes mobile phone technology so special, experiences in Africa, Asia and America, and finally my proposal in more detail. Please check it out. Comments and suggestions are welcome. Thank you".

Jorge Luis Alonso G. Content Manager Red Electrónica de la Papa (Redepapa) www.redepapa.org

Mapping medicine availability via SMS

Medicine stock-outs are a potentially lethal problem in a number of African countries, yet governments insist they don't occur. What could be more powerful than a map which contradicts this claim? Last week activists in Kenya, Uganda, Malawi and Zambia started surveying clinics in their respective countries, checking stock levels of essential medicines, including:

• First-line anti-malarials
• Zinc 20mg tablet
• Penicilin
• First-line ARVs
• Metronidazole 200mg tablet
• Ciproflaxicin
• Amoxicillin suspension
• Ceftriaxone
• Cotrimoxazole suspension
• ORS - Diarrhea

Each of these are seen as essential in varying degrees to fighting disease and illness, and are widely used when available.

Armed with the data, activists report their results via structured, coded SMS - "x,y,z" - where the first number represents their country code (Kenya, Malawi, Uganda or Zambia), the second their district or city, and the third the medicine which they found to be out of stock.  These messages are received by a phone connected to a computer running FrontlineSMS, which then runs an automatic script which validates the data before it is sent over the internet to a Ushahidi-powered website.

From there the results are automatically displayed on a map, below (click to visit the live site).

As of today, there have been over 250 stock-outs of these essential medicines.

Since the data is automatically populated, the map represents an almost real-time picture of stock-outs in the four target countries. After a successful launch and a week piloting the service, the "stock-out hub number" will now be distributed to medicine users throughout each country so that anyone with a mobile phone can send in a stock-out report. Unlike reports from official, known data collectors, these messages will firstly be checked by staff at Health Action International (HAI Africa) before being posted up on the map.

The technological portion of the campaign was implemented by Michael Ballard and Claudio Midolo, both Open Society Fellows from the Department of Design + Technology at Parsons the New School for Design in New York.  Ndesanjo Macha also helped in getting FrontlineSMS up and running in Uganda and Malawi.

For further background information and up-to-date news, visit the "Stop Stock-Outs" website.

FrontlineSMS:365

As the latest iteration of FrontlineSMS celebrates its first birthday, now is as good-a-time as any to sit back with a double latte and reflect on the successes - and challenges - of the past twelve months Happy birthday to o/

Exactly one year ago today - 25th June, 2008 - saw the release of the revised version of FrontlineSMS. Originally written in 2005 over a five week summer break in Finland, the MacArthur Foundation stepped in a couple of years later to fund the development of an improved, Java-based multi-platform version following its successful deployment in the Nigerian Presidential elections, an event which turned out to be pivotal in the short history of the software.

Since then there have been numerous interim releases thanks to follow-on funding from the Open Society Institute (OSI) and the Hewlett Foundation, funding which has allowed us the luxury of pushing out new and improved features to users. In three months time we'll see the release of a significant upgrade with a range of new features - including picture messaging - which promises to open up the platform yet further.

Suffice to say it’s been an exciting if hectic past twelve months. From a standing start last summer almost 2,600 NGOs have - one way or another - got to hear about the software and downloaded it. The online community is picking up steam and currently stands at just shy of 600 members. We’re about to launch another community, this time aimed at developers, although thankfully we won’t be starting from scratch on this one. Numerous programmers, projects and organisations have already begun working with the code, and others have used it to build diverse applications including human rights- and agriculture-based SMS solutions. We’re very excited where this could be headed, but hold no illusions that an active, engaged developer community is essential if FrontlineSMS is to ever become sustainable, developmentally at least.

Over the past twelve months the software has also been profiled in the international media and presented at dozens of ICT4D and non-ICT4D conferences around the world. Thanks to the efforts of the FrontlineSMS:Medic team it also made it onto the CNN and Discovery Channel websites (a selection of videos are available via the community site). Recent efforts by the University of Canberra have also attracted the attention of Brad Pit and Angelina Jolie.

In addition, volunteers have helped translate the software into over half-a-dozen languages, numerous non-profit organisations have held FrontlineSMS training sessions for their staff, and Plan International went a step further and made their own introductory videos to distribute to Plan field offices via DVD. The software has a growing following on Facebook and Twitter, and continues to get good traction in wider non-profit circles. Many people are beginning to hear about FrontlineSMS through their own networks, and that’s a simple yet significant first step for many NGOs looking to deploy SMS services in their social change work.

But the past year - and the three before that, if we’re to be honest - have presented their fair share of challenges. When FrontlineSMS was originally conceived in 2005 it was highly experimental. Every step since has presented its own mini mountain to climb.

#1 Applications development and deployment

We’ve certainly learnt a lot on the development side of things - everything from the technical, geographical and financial challenges of creating mobile tools for use in resource-constrained environments, through to ways of encouraging adoption among the hard-to-reach grassroots NGO community. Best practice - such as understanding the fundamentals of the problem at the very beginning, researching existing solutions, rapid prototyping, choosing appropriate platforms and leveraging existing structures, are among a number of important key steps we’ve learnt along the way.

#2 Dismissing myths

By far the best way to fully understand the geographical, cultural and technical challenges of building mobile tools is to go out and build tools. It’s also imperative to spend a little time with the people or organisations you’re trying to help, ideally before you start designing anything. Neither of these are easy, mind you - time and cost are two factors - but you’ll gain far greater insight than you could ever do basing your project entirely on what other people say. Misconceptions and hype can be dangerous distractions and blind alleys, particularly if you base some of the fundamentals of your project on them. Scaling, “big is beautiful”, centralised versus distributed and “collaboration at all costs” are just a few. Proceed with caution.

#3 Fragmentation

Although things are much better than they were with the 2005 release (which only supported half-a-dozen devices), today we face the challenges created by a hugely fragmented handset market which innovates and releases new models at a remarkable rate.

We could, of course, make things easy for ourselves and insist users get hold of a GSM modem, but the whole point of FrontlineSMS is to try and lower the barrier to entry, and only supporting modems (and not the devices most readily available to NGOs - mobile phones) would be entirely counter-productive. Over the coming weeks we hope to gain access to test facilities which will allow us to test the software on a wider range of more recently-released phones, but keeping up with the industry will be an ongoing challenge.

#4 Device configuration

Getting their phone connected and working remains one of the bigger challenges for end users. We've made things as easy as possible with built-in automatic detection and configuration, but this can be totally thrown by cheap or fake/imitation cables, handsets not put into the right 'mode', incorrect or corrupt software drivers, software running on the computer 'locking' the phone and not allowing FrontlineSMS access, or by the phone communicating using different 'non-standard' protocols. Again, this is a problem which won't go away, but one we're going to have to do our best with.

#5 Outreach

Finally, how do you promote a grassroots messaging tool to grassroots NGOs who by their very nature are largely 'offline'? It may have taken four years, but FrontlineSMS is today relatively well known among our target communities, and much of the adoption is driven organically, i.e. by one NGO talking about it with another. We're very happy with our 2,600 NGOs in the past year, but we should be reaching out to many more. Getting it up to nearer 5,000 over the next twelve months is the target we've set ourselves.

#6 Bandwidth

FrontlineSMS is run by the smallest of teams - one project manager and two part-time software developers. As the software begins to get serious traction in a number of target areas, we need to plan very carefully to ensure that we don't miss out on key opportunities, that we keep up with the users' needs, that we remain responsive, and that we don't become too overstretched. Some of the signs tell us that perhaps we already are.

#7 Evaluation and impact

A number of researchers and larger international NGOs are beginning to take an interest in helping us assess the impact of FrontlineSMS among the user base. There is still much we don't really know - how many downloads lead to regular use (and how many don't), what barriers stop people using it, what impact the software has on the work of the NGO, and the benefits it brings to the communities they serve. These are all critical questions.

As we enter the second year, we're just about ready to start making sense of the map and what it represents. And that means our successes, our failures, and where we go from here.

FrontlineSMS reaches out in Cambodia

Brad, Angelina team up with FrontlineSMS project in Cambodia:

UNIVERSITY OF CANBERRA PRESS RELEASE

Researchers from the University of Canberra are working with the Maddox Jolie-Pitt Foundation (MJP), an organisation founded by philanthropists Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, to trial a cost effective text-messaging system. The project with the University of New England is funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research to help improve the lives of some of the poorest people in Cambodia.

The mobile phone system can be used to alert villagers about disease outbreaks, like tuberculosis and other important health and agricultural information, like pest problems in Samlaut, a remote and rural outpost in northwest Cambodia where MJP is implementing large scale integrated development interventions.

Although reports are showing that the percentage of Cambodia's population falling ill with TB declined in 2007, Stephan Bognar, Executive Director of MJP said that Cambodia had approximately 495 new cases per every 100,000. Only Zimbabwe and South Africa had higher rates. "We need, therefore, to find effective tools to quickly disseminate information to isolated and rural communities."

The University’s Dr Robert Fitzgerald says the researchers chose SMS text messaging as the information tool of choice because Cambodia has 85 per cent mobile phone coverage and texting can cost as little as 3 US cents.

The seed for the simple, but successful technology came from a project to help Cambodian farmers get better prices for their crops.

"We wanted to help farmers access the price of maize or soybeans on demand, so they were in a stronger position to negotiate the sale of their crop," Dr Fitzgerald said. "Many of these farmers have to borrow money to plant their crop, in most cases paying 4 per cent interest per month."

"Some traders and farmers knew some price information but that was not always shared, so the only way the farmer could find out about the price was to travel to town or ask nearby friends. So now farmers can text the agricultural information server and straight away find out about the prices."

The FrontlineSMS system runs on any PC, with a GSM modem and a pre-paid SIM card. The software is free and open source, and was developed by UK-based expert Ken Banks who designed the software back in 2005 specifically for Non-Government Organisations working primarily in Africa.

Dr Fitzgerald is working on a new project with his colleagues to expand the farmer SMS network to include more production and marketing information.

(Further details on the project, including future plans for expansion, are available via a guest blog post from Robert here. The official University of Canberra press release is available here)

Mobile meets plough in Cambodia

In this, the tenth in our series of FrontlineSMS guest posts, Dr. Robert Fitzgerald - Associate Dean of Research at the University of Canberra in Australia - explains their use of the software to provide agricultural data to farmers in Cambodia, and their plans to expand the service over the coming months

Background

"For the last three years I have been working with my colleague, John Spriggs, on agricultural development projects in Cambodia. John is an agricultural economist who has over the last few years been applying participatory action research methods to improving agricultural marketing systems in developing countries (Cambodia and Papua New Guinea). My background is in technology and education with an interest in the application of robust technologies to help users communicate and work together.

Originally, John invited me to join him on his project to explore ways we could use communications technologies to the improve the marketing system for maize and soy bean farmers in western Cambodia. From our early workshops in Battambang, Cambodia, we identified poor communications as one of the key constraints to improving the marketing system. At that time I had been developing an interest in mobile communications, particularly the application of SMS, and was following closely the work of the Pinoy Internet Farmers project.

Following an initial workshop we presented a proposal to the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) for a year’s extension to John’s project to develop the Electronic Marketing Communication System (EMCS). During that project we used a propriety system, Infotxt (developed in the Philippines) to run an SMS server from the Price Division of the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) in Phnom Penh. A price officer collected price data each week and used this to update the server.

The trial was very successful and the information on demand system allowed a user to text specific keywords and that would return price information. We conducted a number of training sessions in 2007 and later that year the Cambodian People’s Party endorsed the EMCS as a significant agricultural innovation in Cambodia.

During 2007 we worked closely with Pieter Ypma from CAMIS and for a number of months they used our EMCS system to SMS-enable their web-based price database. In early 2008 our project concluded and we handed the server across to the MOC.

A new project begins

In April 2008 we started a new project which focused on production and marketing problems faced by poor smallholder farmers in northwestern Cambodia. While still a comparatively fertile area, over the last ten years crop yields have been declining and soils are being degraded by excessive cultivation and burning. Much of the crop development has been largely driven by market demand in Thailand, however local farmers are disadvantaged by lack of market information, and inadequate post-harvest technology and transport infrastructure.

The overarching aim of the project is to improve the functioning of the production–marketing system for maize and soybean in north-western Cambodia as a key to increasing cash income, sustainable growth and poverty reduction for smallholder farmers. We have established eight village clusters, four in the district of Samlaut (a protected area containing the last remnants of tropical rainforest in Cambodia) and four in the municipality of Pailin (a previously heavily forested area known for its gem mining).

Farmer workshops have been investigating key socio-economic issues related to adoption of the improved crop technologies and improving land use. Village level workshops have worked on gross margin and partial budgets to examine return on investments for various production technologies and discussed access to marketing information.

FrontlineSMS

Building on the previous project we wanted to extend our SMS work to both the production and marketing system. After a number of months of evaluation we selected FrontlineSMS as the platform for our SMS work (previously covered on kiwanja's blog here).

In February 2009 we set up two FrontlineSMS servers. The first was with the newly formed Northwest Agricultural Marketing Association (NAMA) in Pailin which had particular focus on the provision of information (rated top priority by members) and the exchange and sharing of silo association price and market information. A second server was installed with the Maddox Jolie Pitt Foundation (MJP) in Battambang with particular emphasis on basic market information and health alerts. Check out the Pitt-Jolie press release here.

In June 2009 we further refined the systems and NAMA is focusing on using FrontlineSMS to broadcast messages to members, to provide maize, soy bean and cassava price information, and to distribute seed and fertiliser (input) costs.

MJP has developed three main knowledge areas/teams for its FrontlineSMS server:

• Health – Health alerts and health-related information, and health communications (e.g. clinic reminders for pregnant women)
• Farmer – Price information, buyer contacts, weather information and farmer communications (e.g. meeting reminders)
• MJP Head Office Field Communication System – A field communication system to provide field worker contact and updates, emergency/disaster protocols via SMS, meeting reminders, etc.

Future SMS applications

While our SMS servers are still in the early days of use we are exploring other SMS-based information systems such as GeoChat from InSTEDD and mhits– an innovative SMS-based micro-payment system developed in Australia by Harold Dimpel.

Volunteer and Intern opportunities

In recent conversations with both MJP and InSTEDD we have been exploring the possibility of establishing intern programs to encourage volunteers work with us. Some good work is already underway by volunteers. Oum Vatharith from Phnom Penh is already working on a Khmer translation of FrontlineSMS and I have talked to him recently about the development of FrontlineSMS user manual in Khmer.

We will be looking for volunteers in the form of software developers and IT savvy community/education development folk who are interested in working with these leading NGOs to help ensure that we realise the potential of technology to make a difference to peoples lives. If you are interested in helping out, please leave a comment!

Thank you."

Rob Fitzgerald Associate Dean of Research, Faculty of Education University of Canberra www.mathetic.info

The making of an SMS icon

Running social mobile tools through the global branding machine might not seem like an obvious thing to do, but done right it can lead to some surprising - and unexpected - results. This is our story.

"Branding was the last thing on our minds. It was October 2007 and we were knee-deep building out the alpha version of the revamped FrontlineSMS. I'd just taken a phone call from Wieden+Kennedy (W+K), a global branding giant with the likes of Nokia, Nike and Google on their books. Renny Gleeson - W+K's Creative Director - had stumbled into what we were doing via our Social Mobile Group and wanted to see if they could get involved. I'll never forget the first five words he said to me (they sadly can't be repeated here).

We were still evaluating tenders from a range of web design companies in the Bay Area, but Renny was insistent that the job of building the FrontlineSMS website and brand had their name written all over it. It turns out he was right.

I never expected in my wildest dreams to end up working with some of the most talented brand experts in their field. If we'd gone our own route then our logo would likely have ended up as a picture of a mobile phone with the words "FrontlineSMS" underneath (this accurately describes our first effort, although it did help as a starting point for the W+K team). Early ideas - straight off the bat - looked like this.

It was a fascinating and evolving process, and one which eventually lead to a short list of keywords which we felt best described what lay at the heart of the software. One stood out - one which not only happened to be central to the early FrontlineSMS thinking, but one which came through strongly time after time in email messages from the growing community of users. And that word?

Empowerment.

Empowerment is hugely personal and emotive. It's also something often expressed physically, and how to graphically represent this 'physical expression of empowerment' became a key theme as the logo continued to evolve. The neat concept of a 'textable logo' was also beginning to emerge, something which was to later prove something of a masterstroke.

According to Kelly Wright, a member of the W+K team:

We collectively focused in on the 'textable logo' concept because it spoke to the FrontlineSMS technology, and being purely visual, could be language independent.  The challenge then became how to convey 'empowerment' through this pared down form

The 'o/' form had history, as Renny learned when he first shot the concept through to me on Skype.  Check it out for yourself - it's a Skype emoticon shortcut, and when we saw what it generated, we were both sold on the unexpected - but hilarious - additional layer of meaning.

Renny had this to say about the overall design experience:

Ken built FrontlineSMS out of love, faith in human potential, and an inspired application of mobile technology.  And you can feel it when you talk and work with him.  At W+K, while we have the privilege to work day in and day out on some pretty impressive brands, the chance to help craft the visual language and web experience for Ken's creation was uplifting.  From our first conversation with Ken, W+K has felt like a part of the extended FrontlineSMS family

And talking of family, something else very interesting has been happening. Something quite unexpected.

Today, as the FrontlineSMS software finds its way into more and more pairs of hands - currently 2,452 and counting - users have started sending in pictures of themselves, their teams and their community members replicating the FrontlineSMS logo, just like the ones above. I'm not quite sure what this means, but perhaps it's yet another sign that we've been able to take engagement and ownership to an entirely new level.

A few of the earlier (staged) photos are available on Flickr, including this one by Erik Hersman, below, which has become something of a "poster shot" for the icons phenomenon.

Branding social mobile tools is a relatively new concept - there is no manual, after all. Many people are still learning on their feet - us included - and what has happened here is just one of the many reasons why we, and others, are finding this space so exciting to work in."