4 Requirements for Technology Project Sustainability
I am often called in to help when a technology project has gone awry. For example, once a partner organization gifted a network-attached storage server (NAS) to...
Please Help USAID Develop Responsible Data Practices for Digital Development
Are you managing personally identifiable data? Have you struggled with the need to share, yet protect sensitive data? Do you worry about privacy risks and want...
Does Informed Consent Really Matter to a Poor Farmer?
One of my first tasks at IRRI is to develop a consent form we can use across our agricultural extension service tools that at a minimum will inform end-users, usually...
How We Fought Ebola with Information
In December 2013, a little-known viral hemorrhagic fever in West Africa was detected in a forest region of Guinea. It was soon confirmed to be Ebola Virus Disease,...
We Can Now Fingerprint Children at 6 Months Old, But Should We?
In 1899, Sir Francis Galton first captured ink-on-paper fingerprints of a single child from birth until the age of 4.5 years, manually compared the prints, and...
Apply Now: $5 Million in Cash Grants for ICT4D Hardware Purchases
Guess what kids, there is a Hardware Santa Claus! Nethope has just announced its 2017 Device Challenge – $5 million dollars in cash grants for technology...
The Unequal Diffusion of Big Data Capacity
A 2014 White House report from the office of President Obama underlined that Big Data leads to ‘vexing issues’. Big data technologies can cause societal...
Surprise! More Internet Bandwidth Leads to Worse User Experiences
In rural developing communities, access is often provided through slow satellite or other low- bandwidth long-distance wireless links, if available at all. As a...
The Biased State of Gender Disaggregated M&E Data
Recently, we sent out a survey on international development experiences with gender data to help inform the MERL Tech conference. We asked whether international...
Do You Eat Your Own ICT4D Dog Food?
In software development, there is a term called “eating your own dog food” – meaning using your own software to better understand and address your...