An article in the June 5, 2008, issue of Business Week addresses some of the challenges faced by the One Laptop Per Child project. Not surprisingly, these are same the challenges that any large-scale technology project in the developing world must overcome.
The article points out that:
- Importing a powerful new tool, like a laptop, into a culture that’s not acclimatized to using it and doesn’t fully understand its capabilities means that many of the tool’s features won’t get used.
- New technology requires ongoing support, and you can’t just delegate support to people in the country, such as teachers, after only 40 hours of training.
- New tools must integrate into communities and support–not contradict–that community’s way of doing things. The community could be the local village, the country, an organization such as a school or hospital, or a governmental system such as the health or educational system.
- You must run a development project like a business; you can’t achieve results when people are spread too thin and you take on too many tasks without a clear plan for executing them.
The article also describes the culture clash that arose within the OLPC project between Open Source advocates and those who wanted to partner with Microsoft. Open Source software is ideal for a project like this, which tries to reduce costs as much as possible, while giving students access to tools, including the software itself. But governments like known entities, and Microsoft is that, especially when it negotiates with governments to reduce software licensing costs.
In summary, executing a massive technology project in the developing world is complicated and has many, many variables, some of them unforeseen. The number of stakeholders involved is enormous. There are many potential points of failure. To succeed, projects must be planned carefully and resourced appropriately, and project implementers must pay attention to more than just the technology. They also have to consider the cultures they’re entering, the systems already in place and the people who will be working with the technology. In other words, it’s not easy executing an ambitious ICT for development project like One Laptop Per Child.
Posted by
Shannon Turlington on 6/20/2008 • Tags: ICT4d, Sustainability, Technology
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This morning Kate Somers (IntraHealth Senior Program Development Team Leader) and I went to a class at the UNC School of Law. The class is a contracts law class which is taught by a close friend. What Kate talked about was a recent contract she wrote for a project which we will be announcing shortly. I was there because the project in question will deal very directly with open source technologies and the professor thought it important to explain the work as well as the contract.
The class went very well as it dealt fairly evenly with both our planned initiative, and the details of the contract. I think the point of having us there was both to capture the attention of those students who are very interested in contract law and to show those who might not have as big an interest in the required class how powerful a tool a good contract can be. I would imagine that in the course of their regular classwork these students don’t come across contracts that are quite like the ones Kate has to draw up dealing with an organization like IntraHealth, and the work we do with open source technologies.
For me it was great to note the interest the students had in the work we are doing here at IntraHealth, and more specifically in the Informatics group. Of course, any student is eager to take the opportunity to discuss things outside of those which are assigned, still there were some great questions about our work and the project in question.
I have not been in a college classroom since my own days in college which are too far back now for me to want to mention. Nonetheless, when I was in college there were no such things as laptops. Now, the group of folks staring at the front of the classroom are doing so just over the tops of their laptop screens. In trying to explain why an organization like IntraHealth is working within open source licensing I pointed out that throughout that classroom I could see many Apple computers, some Dells, and a few HP’s. I assumed that most of the non-Apple computers were running Windows. I’m not entirely sure how many people are in that class but perhaps it was around 40 people. If we were to very conservatively assume that the license fee for each machine (just for the operating system) was $200 that would be $8000 worth of operating systems in that room alone. When we go into relatively poor countries, and into relatively poor Ministries of Health and attempt to put in systems with expensive per-seat license fees it typically cannot work. Add to that the fact that specialized systems usually have license fees that dwarf those of operating systems and you can see the problem. All this before we even get to upgrade-fees and the cost of customizing a system to suit the users specific needs.
Of course there are many more benefits to us using open source technologies but in many ways it all comes back to this economic question. For most of us, I think it is safe to say that to help health care workers do their work more efficiently so that they can help more people, we really aren’t concerned whether the tools are open source or proprietary - as long as we are helping them. However, there is an organic path with the finances and with the ownership model that very directly leads us to use and promote open source for this work. When we consider long-term sustainability on top of that, to me, we again come back to open source due to its usual adherence to standards as well as the complete and open access and ownership of the code.
Posted by
David Mason on 3/25/2008 • Tags: Open Source, Resources, Sustainability
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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about Virtue. One thing that has been lost over time with the word “virtue”, which we can rediscover with the etymology of the word, is that it is supposed to be habitual. The original Greek context of the word is habitual excellence. I must admit preferring that interpretation of the word over what it has come to mean since.
When thinking about virtues in the sense of trying to achieve habitual excellence I remember an article written by Yochai Benkler and Helen Nissenbaum: “Commons-based Peer Production and Virtue (PDF).” In it, Benkler and Nissenbaum suggest that commons-based “peer production offers an opportunity for more people to engage in practices that permit them to exhibit and experience virtuous behavior.” In other words, releasing your code or content in an open fashion, or joining in on an open source project is a good practice that provides a chance at “habitual excellence.” More simply, there is virtue in open source. It’s not clear to me that the majority of people involved in open source projects are doing so simply to be good citizens or to blatantly achieve habitual excellence. In Some Simple Economics of Open Source (PDF) Lerner and Tirole wrote “Any explanation [of the many contributions made to open source projects] based on altruism only goes so far.”
I find that most people working in open source do not consider their contributions the same as charitable works. Perhaps it is more simply a part of their computing environment. To many contributors, it is as natural to log in to IRC and answer a question or submit a small patch to share a fix to a problem as it is to configure the desktop background. Nonetheless, there is at the heart of this openness a belief that the proprietary system of development and distribution of software is inherently wrong. It’s not just a matter of wanting to, as Bill and Ted said, “be excellent to each other“, more it’s an understanding of, and desire to work within, the correct system (a common trait with the better engineers). When it comes to code, the system of transparency is the correct way, it is the excellence.
It is true that transparency is not always a virtue. Transparency can be a virtue by enabling feedback. But transparency, if it is one sided, can also be dangerous. People are threatened by transparency because we all have secrets, and usually don’t want to share them. That said, institutional transparency can help all of us because it improves trust and creates a system which steers us towards honesty. If we assume that the system is transparent then that guides our behavior. Just as Benkler and Nissenbaum note about Wikipedia and its “self-conscious use of open discourse”. The participants of Wikipedia know the realm in which they work, they understand the goal and their work fits into that goal without over-reaching protections and restrictions. If we are used to systems that hide our actions then transparency is a threat. However, if we understand a system’s goals, processes, and implementation, and are allowed to work within it (or even experiment in it), we will respect the framework while doing so.
Institutional, or system-based transparency is easier to explain, and more easily understood in the realm of code and by technical people. This is because it is already organic to their ethos. They get it immediately because, despite making us hole up in dark rooms with our screens shining their warm, familiar glow on our faces, our computers have become social tools. Despite our redefinition of the term, we do interact with each other through our technology. This is important because the act of sharing is built into this grander social network. I use the word ethos to define this because sharing is the distinct spirit of what is going on in the technical world. The more interesting part of this is that that spirit has now moved into other areas that the technology has forced itself into. Media being the prime examples: photos, music, movies. Transparency is not a natural tendency to those who have been creating such media before now. This has slowly changed with the introduction of licenses such as the Creative Commons, and with successful experiments such as Radiohead’s latest release, In Rainbows. Sharing works, especially when all parties understand the system and the intent behind the sharing, has become most apparently beneficial to distribution and dissimination.
This should be no different for health. Health is one of our foremost human concerns. To successfully treat health problems around the globe there must be sharing. There must be transparency. This is important for all aspects of health systems, from the information that guides our understanding and diagnosis of problems, to the tools we use to facilitate the vast amount of work that needs to be done. Without transparency where is our health? Locked in trade secrets? Protected from our understanding for what gain?
The good news is that we are on the right track. We’ve been working hard on our code, which is all being developed in a fully transparent manner, but we are also doing a great deal to make sure our information is available too. The last couple weeks I’ve been learning more about the great work the folks in the Global Resource Center are doing and find their freely available information truly inspiring. I think there are probably areas within our work in which we can be even more transparent, not just so that others may benefit from our knowledge, but so that we can then benefit from theirs as they join in on the habitual excellence we are working with in being transparent. And join they will. Not just to be altuistic, but because the system of transparency we are engaging in is the correct system for health.
Posted by
David Mason on 12/6/2007 • Tags: Activism, Community, FOSS, Open Source, Public Health, Sustainability
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The DDDM workshop in Uganda this summer provided the first opportunity for many of the participants to review and discuss reports from the iHRIS Qualify system in the Nurses and Midwives Council. Dr. Pamela McQuide, HRIS leader, said she was extremely excited about participants’ reactions to seeing the reports. “When participants had actual Ugandan data, they erupted in discussion,” she said. She explained that the reports spurred lots of questions and they talked for three or more hours, showing that “they are very hungry for their own data and supporting it.”
One participant said the workshop gave meaning to the data they had been generating and built up credibility and interest in the HR information systems being established in Uganda. “It was the first attempt we had at integrating information from the various sub-systems in HRH and seeing how all these sort of fit together in order to have meaningful information.” He went on to say that the most surprising thing he realized was the amount of data already available. “It was just amazing to know there was so much data already available from different subsystems. I found that overwhelming, it was just phenomenal.” As he stated, a strong HRIS is a phenomenal tool for integrating data, where the sum becomes much more important than the parts.
Another participant said that after viewing the data he realized they already had routine information that they should start taking advantage of. He described how different the situation in Uganda was before HRIS strengthening was initiated, “We were looking at a format that was inaccessible, it was paper-based and in containers, but now that it’s in a database it’s easy to analyze.” He went on to say that the reports presented at the workshop were “able to tell us what was really happening on the ground.”
The HRIS team is in the process of implementing similar systems at the other three Uganda medical licensing bodies (the Pharmacy Council, Medical and Dental Council, and Allied Health Professional Councils). As an outcome of the workshop this summer, bi-annual HR data reports will be produced. The reports will incorporate data from all four councils and other sources, such as data from the EU and will influence annual reporting, budgeting, and strategic planning.
Once data can be integrated from various sources and reports can be generated, it is important that the information is presented in a variety of ways so that decision makers can understand and use it. Dykki Settle, HRIS leader, led a session on data quality and presentation that covered useful techniques to enable decision makers to use data. He emphasized that reports should be timely, tied to policy questions and available to the right people. Colorful reports will not be effective unless, as Ummuro Adano has stated, they are “combined with active leadership, change management, and effective professional development for key decision makers.”
Posted by
Carol Bales on 11/30/2007 • Tags: Africa, Capacity Building, Decision-Making, FOSS, FOSS4G, HRIS, ICT4d, Information Systems, Open Source, Public Health, Sustainability
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As a registered nurse with years of international experience in social policy and human resources management, I find the prospect of using Open Source systems for health care extremely exciting.
Over the years I have seen other types of technology programs in Africa fizzle after projects ended or the funding ran out. An expensive liability is outdated software that cannot be modified or tailored to meet expanding requirements in countries experiencing rapid growth and development.
When I was the principal investigator and project director for the Kenya Nursing Workforce Project researching the possibility of starting a new school of nursing, I went to one of the big Kenyatta University campuses and was told that they already had the necessary equipment for distance learning. I was elated and asked to see the system that was already in place. There was a big room filled with gadgets and an auditorium. It had been set up years before by the World Bank to broadcast training programs from NY to developing countries all over Africa. However I learned that it was only a one-way broadcast from NY. After the World Bank’s training program and funding ended the school had not been able to use the technology, because they did not have the ability to broadcast out. I asked what would it take to use this technology to train nurses in Kenya, and he said we’d have to totally start over and scrap everything. They invested oodles of money to develop a system that is unusable now. What happened with the training program is similar to what often happens when projects depend on proprietary software.
I have become a passionate advocate for Open Source. Open Source technology is a way for Africa in particular to use cutting-edge software in a way that is fiscally responsible. Educational programs in Africa have traditionally used Microsoft software. This has created a big problem because in order for the Ministries of Health and other organizations to sustain the programs after the projects end, they have to pay substantial licensing fees. The advantages of using free Open Source software is clear in countries that are financially restrained like Kenya, Uganda and S. Sudan. These countries cannot afford huge software maintenance costs.
I recognize that there are challenges to switching to Open Source software. Because Microsoft technology is what people are used to, it has been viewed as the only reliable technology. Therefore, people have felt that if the product they were using wasn’t Microsoft, then it was inferior. I’ve been very supportive of using and developing an Open Source method that governments and universities will be able to sustain in the future without these huge licensing fees, but with a network of developers that can keep the system running using advanced technology. I have this very concern about a project that I worked on in Africa, and I’m unsure whether or not the MOH will be able to sustain the licensing fees, as expected, after the project funding ends.
The Ugandan Ministry of Health has been very supportive of the use of Open Source technology and our iHRIS software. We installed iHRIS Qualify at the Nursing and Midwives Council last spring and are now implementing similar systems in the other three councils. The IT expert working there, a consultant for the Capacity project sitting in the Ministry of Health, wants Open Source software to be the standard. He feels Open Source software gets less viruses, and he’s insisted that they use Open Source for all their office programs as well as their HRIS. They have already switched to using Open Office - Linux versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. They have also started on-the-job training for Open Source developers working in the public health system in Uganda.
With Open Source health information systems being created across the country, there is a growing need for local Open Source developers. The Capacity project is planning to start working in nine districts in Northern Uganda in this year of the project. We’re going to need people in different parts of the country who can really implement and facilitate these systems. There is a strong desire in Uganda to partner with Makerere University in Kampala to train developers, and IntraHealth is currently developing programs to help make this happen on a wider scale. IntraHealth already conducts on-the-job training to the growing network of developers working on public health in Uganda.
Open Source technology can protect users from the huge problems created by outdated and prohibitively expensive software. Most importantly, Open Source can be effectively and affordably used by the ministries, councils, universities and professional associations making health service delivery operational in these countries on very limited budgets.
Dr. Pamela McQuide
Posted by
Pamela McQuide on 11/20/2007 • Tags: Africa, Digital Divide, FOSS, HRIS, ICT4d, Information Systems, Open Source, Public Health, Sustainability, Technology
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“Am I a geek, or a suit?” I pondered, sitting in a large hall with some thousand others in Victoria, Canada, during the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G ) conference. The question was posed to me by keynote speaker Damian Conway, PERL enthusiast, frequent speaker at FOSS conferences, and management consultant. I wondered to what extent my fellow conference-goers were pondering the same question. Looking around me at the number of bearded geography types who followed his speech with open laptops running strange Unix command lines, I concluded probably not that many. As developers, most of them self-identified with the geek label by default. The exception might have been the four obvious suits who decided to check out the conference, and perhaps some boundary cases such as myself.
Still, as a service to all of us–geeks, hybrid geek/suits, or suits–Damian Conway laid out a business case for open-source software. Contrasting the realm of the geeks with that the minds of the neoliberal “suits” (or: the ones making the actual decisions), the question Conway posed is why don’t the suits wholehearthily embrace the free software the geeks make available? Is there something fishy about open-source?
According to Conway, and taking the case of the battle of the giants, closed-source Windows operating system versus free, open-source Linux, the ten questions any open-source enthusiast geek has to come prepared with when speaking to a suit are as follows:
(Suit question 1) But SCO owns UNIX?
(Geek answer) No, that whole thing was a business play by SCO to raise the price before management dumped the stock. Oh, and if they actually did (the court said they didn’t recently) the open source community would code around it.
(Suit question 2) Open Source has a higher total cost of ownership?
(Geek answer) Yes, if you read studies funded by proprietary vendors, otherwise, it does not.
(Suit question 3) Proprietary software is easier to use.
(Geek answer) Yes, but only marginally and most of that is from familiarity.
(Suit question 4) What about compatibility/interoperability?
(Geek answer) Actually typically Open Source supports more standards and are typically better than even previous versions of proprietary software on the same document.
(Suit question 5) What about security?
(Geek answer) Open Source tends to win here because it has genetic diversity. (How many versions of UNIX are there?)
(Suit question 6) What about support?
(Geek answer) Open Source options parallel proprietary, PLUS you can have folks in house!
(Suit question 7) But what if the product goes away?
(Geek answer) There’s no single supplier, so less likely than proprietary vendors. Open Source is not cost driven and proprietary folks end products all the time.
(Suit question 8 ) Who will we sue if something goes wrong?
(Geek answer) Just like proprietary - no one. Proprietaries are too big to sue (unless you have tons of money) and with Open Source, there’s no one to sue!
(Suit question 9) How will Open Source improve customer experience?
(Geek answer) Open Source use will drop company prices, thus customer prices, scale cheaply, etc.
(Suit question 10) How will Open Source improve the company bottom line?
(Geek answer) All sorts of things will be cheaper: licensing, licensing management costs, risk, insurance, hardware, security, etc.
So, what did I learn? Governments and major corporations around the world are now moving swiftly towards wider use of Open Source software. Open Source software development and support is based on a model of collaborative interaction that is entirely different from the competitive world of commercial software. It’s not a business; it’s a culture. As a manager, to get the greatest benefit from Open Source you need to understand and engage that alien culture, to appreciate the motivations, aspirations, mindset, and limitations of its community. As a geek, you need to know how to sell it.
Alien or not, the geeks, hybrids, and four suits around me showed some serious passion to drive down the costs of software. That’s a good thing, particularly for developing nations struggling to fund their health care system. It is hard to argue with that.
Posted by
Danny de Vries on 11/6/2007 • Tags: Community, Decision-Making, Digital Divide, Events, FOSS, GIS, HRIS, Information Systems, Open Source, Software, Sustainability, Technology
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