Mobile Technology: Small Wonder

Mobile phones have served as a catalyst in the process of global integration of communities. Handsets—even simple ones with SMS and voice capability—are used to collect information from, and disseminate it to areas which are hard to reach by traditional methods.

As governments and NGOs across the globe strive to eradicate poverty, disease and hunger in line with Millennium Development Goals, communications remains one of the most staggering barriers to overcome. This is where mobile phones have provided unique opportunity to narrow the communication gap and pave way for social change like, running mobile campaigns, social advertising and mobile-based consulting services.

The basic requirement of such a social project that a government or non-government agencies undertake is to collect data from the field of intended operation. This could be demographic information, medical and health related data or any other piece of information that helps prioritise actions and take decisions impacting the community in question.

Substantial work has already been done to turn mobile cellular network into an effective data collection platform using open source applications such as Open Data Kit (ODK)—winner of Antonio Pizzigati Prize acknowledging developers who create software for public interest.