Matt Berg

Meeting with Matt Berg
Potential areas of research:
1) Community Based Information Systems
- Think through what to do after ICT is enabled
- amalgamation of community radio, sms, web interface, billboards
- variety of sector uses
- community information center to act as means of access for this information
- practical: text information on broken pump to centralized number
2) Civic Journalism
- Content
o Actionable & Relevant for local people
- Audience
- Storage
- Community produced videos
- Community produced content
- Compilation of history of village/community
o local knowledge, history
o how? Wiki, audio
3) Community Mapping
- Similar to GIS
- Farms, conservation (i.e. pop-up maps of farmers in area including detailed information about crops, etc.)
4) Mobile services
- Improving service
- Direct outreach and indirect information sharing
5) E-governance
- Carrying out basic tasks online (registration, voting, etc)
- Information about rights, laws, etc.
6) Media/technology developments supporting needs in literacy? (exploration of different types of literacy, i.e. functionaly literacy, content and literacy, etc.)

Outline for work:

• Value Proposition: what would the area do for the community
• Landscape:
  • Literature review, research & development, theory
  • Case study review, examples, what’s worked, what hasn’t, why
  • Partners, who is already working in the area
  • Design, what are the existing platforms
• Goal:
  • Comprehensive body of work that could be adapted into a funding proposal

Vertical Areas:

• Health (tracking already underway, more “sexy”)
• Education (sms literacy)
• Agriculture (build knowledge on when farmers are planting, what the inputs are, plot it on a map and analyze the kind of results they get)

- Talk to sectors about their needs, the kind of data that would help them achieve their goals

• Research potential partnerships (i.e. Google Earth)
• Potential to use customer relationship models?

Other:
Knight media challenge
- due Oct. 15
- could help with proposal
Uganda Study
- ICT = improved health outcomes
- GIS
- Accountability and knowledge