2022 IPv6 Deployment grant recipients announced

The APNIC Foundation is pleased to announce its inaugural round of ISIF Asia IPv6 Deployment grant recipients to be supported as part of our Infrastructure program. These four organizations are strong ambassadors for IPv6 deployment in the Asia Pacific.

We look forward to sharing updates as they make progress with deployments, and we hope to see more organizations adopting IPv6 and following in their footsteps in years to come!

  • BOOM! Inc., Micronesia: USD 250,000
  • Tonga Communication Corporation, Tonga: USD 250,000
  • National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal, India: USD 240,000
  • Yayasan Badan Wakaf Universitas Islam Indonesia, Indonesia: USD 60,000

The projects by BOOM! Inc. and Tonga Communication Corporation both have a strong focus on building local expertise and using their deployment experience to empower others in the Pacific to be more self-sufficient in developing and maintaining their network infrastructure.

The projects led by National Institute of Technology Karnataka (in partnership with India Internet Engineering Society – IIESoc) and Universitas Islam Indonesia (in partnership with the Indonesia Network Information Centre – IDNIC), will focus on deployment in the academic sector, including training for students and early-career engineers as part of their projects.

Plans are underway for offering continuing support for IPv6 deployment in 2023. Please check our website early next year to see how you can apply!

Report available! IPv6 deployment at enterprises

IPv6 adoption at large, brick-and-mortar enterprises has lagged. Many feel that unless this issue is addressed, the Internet as a whole will stall at an IPv6 adoption rate of about 60%. The India Internet Engineering Society (https://www.iiesoc.in/), a nonprofit based in India, would like to begin to address this issue.

There are many subsidiaries of large corporations in India. Such organizations, primarily use IPv4 addresses. For example, one of the largest mobile providers in India, whose backbone is IPv6, has had to purchase IPv4 addresses on the open market simply to support these corporations. The decision to move to IPv6 is made at the headquarters of these companies – which is often in the United States. The US federal government has recently announced a direction for IPv6-only for the US government. This makes it the right time for this project.

IIESoc proposes to work collaboratively with a nonprofit industry consortium in the United States, the Industry Network Technology Council (INTC), to address the issue of IPv6 adoption in large brick-and-mortar enterprises. INTC has done a survey of large enterprises and has found that security, application conversion and training are three of the biggest challenges enterprises have as far as IPv6 adoption. We need to find out exactly what these challenges entail. To that end, we need to have brick-and-mortar enterprises involved. This is an issue because such enterprises do not participate actively in Internet standards bodies. They do participate to some extent in network operations groups. Outreach to these organizations will be a key part of this project.

We propose three phases with their corresponding goals. (Subsequent phases may be proposed at the conclusion of phase 3).

Phase 1: IPv6 training and migration discussions for enterprises. Goal: Establish IIESoc as a leader in IPv6 space, create visibility for the project, start to create a core group of enterprises.

Phase 2: Create a consortium of academia, industry, and government. Goal: Prepare for phase 3 which will create security and application inventory.

Phase 3: Create an inventory of application and security challenges in concert with the consortium. Goal: Start to create a methodology to handle the hardest issues in IPv6 conversion.

Phase 1 is the necessary precursor and foundation for enterprises to be able to have conversations about what is to be done for IPv6 migration. If they do not receive training and have a forum for discussion of migration issues, the other phases will not be successful. In this application, we only asked for funding for Phase 1 which lasted 12 months.

The following webinars have been completed as a part of Phase 1 activity:

Introduction to IPv6: Feb 4, 2021

Lab: IPv6 basics: Feb 11, 2021

​Neighbour Discovery: March 4, 2021

Lab: Neighbor Discovery: March 18, 2021

IPv6 Address Planning: April 8, 2021

Lab: IPv6 Address Planning: April 15, 2021

IPv6 Transition Mechanisms: May 6, 2021

Lab: IPv6 Transition Mechanisms: May 13, 2021

DHCPv6: June 3, 2021

Lab: DHCPv6: June 10, 2021

IPv6 and Cloud: June 17, 2021

Lab: IPv6 and Cloud: June 24, 2021

​Introduction to IPv6 Security July 8, 2021

An addition to the project also included the travel to in-person IETF 113 by one student.

The final report is available here.

2021 ISIF Asia grant recipients announced

A large-scale collaborative project among research networks in the Asia Pacific region to build trust and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) capabilities is among the many Internet development and research projects being funded in the newly announced group of ISIF Asia supported projects.

Other projects include IPv6 training, an extensive honeynet cybersecurity project spanning several economies in Asia, and knowledge sharing between Network Operator Groups (NOGs) and Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs).

ISIF Asia received a total of 74 applications for this round of funding, resulting in the biggest group of ISIF Asia grantees ever, with 22 projects covering 16 economies. Some of these projects cover multiple economies. Three economies are receiving funds for the first time: Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, and Lao PDR.

The grants total USD 1.82 million in funding, and are spread across three categories: Infrastructure (developing the Internet), Inclusion (accessing the Internet) and Knowledge (skills and research about the Internet). Funding for these grants is part of the Asia Pacific Internet Development Trust’s 2021 funding for the APNIC Foundation.

The full list of summaries is included below. Follow links below for easy navigation.

INFRASTRUCTURE

INCLUSION

KNOWLEDGE

Infrastructure

Expand the Central Australian Desert Project to serve the Nitjpurru indigenous community in Pigeon Hole. Distant Curve Remote Area Telecommunications. Australia. USD 150,000.

Nitjpurru is a community in Australia’s Northern Territory of approximately 140 people, 450kms away from the nearest town. Nitjpurru is accessible only by four wheel drive vehicle and access is subject to flooding during the wet season. Telecommunications infrastructure is limited to a single payphone, shared by the entire community.

The Central Australian Desert Project connected the Northern Territory communities of Engawala and Atitjere with an embedded system using solar powered microwave relays. This impact grant will fund the development of a similar system for Nitjpurru. The project will also integrate a framework for supervising various systems needed to run the relays, cost-effectively monitor them, and ensure they are providing the necessary connectivity.

Sustainable smart villages in rural Papua New Guinea. Papua New Guinea University of Technology. Papua New Guinea. USD 85,000.

Over 80% of Papua New Guinea’s population lives in rural areas. The government is promoting agriculture and education as key aspects of its development goals, but is challenged by limited connectivity caused by unreliable power supply, a lack of appropriate communications technology, and a shortage of skilled people to maintain infrastructure and train users.

This scale-up grant will help develop a ‘smart village’ solution, seeking to address all these challenges, connecting mobile devices to enhance education and provide information in the local language, supported by a reliable power system monitored by sensors and calibrated based on machine learning techniques. Data traffic, together with power consumption data, will be used to develop a business model for scaling the smart village model further.

The project will provide ten community Wi-Fi sites as sustainable services to rural areas, and aims to cultivate partnerships between industry, community, and academic institutions, to develop digital literacy packages as a cost-effective solution to closing the digital divide for diverse user groups in the community.

Field-ready network-coded tunnels for satellite links. The University of Auckland. New Zealand. USD 85,000.

This project aims to widen the circle of people able to deploy titrated coded tunnels, create reference systems on actual satellite links in the field, and demonstrate that this technology brings actual performance benefits to real users.

This project builds on a previous ISIF Asia project which researched how coded tunnels over satellite links can accelerate individual packet flows. The current project will take it out of the lab and show users that the technology is ready for wider deployment.

This scale-up grant involves a partnership with Gravity Internet and Te One School on Chatham Island, with Gravity Internet being familiarized with the new technology. They will work with an engineering link to Chatham Island using a satellite link to connect to the school.

Hybrid LoRa Network for underserved community Internet. Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Malaysia. USD 85,000.

The Chini Lake, Pahang area of Malaysia has challenging terrain with thick foliage. These conditions mean that the 500 indigenous Orang Asli residents, spread across six villages, lack access to mobile data coverage.

As a solution, LoRa wireless technology has been proposed. The scale-up grant will help establish a LoRa Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) gateway on a helium balloon, equipped with Mesh LoRa architecture that has text and voice messaging capabilities, as well as a cloud-based data management platform.

This will give local residents access to digital materials through a messaging system, accommodating users of all different literacy levels, as well as water level alerts for mitigation of flooding and drought situations, and an avenue for promoting local products and services through the cloud-based data management platform.

Securing Software Defined Network architectures. The University of Newcastle. Australia. USD 30,000.

This project involves the design and development of techniques for detecting attacks on Software Defined Network (SDN) switches.

SDN has proven useful for handling the growing complexity of networks. It is widely deployed in Enterprise, Cloud, and Internet Service Provider networks. As SDN becomes more common, so do cyberattacks that exploit SDN vulnerabilities. There is a growing need to enhance security in SDN networks. This small grant will implement security techniques to validate against different attacks on SDN switches and develop a Switch Security Application for SDN Controllers for detecting attacks on switches.

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Inclusion

Connectivity Bridges: Reaching remote locations with high-speed Internet services. Rural Broadband — AirJaldi. India. USD 150,000.

Various Internet infrastructure initiatives have deployed technologies across parts of India using both wired and wireless Internet. However, rural areas aren’t easily connected leading to some infrastructure being under-used, particularly large communication towers.

This impact grant will help create a hybrid ‘WiFiber’ system that bridges existing infrastructure and adds capability and coverage to reach users in the mostly rural state of Arunachal Pradesh with fast and affordable Internet services.

Local community-based Internet infrastructure development and Internet utilization in rural Indonesia. Common Room. Indonesia. USD 150,000.

An existing partnership between Common Room, the Association for Progressive Communications, and the UK’s Digital Access Programme has resulted in the development of a School for Community Networking in the Kasepuhan Ciptagelar region of Indonesia.

This impact grant will help the school provide necessary infrastructure for a ‘build out’ to extend Internet deployment and training for indigenous and other rural communities in and around seven locations.

The project will provide towers, wireless equipment, servers, and training. It will also provide support as community-based Internet is rolled out, to help demonstrate ways the Internet can benefit these communities.

Equal access to information society in Myanmar. Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation. Myanmar. USD 150,000.

This project will help the Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation combine and scale three programs: Mobile Information Literacy, Tech Age Girls Myanmar, and the Business Startup Development Program.

The Beyond Access project has already equipped 210 libraries around Myanmar with Internet, enabling 360,000 people to use a digital device for the first time. Telco Ooredoo Myanmar will invest in an additional 40 community libraries, mostly in underserved or unserved areas.

This impact grant will focus on equipping thousands of participants — primarily youth and women — at these 40 additional community libraries to develop digital literacy skills.

Broadband for all in Yap. Boom! Inc. Federated States of Micronesia. USD 85,000.

This project will establish an island-wide Fixed Wireless Access broadband network on the island of Yap.

In 2017, Yap to the world via high-speed submarine fibre-optic cable. There is still a lot of work to be done before this improved capacity can be used to provide broadband connectivity to island residents. In a recent proof-of-concept, Boom! was able to provide high speed connectivity to a school in Yap, having obtained the necessary licence and wavelength agreements. This scale-up grant will extend coverage to other parts of Yap.

Bamboo towers for low-cost and sustainable rural Internet connectivity. National Institute of Technology Silchar. India. USD 85,000.

This project is a collaboration among the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay), National Institute of Technology Silchar (NIT Silchar), and Uravu from India. The project will develop and promote low-cost and sustainable bamboo communication towers to expand access to broadband networks in remote and rural areas of India. The scale-up grant will fund the development of detailed instructions on how to construct bamboo towers — including selection of bamboo, treatment, testing of bamboo culms and their joints, structural design considering connectivity requirements and structural specifications, optimization, foundation design, erection of the tower, and its maintenance. Towers will also be constructed to test the proposed methods, and they will be able to be built in any region. Detailed multimedia manuals will also be developed and available on a dedicated website.

OASIS data garden project. SATSOL. Solomon Islands. USD 85,000.

Some communities in the Solomon Islands are faced with the challenges of a lack of electricity for digital devices, and limited means to access money electronically. This means that residents have to travel to a town to access banknotes.

This scale-up grant will fund the development and proof-of-concept testing of a ‘data garden’ that will supply affordable connectivity, power, and a digital payment system.

An OASIS data garden can be easily transported to any remote location in the Solomon Islands via small boat or vehicle, and will operate autonomously. The data garden will support remote villages and communities where it can provide for individuals, households, businesses, schools, and clinics.

Internet connection to four villages in San Isidro. Davao Medical School Foundation (DMSF). The Philippines. USD 30,000.

This small grant project will connect four villages in the San Isidro municipality of Mindanao via Point to Point (P2P) data connections. A P2P connection is a closed network data transport service that traverses the public Internet but is inherently secure with no data encryption needed. A P2P network can also be configured to carry voice, video, Internet, and data services together over the same point to point connection. DMSF will partner with local organizations in each village to develop local capacity for maintenance and security.

Inclusive and efficient access to Internet services and information for persons with disabilities in Bangladesh. Humanity & Inclusion. Bangladesh. USD 30,000.

This project aims to assist people with visual disabilities in Bangladesh, by disseminating standards on accessible web design and screen-reading software.

Around 20% of the population of Bangladesh lives under the poverty line. As Internet adoption rapidly climbs, new opportunities in employment and education are presented via the Internet. However, people with visual disabilities face added challenges in Internet accessibility.

The project, funded with a small grant, will translate visual accessibility standards into the local language and train web developers in these standards. It will also engage in policy dialogue and advocacy for people with disabilities.

Empowering remote agricultural communities in Lao PDR through long-range wide area networks. Makerbox Lao. Lao PDR. USD 30,000.

This project will leverage the possibilities offered by low-power/long-range Internet of Things solutions to bridge the technological and communication divide between urban centres and remote agricultural communities in Lao PDR.

The small grant will help develop a prototype technology that uses long range (LoRa) wireless networking to relay agricultural data (such as soil, weather, and water information) from sensors in remote areas to forecasting experts, then relay that forecast information to farmers in a format that supports their work. The design also considers local conditions such as the absence of power grid connections by developing a solar power support, which LoRa is ideally suited to handle due to its low power consumption.

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Knowledge

Intelligent honeynet threat sharing platform. Swiss German University. Indonesia. USD 150,000.

This project will fully extend the design of the existing Honeynet Threat Sharing Platform [PDF] to provide a broader range of honeypot support, with intelligently categorized and correlated threat data, enabling organizations to share and exchange the threat information with other organizations with a consistent format.

This impact grant will support a partnership between Swiss German University, Badan Siber & Sandi Negara (Indonesia’s National Cyber and Crypto Agency), and the Indonesia Honeynet Project (IHP).

A range of economies are participating in the project, including Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Timor Leste, and Viet Nam.

Two previous ISIF Asia grants supported the development of the Honeynet Threat Sharing Platform, to link honeypots together in a Honeynet that collects information on malicious Internet traffic for a public dashboard. To facilitate cooperation among participants, the Cyber Security Community Information Sharing and Analysis Center (CSC-ISAC) was also established.

The project involved four types of honeypot: Cowrie (SSH honeypots), Dionaea (Multi-Service Honeypots), Elastichoney, and Conpots (Industrial Control Honeypots).

Developing a collaborative BGP routing, analyzing and diagnosing platform. Tsinghua University. China. USD 150,000.

This project is a collaboration between National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) and research universities in the Asia Pacific, to build the kind of trust and BGP capabilities among NRENs that the wider BGP-speaking community relies upon. Currently, there is no large-scale cooperative monitoring system for BGP routing and no collaborative system for BGP hijacking and mitigation among Asia Pacific NRENs.

An earlier but ongoing project resulted in the development of a small-scale looking glass platform and BGP routing collection platform. This impact grant will expand the platform to a BGP hijacking detection and mitigation system and foster the emerging NREN network operations and security community. In addition, the team will analyze the robustness of routing in the Asia Pacific region and suggest how to improve the reliability of Internet routing through cooperative interconnections.

The organizations involved include CERNET (China), SingAREN (Singapore), ThaiREN (Thailand), BdREN (Bangladesh), LEARN (Sri Lanka), AfgREN (Afghanistan), MYREN (Malaysia), NREN Nepal (Nepal), APAN-JP (Japan), ERNET (India), DOST-ASTI/PREGINET (Philippines), HARNET/JUCC (Hong Kong), Gottingen University (Germany), Surrey University (UK), and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunication (China).

Bug Zero. SCoRe Lab. Sri Lanka. USD 85,000.

Bug bounties are when organizations offer rewards to those who are the first to report a problem in their software. This helps them stay ahead of emerging security vulnerabilities.

Bug bounty platforms have helped many organizations in advanced economies worldwide but South Asia has been hesitant to embrace them. Equipped with empirical research data on published results, SCoRe Lab has already started a bug bounty platform in Sri Lanka called Bug Zero.

This scale-up grant will help promote bug bounties as an effective tool for organizations, while also promoting them as a good economic opportunity for youth and encourage inclusion in an area that has generally been male-dominated.

Training and knowledge sharing: Network analysis for AI transformation. TeleMARS. Australia. USD 85,000.

Research from a previous ISIF Asia grant demonstrated that Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques can be used to resolve problems when detecting cyberattacks. This scale-up grant will help implement that work on a larger scale. This will involve strengthening knowledge sharing across Network Operator Groups (NOGs) and Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs), developing training and mentoring resources, and improving professional capabilities in the areas of diagnosis, monitoring, and analysis of historical datasets.

Webinar series to support IPv6 knowledge transfer. India Internet Engineering Society (IIESoc). India. USD 30,000.

This project will continue a series of webinars that have helped enterprises develop IPv6 skills, supported by ISIF Asia through a 2020 grant.

It can be difficult to encourage enterprises to adopt IPv6. One of the issues is a lack of understanding about the technical aspects of IPv6 among some enterprise technicians. Sometimes, technicians seek training but management does not always see the business case for adoption. This small grant will continue and expand a previous series of webinars supported by ISIF Asia that have helped enterprises develop IPv6 skills, in an effort to combat a cycle of misinformation that makes enterprises hesitant to adopt IPv6.

DIY COW — An inclusive community operated wireless kit for enabling local communications at remote locations. Servelots Infotech. India. USD 30,000.

Using lessons learned during remote mentoring for young women in COVID-19 lockdowns, this project will create a Do It Yourself kit that will allow someone with no Internet access to set up a wireless access point with a local access server.

Establishing network connections in remote communities is difficult and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) don’t always see a commercial case in establishing Internet services in small areas. This project funds the creation of kits that can be immediately deployed to connect these communities without relying on any existing Internet connection.

This small grant will help develop kits that allow for the rapid establishment of a server capable of hosting applications that can immediately be used by the community. The kit contains all the necessary instruction materials to be set up without an Internet connection. It can also be connected to the Internet when and if the Internet gateway becomes available, and the set-up materials can easily be adapted to other languages

Cybersecurity education. Passerelles Numeriques Cambodia. Cambodia. USD 30,000.

This project will create fun and accessible online learning content on security issues faced by the public and organizations while navigating the Internet. Cambodia is rapidly digitizing, due in part to the rapid adoption of smartphones. However, with increased Internet adoption comes an increase in cyber-threats. The Cambodian government is currently in discussions to establish a cyber-crime law.

In the meantime, there is a need for greater cybersecurity awareness. This project is a partnership between NGOs Passerelles Numeriques Cambodia and The Foundry. It will develop simple interactive videos and quizzes to test awareness and develop public knowledge about security threats they can encounter in their daily lives. This project, funded with a small grant, focuses on youth and women facing digital literacy challenges.

Design, development and operation of an SDN-based Internet eXchange playground for networkers. University of Malaya. Malaysia. USD 30,000.

Network operators have access to a variety of technical training programs, some include the use of simulations, which are useful to put theory into practice but can be limited to simple configurations for experiments.

This small grant will help build on existing training programs by developing an ‘Internet Exchange Playground’ with a Kubernetes cluster that can help introduce SDN-based BGP/RPKI/RDAP knowledge. The Kubernetes nodes will be scattered across different economies, allowing participants to experiment with cross-border network topologies. It will allow for use of VXLAN and SDN controllers in a WAN environment.

To enhance access, there will be four on-line training, tutorials and seminars aimed at fostering participation, particularly among women. The project will be fostering participation from Bhutan, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand.

The APNIC Foundation thanks all applicants for sharing their ideas, the members of the Selection Committees for their hard work, and the Trust for supporting these projects. Technical reports on the projects will be published on the ISIF Asia website as they are completed.

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Report available! Telemetering the telltale signs of power issues of wireless internet relays

The TellTale project was conceived with aim of addressing the problem of measurement and projection of the power uptime duration of wireless internet relays. In rural areas and in areas where such projections are not available, operators often fail to address downtimes in a timely manner, thereby increasing the number and duration of downtimes and/or fail to project the power needs of a relay properly. These issues have direct adverse economic consequences for both providers and users

In line with this, the project objectives were to:
1. Identify an affordable and replicable sensor+SBC + internet uplink power charge and discharge module
2. Create a cloud-based, machine-learning supported, data ingestion, storage, data prep, analysis and reporting system.
3. Develop an easy-to0use reporting and alert system with PC and mobile applications (Android)
4. Measure and report on the cost-saving and improved uptime impact of the project
5. Disseminate the project findings and share the systems design
6. Create a paid support system for interested parties.

The project has achieved most of its objectives. An AirJaldi “TellTale” system, capable of measuring battery voltage and generating indicators and alerts based on the its change over time, has been built, demonstrated and is ready for distribution and sharing. At a device cost of around US $20 (hardware components) the system is affordable, as are the software packages and cloud hosting services required.

AirJaldi will offer TellTale using a Freemium model. Interested users can either download the source codes and manuals at no cost from Github (accessed directly or via our website and those of other partners), or choose one of various models of paid support offered by AirJaldi.

TellTale’s User Interface (UI) was designed to be clear and easy to use and update and is available in both computer and mobile version. An Android APK, offering a stripped-down version of the web UI with a focus on alerts, was also created and made available for users.

We plan to continue working on improving and enriching TellTale in the coming months and will share information and resources.

The final report is available here.

Congratulations to the ISIF Asia Grantees for 2019

This year ISIF Asia selected 6 organizations in the Asia Pacific to receive USD 20,000 to support research and development of Internet technologies for the benefit of the region. The ideas they submitted for the 2019 call for proposals highlight the main technical, operational and development issues that concern the Asia Pacific Internet community and concrete solutions to address them. This year’s funding round marks our 11th anniversary of operation in the Asia Pacific, and a total of USD 120,000 was allocated.

The application process this year, as the topics for our grants get more specialized, attracted highly relevant proposals and highlighted how a variety of stakeholders are working towards the development of the Internet. We see those as great indicators about the relevance of ISIF Asia as a mechanism to support the development of the Internet across the region. We received 70 proposals from 17 economies.

The funding will be distributed among organizations representing Private Sector (1) and Academia (5) across 5 economies: Australia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and New Zealand.

We are confident the outcomes of their work will continue to support an open, stable, and secure Internet that serves the needs of the people in our region.

2019 Network Operations Research Grants

  • Modelling and identifying IP address space fragmentation pressure points. Curtin University. Australia. USD 20,000
  • Honeynet Threat Sharing Platform. Swiss German University (SGU), Badan Siber & Sandi Negara (BSSN) and Indonesia Honeynet Project (IHP). Indonesia. USD 20,000
  • Implementation and Utilites of RDAP for wider usability among Internet Stakeholders. University of Malaya. Malaysia. USD 20,000
  • Network coding over satellite links: scheduling redundancy for better goodput. The University of Auckland. New Zealand. USD 20,000

2019 I4D Powering Internet Infrastructure Grants

  • Telemetering the telltale signs of power issues of wireless internet relays. Rural Broadband – AirJaldi. India. USD 20,000
  • Network Remote Powering through Quasi-Passive Optical Nodes. Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University). Australia. USD 20,000

The 2019 I4D Award was not granted this year, instead one additional grant under the Network Operations Research was allocated.

The APNIC Foundation and ISIF Asia thanks all the applicants for sharing their ideas with us, the Selection Committees members for their hard work to arrive to this great outcome, and to APNIC for their generous funding contributions for 2019.

Khushi Baby: babies health data collection for improved decision making

The ISIF Asia 2016 Technical Innovation Scale-up Grant supported Khushi Baby, which offers a revolutionary patient-centric platform in India, designed to streamline comprehensive data collection and improve decision-making on the front lines of care.

The data collection methods in Indian rural areas are outdated, cumbersome, and lack patient specificity. Without reliable health records, clinical decision making on the part of community health workers is erroneous and inefficient at the point of care where connectivity is rarely available. Health officials are missing real-time, actionable maternal and child health data, preventing community-level monitoring of which babies are missing their vaccines and which mothers are at risk of birth complications.

Child wearing Khushi Baby health tracking necklace

In order to bridge the gap of maternal and child health, the project team invented a necklace, in which health workers can update patient history by tapping it to their mobile app. They have also designed a dashboard that provides health officials with specific, actionable, and timely analytics. More importantly, the system automatically calls mothers in the local language, reminding them to bring their children to the next vaccination camp and educating them on the importance of immunizations.

Khushi Baby finished its first deployment and randomised controlled trial in over 70 villages. They are now set to expand further in the Udaipur district to over 300 villages serviced by government ANMs in 2018. On 17th January 2018, Khushi Baby team were named as GenH Challenge Winners and received a USD 250,000 to support the continuation of the project. They hope to increase their footprint throughout Rajasthan by building a model consistent with National Health Mission standards for ANMs throughout India. Also, they look forward to translating the insights and engaging with collaborators in Africa and the Middle East where a reporting and engagement gap may be similarly failing maternal and child health care services.

The work done by Khushi Baby contributed to improve general health outcomes in rural Udaipur, especially beneficial to maternal and child health tracking. Read their published technical report to know how did they make it https://application.isif.asia/theme/default/files/ISIFAsia_2016_Grants_Final_Report_KhushiBaby_vFinal.pdf

Zaya Learning Labs: Putting ICTs in the Classroom

zaya

Neil D’Souza is an Indian engineer and a dreamer. His dream is to help the underprivileged children to receive a quality education.

A Life Commitment to Education

D’Souza’s passion to help the disadvantaged started during his time at Cisco. For four years, he worked there, mostly on mobile Internet and video technologies. During his free time, he would do some volunteering in San Jose, California.

In 2011, he took the leap. He moved to Mongolia and spent a year teaching in rural orphanages. This is where he discovered the learning deficiency that affects most developing countries. His pupils were far below their grade level, lacking basic literary and numerical skills.

D’Souza was aware of the ongoing online education revolution. He knew this could help his students to catch up. But without Internet, they had no chance to ever access the educational resources online. The more time he spent in Mongolia, the more determined he became to tackle this issue.

He was even starting to develop his own solution when he met Soma Vajpayee. Vajpayee was the perfect partner for his project. She had been a Training Manager at Citibank for ten years and, just like D’Souza, she was passionate about using ICTs in the classroom. In 2012, they started Zaya Learning Labs. Their goal was to bring quality education to the bottom of the pyramid, starting in India.

The Indian Crisis Education

For years, India has been confronting an acute learning crisis. Although 96 percent of the children go to school, many do not reach basic literacy by 10. In fact, 60 percent cannot read a text, and 74 percent are unable to solve a division problem.

One of the main reasons for the crisis is the lack of trained and motivated teachers. There is an estimated shortage of 1.2 million schoolmasters throughout India. Those who actually teach often lack both expertise and pedagogical ability. Since many in low-income private schools get only $100 a month, they also have no motivation. A majority of teachers even skip school at least once a week.

All this adds to the curriculum’s low standards and large classroom sizes. So it is no surprising that the learning outcomes are so poor.

Mixing education and technology

To tackle this issue, D’Souza and Vajpayee created an innovative solution mixing education and a ClassCloud technology.

On the education side, they developed a blended learning model in order to create a student-driven learning environment. The goal is that pupils stop staring out the window and instead engage with the teacher. This is why they divide the students into several groups based on their level. During the day, each group goes through three different learning times. While the schoolmaster teaches the first group, the second one reads or does homework.

Meanwhile, the last group reviews their lessons using a computer or a tablet. It allows them to connect to the ClassCloud. This portable WiFi device contains all the resources for the class. There are lessons, but also instructional videos, educational games, and quizzes.

To truly engage the students, Zaya developed a fun and friendly learning environment. The ClassCloud is also adaptive, so the pupils can learn at their own level and pace. Lessons and assessments are based on each student’s interests and needs, while also taking into account their progress. When they are consistent in finding the right answers, they can move to the next level. But if they aren’t, they spend more time on the topic. The overall goal is to guide them step by step towards their actual grade level.

Once the students complete their assignments, the system generates a personalized analytics report. It is then sent to the teachers as well as the Zaya educational team. It helps them make the right interventions. For instance, it is easier to identify the students who lag behind and have the teachers focus on them.

An Innovative Solution That Makes Students Happy to Study

Zaya’s ClassCloud is a great Edtech solution, as it is particularly adapted to the constraints of developing countries.

  • It is easy to use, even by teachers who have no IT skills
  • It is battery-powered and can run for ten hours without electricity. This is particularly useful in India, where power shortages are frequent.
  • Finally, it works both online and offline. This is another necessary feature in India, as Internet penetration is around 12 percent. While offline, the ClassCloud stores all the data. It syncs it back to the cloud whenever it has connectivity.

No wonder Zaya has become so popular among low-income schools throughout India. Over 100 schools have adopted it, and 30,000 pupils use it on a daily basis. For them, it has changed everything. They are now engaged in their learning and excited to go to class. More importantly, their learning outcomes increase.

Fixing Government Data Duplication at DataKind Bangalore

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Voters worldwide seldom interact with their chosen leaders- except around 5-yearly elections. However, the advent of advanced Information and Community Technologies (ICT) might shrink this interval considerably. They may even turn back the clock towards the seminal Athenian model of democratic decision-making: directly by the people rather than their representatives. With some political discretion, today’s online forums can allow for similarly incorporating crowdsourced public opinion into policy design. This could contribute to nationally important initiatives (such as preparing Morocco’s 2011 Draft Constitution or debates on Spain’s Plaza Podemos, Brazil’s E-democracia portal and India’s own mygov.in). Nonetheless, we will concern ourselves with far more universal and local problem-solving at the municipal level.

But just who has access to such platforms? While internet penetration in rural India is rising dramatically, the lion’s share (67%) still resides with urban denizens. Moreover, as highlighted by the Wall Street Journal, India boasted of a quarter of the world’s fastest growing urban zones and 8 qualifying ‘MegaCities’ as per India’s 2011 Census definition. The demands on municipal governments are likely to be considerable, and even more likely to be mediated by internet platforms.

Regardless of this explosion of population and the associated challenges, the structure of municipal bodies has remained unchanged since Lord Ripon’s 1882 Resolution on self-government. Furthermore, as Ramesh Ramnathan of Janaagraha points out, the responsibility for action is de facto scattered across acronyms of acrimonious accusing agencies. For example, Bangalore’s (deep breath advised) BDA, BMRDA, BWWSB, BMTC, KSB, BESCOM together juggle the city’s water, transport, electricity, traffic police and development needs. Many authorities, little authority. Increasingly internet-savvy and increasingly increasing residents. Where can they all turn for help?

Enter DataKind Bangalore Partners.

15-year old Janaagraha has endeavoured to improve the quality of urban life- in terms of infrastructure, services and civic engagement- by coordinating government and citizen-led efforts. Of their various initiatives, the IChangeMyCity portal also earned Discover ISIF Asia’s award under the Rights and People’s Choice categories.

Next up, eGovernments Foundation, brainchild of Nandan Nilekani & Srikanth Nadhamuni (Silicon Valley technologist) has since 2003 sought to transform urban governance across 275 Municipalities with the use of scalable and replicable technology solutions (for Financial Accounting, Property & Professional Taxes, Public Works, etc.) Their Public Grievance and Redressal system for the Municipal Corporation of Chennai- recipient of the 2010 Skoch Award -has fielded over 0.22 million complaints over 6 years.

Though these organizations joined hands with DataKind in two distinct ‘Sprints’, the similarities are remarkable. Both their platforms allow citizens to primarily flag problems (garbage, city lighting, potholes) at the neighbourhood level for resolution by government agencies.

Then again, the differences are noteworthy too. As an advocacy-oriented organization, Janaagraha aimed to understand the factors that led to certain complaints being closed promptly by a third party. eGovernments on the other hand, being within the system, to keep officials and engineers adequately prepared for the business-as-usual and also immediately alert them on anomalies. So both sought predictions around complaints- one on their creation, another on their likelihood of closure.

Clearly, quite a campaign lay ahead. If we forget Ancient Greek democracy and hitch a caravan to China, then Sun Tzu’s wisdom from the Art of War pops in: knowing oneself is the key to victory. Always open to relevant philosophy, the DataKinders looked into their own ranks to assess their strengths. The team assigned for E-Governments coincidentally included Ambassadors (Chapter Leader, Vinod Chandrashekhar) and Data Experts (Samarth Bhargav, Sahil Maheshwari) from the Janaagraha project. The teams were also at different junctures joined by the latter’s Vice President (Manu Srivastava) and two of his interns, plus a multidisciplinary mob of volunteers from backgrounds in business consulting, UX Design, data warehousing, development economics and digital ethnography. Let’s see how they waged war.

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Progress to Date

Back in March 2015, IChangeMyCity’s presented a set of 18,533 complaints carrying rich meta-data on Category, Complainant Details, Comments, etc. You’d assume this level of detail opens doors to appetizing analyses. Perhaps. Unfortunately, the information dwelt in a database of 10 different tables. Sahil Maheshwari- then working as a Product Specialist- busied himself with the onerous task of unraveling the relationships between them, drawing up an ER Diagram and ‘flattening’ records into one combined table. The team then accordingly fished out missing or anomalous values.

Conversely, E-Governments users either report their problems online, through SMS, paper forms or by calling into the special ‘1913’ helpline where operators transcribe complainants’ inputs. With digital data being entered through drop-down menus rather than free text (either directly by users or call centre employees), no major missing data was to be found. Except of course, unresolved cases-a mere 8% of the 0.18 million complaints. Some entries, amounting to 0.8% were exactly identical- clearly a technical glitch. Moreover, all data resided in one table. So in November 2015’s DataJam, this structure allowed the team to plunge immediately to exploratory analysis.

Across the 200 wards of Chennai, 93 kinds of complaints (grouped further into 9 categories) could be assigned to departments at either the City or Zone level. Although the numbers initially seemed staggering, Samartha Bhargav ran basic visualizations in the R Programming language. The result? Another instance of Pareto’s rule: 15 of these complaint types were contributing to 82% of grievances. Several DataKind first-timers like Aditya Garg & Venkat Reddy ran similar analyses for the 10 most given-to-grumbling wards, and found trouble emanating from roughly the same top 5 sources. Apparently, malfunctioning street lights blow everyone’s fuse. These common bugbears intriguingly became less bearable (and more numerous) in the second half of the year, while others related to taxes seemed more even across the year.

Even so, how could there be 10 broken lights in an area with only one on record? So had ten people all indicated the same light? Like with data analysis, learning from Chinese classics (literally) involves reading the fine print. Sun Tzu’s actual words: ‘If you know the enemy AND know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.’ Clearly, this enemy was a lot more complicated than the decoy flanks that DataKinders had speared. Tzu and George Lucas may well have hung out over green tea.

Attack of the Clones .

In usual data science settings, duplicates are often easy to identify and provide little intrinsic value. However, the game changes in the world of crowdsourced data. Especiallydata highlighting the criticality of an issue. So to achieve victory, the team would have to understand and strike at its core- dynamic social feedback. We could assess its importance at four levels.

The first involves messages from the platform itself to indicate that a complaint has been registered and no further inputs are necessary. In its absence, citizens could well create duplicates by hitting the Submit button either accidentally (not knowing if their complaint was logged) or deliberately (hoping that repeating the complaint may lead to quicker action). This is more of a concern for web platforms rather than call centres. By matching against columns involving email, phone and postal contact details and date, time and type of the complaint, DataKind had already been able to quickly hurl out these obvious clones.

The second level of feedback is where the Force truly awakens- from other citizens. The ability to see that other fellow residents have experienced the same concern may prevent its repetition. But this rests on two assumptions. First, that they can view already posted complaints, as exists with IChangeMyCity. They may rally behind this shared cause by ‘upvoting’- an indicator to authorities of its increased importance.

Even if this feature does not exist- as with eGovernments- then all is not lost. High priority might still be inferred by large absolute numbers of complaints. But these would provide an idea of the severity of the problem across the ward (45 pot holes in Adyar) rather than one specific instance of it (that life-threatening one before the flyover). Secondly, if peeved citizens do not put in the effort of checking the roster of existing complaints- as inevitably occurred even with IChangeMyCity- then the Upvotes option alone cannot guarantee being Clone-free.

The third and most obvious feedback comes from authorities via the digital platform- to indicate closure. This is provided by both partners, with IChangeMyCity also appending contact details of which official has been assigned the task.

The fourth and final level- is where a citizen can verify that a complaint marked as ‘closed’ has truly been resolved. After all, accountability forms part of the foundation of democracy. In this manner, the same poorly tended-to complaint could be reopened, rather than filing another one out. This feature currently exists only with IChangeMyCity, which not only allows municipal authorities to mark a complaint as ‘closed’ (as exists with eGoverments), but also allows users to reopen them if unsatisfied.

IChangeMyCity’s resolution rates lie close to 50%- a figure probably reached after allowing for this reopening scenario. eGovernments on the other hand closed a commendable 97%, with up to 13% shut on the same day to an outlier of 1043 (almost 3 years), with the majority (56%) in under 3 days. Mr Srivastava emphasized that these efficiency statistics had improved dramatically in the last 2 years. But as we just explored, perhaps a confounding factor is that multiple duplicate complaints are being closed by engineers who have identified their Clone nature.

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How to Fix It?

Thus, it was the second category- unintended duplication- which bled into the fourth. How could the DataKind team exploit the enemies’ own weakness? They decided to unsheathe their two logical light sabers: text and location. Either one in isolation didn’t necessarily pinpoint a duplicate. But in combination, they could quickly incinerate a Clone’s trooper suit.

Saber A: WHERE was the complaint registered? For IChangeMyCity, one can log in, peer through a map of Bangalore and plant a pin on the spot where you’d like to divert the authority’s attention. Using that pin, analysts can procure exact latitude and longitude coordinates. It’s still entirely possible that different people place the pins some distance apart even when referring to the same issue. But it would seem like a safe bet that two closely located complaints might just be Clones.

EGovernments currently doesn’t use maps, but asks users a fairly detailed, 6-level description of addresses (City, Regions, Zones, Wards, Area, Locality, Street). Such text might help direct an engineer gallivanting outdoors, but not for a computer that speaks code. Attempting to translate the text addresses into associated geocodes, the team split the data into 10 parts and ran Google Maps API with an R Script on each one. Despite their best efforts, accuracy could not be guaranteed. Though eGovernments will soon be introducing such coordinates in future work, geocoding seemed like a closed line of attack.

Saber 2: HOW was the complaint registered. The way people express themselves on a particular local issue may vary, but could feature some words in common. However with E-Governments system, pre-loaded tags from the website were automatically attached to complaints. Result? Nearly 40,000 entries demanding ‘NECESSARY ACTION’ (in capitals, no less) with only minor differences. Others exist, but simply restate the category of complaints. (‘Removal of Garbage’). With so little variability and no hidden clues, this strategy failed too.

However, for IChangeMyCity, citizens are free to fill complaint titles and descriptions as they please. So the DataKind Team broke the text of both the complaint’s title and description into sentences and then into words. Then they ran an unsupervised learning algorithm, which helped generate the Jaccard Index- a measure of how ‘close’ two complaints were in terms of statistical similarity.

But to check this ‘distance’ for N complaints against each other would require N*N operations. Far too long for a dataset of this size. To assist with this more abstract sense of ‘distance’, the team decided to turn to the more intuitive geographical meaning of the term. The clearly listed geocode saber we mentioned above.

The team decided that any two complaints within 250m of each other on a map could be considered as potential duplicates, while the rest could be ignored. Plugging these codes into the MongoDB geospatial index, Samarth ingeniously reduced the computation time for this process from 2 hours to 10 minutes. He also later developed a REST API that could be queried to detect the 10 nearest complaints. Going forward, the team hopes to set a threshold of such ‘similarity’ beyond which a new entry could automatically be flagged as a duplicate, much like answered programming queries on Stack Overflow.

 Onward to De-Duplication Success

At first glance, it may seem like the Attack of the Clones had stamped defeat over the eGovernments project, while IChangeMyCity had dodged the bullet. But let’s not jump to conclusions. The importance of this first battle is relative. Since Janaagraha is focused on closure of a single complaint, it makes sense not to muddy waters by repeating the same theory. EGovernments on the other hand is interested in the total number of complaints likely to arise, not the problems. Also, as we’ll soon see in the next installment, the larger numbers of complaints (including duplicates) would prove crucial in helping generate valid forecasts for the Chennai Municipal Corporation.

So at the end of this first DataJam session, what had the team discovered? On a flight that carried along Sun Tzu, 2 mayors, George Lucas and random Athenians in Business Class, we learnt the philosophical complexities of the idea of ‘duplication’, especially in the contexts of crowdsourcing and democratic processes in strained local governments.

Abhishek Pandit is a Strategy Consultant at ChaseFuture

DataKind Bangalore: Using Data to Improve Development

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On the eve of the birthday of MK Gandhi- India’s founding father- two very different groups of technologists are buckled up onboard flights to the United States. One surrounds a man who has risen from poverty to the position of the country’s Prime Minister. Soon, their plane begins its descent into the sun-drenched hillsides around Silicon Valley. The second comprises a trio of young middle-class professionals who’ve applied for extended leave from their day jobs to visit New York.

Peering out at the towering skyline from their windows, they dwell on the upcoming Second Annual Summit of the movement that they helped launched globally a year ago. Despite these surface differences, the two groups find their eyes glazing over the same dreams: harnessing the power of technology and internet connectivity to build a better, brighter India.

Who are they? The first-as you must have guessed- is the retinue of Narendra Modi, spearheading his ambition for a Digital India. Less obvious, and the subject of this three-part series- is DataKind Bangalore, and their diverse initiatives for the improved governance and accountability.

DataKind Banga-what? Mouthful alert. So let’s review that- one word at a time.

DataKind is a global nonprofit that unites pro-bono data scientists with social sector organizations to address critical humanitarian problems within a project-based framework. Since its launch in New York City in 2011, DataKind’s volunteers have undertaken a range of exciting initiatives– from scraping website data on Indonesian agricultural prices and Mozambique’s microfinance, to exploring poverty levels through satellite imagery of electric lighting in Bangladesh and roof materials in Uganda, to identifying trends in the needs of the distressed by mining their SMS text in India, the US and the UK.

This breadth of impact and depth of expertise has only been possible through a vibrant worldwide community represented at DataKind’s Chapters in Dublin, San Francisco, Singapore, the UK and Washington DC, and of course, Bangalore.

Yes, Bangalore. The city Indians would like to call the Silicon Valley of the East. And what Silicon Valley itself would like to dislike as the Outsourcing Capital of the world. Except now, Bangalore is ‘insourcing’. DataKind’s local Chapter, founded in 2014 has been harnessing the country’s top tech talent to take on its own greatest challenges.

Within just a year of operations, their tally of volunteers hit a staggering 700. So could India’s bemoaned Brain-Drain be quietly rebounding into a Brain Gain? Perhaps part of the pro-bono participants’ passion pertains to how Bangalore’s is the only Chapter situated in a developing country.

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Of course, all members of DataKind’s international network confront the ‘wicked’ problems that bedevil poverty alleviation. But when you experience this wickedness first-hand, when it’s cackling in your face on a daily basis, you’re far more inclined to land an algorithmic slap on its cheek.

One of the most stinging issues- possibly one that brought Modi into power- was a lack of transparency and accountability and an almost resigned acceptance of corruption and inefficiency.  And as the trio in New York soon realized at DataKind HQ, governance had unintentionally become a Chapter theme of sorts. 4 of all their 6 nonprofit partners thus far had resolved to support public bodies with data-driven decision making, or at least to build societal consensus on the need thereof.

As another interesting insight at the Global Summit, the Bangalore trio noted that even in developed nations like the UK, the supply of well-trained data scientists still fell short of demands from the private and public sectors. What did this portend for India?

In parallel and on the opposite coast, Modi had been pitching to several CEOs to invest in his country’s IT infrastructure. This tied in with the 17-point Digital India vision he announced 3 months ago, which concludes with ‘I dream of an India where every Netizen is an Empowered Citizen’. But as former Microsoft researcher, Kentaro Toyama elaborates in his book ‘The Geek Heresy’– mere provision of internet and mobile technologies, without investing first in human capacity to handle them (and the resulting information deluge) would ring hollow. An empty promise.

Volunteers at DataKind Bangalore have been fortunate to belong to the narrow segment of digital elite equipped with the industry knowledge and cognitive capabilities to leverage these tools. And it turns out that 6 of the 17 points in Modi’s mandate could be linked to issues of Good Governance. So if there is any measure of evaluating just how truly efficacious the ICT4D mandate could prove for India, and particularly in transparency and accountability, DataKind Bangalore and its projects with local NGOs provide an exciting testing ground.

Likewise, this current Chapter theme of Governance will form the focus of this series, though future extensions may explore outstanding DataKind Bangalore projects in other areas such as education, agriculture and microfinance. The remainder of this entry outlines the workings of DataKind’s typical project cycle, and sets the stage for more detailed explorations that will follow in the coming weeks.

Given this backdrop of the non-profit and technologist landscape, how does possessing data lead to any sustainable change? The answer: it doesn’t. Not per se, at least. Then again, DataKind Bangalore isn’t a group of number crunchers alone. Think of it rather, as an innovation and strategy hub. Likewise, its leaders follow a system.

First, a rigorous scoping and outreach process helps determine which organizations hold sufficient management capacity and clearly defined data science problems for the collaboration to prove worthwhile.

Secondly, doors are opened to volunteers from not only the IT industry but a variety of fields including economics, design, journalism, anthropology, and business development. This diversity enriches the ideation process, while also providing many participants with their first on-the-job taste of programming and statistics.

Thirdly, through a defined sequence of community events, the nonprofit’s challenge is hacked and hewed much like Michelangelo sculpting David out of a block of marble. Project Accelerator Nights (evening brainstorming sessions that lead to problem formulation) and DataJams (sessions of data cleaning and exploratory analysis) then culminate in DataDives (weekend hackathons on clearly defined challenges).

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If partners believe that the resulting proposition would boost social impact, a specially selected DataCorps project then fully integrates it into the host organization over a six-month period.

For every David, there’s a Goliath lurking out there somewhere. And the world we inhabit today teems not only with Big, but Giant Data. This isn’t just the statistics computed to furnish in a Non-Profit’s annual reports or the World Bank’s tables, or even decade-end census figures. Neither is it the information gleaned from large-scale randomized controlled trials on policy effectiveness.

Sure, all of that is pretty and polished. But to (grossly) twist a John Legend classic, quantitative analysts today have to learn to love data with it ‘all its curves and edges, all its perfect imperfections’. And this could either pop up mercilessly in real time (through the spread of social media, mobile devices and sensor devices) or turn musty over years in impregnable government PDFs.

So no matter what fancy statistical technique DataKind may have planned, the first step of problem solving remains the same. All available data- whether from partners or scraped off the net- must be tamed and standardized into a format suitable for computers to perform their magic on. Once this foundation is laid, applications of data science to governance could be classified broadly into two use cases. We will explore each with a pair of Datakind Bangalore partners.

The first centres on the executive wing of public administration- specifically interface with citizens at the municipal ward level. Hell hath no fury like a Smartphone owner scorned. Naturally, public officials often feel overwhelmed and understaffed to deal with the volume and variety of their complaints. As a first remedy, duplicates must be cleared, i.e. if many citizens are lodging new entries for the same issue. These must then be allocated to the appropriate authority for resolution.

For example, ISIF 2015 award winner (and coincidentally one of DataKind Bangalore’s inaugural partners), Janaagraha has leveraged its ‘I Change My City’ online platform and mobile app to empower over 2 million Bangalore citizens to lodge over 36,000 complaints on daily hassles such as potholes, garbage left in the open, streetlights, etc (see below).

With some practice on previous years’ data, a computer can soon begin to predict where and when they are likely to emerge, and calculate the probability that they will be resolved. Machine Learning, Mamma Mia! The next entry in this series will explore the mechanics of such an analysis both for the established Janaagraha initiative as well as the newly commenced e-Governments Foundation project in the neighbouring metropolis of Chennai.

The second approach turns to the judiciary and public finances by visualizing data over time or in specific areas. This allows for identifying trends to take action (for public officials themselves) or demand good governance (for citizens and activists). For example, a brief mapping exercise with the Bangalore Police helped them deduce the location of organized gangs (mostly around open public spaces) and then snatch up and enchain some unassuming chain-snatchers. But more importantly, such visualization converts endless and inscrutable reams of data into a clear and visually engaging narrative.  The final installments of this series will compare applications of data cleaning and visualization to two freshly minted DataKind Bangalore partnerships.

First, DAKSH and its Rule of Law project aim to throw light on another category of the overwhelmed government employee- judges at the District, State and National levels. By mapping and quantifying India’s notoriously high case pendency across courts, DAKSH aims to foster informed public debate and develop sustainable solutions.

Second, Centre for Budget and Government Accountability from New Delhi is striving to develop a detailed data Portal on Union and State budgets in India since 2005 and expose any discrepancies between funded allocated and those actually spent. With both partners, DataKind will help discipline and visualize unruly giant data for a simplified user experience that provides not only intelligible insights but impetus for informed action.

So there we have it- common citizens in the world’s largest democracy harnessing internet technologies for improved transparency and accountability.  The world has changed dramatically since back when Gandhi overthrew a colonial regime through the power of a clear national message and transforming the culture of community movements. It remains to be seen whether embedding technology and data-driven decision-making within organizations can help create a similar impact on the dramatically different challenges of the present day.

Two groups who believe in this potential- Prime Minister Modi and DataKind Bangalore- may have now caught the flight back to India to achieve their mission. But now it’s time for you to fasten your seatbelts. Stay tuned as we embark on new adventures with two fascinating methodologies applied to pioneering and passionate partners in the Silicon Valley of the East. No matter how long the seed needs to take root, and whether this experiment fails or succeeds- it’s definitely a journey you don’t want to miss.

Abhishek Pandit is a Strategy Consultant at ChaseFuture

Can ICTs Improve the Indian Rural Health System?

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Despite real progress since 1990, India has not achieved universal health coverage yet.

For instance, the country still has the highest infant death rate in the world. In 2013, 1.3 million children under the age of five died. For many, this was due to preventable causes like birth complications, pneumonia or diarrhea. Tragically, the majority of fatalities occurred in poor rural households.

A shortage of skilled medical staff in rural India

In India, most of the medical facilities are in the cities, where only 27 percent of the population lives. Approximately 716 million people are currently living in rural areas and they only have access to deplorable health centers. Most of the time, they have to travel a long way to get there. When they arrive, nothing assures them that they will find a practitioner to treat them. Rural India is indeed facing a 64 percent shortage of health professionals.

Aware of the situation, successive Indian governments have been working on this issue. In particular, they have hired women as health workers in remote villages. Today, they are the backbone of the public health system in the countryside. However, most of them are semi-literate and have an insufficient basic training.

A lofty young couple to tackle the Indian rural healthcare issue

They took the leap in 2013 and their dream seemed impossible to achieve. After all, Abhinav and Shrutika Girdhar had no healthcare experience. All they had were years of frustration with the rural medical system.

Shrukita grew up in Mumbai, but her grandparents live in a village of 2,000 people. Whenever they get sick, they have no choice but consult the local health workers. They are only two and they have poor medical skills. Often they cannot cure treatable problems, and often times, this leads to the patient’s death.

Such a situation worried Shrukita, so she opened up to her husband. As the son of two doctors and an entrepreneur at heart, Abhinav was willing to take action. Together they agreed they would focus on improving the training of health workers.

That’s how they left their well-paid jobs and started Bodhi Health Education.

An accessible, personalized training program for health workers

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In India, road conditions are usually poor, so it was unrealistic to organize the training sessions in the villages. On the other hand, mobile coverage is good and there are over 900 million cell phone users. Plus, Shrukita being an IT engineer, they opted for an e-learning solution that could easily be delivered through Android-based devices.

That way, they would tackle the challenge of training uneducated people. Most health workers have limited formal education and it is hard for them to learn medical topics. That’s why the Girdhars and their team of medical specialists developed an adapted curriculum. They made sure to explain every concept and procedures using pictures and videos. Additionally, they deliver the lessons in Hindi and India’s regional languages. That way, the learning is simple, interactive, and engaging.

Furthermore, the Bodhi curriculum relies on a personalized educational approach. After a lesson, the learner has to answer practical questions; after a module, she must then take a quiz exam. The results are sent to the trainers who can assess the learning process. It allows them to tailor the program to the health worker’s pace and progress.

Reluctant medical authorities

At first, Shrutika and Abhinav had to overcome resistance to e-learning. The medical authorities were doubtful about using technology to train community health workers. Despite this rebuff, the young entrepreneurs persisted. In less than two years, they developed 100 training modules. The Bodhi curriculum now covers topics like maternal and child care, immunization as well as tuberculosis.

Besides, the Girdhars introduced their program to health workers, who all showed great interest. They found it easy to use and were happy for the opportunity to increase their skills and knowledge. They knew it could help them better treat people, but also earn more money.

In view of these results, the Indian medical authorities agreed to give it a try. Bodhi Health Education could develop partnerships with the government, private hospitals and healthcare companies. These organizations provided tablets, computers and smartphones to upload the Bodhi curriculum. Over 1,000 community health workers could at last access the training.

Towards a better healthcare for the ‘bottom of the pyramid’?

For Shrutika and Abhinav, this is only the beginning. In the next five years, they aim to train more than 60,000 rural health workers. They also want to go international and promote their solution in Asia and Africa.

And of course, they will focus on the regions with the worst health indicators to achieve a major impact!