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Feel-good data story for the holidays
By WDavidStephenson | December 26, 2011
As you’re probably aware, necessity is making Africa the go-to region for cheap, innovative uses of cell phones and wireless devices.
Catching up on my reading, I came across an article in CIOÂ about MIT’s Africa 2.0 forum, which included a presentation by Nathan Eagle of Jana, which uses the incentive of free mobile airtime to get consumers in developing nations to complete surveys or purchase products.
In this case, Jana was working with hospital nurses in rural Kenya to get them to text blood supply information to a central data base. Since African cell users may spend 10 per cent of their annual incomes purchasing air time, Jana found that compensating the nurses by giving them air-time credit would directly increase their willingness to participate in the program.
The program was a win-win: the nurses got the usage credits they wanted and the public health authorities got the blood supply information they needed. I must admit I’m a little ambivalent about Jana’s wider mission of marketing to people who are barely surviving economically, but if they are getting something that is so valuable — cell minutes — in return, at least there’s more of a beneficial tradeoff.
There’s also the added benefit of making vital public health data available by harnessing the profit motive.
Let’s hope the new year brings more such clever win-win collaborations to make data more widely available.
Topics: data, data dynamite, open data, empowering public | |
