Guest Post by Joseph Agoada
Joseph Agoada was selected as a YouthActionNet Fellow in 2008--today he is innovating from within as the Resource Mobilization Coordinator for UNICEF Social and Civic Media. |
| Students document a dangerous gap. |
In a large organization,
moving past pilot successes can be just as challenging as starting up
innovative new ones. Recently, a community based, youth-led digital mapping
initiative facilitated by UNICEF was facing a “good” problem. In the pilot
initiative, 111 youth in five low-income communities were trained to use the
system known as UNICEF-GIS to assess the risks and vulnerabilities in their neighborhoods.
They used mobile phones loaded with the UNICEF-GIS app to photograph problems;
the photos were automatically tagged with global positioning system (GPS)
coordinates, enabling researchers and officials to pinpoint the problem areas helping
to identify the presence or absence of drainage systems, the availability of
sanitation facilities, impediments to evacuation, and other issues.
The project which started in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in late 2011 was replicating organically, with new neighborhoods adapting the platform each month. A second country successfully piloted the technology, and we were receiving constant interest from new countries. However, with the replication and success of the project came a large influx of media-rich, geo-referenced data, and our team did not yet have the capacity to sort through the data and develop actions to remedy these issues quickly.
The project which started in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in late 2011 was replicating organically, with new neighborhoods adapting the platform each month. A second country successfully piloted the technology, and we were receiving constant interest from new countries. However, with the replication and success of the project came a large influx of media-rich, geo-referenced data, and our team did not yet have the capacity to sort through the data and develop actions to remedy these issues quickly.
It became clear that this experience was a side effect of
the “big data” paradox that makes many innovative initiatives too complex for
institutions. There are tensions and
complexities in trying to balance data needs appropriately—you need sufficient
data inflows to derive comprehensive conclusions from data sets, but too much
too data too fast creates the impossible task of trying to make sense of all of
it. At the time, we were also dealing with resource-constrained governments and
poor communities which made the process even more complex.
 |
| Students identify risk areas |
Our team was committed to
finding a solution. We devised a plan to build a tagging based system. For
example, when a youth submitted a “landslide” risk near a “school” it would
rank higher than a “pothole.” Urgency would thus depend on keywords that were
attached to each report of an environmental hazard or risk logged by the youth
mappers. (read more on Urgency Rank
development). To test this out, we applied for a grant from the John S. and
James L. Knight Foundation.
The Knight
Prototype Fund provided UNICEF with the financial investment that empowered our team to
mobilize resources for a small, fast-turnaround project and to test the urgency
platform. While it is true that UNICEF is a large-budgeted organization,
resources for new and risky projects are very limited. The grant from Knight
Foundation was a critical catalyst, and a valuable intrapreneurial investment
that let us assemble a team to quickly build and test our idea. That funding turned into a prototype that is
now live.
Test the Prototype: urgencyrank.unicef-gis.org
Test the Prototype: urgencyrank.unicef-gis.org
The financial resources
provided by Knight Foundation were only part of the solution in delivering this
working prototype. To mobilize the technical resources and innovative support,
key partnerships were maintained with the MIT Mobile
Experience Lab and Joost Bonsen, instructor in the MIT
Media Lab. They provided critical initial feedback and direction. UNICEF was
also able to renew its working relationship with InSTEDD, working collaboratively to
crystallize and execute the technical side of the solution.
The next step for the innovation, which is part of the UNICEF-GIS platform, is to continue iterating and prototyping, testing solutions based on scientific assumptions and failing fast and forward in the scaling process. A renewed partnership with the incredible Public Laboratory for Open Technology is in the pipeline to further create do-it-yourself solutions that will allow communities to take action into their own hands, without extensive technical training.
TechChange Course TC108a - Intrapreneurship - Innovating from Within
The next step for the innovation, which is part of the UNICEF-GIS platform, is to continue iterating and prototyping, testing solutions based on scientific assumptions and failing fast and forward in the scaling process. A renewed partnership with the incredible Public Laboratory for Open Technology is in the pipeline to further create do-it-yourself solutions that will allow communities to take action into their own hands, without extensive technical training.
The forward-thinking process
we undertook at UNICEF for the Urgency Rank Prototype was a methodology of
intrapreneurial advancement, moving past a pilot within a large organization by
experimenting, testing assumptions, and learning quickly. This summer I am
looking forward to sharing knowledge and insightful discussions on the
intrapreneurial approach through an online learning course with TechChange.org,
run by 2009 International Youth Foundation Global YouthActionNet Fellow Nick
Martin. The course, featuring practitioners from the
World Bank, Washington Post and Johns Hopkins begins July 24th and is currently
in open enrollment:
TechChange Course TC108a - Intrapreneurship - Innovating from Within
Photo Credit: (1,2) CEDAPS and (3) UNICEF-GIS
