World Bank
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Open Access Week Preview
Organizations around the world are gearing up to celebrate Open Access Week, officially held Oct. 22–28, 2012. For most institutions, Open Access Week is a way to increase the visibility of open access among scientists, researchers, librarians, university faculty members, and students. Read More »
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Open Data for Better Government
Open data is the new thing in development. In the last three years, the World Bank, the United States, the United Kingdom, Kenya, and now the new Open Government Partnership have made raw data available to the public in forms that can be manipulated and interpreted by techno-savvy people to improve governance.
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Open Data For Development Camp Highlights Challenges And Innovations In Aid Transparency
From May 12-13, AidData's Anna Lauridsen attended the Open Data for Development Camp (ODDC) in Amsterdam. The camp, hosted by Open for Change, allowed participants from the development and technology fields to discuss challenges, benefits, and lessons learned associated with open data. Read More »
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Open Data: 50 Countries, 100 Speakers and the Power of Ideas
Hundreds of open data experts and enthusiasts from more than 50 countries are expected at the second International Open Government Data Conference (IOGDC) —a look at the impact and promise of open data in cities, countries and institutions around the world.
Open Development Roadshow in South Asia
Local languages, more poverty data, more timely data, and more information on data sources, data reliability, and the differences between World Bank data and national data. These were the comments we heard most often during visits to India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka as part of a World Bank Open Development Roadshow... Read More »
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Open Source for Humanitarian Action
In the days following the Jan. 10, 2010, earthquake in Haiti, chaos prevailed. Transportation was limited, if not impossible. Lines of communication were broken. A few radio stations continued to broadcast, but the disaster’s scale was overwhelming. Only one form of mass communication remained relatively intact: cellular phones. Even before the disaster, there had been only 108,000 landbased telephone lines in the country, compared with 3.5 million mobile phones. After the earthquake, mobile communications, particularly text messages, were one of the few means by which people could report their needs and location...
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OpenStreetMap Community Helps With Nepal Earthquake Response
Since the devastating earthquake in Nepal, there have been responses from all over the world from relief agencies, governments, non-profits, and ordinary citizens. One interesting effort has been from the crowdsourced mapping community, especially on OpenStreetMap.org, a free and open web map of the world that anyone can edit (think the Wikipedia of maps.) Read More »
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Public Forum discusses Open Development Initiatives in Nepal
The Open Forum discussed three aspects of Open Development; Open Data and Knowledge, Open Operations and Tools and open solutions. Information was also shared on various tools and platforms like the Bank’s Open Data, Open Finances, Mapping for Results and Open Knowledge Repository as well as the Access to Information Policy which includes strengthening public ownership and oversight of Bank-financed operations. Read More »
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Public Health ACTion (PHACT) 2013 Campaign mobilizes support
The 2013 Public Health Action (PHACT) Campaign is well underway. Check out the Public Health ACTion (PHACT) Campaign web site maintained by the American Public Health Association (APHA). It provides 'open' data and information on public health funding impacts on communities in every state in the U.S. Click on your state to find out where it ranks on public health funding and activities. Read More »
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Redefining Impact Through Open Access
In the 18 months since the World Bank announced its Open Access Policy with the launch of the Open Knowledge Repository, a transformation has taken place in the way the Bank’s published knowledge reaches the public. The frequency and volume of content being accessed doubled from one million downloads in the first year to two million in the subsequent six months. But measuring the impact goes beyond counting downloads and visits. Read More »
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Rethink Data, Transform Healthcare - Unlocking The Value Of Health Data
We are all consumers of healthcare and therefore have a vested interest in its future. As an observation, being an outsider to this sector, the healthcare global system looks increasingly broken as the rate of change and complexity increases. At the same time, my empathy is with those people working inside the profession that provide high quality, compassionate healthcare, and support. But maybe more help is needed to handle the relentless challenges and changes at the edge. Read More »
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Save The Date: Oct. 21 Open Access Week 2013 Kick Off Event At The World Bank And Online: Redefining Impact
SPARC (The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) and the World Bank have announced they will co-sponsor the kickoff event for Open Access Week 2013 on Monday October 21st in Washington, DC. Read More »
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Smartphone, Finger Prick, 15 Minutes, Diagnosis—Done!
A team of researchers, led by Samuel K. Sia, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering, has developed a low-cost smartphone accessory that can perform a point-of-care test that simultaneously detects three infectious disease markers from a finger prick of blood in just 15 minutes. The device replicates, for the first time, all mechanical, optical, and electronic functions of a lab-based blood test. Specifically, it performs an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) without requiring any stored energy: all necessary power is drawn from the smartphone...
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The Largest Payment Platform On Earth Can Reach 2 Billion People–So Why Haven’t You Heard Of It?
When Jana co-founder Nathan Eagle needed to connect to a cell carrier in the developing world, he’d come to meetings with a duffel bag full of cash and say that he wanted to buy airtime. For carriers who were taking on more customers than ever, but struggling with declining revenue per user, it was an irresistible sales pitch. The result, two years later, is that Jana is now the largest payment platform in the world. Read More »
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The Umpteenth Blog On Using SMS Feedback In Projects…Now with Support!
With shiny apps hogging the mobile spotlight these days, one could be forgiven for forgetting about SMS (“Short Message Service” or text messaging). But although apps often disguise themselves as universally useful, their data and hardware requirements preclude their widespread use in poor countries... Read More »
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