• Infonet

By Social Development Network, East Africa

Citizens can get information on government funding for development projects by sending a text message to Infonet’s Budget Tracking platform. Users’ questions provide data to help build a picture of which government funds are most under scrutiny in different areas. People can also leave comments on each project added to the website to verify, contest, or add information, or connect with a local social development group who can help them query the allocation and use of public funds. To date, over 36,000 development projects have been listed. In its first month, 25,000 people used the tool on their mobile phones, and there were 15,000 website hits. 

TOOLS USED: database (WampServer: Apache, PHP, MySQL), website, mobile phones.

LINKS TO LEARN MORE:

Budget Tracking Tool

Social Development Network

• Freedom Fone

By advocates in Zimbabwe

Kubatana is a media and communication project that aggregates, amplifies and disseminates information generated by the civil society sector in Zimbabwe. Materials are published on www.kubatana.net and publicised through a regular email newsletter and SMS alerts. A variety of materials including printed articles, reports, CDs and DVDs are distributed to individuals and organisations throughout Zimbabwe via post. To address the growing use of mobile phones in developing countries, Kubatana is creating an open source software platform called Freedom Fone to promote the use of interactive voice response (IVR) by community and development oriented organisations. Freedom Fone will empower organisations to generate call-in information-on-demand in any language. 

TOOLS USED: FrontlineSMS, mobile phones, desktop computers to run Freedom Fone call-in system.

LINKS TO LEARN MORE:

Freedom Fone website