Taarifa active in Dar/Tanzania?

[Paul Uithol]

Hi,

Came across your project while looking at some water related projects in Tanzania (and also researching Python REST APIs; we were using django-tastypie, but eve looks pretty great). You website mentions you're currently involved in a project in Tanzania; I'm wondering what the current status and the story behind that is?

The reason I'm asking is that I'm currently in Dar es Salaam, working on a HOT project (on OpenStreetMap, currently in the area around http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/-6.8024/39.2467), basically mapping Dar ward by ward to collect data on drainage, sanitation, water, buildings, etc. We're looking to collect enough baseline data to allow informed decisions on how and where to improve infrastructure to better prepare for (and decrease the impact of) flooding. Which seems to have some overlap with your project, seeing as we're also collecting waterpoint/watertank data, The data you have seems quite up to date, and I'm wondering how it's being collected/updated? Would there be some way to tie this in to other (community) mapping initiatives, like the one we're working on getting off the ground currently?

[Dirk Gorissen]

Hi Paul,

You will find that the project lead (Mark Iliffe) behind the community
mapping work you are doing in Dar is one of the Taarifa co-founders
and the two things are very closely related :)

Our data comes directly from the government and the whole idea of
community collection/updating is exactly what we are working on. Hope
this helps, happy to have a call if useful.

Cheers
Dirk


_________________________________________
Dr. Dirk Gorissen
Research - Tech4Good - Flying Robots
Skype: dirk.gorissen
Mob: +44-7763-806-809
Twitter : https://twitter.com/dirkgor
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dirkgorissen

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[Willow Brugh]

Strong agree that Mark is the best person to talk to about this, but I bet we could all use a check-in with each other.

Paul, what's your timeline like? Would a call next week be ok? Or -- better yet -- I'm in Nairobi from April 25-May 5, if we could call from same timezone (or if you want to jaunt over).

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[Paul Uithol]

Ah, that's great! I did meet Mark when he was in Dar, but the focus was pretty much on getting the mapping up and running. Will ping him about this.

A call sound good, I wouldn't mind getting a bit more backstory. I would be available for that somewhere in the second half of this week, from Wednesday on. I'll be in SA the week after that, basically travelling. The week after that (from 27th of April on) would be fine for me as well.

Did you guys ever hear of http://www.waterpointmapping.org/ btw? Is that in any way connected? Seems to be similar in scope, but there doesn't seem to be much life there..

Cheers,
Paul

[Nico Weinert]

Hey,

Don't want to be cynical, but sounds like Taarifa should be even easier than that project. 

From their website:

"

How's it done? 

The beauty of Water Point Mapping is it's simplicity.

You visit a rural water point, you fill in a 1 page questionnaire, take a GPS reading and a photo then you go and visit the next one. "

Best,

Nico

[Dirk Gorissen]

Interesting, never knew of http://www.waterpointmapping.org/ wonder
who is behind it.

Late April better for me.

Cheers
Dirk
_________________________________________
Dr. Dirk Gorissen
Research - Tech4Good - Flying Robots
Skype: dirk.gorissen
Mob: +44-7763-806-809
Twitter : https://twitter.com/dirkgor
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dirkgorissen

[Nico Weinert]

Looks like they collected some very nice data, I definitely see some synergy between the two projects.

[Willow Brugh]

In contrast, in Taarifa, via SMS, IVR, webform, email, etc you enter a code for the water point (either the long-form code proffered by the Ministry of Water (often referred to as "MoW") or a "Three Words" designation -- this is still being discussed on a github issues), along with a "broken" or "fixed" and it updates the database. It's also possible to attach extra information

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[Mark Iliffe]

Welcome to Taarifa Paul! Let's chat. I'm sure there are ways to tie things together. I know with regard to the community mapping work in Dar, phase three will start to look at deploying tools that leveraging the data from the mapping project. This needs to be thought through quite carefully in conjunction with the community and stakeholders in Dar to ensure that they will a. use the tools and b. act upon reports of broken infrastructure, but I'm sure we will do something, it's a question of getting through the initial mapping phase and scale up first.

I know a bit of history about the waterpointmapping.org site - it was started by one of the original coders of the WPMS in Tanzania, but it's since been depreciated - the data and the maps date from 2010. I think an all hands call would be good. Willow, could you organise something next week that works for you and is in the evening around 1800-1900 GMT? This would mean all from Dar to EST could be able to get on the call at a reasonable time - maybe even those on the west coast US too. 

Best,

Mark

[Paul Uithol]

Hi Mark & all,

Well, yeah. The non-technical/user aspects of this projects seem to be it's greatest risk to me. For the feedback loop to be actually closed, I guess there should also be transparency on how specific defects are resolved, as well as statistics on general numbers? Full transparency may (or may not)  be a bridge too far, but at the very least the person actually reporting the malfunction should receive updates I guess. In technical terms though, to me that sounds an awful lot like some sort of a ticketing system, allowing triaging, querying on MTBF, speed of resolution, etc..

By the way, with regards to actual UI workings operation, I understand lower-tech versions are somewhat of a priority? I haven't checked out the phonegap/cordova app yet, but for those apps it shouldn't be too hard to give a choice between the nearest water points, based on available positioning information (cellId, gps, etc)?

Anyway, should be interesting to see how we can tie this in to our current efforts! As I said, I'll be in SA next week though - the week after that (from Tuesday the 28th on) would be fine with me for a call.

cheers,
Paul

[Mark Iliffe]

Hey Paul, All,

Responses inline:

On 15 Apr 2015, at 19:00, Paul Uithol <paul....@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Mark & all,

Well, yeah. The non-technical/user aspects of this projects seem to be it's greatest risk to me. For the feedback loop to be actually closed, I guess there should also be transparency on how specific defects are resolved, as well as statistics on general numbers? Full transparency may (or may not)  be a bridge too far, but at the very least the person actually reporting the malfunction should receive updates I guess. In technical terms though, to me that sounds an awful lot like some sort of a ticketing system, allowing triaging, querying on MTBF, speed of resolution, etc..

Completely agree. Taarifa almost closed the loop in Tanzania, in Mafinga district: https://taarifa.wordpress.com/2014/06/05/updates-from-the-field-taarifa-in-iringa-district/. The remaining issue was mainly around money for district water engineers to effect repairs. We held a forum to discuss this with the wider community, this was echoed all the way up to the regional level.

By the way, with regards to actual UI workings operation, I understand lower-tech versions are somewhat of a priority? I haven't checked out the phonegap/cordova app yet, but for those apps it shouldn't be too hard to give a choice between the nearest water points, based on available positioning information (cellId, gps, etc)?

That would be good, there are a lot of Github issues around this. However - the division of labour for the cooperation with Sema and ITC is yet to be decided, I know they have extensive experience with USSD and SMS so could be interesting to see what they have as well.

Anyway, should be interesting to see how we can tie this in to our current efforts! As I said, I'll be in SA next week though - the week after that (from Tuesday the 28th on) would be fine with me for a call.

cheers,
Paul

Best,

Mark

[Willow Brugh]

I'm a bit overclocked right now, but an all-hands sounds like a fantastic idea. I'd posit we need to cover:

* upcoming Tanzania initiative (Lisha in lead for this agenda point, based on grant)

* overall project status (Drew, can you do this, based on the blog entry in process?)

* upcoming training game in Nairobi (I'll be lead on this)

* update on how Emmanuel is going (Emmanuel as lead, clearly)

* some clarity of if we're using G+ or Slack, and a full port over to whichever we choose (group discussion).

Dirk, Florian, Mark, you'll notice your own absence of lead items on here - I'm explicitly working to distribute knowledge and initiative into new bits of the group.

I'm sending this while offline, so someone please start a pad at taarifa.hackpad.com and reply to this thread with the link so others can also add to the notes. 

I've sent an invite for the only time I can crowbar into my schedule next week, which is also cognizant of timezones. Hope it works for everyone! I'll add a G+ invite link to it once I'm actually connected to the internet, if I remember. All are, of course, welcome! Reply if you'd like to be added to the invite. Please invite anyone else you think should *specifically* be on the call. I'll post the link to the hangout to the list just before we start.

[Willow Brugh]

Internet connection: achieved.

Please add to the agenda here: https://taarifa.hackpad.com/Taarifa-Overview-Checkin-2015.04.21-nR815ghgENo

(and thanks to Florian for the fantastic overview doc on the taarifa hackpad)

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[Willow Brugh]

Join us here: https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/calendar/N2RrYmZoanRiazhldW5qdmJlMWsxNWk5cWNAZ3JvdXAuY2FsZW5kYXIuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbQ._8d2jcgpl7524cba18gs3eb9k690kab9p64qk8b9g84q46gpm70pjigi36k

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[Cécile Remy]

Dear all,

My name is Cécile Remy, I’m a French PhD student working with the French Mapping Agency, studying production and actuals uses of Volunteered Geographical Information – i.e. Geographical information produced by ordinary citizens – in the water and sanitation in Eastern African cities. I’m presently working in Dar es Salaam, where I’m also involved in the Dar Ramani Huria Project with Mark Iliffe and Paul Uithol as an “invited research”.

1/ I’m currently looking for updated information about the present deployment of Taarifa in Tanzania/Kenya :  I understood a pilot field deployment has been conducted in the Mafinga District in May-June 2014, with COWSOs sending SMS reports about water point functionality. Was it only deployed in rural areas (villages) or also in urban? Were ordinary citizen able to send reports, or only COWSOs? Any other deployment experience since the “gamification exercise” in Mafinga? Any deployment planned in urban areas?

2/ I would also be interested by an update on the state of progress of the Maarifa project you are carring out with the SEMA team (I met Yola Georgiadou in Dar a few days ago).

I would certainly be easier to discuss these different questions on skype, but my internet connection is quite [very] unpredictable here =/

Many thanks in advance for your time, and I which you a good weekend,

Best regards,

Cécile

[Willow Brugh]

In-line responses

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On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 10:42 AM, Cécile Remy <ceciler...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear all,

My name is Cécile Remy, I’m a French PhD student working with the French Mapping Agency, studying production and actuals uses of Volunteered Geographical Information – i.e. Geographical information produced by ordinary citizens – in the water and sanitation in Eastern African cities. I’m presently working in Dar es Salaam, where I’m also involved in the Dar Ramani Huria Project with Mark Iliffe and Paul Uithol as an “invited research”.

1/ I’m currently looking for updated information about the present deployment of Taarifa in Tanzania/Kenya :  I understood a pilot field deployment has been conducted in the Mafinga District in May-June 2014, with COWSOs sending SMS reports about water point functionality. Was it only deployed in rural areas (villages) or also in urban? Were ordinary citizen able to send reports, or only COWSOs? Any other deployment experience since the “gamification exercise” in Mafinga? Any deployment planned in urban areas?

We trained people in rural areas, but in a town. Citizens *could* send reports, but we only trained COWSOs.

I also ran a game for a conference. https://github.com/taarifa/Training and https://aspirationtech.org/blog/willow/nairobi_spring2015

 

2/ I would also be interested by an update on the state of progress of the Maarifa project you are carring out with the SEMA team (I met Yola Georgiadou in Dar a few days ago).

I would certainly be easier to discuss these different questions on skype, but my internet connection is quite [very] unpredictable here =/

I'm anticipating Mark or Lisha will be better equipped to answer this question.

 

Many thanks in advance for your time, and I which you a good weekend,

Best regards,

Cécile

--

[Lisha Sterling]

Hello Cécile,

I am working on the new project with Taarifa in Tanzania. This is a little different because it isn't Taarifa per se, but a fork which is combined with another application called SEMA which was developed by the university of dar es salaam and the university of twente. This new combined fork is called Maarifa.

We are using SEMA's USSD functionality instead of simple SMS. This allows for a two minute session with question and response to give us more information with each report. We are using DHS2 as the database repository for the information that comes in, and then we use Taarifa to present a dashboard with graphs, reports, and eventually a full problem and change ticketing app for the browser.

Our first pilot for this combined project is in Bunda district where we have assigned reporters who will be checking on water points on a monthly schedule. We are using assigned reporters in this case because all previous pilots with public reporting have shown that almost no one reports problems because they don't believe that anything will come of it. We are working on a strategy of proving the value of reporting and then inviting the public to take part as confidence in the system grows. In the meantime, anyone who wants to take part is invited to become one of the designated reporters.

I will be in Dar next Wednesday night and will stay in Tanzania for two and a half months. I would be happy to meet with you in person to go into greater detail about the project.

You can email me directly at li...@gwob.org.

Regards,
Lisha