“From our house we can see [the gangs] standing and shooting at each other. There are bullet holes in the walls of my house, says Candice Kemp. “I heard a machine gun for the first time last year. That’s when Uber stopped operating in our area.”

Kemp’s home is in Lavender Hill, and located at the edge of two rival gang territories. Lavender Hill is a notorious neighbourhood in one of Cape Town, South Africa’s poorest areas, the Cape Flats — an area named literally for its flat landscape. It’s a catch-all phrase for suburbs like Athlone, Manenberg, and Bonteheuwel. The Cape Flats is windblown and sand-blasted — the howling Cape winds pick up sand from the nearby beaches. It is highly populated, with dilapidated infrastructure, and even 25 years after the end of apartheid, almost exclusively occupied by “people of colour”, people that Cape Town City government is often accused of neglecting. It also serves a strong contrast to the developed urban city centre, on the slopes of iconic Table Mountain, which every year claims one or two “best city”-type tourism awards.

Kemp is part of the “coloured” community in Lavender Hill; Although this term might grate for international readers, in South Africa “coloured” refers to people of “mixed race” parentage, and is not considered a racial slur. It is a legacy of apartheid that lingers long after the racial segregation system was legally dismantled, but is now used an official designation on demographic forms, with a view to — in theory — making sure previously disadvantaged people are given opportunities, and for supporting transformation objectives.

Legacies of inequality

Another of those persistent legacies is what is often called “spatial apartheid”. South Africa was divided by race, by area, according to where the state declared you fell on the racial spectrum. White people enjoyed the most space, in the best areas located close to work opportunities and city services.

Although that law and system no longer exists, the reality is that South Africa hasn’t economically transformed sufficiently, and with a few notable exceptions and a small-but-growing black middle class, the country remains economically stratified largely along racial lines.

Kemp’s parents lived in District Six before the forced removals in the 1960s that brought them to “the Flats”, a time her mother has clear memories of. Born in 1984, ten years before South Africa’s first democratic elections, Kemp herself remembers the “whites” and “non whites” signs demarcating areas of Muizenberg beach — a common trope of the way the country was divided racially.

Today, Lavender Hill is deeply immersed in and associated with the gangs of Cape Town — where the South African government last year decided to deploy the South African National Defence Force (SANDF), in what many are calling a desperate and ill-considered attempt to address rampant violence and gangsterism in the area.

In the first seven months of 2019 over 900 people had been killed in gang clashes, or at the hands of gangsters in the area. But in the 1990s, Kemp says, they could still play outside as children. “I remember my mother would call me in at 8pm. It was safe. I can’t remember all the shooting and the gangsters. It has become so much worse. Even though I grew up there, I might be robbed. The younger generation [of gangsters] don’t know us.”

Next generation

Being an English-speaking person in the Lavender Hill of today has made her a target she says, and “I’m light of complexion … So they hate you automatically,” she says.

Her twelve-year old daughter is also pale-skinned and Kemp believes she is a target, worrying that she might be attacked. “I keep her next to me, and when we go out she is with me. She doesn’t go outside. She doesn’t have any friends in the area. She stays indoors on her tablet.”

Kemp went to school with at least one person who would go on to become a high-ranking gangster, counted them among her friends. This gave her a degree of protection in high school and thereafter. “But since he was put in jail,” she says, “the youngsters are running around stabbing people, robbing people. They have no respect.”

These “youngsters” are sometimes as young as nine or ten, and are already “talking about tik” — a local term for crystal meth cut, often cut with cheap household additives. “Most of the hitmen are now kids,” she says. “One of my friends was killed by a young boy just like that. He thought he was just a kid heading to the store, and then he pulled out a gun and shot him.”

As far as Kemp knows, this was a random killing for the sake of initiation. In order to join a gang like the JFKs, the Mongrels, or the Americans, “you must kill”, she explains. “The JFKs basically rule Lavender Hill.”

A violent history

Raisa Cole is an urban development specialist. Cole lived in Wynberg during her youth, which is considered ‘suburban Cape Town’, but because of the legacies of apartheid spatial planning, most of her family lived in “coloured townships areas”.

“It was definitely a part of my reality,” she says. These spaces have a history of spatial violence, she argues. “Not only in terms of the kind of social ills that have existed there since 1966 when they were developed, but also in the trauma people experienced by being displaced to these areas.”

She is not a fan of the military response strategy, saying:

“The space itself has a history of violence, and introducing new forms of aggression — such as military presence — is problematic.”

Moreover, Cole says, it shows a complete lack of understanding of that community’s perceptions of and attitudes to the SANDF. “There are lots of community policing and safety forums in the Flats, some with ex-gang members involved. They do a lot of work on violence prevention. That is based on an intrinsic understanding of the social codes in that neighbourhood and what fuels the gangsterism. But they don’t know or trust the SANDF.”

Parallel services

Critics of Cape Town City government say that their policies are demonstrably pro-rich and anti-poor, and that the slow development and patchy service provision in the Flats is indicative of this. According to some, this combined with the culture of violence described above has created the perfect environment for gangsterism to thrive.

“In the vacuum of service provision, the gangs also provide almost a parallel stream of services that communities rely on,” says Cole. “My grandmother ran a community centre in Hanover Park, and took kids from the neighbourhood all over the world to take part in gymnastics competitions. A lot of those children were sponsored by the Americans gang, in terms of their costumes and equipment.”

She continues: “There isn’t a clear dichotomy of above-the-board, legal activity from the gangs and their more notorious [characteristics]. They are interconnected, and one relies on the other.”

Some public officers have attempted to address this through financial inclusion plans, the best of which are based on principles of economic expansion, says Cole. With jobs and growth in the area, they hope stability will return.

“But, we mustn’t be naive about it,” Cole says. “I don’t think that even if government officials were coming into Manenberg, they would have the organisational clout needed to execute an intervention.

“I do think there needs to be a source of stability created first, for growth-focused economic activities to have fertile soil, and I think that stability must come from the community. There needs to be serious capacity development in terms of the South African police force, and then partnership between police and community policing forums.”

Homegrown knowledge

Rushka Ely is a development practitioner with a focus on inclusive and sustainable development. She is also a proponent of community-led interventions — for addressing both violence, and systemic poverty and inequality.

Ely is also a programme lead at an organisation called the Western Cape Economic Development Partnership. Not only is this her specialist field, but she grew up in the Cape Flats area. She describes the military moving into the Cape Flats areas as “absolutely” misplaced.

Anecdotally, Ely says, she is hearing that the army presence means there have been kids playing on the streets again; “And that is fantastic.” But she worries about the long-term thinking here, or lack thereof. “The army can’t stay there forever. What happens in three month’s time when the gangs are operating in the same way they used to? Even with the army in position, it hasn’t really stopped the murders.”

Ely believes this approach is a knee-jerk reaction to the surge in violence in the area in 2018 and 2019. She argues that the municipal government simply doesn’t know what to do, and is under pressure to come up with a solution. “But how can you?” she asks. “How can you come up with a solution if [city government] doesn’t understand the context and the history?”

“I think one of our biggest failures is not making a sufficient attempt to learn from the communities themselves,” she says.

“These communities have had to be resilient, and figure out ways of coping with violence. There are real stories to be told, such as when the most dangerous street in Manenberg was shut down for an evening this year so that 2000 people in the community could break their fast together in Ramadan. Or a block in Lavender Hill that is kept safe and violence-free by a few old aunties. How is that happening, and how do we leverage off those relationships to inform policy and strategy around safety and violence?”

Aspirations of simple safety

As a result of the violence and poverty, Kemp says her community have completely different expectations for themselves, compared to her colleagues at the energy engineering firm she works for today.

“Where I come from, if you say ‘I am educated’ it means you passed matric” (final year of high school). The goal is just to get your matric and get a job afterwards.”

Her white colleagues come home from vacations describing their latest overseas trip, but Kemp just wants one thing for her family: to move to a flat in Wynberg, a little two-bed where she doesn’t need to lie on the floor to avoid cross-fire, and somewhere where Uber operates, so her daughter can move about the suburb and visit her friends.

Please note: This article was written in July and August 2019. Words and photos by Kate Thompson Davy.

A year and three weeks have gone by since I lost my father to Alzheimer’s. I’ve been trying to write about this experience for ages, or to write a profile that I feel reflects who he was. And I’m not winning in these endeavors at f*cking all.

Then last week I lost my father-in-law to cancer. It’s been a year of loss in so many ways.

So here’s a very different #throwbackthursday post: the eulogy I read for my dad, 5 May 2017.

I often joke that it is easy to be a journalist because I don’t have to make anything up; I just need to tell someone else’s story. But how do I begin to tell you this one?

As a journalist, I might start like this: East London, 1 May 2017 — Prominent business man and pillar of the community Alan Glyd Thompson has passed away at 73 years of age. Thompson, known as Al, was a family man first, a fierce friend, a dedicated golfer, and forever a Komga farm boy at heart.

As his daughter, I could say: My father, my daddy, is gone. And I’m sadder than I can explain, but also relieved that his suffering is over.

Neither of those is remotely adequate. I wish I could capture the “essence” of him on paper, but I’m no poet or biographer. So, let me start like a good journalist with what I know for sure…

I know that Al was a farmer’s son who loved this land and all animals, and was deeply, wide-eyed-ly passionate about the sea: swimming, fishing, picking muscles off the rocks, diving for crayfish. He was most at ease outdoors.

I know he was a short shorts kind of guy, with tanned and freckled knees, dark hair that curled in the sea air like mine.

He had no fear of cold water. He would go splashing into the ocean whether the warm Natal or cold Cape tides were swirling in.

He loved to dance. He loved his dogs. He loved to dance with his dogs. He wouldn’t take no for an answer to an invitation to dance, and dancing with my dad always came with his own added percussion … that “chachachcahcha” thing he did, just in case you couldn’t keep up with his rhythm.

He never swore, and in fact couldn’t tell a naughty joke without messing up the punchline. Everyone in his circles had been subjected to at least one of his awful “Little Johnny” jokes that, even in his sixties, would cause him to blush like a school boy as he told them.

He was the epitome of a “people person” — someone for whom his relationships were paramount. He had an incredible memory for faces and names, and loved to reminisce with people about their school days, their Round Table shenanigans.

Dad loved his family unconditionally. He always looked at my Mom like a man who had won the lottery. In fact, it was just a year ago, during a particularly bad and confusing week, that he “rediscovered” my mom, believing briefly that they had just met… Dad declared himself passionately in love and proposed to her — having asked my Gran for her blessing, of course. They celebrated by phoning my sister with the good news.

I don’t share this story to have a laugh at his expense, but because this hideous eroding disease never really touched the core of my dad. Even when the world got fuzzy, his sight tunnelled and the narratives of books, films and anecdotes became too twisty and complicated to follow, these things that were so integral to who he was never left him. Dad found solace in the sea, the beach, his dogs, friends, and his family.

Today would have been my parents 44th wedding anniversary, or their second first anniversary if he had had his way….

We didn’t always see eye to eye. The height of my teenage rebellion coincided with some of the most stressful years of his life as a business owner, and because of this we butted heads often at that time. But I never doubted that I was deeply loved, and wanted — even if he did love to tell me I was his favourite “mistake”.

And I know that despite how different I thought we were, essentially everything that I love about the Eastern Cape (like this community, the wild coast), and about my family (our particular way of laughing through tears, our loyalty, and what some might call our stubbornness), the way I love my four-legged children more than I like most people — all of that is a direct result of his influence on my life. And I know that that is an amazing gift, Dad — a legacy of a life too short for us, but energetically well-lived:

Seventy-three years, 44 years of marriage, three children, four grandchildren, 15 beloved dogs, two or three ill-fated cats, around 730 fresh fried fish, and approximately-exactly ten thousand beach walks to Halfway Rocks, one Alan. Hamba Kahle Daddy.

Speaking from my own experience only, the data is the least of your worries. The data is ready to be analysed. But bringing your story to life with real people’s stories, and managing ambitious, wide-ranging data projects is a whole different kettle of fish for a “traditional” journalist

When I landed an impactAFRICA grant in 2016, it was one of the most exciting moments of my career. I’d been researching garnishees and unethical behaviour in the South African credit industry for the best part of two years at that point. I had more information than I knew what to do with, and a deep need for this story to see the light of day.

A quick recap, in simplest terms: A garnishee (or emolument attachment order, EAO) is a legal order served on an employer (your company) to enable collection of debt owed by a consumer. So, if you don’t pay your instalments on your clothing store card, for example, the company might go to court to get an EAO against you to collect on that debt. They serve this on your boss / payroll at your company. Then your employer has to pay a portion of your salary directly to the creditor. Different versions of garnishee orders are used around the world to this end, but they are particularly controversial in South Africa where rampant abuse of the orders saw a legal challenge go all the way to the Constitutional Court (who found elements of one of the Acts governing this to be unconstitutional). It was a landmark case in SA law, and received huge media attention, but there has been a tendency on the part of the media to treat the issue of garnishees as “job done” after the case. In reality, the ConCourt dealt with just two issues in a practice riddled with loopholes and outright fraud. It is a hydra and the fight is far from won.

I wanted to be able to show “how we got here”, and what those remaining loopholes are, to offer some sense of just how prevalent and unregulated (“unregulatable”?) garnishee use had become in South Africa.

As we know, around the world, media is in flux: a problematic revenue model and a changing information environment mean that many publications can’t afford to invest in single issue, in-depth reporting. It’s even tougher if you’re a freelancer on the outside of the newsroom. And the impactAFRICA grant gave me the support and space to put time and energy into doing this as a freelance journalist.

I approached Business Day because I wanted to tell a high level, detailed story to a high level audience. Yes, we need to ultimately educate consumers on their rights. But I also wanted the champions of private business and public service to get an overview of the issue, and to consider their role in this. Business Day seemed a good fit in this regard, and were immediately interested and committed to the idea. With them on board, I wrote up my impactAFRICA application and motivation. A for away, right?

Yes and no. I could never have anticipated some of the challenges I faced over the next year from acceptance to publication.

One example is companies who promise data — in writing — and then drop off the face of the planet. No response to email after email, no answers to your numerous phone calls. No explanation, no nothing. Another is just how frustrated the victims are in this matter, and that you (as the journalist) are not seen as their ally (or even a means to an end), but as another cog in a large uncaring system that has let them down time and time again.

Specifically, 15 consumers with garnishees agreed to speak to me on record. One by one, almost all of them the dropped out of the process. And who can blame them? Their lived experience of the court system is one of fraud and brutal bureaucracy. Their lived experience of the media is an industry that seems to pop in when the spotlight is on, but leads to little change in their lives. Wouldn’t you be frustrated?

Then there was the issue I should have anticipated, but naively didn’t. As a freelancer, I was the writer, the researcher, the project manager, and other roles as well. The insightful Code for Africa fellows had tried to warn me: you need a team, and you need distinct responsibilities. When life comes at you (as it inevitably does), if you are trying to conduct (and play) all the disparate instruments of the orchestra by yourself, things fall apart.

Fast forward a year, and we’ve had two large features appear in both the print and online editions of the Business Day, seen them shared fairly widely on social media, reprinted and shared in legal circles (a core industry implicated in the story output, and therefore an important audience), and — I’m told — discussed at a meeting between leadership of the debt recovery industry and representatives of a top government department. All of which I am excited about and proud of.

But the real takeout right now, and one that I am still figuring out how to manage, is the people (the credit consumers) who have reached out to me since publication: “I can’t get a statement from my debt administrators”… “I’ve been paying off diligently but my debt keeps growing”… “I don’t understand why I owe this much”… “I never opened this account”… “I don’t know how long I will be paying for”…

This story has only just scratched the surface.

Code for Africa (CfA) is the continent’s largest federation of data journalism and civic technology laboratories, with labs in four countries and affiliates in a further six countries. CfA manages the $1m/year innovateAFRICA.fund and $500,000/year impactAFRICA.fund, as well as key digital democracy resources such as the openAFRICA.net data portal and the GotToVote.cc election toolkit. CfA’s labs also incubate a series of trendsetting initiatives, including the PesaCheck fact-checking initiative in East Africa, the continental africanDRONEnetwork, and the African Network of Centres for Investigative Reporting(ANCIR) that spearheaded Panama Papers probes across the continent. CfA is an initiative of the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ).

Freelance data journalism: A million moving parts; a reality check; a huge responsibility to your… was originally published in Code For Africa on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Izwi Lami is a civic tech project of health news agency Health-e. Using responsive text (SMS) to start conversations with rape survivors, Izwi Lami — which means “my voice” — is hoping to change the news narrative around reporting on sexual violence by using tech to amplify survivors’ voices. The SMSes also direct survivors to counselling services in their area and invite them to add their names to a petition campaign that calls for the provision of essential care packages at clinics and hospitals. We spoke to multimedia journalist Kim Harrisberg about the campaign, the tech tools they used and lessons they have learnt.

Q. Tell us about the roots and aims of the Izwi Lami campaign

Health-e has existed for 18 years, and has been covering sexual violence and gender-based violence for many many years. This campaign started as a means to address the sexual violence crisis in South Africa. Our staff imagined how we could address this issue through an innovation lens, one that could tackle the normalisation of rape culture, by engaging with survivors — so that they are not only being spoken “about”, but can come into the conversation. This fits into the concept of service journalism or journalism that provides tools. We also believe that it helps combat reader fatigue on the topic.

We had three specific aims for the campaign:

1. To provide a space for survivors to share their testimony. We’ve had examples like one survivor who said they were raped 30 years ago but have never had a space to talk about it before. We wanted survivors to feel less alone.

2. To direct survivors towards Thuthuzela centres and counselling services in their provinces. For this, we contacted all the Thuthuzela centres first to check capacity, and we only refer survivors to the ones that indicated ability to handle the new stream. We realised the responsibility of referring survivors to a place that is able to assist.

3. To direct survivors towards the petition that we set up with amandla.mobi that is calling for packages of care to be distributed to all 25 health facilities. The package of care cover the basics that a rape survivor should be given including the “morning-after pill”, antiretrovirals, counselling and various antibiotics.

This final aim was influenced by our own goals and purpose. Because we are a health news agency, we wanted to look at it through the health lens. We had considered other options, such as directing survivors to the sexual offences court, but we decided to focus on the basics of the health care they need after rape. A lot of this was inspired by a report from MSF looking at a clinic in Rustenburg where they found that a large portion of abortions from the clinic were terminating pregnancies that occurred as a result of rape. This showed that too many survivors were not getting the health interventions they needed. Many women didn’t even know that they were entitled to these things. So, we also designed posters for the clinics that gave details of the kinds of care survivors are entitled to receive. We have citizen journalists around the country and they have helped us distribute these to clinics and hospitals.

We have used extracts of the testimonies on social media and in news pieces (with permission from the survivors, of course). This was important for us to show other survivors that they are not alone. We also wanted to humanise the rape statistics. These aren’t just numbers, but people. We are not saying this is a perfect model, but it has prompted us to analyse our role as journalists in SA, and how we partner with other organisations and use tech to do so.

Q. Tell us about the tech that enables the campaign? Did you have to develop new tools or use existing ones?

We worked with GroundSource, which is run by an American journalist Andrew Haeg. They developed a tool for SMS engagement. It allows you to design a conversation in an SMS template. You choose your own keyword (we chose endrape) and he liaises with the service providers to get a shortcode number. This then prompts a series of automated texts that a user can respond to. This includes asking people where they are based in order to direct them to regional services.

In terms of designing the conversation we also consulted with Rape Crisis. They gave great insight into the wording of our questions — such as not using the word “victim”, but rather “survivor”, or when to ask for identifying information like what province a survivor is in. This was invaluable.

Once a testimony has come in, we then look at that through a journalistic lens to see how we can best use it on the various platforms we have available, to further tell the story of rape in South Africa.

We consulted with GroundSource along the way to assess what was and wasn’t working. It was an already existing system and quite easy to use. We cover the costs of using GroundSource and the costs of the SMSes, so those are free for the survivors, through our grant funding.

Q. How did you deal with users’ privacy for such a sensitive topic?

We don’t have an official privacy policy but anonymity is something we discussed extensively along the way. For example, GroundSource also works through Facebook Messenger as well as SMS. We knew Messenger could be a powerful tool, but we couldn’t ensure complete anonymity through it, because it is linked to a Facebook profile. Given this, we decided not to use that option.

The only people who have access to the back end are three people in the office. These users can see the cell phone numbers associated with users, but we only call people if we have explicit permission to do so. Sometimes users ask us to call them so they can elaborate on their stories, or we ask permission to call for further information. The tool allows for meaningful dialogue in that way.

In terms of the survivor stories, we only ever share what users give us explicit permission to share.

Q. How do you see tech influencing or changing journalism or your work in future?

I really like the idea of being in conversation with your readers, and tech tools like Messenger make that a real possibility. Something like an automated health bot that could answer reader questions is one way of doing that.

Q. What have you learnt along the way?

We are a small team, of 12 in total. We learnt some important lessons about the scope of rape and rape culture, and how big an issue it is to tackle.

On the other hand, I think we were overly ambitious initially about how many testimonies we would get. So we are learning just how difficult a thing it is for people to share.

This is a drop in the ocean [of the number of rapes happening in the country], but we’ve been approached by a lot of people who are interested in making this a bigger partnership, and for us that is a great thing. It makes the campaign a catalyst for what could potentially become a much bigger partnership with government in making this a long-term service available to survivors.

Q. What is the future for the campaign?

We are looking at a way of incorporating survivors’ rating of services like 24-hour health facilities and police stations. This is in the pipeline.

Then we recently met with the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development who had heard about the tool. We discussed the possibility of them taking it on, with a view to making it a long term and sustainable service for rape survivors. In that iteration, we would move away from just asking for testimonies, and start asking important questions that can help us provide better services.

This would include what language survivors speak, what province they are in, and what services they are looking for eg police stations, a sexual offences court, a shelter, or a Thuthuzela centre.

Innovation Q&A: Health-e’s Kim Harrisberg was originally published in Civic Tech Innovation Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“If you build it, they *might* come”: Contrary to the pop-culture refrain, building (or in this case, developing or rolling out) a mobile tool is not sufficient to enact change.

Case in point: Practitioners in civic tech talk about the benefits that flow from mHealth innovations and information and communication technological (ICT) interventions as a “given” — that they will drive improvements in health systems, and support citizen engagement and service provision accountability.

But there is little systematic research here to back this up. In fact, the findings of a new Making All Voices Count (MAVC) report — by Tabitha Hrynick and Linda Waldman — found that strong stakeholder relationships with “government actors” are just as critical to success in mHealth accountability as the tech intervention itself.

The authors address the gap in the research literature through their study of the accountability models of seven mHealth initiatives in developing countries.

Why you should care

The report found that incorporating mobile interventions in your accountability model is not a sufficient condition for encouraging engagement or driving changes to the levels of service delivery. Simply put: mobile isn’t the silver bullet solution we so often suggest it is. Civic tech projects and organisations — both in and outside of mHealth — will find the recommendations provided by the report illuminating, and can use the key findings to maximise their own engagement and feedback strategies.

The gist of it

All the organisations assessed in the review use mobile tools — tablets and mobile phones — to capture information on health services. Five of the seven used the tech tools to source feedback from citizens and shared this information with the public health institutions. They found that the tech tools aided the efficiency of the information capturing and feedback process.

According to the researchers, the seven organisations shared two common, well-founded, assumptions: that encouraging citizen engagement and amplifying users’ voices can bolster accountability, and that information gathering is a critical step towards improving service provision. But the authors note two more, less immediately evident, assumptions shared by the organisations reviewed: Firstly, the assumption that citizens would use the technology provided, and, secondly, that the public officials who were responsible for these services would respond to this feedback to improve services. It is in these latter assumptions that the research found that potential missteps lie.

The report delves into these and other barriers to accountability, and highlights the complex combination of conditions required for the greatest chance of a successful feedback loop within accountability projects. , Primarily, programme examples with existing, well-established and maintained public stakeholder relationships were most likely to succeed on those terms.

Report summary

This report (pdf, 1.3MB), by Tabitha Hrynick and Linda Waldman, explores the successes and challenges of the ICT-supported accountability programmes of seven mHealth initiatives, specifically OurHealth, eThekwini WACs, and Thuthuzela Voices (all in South Africa); Mobile Mapping for Women’s Health (Tanzania); Text2Speak (Nigeria); SMS Gateway, and Citizen Journalism for Quality Governance of Universal Health Insurance Scheme (both Indonesia).

Through a mixed methods approach (combining narrative information sourced through interviews with quantitative information from project reports), the research reveals the conditions that promoted both engagement and accountability within the programmes.

The learnings are relevant to civic tech initiatives beyond health: The researchers found that mobile accountability tools do in fact speed up the collection and analysis of the required information. But this is countered by elements like slow app or tool development, and personnel changes in public stakeholder positions.

On the latter point, the authors write: “Changes in government staffing (locally or nationally) also meant that some projects lost the crucial link with sympathetic and influential individuals who were willing to listen to and amplify citizen voices within government and policy circles, and take action when necessary.”

What was done

The researchers conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with representatives of the organisations who were identified as “having the most experience relevant to [the] enquiry”. These interviews focused on the interviewees’ self-assessment: both how they had imagined the interventions to affect accountability, and “how this played out in practice”. Interview time was also give to help understand the broader context of each project, the design and implementation of interventions, and stakeholder collaboration successes and challenges.

The researchers also incorporated information and insight from the documentation (proposals, progress and final reports) on these projects held by funding partner Making All Voices Count.

What happened?

Through this mixed methods approach, as well as a nuanced literature review of the existing debates and discussions about this subject, the researchers provide a rich and insightful picture of the mHealth for accountability space. They caution that their aim was not to determine whether projects where ultimately successes or failures. Instead, they worked towards providing a better understanding of project design and implementation, and how this can promote or hinder outcomes.

What did the researchers learn?

The research report shines a spotlight on several common road bumps experienced both in mHealth specifically, and in civic tech more generally. In the early phases of developing the mHealth intervention, the interviewees reported experiencing delays that set their overall timelines back. This was “due to having to adapt to realities on the ground or because of tensions and misunderstanding with private technical partners”. This is in line with the findings of another MAVC report, and reiterates the importance of strategic tool choice and project planning.

Other key findings include:

• Strategic partnerships bolster uptake and accountability: “Engaging existing community-level groups or forums is more likely to lead to success in uptake of ICTs for improving health services and strengthening accountability.”
• A network of relevant stakeholders increases input and overcomes the “negative feedback” factor: “Other stakeholders (e.g. health workers) must be involved to maximise impact and sustainability and to allay any fears about consequences of negative feedback.”
• Working collaboratively with decision-makers achieves more than an antagonistic or “call out” stance: “Unless those in positions of power to change things (locally and / or nationally) are allies in the process, efforts are unlikely to meet with success.”
• Match online opportunities to offline ones: “Offline spaces can strongly complement online innovations to leverage individual citizens’ feedback and translate that feedback into action to improve services.”

The authors also note, rather worryingly, that “the services that required the most attention … were the ones least likely to be addressed. This illustrates how highly unfavourable feedback can pose barriers to accountability.”

For the full details, you can access the research report here.

Publication: “ICT-facilitated accountability and engagement in health systems: a review of Making All Voices Count mHealth for accountability projects”

· Authors: Tabitha Hrynick, Linda Waldman

· Link: http://www.makingallvoicescount.org/publication/ict-facilitated-accountability-engagement-health-systems-review-making-voices-count-mhealth-accountability-projects/

· Download (PDF, 1.3MB): https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/item/14034/RReport_ICTfacilitated_Online_final.pdf

Mobile not an accountability ‘silver bullet’ was originally published in Civic Tech Innovation Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How do you extend online access and promote digital literacy in a deeply unequal society?

This is the mammoth task Cape Town’s SmartCape initiative set themselves. Senior online producer for the City of Cape Town Thurlo Cicero takes us through their growth into one of Africa’s largest digital inclusion projects, and the lessons they learnt along the way.

Q. Tell us about the start of SmartCape and how it has grown?

SmartCape started in 2002 with a pilot project in just six municipal libraries. We knew that we needed to give citizens access to the internet, and this was the seed of the idea. In 2003 we applied for and won funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that allowed us to scale up the operation. Today we now provide limited daily internet access from PCs across all of the City’s 104 libraries. Several of the locations also have WiFi zones too. This has evolved into a broader digital inclusion project that is part of the City and Mayor’s vision for Cape Town. SmartCape is the platform through which we are up-skilling people and promoting e-literacy. It is also a means to accessing the City’s e-services. Today there are over 450 000 registered users who can get 45-min free internet use per session per day, across 670 computers. The users of the wifi spots can access up to 500 MB a month.

Q. What data do you collect from your users and how do you inform them of this data usage?

We collect a lot of demographic information through the sign up process — all the typical stuff. We also provide the privacy policy during the registration. Users can also access this at any point from the footer menu at the bottom of our website. In addition, we also capture where people log on from, what kinds of applications they use. Our privacy policy was approved by the City’s legal department and we believe it is PoPI-compliant, and promotes informed consent.

Q. What are the patterns of application usage you see?

Because it is a public service, we do filter the services people can access somewhat. Having said that, we have also evolved with the times. Today the majority of our users stream video through Youtube and Facebook, and a large portion of users access government services and information on things like public health services through our connected PCs. Typical users are looking for work — writing CVs, applying for jobs — and we also have a large portion of school children using the service to research their reports. SmartCape used to have its own portal where we wrote original content aimed at digital literacy and related educational topics. That has now been taken over by the City. Our page now sits within the City site, so that makes accessing City services easier. Our users are typically lower LSM people, and that does inform their usage trends. We have things like CV-templates and typing tutors. Several small businesses also got their start from SmartCape. We hear great stories about people finding jobs, reconnecting with their families, and event finding love online through this project.

Q. How do you engage citizens and users?

We ran an online survey recently, but the team also does site visits. We try to visit the entire network of libraries frequently. It’s a mammoth task. On site, we engage with the users — just quickly to check in with them but not to waste their time during their session. We also speak to the librarians as they are the closest to the user side of the service.

Q. What kinds of feedback to you get from your users?

Understandably, they want more connected PCs, more wifi zones and more time. They want to be able to surf on their phones while they wait for the PCs to become available. There is a lot of competition for the computers, with a lot of the places — especially our flagship facility City library — having queues for PCs. In that location, we’ve even implemented a “buzzer system”, so they can browse books while you wait and get a notification when a terminal becomes available.

Eventually we will be able to accommodate more users, but this is dependent to a degree on the roll out of the City’s broadband. As a city, our main priority has to be the provision of basic services first, so sometimes “extra” projects take a back seat to that.

Q. Do you have a process for documenting learning in your organisation?

We do have an innovation team that incorporates several projects. We meet once a month and we also produce reports that capture or document learnings. These are then fed up the hierarchy chain of the City. All of these things tie in together. We are constantly looking for solutions to better what we do. The vision and strategy of the City is there to guide us.

Q. What could you do better?

I think any municipality has its challenges, but having said that I do believe that we — this project — is a forerunner at the moment. There is no other service that does what we do. The Western Cape government came to us to help them with their digital projects, to help them with public access. We also consulted to the City of Joburg and eThekweni in Kwazulu Natal.

Q. What do you wish you had known when you started? Or what advice would you give to a similar project starting out?

You need to have a funding mandate, rather than relying on “excess money” when it becomes available. We also grew faster as we moved from a project basis to one of the operational concerns of the City. I think we could also have engaged better with corporates. For example, the City already spends over $20 million on licensing software for staff. We cannot carry the cost of rolling this out to citizen users too, but people want brand name software rather than the open source alternatives we provide. It would be fantastic to partner with someone like Microsoft so we could offer their Office suite.

Q. What other services do you promote or offer?

One popular option is a gaming extension that we have. Here we partnered with the recreation and parks department and offered gaming to learners during the holidays. We teach people how to play games, teach them about eSports. It’s a form of social intervention that has been used to keep at risk kids out of gangs. It’s part of our evolution from a public access project to one of holistic digital inclusion.

Civic Tech Q&A: SmartCape’s Thurlo Cicero was originally published in Civic Tech Innovation Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Is your civic tech project PoPI-compliant? The Protection of Personal Information (PoPI) Act has been a talking point for businesses for several years now, but with the appointment of the Information Regulator, the time has come for civic tech initiatives get serious about PoPI compliance .

At our recent Civic Tech Innovation Network (CTIN) event, media lawyer Dario Milo presented on PoPI , offering some key guidelines for how to interpret the legislation, what penalties non-compliant organisations may face, and the simplest solutions for compliance. Drawing from that and additional research, here is our straightforward CTIN guide to PoPI for civic tech.

The headlines

You are probably collecting what the law now calls ‘personal information’.

Soon civic tech initiatives (like others) will have to do a lot more than including a tick box to get permission to store and use people’s personal information.

You will need to tell people who you collect information from — on websites, mailing lists and applications — what you are planning to do with their information in some detail.

You are also responsible for ensuring that any other organisations you use to store or process the information is also compliant. So you need to be particularly careful about cloud services, for example which store data all around the world where the law may not be so strict — one of the places it is less strict is the US!

Anyone you collect information from is entitled under PoPI to ask to see what information you have about them, to get any inaccurate information corrected or to ask for their personal information to be deleted.

All the regulations are not in place yet. But its the right thing to do so start working on this now.

What is the current status of PoPI?

The 10th draft of POPI was adopted and signed into law by the President.

On 11 April 2014, some sections of POPI came into force, which enabled the establishment and powers of the Information Regulator.

In 2016 the Information Regulator, Pansy Tlakula was appointed. The regulator has extensive powers to investigate complaints and to fine organisations that misuse personal information.

The regulations that affect organisations and companies that gather personal data have not yet come into force. At the workshop, Dario suggested that PoPI could be in full force within two years.

Who does PoPI apply to?

The Act applies to “any person or organisation who (or which) processes the personal information of others and who is defined under PoPI as ‘responsible parties’.” From a civic tech perspective, it’s hard to imagine any scenario that would exclude you from such a definition.

What is the basis for PoPI?

PoPI is predicated on our constitutional right to privacy, specifically informational privacy. Section 14 of the Constitution deals with privacy, saying: “Everyone has the right to privacy, which includes the right not to have their person or home searched; their property searched; their possessions seized; or the privacy of their communications infringed.” PoPI tries to balance these rights with the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of information.

What constitutes ‘personal information’?

Dario says that “personal information”, according to the Act, includes any information relating to an identifiable, living, natural person (or an identifiable, existing juristic person). This includes, among other things, identifying information like your name and ID number, contact details, physical address of people and businesses. But it could also include information that doesn’t appear to be personal , for example, the ‘IP’ addresses of people’s computers which could be used to identify people.

There are also especially strict rules that apply to ‘special personal information’ which includes any information about people’s race, political persuasions, health or sex life.

Okay, so you have personal information from users. But what do you do with it?

PoPI is concerned with the “processing” of this info. PoPI says that all personal information must be collected for “a specific, explicitly defined and lawful purpose related to the function or activity of the responsible party”. Dario explained that processing includes “any operation, or activity, or set of operations (whether or not by automatic means) concerning personal information”.

This includes:

• collection, receipt, recording, organisation, collation, storage, updating or modification, retrieval, alteration, consultation or use;
• dissemination by means of transmission, distribution or making available in any other form; or
• merging, linking, as well as restriction, erasure or destruction

Dario told the participants of our event that responsible party may not process personal information, unless:

• The data subject consents to the processing;
• Processing is necessary for performance of a contract to which the data subject is party;
• Processing complies with an obligation imposed by law;
• Processing protects a legitimate interest of the data subject;
• Processing is necessary ‐ public law duty by a public body;
• Processing is necessary for pursuing the legitimate interests of the responsible party or of a third party to whom the information is supplied.

Explicit steps must be taken ensure the data subject is aware of the purpose of collection. There are eight conditions for lawful processing under PoPI.

Condition 8 is particularly relevant for civic tech projects. It specifies that the data subject is entitled to:

• Enquire — without monetary charge ‐ whether his / her personal information being processed
• Request description of his / her personal information
• Request information on the recipients of this personal information
• Challenge the accuracy of personal information
• Request correction of information (if inaccurate, irrelevant, excessive, out of date, incomplete, misleading or obtained unlawfully)
• Request deletion

So, if you get the info, analyse it, store it, or even delete it, PoPI regulations governs this, and not complying could see you fined.

What penalties could you face?

Non-compliance could see an organisation face both administrative fines (up to R10 million) and criminal offences (including imprisonment up to ten years).

What about the implications of cloud storage?

If you use any virtual or off-site storage, you should also consider the following rule: “Personal information may not be transferred to a third party in a foreign country”.

There are some exceptional conditions that apply when data may be transferred trans‐border. These are when the recipient is subject to a law, or binding corporate rules or a binding agreement which:

• provides for an “adequate level of protection” that effectively upholds the principles that are substantially similar to the conditions for lawful processing; or
• includes substantially similar provisions relating to the further transfer
• of personal information to third parties in foreign countries
• consent
• other exceptions

Ethics

Beyond the legal considerations of PoPI, there are ethical concerns that civic tech organisations and practitioners ought to consider. Some guiding questions include:

• Does your organisation have an internal or published privacy policy and how far along are you in thinking about your privacy and data security?
• Is your privacy policy clear and easy to understand?
• What information do you collect from users and partners? What do you use it for?
• How do you secure the information you have?
• What is your data retention policy?
• How well do you inform the people whose data youhave about your answers to these questions?

Consent: the golden rule

Dario argues that the simplest way to ensure PoPI compliance is to get “informed consent”. If you source explicit consent from users, having provided them with clear, simple, accurate information on precisely how you will use and manage their info, you’re on the right side of the law.

So dust off those privacy policies, civic techies. They are no longer ‘just’ a tick-box concern. Rather, a thoughtful and precise privacy policy — with active consent built in — could be your legal saving grace, and its the right thing to do.

About our expert

Dario Milo is a partner in the Dispute Resolution Practice at Webber Wentzel, where he leads a team that focuses on media, communications and information law, and commercial and tax dispute resolution. Dario also teaches media law, access to information law, and privacy law at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he is a visiting associate professor.

Access the full set of slides from Dario Milo’s presentation here.

PoPI 101: privacy for civic tech was originally published in Civic Tech Innovation Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Koketso Moeti is the founder and executive director of amandla.mobi — a non-profit community advocacy organisation that works to empower communities to raise awareness and enact change on the issues that matter most to them.

Their stated goal is to “turn every cellphone into a democracy building tool so that no matter where you live; what language you speak or what issue you care about, you can take action with others”. And their primary weapon of choice is petitions and awareness campaigns.

One of their most prominent and successful campaigns to date was the petition to stop the “virgin bursaries” (the uThukela District Municipality’s ‘Maidens Bursary Award’) which has over 17,000 signatories.

Q. To your mind, what is the most innovative thing about the amandla.mobi platform?

The creative use of technology to amplify the work of those being silenced and ignored, and to bring critical social issues to the foreground is a significant way of democratising digital tools.

Tech is not going to disappear. We need to harness it creatively to build the world we want, rather than leaving it solely to those whose only interests are profits, exploitation and worse. And this is where we are innovating, we didn’t build something new. We merely took the same tech that could’ve been used in all these other ways and used it differently. This is innovation, which is often conflated with invention.

Q. How do you measure yourselves and campaigns? What constitutes success for a campaign?

Basically success for a campaign is having a decision-maker take a decision we want them to and implement it, like when we got eTV to broadcast ‘Miners Shot Down’. That was very clear, simple success.

We also have campaigns like when we forced the Department of Higher Education to release the ‘No Fee Varsity’ report. The initial ask of the campaign was just for the report to be released. We felt this was important and that it affirmed and strengthened the #FeesMustFall struggle that was happening at the time. [Success for a] campaign [like that] means having your first victory, and then moving the energy to a “next ask”, like implementation.

Other internal measures of success include measuring the number of people who join more than one campaign, and go up the ladder of engagement by taking more and deeper actions, such as directly contacting a decision maker; contributing to a submission; donating to a particular tactic; advising us on campaign tactics; hosting a meeting or other kind of event; attending a protest; and so on.

There are some side benefits we don’t quite measure which can also be important, like how some campaigns raise awareness about things that are often ignored, or just even put new information in the public domain.

Q. How do you facilitate transitions from a successful petition campaign to real change in the world?

How we choose to have the decision implemented varies from campaign to campaign, depending on the issue. For example, the ‘Miners Shot Down’ broadcast was easy to implement. It was getting the commitment to do it that was hard. Likewise our successful campaign to stop the racist Penny Sparrow’s attempts to crowdfund for her fine. [We petitioned the crowdfunding site to remove the campaign,] and little oversight was required to ensure this.

But an issue like the youth desks in the City of Ekhurhuleni depended on those in the area taking the lead to ensure and monitor implementation. Another example is our campaign to have R5 assault rifles removed from public policing (a campaign which we worked on with Gun Free South Africa). While the rifles have not been used since, we are looking for ways to ensure that this isn’t arbitrary and is systemic. Hence we are working with partners who bring the expertise to monitor implementation. Partnerships — with those affected by an issue, and with experts working on it — are very important in such campaigns, as they bring the research capacity, lived experience, proximity to monitoring implementation, and so on.

The tactics and partnerships required depend on the type of campaign. Some are ‘rapid response’ campaigns, responding to values aligned, immediate issues brought to our attention in the news or by our members, and others are long-lead campaigns, which take time and which require ‘moments’ to be exploited to re-energise or ‘moments’ to be created by us.

Q. You’ve managed to reach impressive scale quite quickly. What contributed to that? What advice would you give about achieving scale to other civic tech projects?

Our work is very data driven. We do a lot of testing both of tools and messaging. As clichéd as it sounds, testing and iteration are key components of our work, and I cannot stress enough how important this is.

Q. What advice would you give to other South African civic tech startups? Or, put another way, what do you wish you had known when you started?

Data always matters! Don’t test simply because it’s something that needs to be done. Test knowing that you will be really trying to understand and work with the story the results tell you. It’s not about you and your knowledge, it’s about what you’re hearing from those you are serving.

Q. When Mxit closed, you lost a big portion of your user base. How did you bounce back from this major blow? What did you learn from that experience?

It affirmed our view that mobile tech is volatile, forever changing and one must constantly stay looking ahead. You meet people where they are, but also stay looking forward to where they are heading. And while it’s something we know and regularly practice, at that point we missed the mark. We managed to find some of the members on other platforms, but not many and partly because the blow led to a major paralysis on our end. That would be a key learning from this, I think: how we respond to massive failures and the need to act fast to salvage what we can.

Q. Do you have a process for documenting learning’s in your organisation?

Unfortunately not! We are a very reflective team, but have not managed to systemically document our learning — which range from learning’s about the tech to even about our organisational structure.

[Having a systematic learning process] so would help a lot, especially when inducting new staff because very few people come in with the right mix of skills, so our work also involves intensive building of a talent pipeline in the space.

It’s something we are hoping to address, by having an external researcher spend some time working with us to develop a case study of sorts with the hope that this will get us going in that area.

Innovator Q&A: amandla.mobi’s Koketso Moeti was originally published in Civic Tech Innovation Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Civic Tech doesn’t always have to be digital tech, and sometimes combining ‘new’ and ‘old’ tech may be the best way to succeed. Farm Radio International (FRI) has been able to scale up their ambitious food security intervention programme in East Africa and amplify the voices of local farmers directly affected by agricultural development projects combining the ubiquity of broadcast radio with newer technologies to get direct feedback from listeners.

By using interactive voice response technology (IVR), radio producers incorporated farmers’ feedback into their programming. This research report analyses an implementation of the Listening Post project in Tanzania, and explores the opportunities, challenges and important lessons about data gathering, responsiveness and “closing the feedback loop”.

Why you should care

This research should be of interest to civic tech projects and organisations looking to scale up their interventions, and demonstrates the power of combining new tech with established broadcast media in “chasing scale”. It also cautions civic tech project teams that “closing the feedback loop” takes more than gathering voices. If you are collecting citizens’ voices you need to be clear (and to communicate) what you will use them for and how those citizens will get to know what results have been. The report offers some guidance on thinking through these issues.

The gist of it

FRI works with African broadcasters (over 650 radio partners) to create content to share practical learnings and information for farmers, and to give farmers access to the public sphere. The Listening Post combines radio and phone, using a multi-channel web-based IVR platform called Uliza (built on an IVR system developed by VOTO Mobile). Farmers can ask questions and participate in conversations through voice and SMS. These contributions are then incorporated into Listening Post radio programming, over the course of a “Listening Post series” which tends to run for five to six weeks.

The goals of the Listening Post model include:

• to collect data from farmers that is then fed back to partners assessing their impact of their agricultural projects;
• to give farmers a say in what information they wanted;
• to connect farmers to applicable experts;
• and to amplify or facilitate the inclusion of farmers’ voices in agricultural development projects.

The research examines an implementation case of this approach in Tanzania — through content analysis of a sample of programmes — with a view to assessing the model’s success against these goals. The findings also formed part of a new design and strategy for the Listening Post which, although still in development, “has a stronger focus on both sides of the communication equation, where information flows not only to farmers from extension services and researchers, but also from farmers to government and other agricultural development actors.”

Report summary

In this report (PDF, 2.9 MB), Heather Gilberds, Calum Handforth, Mark Leclair present the findings of a 12-month research project into the possibilities created by the Listening Post model of combining new digital technologies with radio. They argue that this allows for feedback and interactivity in radio content, and helps integrate farmers’ voices into development projects. In this way, it facilitates adaptive management processes and makes these development projects more farmer-centred and responsive. This report forms part of the Making All Voices Count (MAVC) Practitioner Research and Learning grants outcomes.

By combining “old media”, broad-reach radio with a new media interactive voice response (IVR) tool, Farm Radio International have piloted a model for audience engagement, interaction, and knowledge sharing. The goal is simple: Support small-scale farmers and include them in the decision-making progress despite the distance (and privilege) barriers at play. Give them a platform to ask for what they need, to share their opinions, and facilitate closing the loop with agricultural project decision-makers.

What was done

The researchers conducted in-depth content analysis on three of six Listening Post series, and a random sample of the messages recorded by farmers on the IVR system. They coded the messages with a view to establishing:

1. The types of questions farmers ask when calling the IVR system as part of a Listening Post.
2. Whether farmers are asking similar types of questions.
3. The challenges to collecting useful data from farmers.

The also produced statistics on IVR engagement from farmers, including:

• There were 64,449 unique interactions with the system;
• A total of 11,764 individuals participated in the polls;
• Extension workers answered more than 150 questions left by farmers on the system on-air

What happened?

The research found that linking a mobile-based crowd-sourcing tool (such as IVR) with ubiquitous and virtually-free radio promotes engagement with a large number of the target audience (farmers), and that the audience felt positive about the model’s usefulness, trustworthiness and potential for incorporating their voices into the processes of policy-makers and NGOs. The researchers conclude there is “clear potential” in this model “to strengthen the chain of relationships between citizens, extension services suppliers, projects and policy-makers”. The model enables:

• Real-time feedback collection and collation from farmers, “that could be used to aid decision-making”
• Improved accountability within agricultural development initiatives, “helping to ensure they are more responsive to farmers”.

What did the researchers learn?

One of the most important findings of the study is that “closing the feedback loop” remains a challenge. The communication technology combines to create a powerful platform, but its effects are limited unless the feedback can reach, and is considered by, those in the public service and NGO space who design the agricultural projects and frameworks that apply to these farmers-participants. The researchers conclude that these civil and public actors/decision-makers need to be identified, engaged with and even sufficiently incentivised to respond to the ‘citizen voice’ from farmers that the initiative gathered.

In addition to the broader findings about scale and the potential of combined radio and mobile, the researchers offer several take-outs for the next design and strategy phase of the Listening Post. These may be relevant for any tech for transparency and accountability initiatives (T4TAI), as well as communication for development (C4D) projects:

1. Effective partnerships are the key to success.
2. Communicate clear objectives to all stakeholders at every step of the process.
3. Offline processes need to support the technology.
4. Data quality is as important as a robust platform.
5. User testing can help identify possible pitfalls and methods for mitigating them.

For the full details, you can access the research report here.

Project: Farm Radio International’s Listening Post

Publication: “Exploring the potential for interactive radio to improve accountability and responsiveness to small-scale farmers in Tanzania”

Authors: Heather Gilberds, Calum Handforth, Mark Leclair

• Link: http://www.makingallvoicescount.org/publication/exploring-potential-interactive-radio-improve-accountability-responsiveness-small-scale-farmers-tanzania/
• Download (PDF, 2.9MB): https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/123456789/12770/FRI%20Listening%20Post%20research%20report%20for%20MAVC%2021-Feb-17.pdf

Two is better than one: putting radio & phone together to engage small scale farmers in Tanzania was originally published in Civic Tech Innovation Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Many civic tech initiatives involve ‘crowdsourcing’ information from publics — gathering and combining ‘citizen voice’ in order to monitor public services for example. The organisations that play this role — whether in government or civil society — are intermediaries that are aiming to hold public institutions to account. New research on ‘crowdsourcing intermediaries’ asks an important question: how accountable are these intermediaries to the citizens whose data they use? The researchers, Evangelia Berdou of the Institute of Development Studies in the UK and Cathy Shutt looked at twenty of these intermediaries in nine countries in Africa, Asia and Europe. They found that in half them failed to tell people enough about how their data would be used and handled. The findings of this research should be of interest to both donors and practitioners operating in civic tech, especially those that deal in governance, transparency and accountability.

Why you should care

There is an ethical obligation (and a legal one in South Africa, as well as other territories) for organisations to handle the personal information of their users responsibly. Civic tech projects are not exempt from this, despite tending to think of themselves as the “good guys”.

The gist of it

This research report examines how crowdsourcing intermediaries, manage the collection and treatment of citizen-reported data. The report works to turn the conversation around (“shift the spotlight”) from one that tends to focus on whose voice is represented, to an examination of the policies and principles within the intermediaries themselves. In the sample, only 50% of the projects had published a privacy policy at all. This, the researchers suggest, indicates a significant gap between the contemporary discourse around privacy, and how civic tech organisations are applying (or not) the principles of responsible data use and privacy.

Report summary

Crowdsourcing intermediaries collect and analyse citizen feedback using digital platforms, with a view to supporting positive change. As the writers themselves highlight in their introduction, the difference in their approach to this research was a shift in focus — from whose voice is included (representation) to how these voices — and the personal information therein — are collected and handled (privacy and gatekeeping).

From this, three key themes emerged:

1. The role of crowdsourcing intermediaries as gatekeepers of citizen-generated data
2. The accountability of crowdsourcing intermediaries to citizens who contribute data, especially in terms of data policies
3. The factors that influence the pathways of individual crowdsourcing intermediaries

This summary focuses on the privacy aspects of the research . They write:

“The analysis of website content also highlighted privacy concerns, and challenges about how transparent and accountable crowdsourcing intermediaries are to their participants on the basis of the information they make available on their websites. Only 10 out of the 20 websites studied included a privacy policy; six did not explain the sequence of actions that were triggered by submitted reports; and only two made the information they collected available in a format suitable for further analysis. These and other findings suggest that there is much to be done to ensure that those who seek accountability on behalf of others are equally accountable to them.”

What was done?

The researchers took a mixed-methods approach, combining both content analysis of website text (capturing web content in PDF form and then analysing it), with four qualitative case studies. The web content elements were then assessed within a conceptual framework incorporating reading and concepts from both the fields of media and communications, and social accountability and governance.

What happened?

The report describes how these crowdsourcing intermediaries express citizen voice, including which tools, practices and policies they have in place to manage this — with a view to assessing their transparency about privacy , and ultimately their accountability to their users.

Some of the questions the researchers raise include:

• Do they clearly explain any steps taken to ensure the anonymity of contributors?
• Do they articulate clearly the rules for moderation and publication?
• Do they explain what actions, if any, citizen contributions will trigger?

What did the researchers learn?

Only half of the projects had published their privacy guidelines or policies. Only seven out of twenty talk about how or when collected or crowdsourced information will be shared with the authorities tasked with addressing the targeted issue, but even these often fail to provide clarity on how much personal information about the users (or “reporters”) will be provided to these authorities.

Just two of the sites are transparent about the fact that they can be compelled by legal authorities (ordered by courts) to release personal data. See table below for the full analysis.

Conclusions

Among the broader conclusions of the report, the findings on privacy and data use transparency and accountability showed a “substantial gap” between the prevailing privacy discourse and the actual implementation of these privacy best practices in crowdsourcing intermediary projects. These projects tended to publish more information on teams involved in the project than clarity on data use after submission, or what actions will be triggered by a report.

One clear outcome of the research is that it is not enough to ask users to trust that a civic tech project is more ethical or responsible than a corporate or state entity. And there are significant “real world” implications or consequences to the data shared. The writers of this report give the example of those who report corruption, arguing that they have “more to lose if their identity is revealed than those who have reported the existence of a pothole in their street”.

The researchers acknowledge that sometimes the communication platform limits the ability of the intermediary to share privacy information or policies. They suggest taking steps to make this information more accessible, within the platform or via other channels.

One remedial action they suggest is prompting users to “visit a website, or listen to a recorded message that explains clearly and succinctly how their anonymity is protected”. They also recommend bringing intermediaries together to discuss these issues and to develop potential solutions, arguing that “[b]ringing actors together physically or virtually to do this could encourage the co-creation of appropriate standards”.

[Editor’s note: The Civic Tech Innovation Network is convening an event focused on this issue on 19 July 2017, in Johannesburg. For more on the event, click here.]

They continue:

“[I]n the age of big data, where information about citizens can be collected and combined from many different sources — including website cookies and social media accounts — careless data handling can render citizens vulnerable to data profiling and targeting (Solove 2004; Gandadharan 2012).”

For more details, you can access the research report here.

Project: Research report for Making All Voices Count

Publication: “Shifting the spotlight: understanding crowdsourcing intermediaries in transparency and accountability initiatives”

Authors: Evangelia Berdou, Cathy Shutt

• Link: http://www.makingallvoicescount.org/publication/shifting-spotlight-understanding-crowdsourcing-intermediaries-transparency-accountability-initiatives/
• Download (PDF, 992 KB): https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/123456789/12836/RReport_ShiftingSpotlight_Online.pdf

Collecting personal data: First do no harm was originally published in Civic Tech Innovation Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.