MobileActive.org

There is an enormous amount of literature on the use of mobiles in development work - from case studies and project evaluations, to broad policy recommendations and specific technology papers.

One place you can begin your search of relevant publications, reports and evaluations is in our mDirectory. For snapshots of the kind of information you can find there, here are more research slidecasts!

Way back in 2008, we spoke with Yael Schwartzman, who described her work in agricultural data collection. In this presentation, we feature a report published by Schwartzman, now a country manager at Frogtek in Mexico, and Tapan S. Parikh, assistant professor at UC Berekeley's School of Information.

For a rural coffee cooperative in Guatemala, they developed and tested two mobile phone camera-based applications, called CAM DPS and CAM RANDI (now known as DigitalICS). These applications can be used by cooperatives to manage product deliveries and farmer pay-outs, and to monitor production quality.

Soon after this publication, DigitalICS was deployed at a cooperative in Oaxaca, Mexico called CEPCO. (More information on the deployment and technology). In email correspondence, Schwartzman explained that the use of DigitalICS has resulted in a 50% reduction of internal control costs. In addition, internal inspection time is 40% more efficient and evaluation time 70% more efficient.

DPS, the delivery and payment management system, is expected to be tested in the summer of 2011.

Images courtesy of Yael Schwartzman.