Introducing Taarifa

Mark Iliffe

Making The Invisible Visible

(c) OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA

(c) OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA

http://www.flickr.com/photos/markiliffe/6147661616

Musings...

• Maps of developing nations are coming. Be it through community engagement or other means, with OSM/H.O.T., Google MapMaker etc...

• This Data can be used to engage citizens and improve public service delivery and environmental problems (among many other uses).

• Citizens need to engage with governments - Taarifa provides an interface to facilitate this communication and provides another tangible use-case for maps.

Problem

“The problem we are trying to solve is that the technology we design is diffi cult for our users to use and access.”

Steven Feldman

What Is Taarifa?

"The Taarifa Platform is an open source web application for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping. It allows people to collect and share their own stories using various mediums such as SMS, Web Forms, Email or Twitter, placing these reports into a workfl ow. Where these reports can be followed up and acted upon, while engaging citizens and communities."

How?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/markiliffe/6288697974/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/markiliffe/6288669974/

Process

Technology

Currently

• PHP, MySQL, JavaScript - Built on top of Kohana

• Forked from Ushahidi

• LGPL 2.1

Proposed

• Python and JavaScript => Taarifa API

• GeoDjango

Features

• Cross platform mobile and web using HTML5/CSS3/JQuery

• Customisable forms• Report workfl ow• 'Better' UI/UX tweaks• Easily export data• Automatic Geolocation• Form functionality (custom forms, copyable forms etc)

Design Decisions

• Transition to HTML5 Web App• Workfl ow and Triage Integration• User Feedback

http://dev.taarifa.org/reports/view/30

Where?

• Uganda - Ministry of Local Government/ Africa Urban, World Bank (AFTUW)

• Zimbabwe - Pilot World Bank, Africa Urban (AFTUW)

• Senegal – Planning, Global ICT, World Bank (GICT/SDN)

• Far/Middle East and Eastern Europe (Coming Soon?)

http://www.taarifa.org - We Need A Website!

http://gm.taarifa.org - Current release

http://dev.taarifa.org - Dev with Ugandan dataset

http://ugtaarifa.org - Uganda Harrare Watch

https://github.com/taarifa/ - GitHub Source

Problems

• Governments/Organisations need to be willing to engage with citizens/users.

• Inheriting licences and design decisions from Ushahidi.

• Hackathon and existing code ergonomics.

• Open Layers on a phone, poor UX.

• Cheap phones are cheap. But getting better!

Roadmap Future

• Current version as a fully featured prototype.

• Better tech = happy developers = a better product = more problems solved = happier citizens.

• True offl ine functionality within the browser.

• Location from SMS (GeoSMS?)

• Leafl et.js

• Cloud based SMS integration

• Community engagement (developers and users)

Taarifa Needs YOU!