Kiwanja.net Launches Newest Version of FrontlineSMS, Mobile Organizing Tool

This past February the Berkman Center hosted a meeting in Istanbul where Ken Banks, creator of FrontlineSMS, presented on the use and relevance of mobile phones in activism around the globe. Ethan Zuckerman liveblogged the session, where he described:

The tool is being used by several dozen groups in over forty nations. A Lebanese group uses it for education on human rights; in South Africa, another group uses the tool to provide feedback to community radio programs; an Albanian group uses it to monitor corruption in public services; in Uganda, the tool is used for community healthcare. Banks says that he’s amazed the tool has been useful to people beyond the ones he’s originally intended to serve.

One of the major applications for FrontlineSMS is election monitoring. Banks tells us about a project that allowed 800 Filipino election monitors to coordinate their work via SMS, performing very thorough monitoring of elections. A similar project in Nigeria put the ability to monitor elections into the hands of private citizens, not official election monitors. The results were interesting - the citizen monitors were very interested in getting good news out about the Nigerian elections, combating the perception Nigeria has for corruption and for election violence. This may not be a completely accurate picture of the recent Nigerian elections, but it shows the desire of the people in Nigeria to combat negative reporting and stereotypes about the country.

The latest version of FrontlineSMS launched this past week which

builds on the success of the earlier version by supporting Windows, Mac and Linux platforms; by providing remote data collection functionality for organisations needing to electronically capture information in the field; by offering language support for Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Swahili; by working on an increasing range of handsets and modems; and through its provision of built-in support for online messaging services, designed for NGOs who do have access to the internet. The new FrontlineSMS website also contains a community section allowing NGOs from around the world to connect and share experiences, ideas and suggestions for future releases.

More at Kiwanja.net and at FrontlineSMS's website.