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Would you agree with me that it is easy to become overwhelmed – in general? If I’m honest (which I always try to be) it actually pains me that this reality is, well, a reality. But, the truth of the matter is we are all a part of this brave new world where information, opinions, new ideas and old obligations are hurtling at us with both unprecedented speed and in abundant volume. So what, then, do you do, when its you’re job to coordinate the implementation of innovation – of new solutions to old problems? With the wrong person or team in place, it could quickly become a case study in watching people go crazy as they attempt to absorb all the information about shiny new objects, while effectively staying the course to roll out the technology or process that has been developed for the needs at hand. This is exactly what my guest for the 136th episode of the Terms of Reference Podcast does day in and day out. Sean Blaschke is the ICT4D coordinator for UNICEF in Uganda and, as you’ll hear in just a second, he has essentially an unlimited amount of stories about how implementing new practices can go wrong – but also what happens when you get it right. You can connect with Sean here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-blaschke-8910087 Tweets by seanblaschke
IN TOR 136 YOU’LL LEARN ABOUT
- What a UNICEF country technology for development coordinator does
- How Sean’s experiences in digitization of population records in Uganda gave him awareness about the importance of data security in the development space
- The difference between data center and information management cultures in health care
- The huge impact it made at UNICEF when innovation “moved out of the situation rooms” and into the field work
- How to always be ready to change UNICEF’s approaches, goals and roles to ensure influence
OUR CONVERSATION FEATURES THE FOLLOWING
Names:
- UNICEF
- Uganda Ministry of Health
- World Health Organization (WHO)
- World Bank
- Johns Hopkins University
Topics:
- Digitization of government records, birth, voting
- Security, cybersecurity
- Public health, disease surveillance
- Paper trails, health care
- Ebola, alerts
- Acceleration programs
- ICT4D
- Health care, systems
- Youth, African
- OpenSRP
Places
- Kampala, Uganda
- Nigeria
- Kenya
- Washington, DC
EPISODE CRIB NOTES
Stephen and Sean know each other for a while 02:58 Just Uganda tech for development coordinator- “Just a small part of my job”
- Sean oversees tech implementation across UNICEF programs
- Identify interesting ideas, new patterns and trends, meeting industry standards and larger systems integrations
- Over 7 years now. “An abnormality”
- Digitization of Uganda’s voting registration, 2011. Largely successful program
- “The largest, haphazard paper piled room I have ever seen in my life”
- How to streamline, secure data?
- Then someone sneak in and stole the country’s voter registration records
- People will get the data. Watergate is everywhere
- “Too easy to steal”
- It changed all conceptions about data storage and security
- A web platform for birth certificates, reached 65%-70% nation coverage
- Today most of new birth get digital registration
- Close to reaching universal coverage
- Most of Sean’s time is spent on “system strengthening”, on platform, community and government flanks
- Working with Ministry of Health and WHO
- Disease surveillance
- Hospital paper trails. Some health care facilities need to close during the week to deal with clerical work, professionals having to deal with data entry
- Someone realized they all had phones
- Quick-scaling phone-based clerical work automation
- Health care management system, uses international standards
- This helps diagnosing and notifying critical info, such as Ebola cases
- SMS alerts
- “We moved from a data center to an information management culture”
- Reaching disease surveillance standards
- Level of digitization and spread in Uganda is not often replicated worldwide
- UNICEF pushes for digital information management
- Key indicators allow local managers to track performance against regional targets
- Some illnesses have dwindled
- Managers can also match operational indicators, such as health care facilities occupancy
- Local governments across Uganda know what their weaknesses and priorities are
- UNICEF moved innovation out of the ivory tower, and it made all the difference
- Out of the situation rooms
- Shift to acceleration programs on the ground on Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda
- Challenges must be dealt at the core of societies
- Aid professionals must go to the field and understand
- “Our stories” program looked to amplify youth’s voices through social media
- But the questions about capture real concerns still remained
- A “Youth report” program used SMS to engage and listen to people
- It included polls
- “We would have never come up with some of the best ideas from New York”
- Some of the ideas that have spread into institutional practice were born from youth on the ground
- A Youth entrepreneurial fund in Uganda
- Tens of thousands of volunteers contributed
- NGOs took long to show some measure of success
- At a DC conference, they tried a game of asking professionals what they thought were Uganda’s youth priorities, then see how much they matched with actual young Ugandan’s responses. The results were abysmal
- Number one topic, in more than one African country: Sex.
- Reproductive health. It deserved a half day long panel
- Health and diseases such as cancer were sorely missed by pros. “We need to listen more”
- To promote institutional democracy. Not only a UNICEF priority
- Allow for failure and change
- “We’re slowly starting to move in this direction”
- Large multilateral cooperation organizations are still slow
- Sean has had the fortune to be able to try different strategies
- Talent might be good around the world but it is not widespread nor diverse
- Stephen: how about scaling mechanisms?
- Achieving global influence is never easy
- mtrack (??) has shown positive impacts and international organizations have supported scaling efforts
- “We don’t want to start too focused, siloed initiatives”
- Making tools work “out of the box” to complement wider initiatives makes all the difference
- Data tracking tools put to health and nutrition initiatives
- Each country has their priorities, tools can be repurposed in each case
- UNICEF is funded by the UN, and proposals and grants
- Innovation is sometimes spearheading projects, other times is a component
- “It depends on the country”, some want to try new things, other want to continue existing innovation efforts
- Countries also vary in scale
- 2017 saw startups implementing some of UNICEF’s innovation across Africa
- UNICEF also provides funding for startup innovation
- “We’ve had a lot of programs who have not met the desired goals”
- A program was anchored on specific system access
- There was high engagement, but bureaucracy became a liability
- Community outreach was growing but project goals were being unmet
- Bureaucracy can severely affect supply chains, for years to come
- There is an innovation risk in pushing too quickly
- Overreliance on system reporting when people do not implement computers for their day-to-day activities (like health care) are doomed to fail
- But not improving or fitting reporting methods affect the quality of reporting and assessments
- Big Data has a place on field operations
- “Shock” events are interesting learning and comparative research opportunities
- Data triangulation is always recommended
- UNICEF, WorldBank blogs
- ICT4D blogs
- But beware echo chambers
- “I always triangulate with the ground, grassroots events”
- Listening does not always lead to radical, innovative ideas, and that’s OK
- Accelerators are great knowledge repositories
- Business, economics understanding
- Success environments
- Design tools
- OpenSRP
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