The Ushahidi platform was first launched amidst a violent conflict some four years ago. Since then, the platform has been used to map other violent crises in places like Egypt, Kyrgyzstan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, etc. During this time, repressive regimes have clearly become more sophisticated in using social media and surveillance technologies. Most software is subject to security risk to compromise, gaming and subversion. Ushahidi users are not immune. We’ve compiled some resources and suggest that these be reviewed before deploying the tool in any hostile environment.

The purpose of this blog post is to provide some basic recommendations on how to use the Ushahidi platform more securely and to provide links to many important resources out there. Remember, using technology will always carry some risk, so before using Ushahidi or any other technology, please do everything you can to educate yourself on these risks, and not only those that you will personally face but also the risks that others will face as a result of your project.

1. Please use https and only https to access your Ushahidi platform. After enabling SSL on your server, simply change site_protocol from http to https in your config.php file. If you are on Crowdmap, SSL is already forced and supported across the board.

2. Do not use your real name or real email address when you create your account to access the back-end of the Ushahidi platform. The backend could be compromised.

3. Do not add any sensitive information to the Ushahidi platform, even if this information is not published, e.g., an unpublished report in the back-end of the platform. This means no personal identifiers, no links back to an original tweet or blog post, etc., from which the report is created. The back-end of the platform could be hacked, so all sensitive information should be kept in a separate and more secure location. This also means not mapping the exact location of reports and not publishing reports in near real-time but rather with an appropriate time delay.

4. The Ushahidi map should be kept password protected and the link should not be shared publicly. Users who wish to access the map should be carefully vetted before being provided with password access. Only make the map public if you have taken sufficient steps to minimize the associated risks.

5. Always log out when you’re not using the Ushahidi platform and be aware of whose Internet connection you are using to access the platform, i.e., if browsing from an Internet cafe, who else are you sharing the network with? When SSL is enabled, threat of interception can be minimized but isn’t eliminated entirely.

6. Do not use shared hosting and make sure your server is properly firewalled and secure.

7. If you’re not using the latest version of the Ushahidi platform, please upgrade immediately! More information here on how to upgrade. Please follow the Ushahidi blog and subscribe to Ushahidi dev mailing list for security announcements.

There are many additional steps that users can and should take to use the Ushahidi platform more securely. The ones listed above do not guarantee full security. We have therefore compiled a list of additional resources (please see below) that users should familiarize themselves with before deploying the Ushahidi platform in a hostile environment. We also invite experts in this space to provide additional resources and comments. In the meantime, we shall strive to continue rendering the Ushahidi more secure with the help of our partners and we will be sure to post security updates via our blog.

The resources below have also been added to the “Best Practices” section of our new Ushahidi wiki. You may have expert knowledge which could assist our community. Can you help? Our goal is to provide a curated list of existing best practices and resources to our community.

Tools:

• Tor

• Surveillance Self-Defense: Defensive Technology

• The Guardian Project

• Mozilla Firefox Privacy- Security Add-on

• Privacy script

• Collusion (Mozilla Firefox add-on) Track who is tracking you

• Open Web Application Security Project (multiple languages)

• Report unavailable/blocked websites with Herdict

Other Resources:

• Security In A Box – How to remain anonymous and bypass censorship on the Internet – 2010-06-21 – MobileActive
• Security In A Box – How to protect your information from physical threats – 2010-06-16 – MobileActive
• Security in-a-box (Multiple languages)
• SMS Privacy Tips for Election Monitoring And More
• Access Now
  • Defense Against Denial of Service Guide (DDOS) (Mulitple Languages)
  • Protecting your Security Online (Multiple Languages)
  • Additional Policy Activism Resources
• Digital Security and Privacy for Human Rights Defenders
• SaferMobile (via MobileActive)
• Non Violent Struggle – 50 Crucial Point (Multiple Languages)
• Hints and Tips for Whistleblowers
• WARNING: Social media is dangerous (via Meedan)
• Skype security weaknesses could endanger vulnerable users
• Organize on Facebook Securely (via Movements)
• Open Net Initiative (series)

This list will continue to evolve on our wiki. We will add your recommendations on security tools and additional resources. Thanks in advance for helping the community of deployers be safe and secure.

I’ve heard it time and time again. Human trafficking doesn’t happen in…my rural area, my district, my zip code. But I’ve seen the faces of local victims. I’ve heard and read their stories about being sold and abused right here in our own backyards.

Crowdmap, matched with the skill and time of a great volunteer, David Taylor, plus the fabulous help of Ushahidi in accomplishing our goals, gave us the End Slavery Tennessee Case Map, a tool that effectively shows people that human trafficking and slavery does indeed happen right where they live. That said, the map shows only the tip of the iceberg – the cases that actually make it to court and get coverage by the media – but it’s enough to convince the change makers that this travesty does happen in their world, and that they need to pay attention.

Who are these change makers?

• Legislators who will sponsor or back bills needed to make systemic changes.
• Media who will cover the topic and open viewer’s eyes, so people correctly interpret the suspicious signs they may be seeing.
• Professionals who are motivated to call us for training, so they are equipped to help survivors.
• Targeted youth who read the stories and make more prudent decisions or recognize trafficking in their peer group and report it.
• Community members who start noticing the steady stream of men going in and out of the house next door or the child they sometimes see in a yard but who never leaves the house, and with this new awareness will understand what might be going on and call the state Human Trafficking Hotline or our agency.

Now that Crowdmap shines a light on human trafficking, we are without excuse. Both justice and mercy now compel us to come together to end slavery.

Editor note:

We’d like to thank Derri, David and the whole ESTN team for helping us troubleshoot and resolve some Crowdmap bugs. Not only are they leading change with their project, they are contributing to our community by helping others. Thanks!

[Guest post by the I Spot Fair Trade creators from the SurvivorsConnect.org team.]

As anti-trafficking activists, it’s sometimes tough getting dressed in the morning or even making coffee – knowing that nearly all of our products, from the clothes we wear to the food/drinks we consume can be tainted with forced labor and slavery.

There are a lot of great efforts to help consumers understand just how human trafficking and modern day slavery is involved in our products. For example, Slavery Footprint just came out with an app that allows consumers to visualize how their purchases are connected to modern-day slavery, by calculating just approximately how much slavery labor may have gone into the product and its various parts.

Sounds great right? While it is doing a great job of engaging individuals, groups and businesses in building awareness for and create deployable action against forced labor, it is not exactly the most encouraging tool. Quite frankly, no one really wants to be reminded of his or her slavery-ridden purchase on a regular basis, or how bad he or she is with a tool that tells you that basically every product should be off limits.

iSpot Fair Trade – Find Retail locations for Fair Trade through out the US & Canada

This is when we began to look into Fair Trade. Fair trade is a social movement and market-based approach that aims to help people in developing countries by promoting sustainable trade, fair wages and labor standards. At this time, a product labeled as “fair trade” is the closest we can get to deem any product as slavery free. When we shop, if we’re presented with a fair-trade option, we’ll take it!

Survivors Connect’s mission is to develop and extend innovative ICTs to help anti-trafficking efforts, and our link to the fair-trade movement was quite simple. SC partnered with the Fair Trade Resource Network in effort to make it easier for consumers to make wiser, helpful choices that do not promote slavery. Welcome – “I spot fair trade” a web-based map that allows individuals to identify where Fair Trade goods are bought and sold through out the United States and Canada!

About I Spot Fair Trade’s Mandate

Founder of Survivors Connect, Aashika Damodar, is excited about the initiative:

Our goal at Survivors Connect is to empower activists with innovative technologies like this. The idea behind iSpot Fair trade is to ‘crowdsource’ information about where fair trade goods are sold. Unlike normal databases that simply tell you where stores are (which often are incomplete, not kept up to date), iSpot allows individuals to send an email or submit via the website describing where they see fair trade. Their submission is then plotted on an interactive map, and visitors can search by town, see the submission, add reviews and comments and share with their friends and family. By doing so, we hope that this will stimulate the demand for more fair trade through out the country!

The iSpot Fair Trade map is simple. Users can contribute a location where they see fair trade goods sold via email or the website itself (and eventually by SMS/MMS). The platform aggregates information along with news, photos and videos that are related to existing sources, all in one place on an interactive Google Map. iSpot Fair Trade plots information about the location of Fair Trade stores, fair trade clothing, accessories, food, drink and more.

Jeff Goldman, the Executive Director of the Fair Trade Resource Network (FTRN) says,

“This easy-to-use tool will help conscious consumers find thousands of Fair Trade products and tens of thousands of locations near their homes or when they travel, thereby helping marginalized farmers, artisans and workers in poor countries get a better deal. Shoppers wont have to settle for conventional products and brands that often exploit producers and the environment in a race to the bottom.”

The Fair Trade Resource Network has already plotted over 200 locations that sell fair trade items. FTRN has now opened the site to the general public for individuals and groups to contribute. We hope in a year’s time, we’ll wont see any ground left on the map and maybe a smartphone APP for ISpot Fair Trade. If you have any recommendations for us, please reach out!

More Information

I Spot Fair Trade (map)

Contacts: Fair Trade Network: jeff at ftrn.org and SurvivorsConnect: adamodar at survivorsconnect.org

Since last year we’ve worked on more external projects. In order to keep some sanity within the platform team, we’re adjusting ourselves to have a team that focuses on external projects, ensuring that our contract work doesn’t throw off the timing of the milestones for Ushahidi and SwiftRiver. To that end, there have been some new additions to the team, here they are:

Nathaniel Manning (@NatPManning)

There has been an increasing need for us to have someone dedicated to dealing with organizations who want to contract the Ushahidi team for a special deployment. “Nat” joined us in January to help solve this problem. Besides dealing with the value added services work, Nat is also responsible for working with me (Erik) on finding ways to partner with other platforms and extend the use of Ushahidi’s functionality, data and community. He’s based in San Francisco, and always ready for a conversation.

Robbie MacKay (@RJMacKay)

Our first Kiwi, Robbie has been a long-time volunteer coder and deployer in the community. He’s been very active with the Standby Task Force, and has been delving into Ushahidi ever since the earthquake in New Zealand a year ago. Robbie’s job is to work primarily on external projects, directly with clients, where he’s had a lot of experience in the past. Robbie also is keen to collaborate with the wider Ushahidi software developer community. He’s been with us in Kenya for the last week, and we can tell that we’re going to enjoy having yet another funny accent in the house.

Jepchumba (@DigitalAfrican)

Famous for her the design community she has created at African Digital Art, Jepchumba joins us part-time to help with the demanding amount of design work that is needed. To be honest, we’ve been on a campaign to suck Jepchumba into the Ushahidi vortex for quite some time, so we’re all quite excited to have someone of her calibre joining Brandon on the design front. Jepchumba is going to be helping out with alternate forms of data visualization on the Ushahidi platform, as well as helping get the design community more involved in deployments around the world.

Who are these deployers? One thing connects all of them irrespective of location or topic: They want to do more in their communities and world.

Ushahidi gives us a window into many varying disruptive movements, large or small: community members, from Syrian Tracker to Moroccan Elections Elections to Open Nuclear Iran mappers to Maps4aid.

Even children are trying to activate change outside the traditional methods or institutional structures: Amrita of Bangalore, India (8.5 years old) is a Trusted Food Reporter for the Cost of Chicken Project; kids from around the world are collecting data on local food conditions, from grade 8 students in San Francisco to grade 3 students in India; students are mapping to learn and collaborate about food production and food sustainability.

Olga Werby, Mapster and President of Pipspeak Productions.

Software Centre, the Morocco-based team led by Tarik Nesh-Nash, started with election monitoring with Marsad.ma and is now mapping corruption. Boyan Yurukov created the Bulgarian award-winning 2011 crime.bg. He also developed and installed Fairelections.eu election mapping, which was moderated by the Institute for Public Environment Development.

These deployments are aimed at giving voice to fair democratic practices. Each of these deployers mentor new mappers sharing best practices or create additional tools, like Boyan’s Facebook app. By sharing their story, they’re beginning to inspire others to map elections or corruption.

Why Storytelling Matters

Persistent outreach and storytelling are key to successful deployments. The Syria Tracker team is a collective of partnerships and volunteers, including some of our friends within the Crisismapping Network and the Standby Task Force. Over the past 286 days, they’ve mapped more than 6,300 deaths.

Melissa Elliot, left, is the Reports Coordinator for the StandBy Task Force.

Shemeer Babu is one mapper in India focused on highlighting the issue of violence against women with Maps4Aid. His next project is building out Blogs4Aid. His plan will be focused on using SMS (short message service) and maybe IVR (interactive voice response) since 90% of rural women in India don’t have smartphones. Both @maps4aid and @syriatracker use Twitter on a daily basis to keep their map story alive and in the minds of their followers, using free online resources to augment their story.

Melissa Elliot is a core team member and reports coordinator of the StandBy Task Force. This week she attended a Canadian government event to share the story of Crisismapping and volunteers. Her constant drive to make a difference in the world inspired officials to consider their first-ever Crisismapping Simulation. As a leader in a growing community that often uses Ushahidi, she is one of over 750 volunteers who map information for emergencies.

We’re delighted that these talented volunteers often assist other Ushahidi community members with their non-crisis related maps.

How can you help?

Every day deployers need support to build their projects. For example, Open Nuclear Iran needs a banner for its Crowdmap; Shemeer needs a hand determining how to grow his local project to a larger sustainable Blogs4Aid initiative; the Corruption Tracker and the Harassmap teams are looking for more volunteers to support their long-term projects.

Requests for assistance can include help with storytelling, project management, technical assistance, design customization and security concerns.

These people often use Ushahidi’s software in their spare time with no to low funding. They are the so-called “do-more disrupters.” Mentoring and help matchmaking are core to these deployers’ ongoing efforts.

We’re launching a new wiki space to assist our existing Community Connect with people who may be able to help. To find out more about this, join our community site or follow our Ushahidi blog. Who knows how you will inspire and be inspired to actively do more in your community and the world!

Really, having technical tickets (issues, bugs, features and pull requests) and commits in the same place will help with the two big things: transparency and collaboration. We want to make it easier for you to see what we are working on, submit a ticket and lend a hand when you can. If you are busy creating great code, we’d like to know about it and be able to incorporate it into the core. Or, make it more visible for others to use your code for their Ushahidi-related projects. Git Issues is directly connected to our GitHub – Ushahidi. (E.g. Ushahidi core issues live under https://github.com/ushahidi/Ushahidi_Web/issues).

Migration Help and Schedule:

Our team has reviewed the Red Mine and have flagged issues to be migrated.

Please add a comment to any items that you think need to be migrated to Git Issues. We’ve added the document to our new beta wiki for your review. Every coders eyes will help us capture the active tickets/issues. Ping Hleson at ushahidi dot com if you have a questions.

Migration Schedule:

• Community Feedback on Issues to be migrated: February 8 – 15, 2012
• Migration Freeze on RedMine: Februay 15 – xxx
• Ushahidi Community Developer Skype Chat (time to be announced) Wednesday, February. 15, 2012
• Deprecate Redmine. February 29th, 2012
• Team cleans out the Github store procuring all the sweet Github Octocat hoodies. March 1st, 2012

Getting Help:

Tool soup is confusing. Duplication is less fun than collecting Nyan Cat mash-ups. Here’s a cheat sheet:

Forums: “How do I….”, “I’m troubleshooting”, “General Support”
Wiki: “Where are the documentation, best practices” and “How do I…”. Bonus points: document and share your knowledge
GitIssues: “Houston, we have a problem.” “Nyan, Ushahidi would rock it if…” (Issue/bug/feature)
Github: Commit, Pull Changes, Fork
Contact: General questions (eg. Erik’s favourite ihub story, business endeavours, events, press etc.)

Steps to get help:

Technical Issues:

1. Search the wiki or forums.
2. Collaborate with the community skype or dev mailing list. (This is a real-time stream of global chatter)
3. Search Git Issues for existing issues.
4. Add a Git Issue: (bug or feature) request.

Non-Technical Issues:

1. Search the wiki or forums.
2. Add a forum post for questions.
3. Share your knowledge on the wiki.
4. Collaborate with the Channel for Academics, Researchers and Community Skype Chat or mailing lists.
5. To ask general non-technical tickets, you can drop us a Contact note (http://ushahidi.com/contact-us).

We will review all Git issues weekly and assign priorities. The priorities could include assigning to a team member or requesting community help. More details as we get closer to launch.

To sum up: GitIssues, flag your tickets for migration, Octocat hoodies and Nyan Cat.

These badges are broken down into “badge packs”. For example, the Locations pack is a simple grouping of badges that follow a travel theme, with badges highlighting landmarks from countries around the world. The Ushahidi pack is a group of generic badges that the Ushahidi team has put together. New packs are expected soon, with contributions from the community and designers from other projects as well.

How can you use this as an Ushahidi administrator? Deployers of newer versions of the Ushahidi Platform and current users of Crowdmap have access to all of these badges already. Simply log into your admin panel and browse to the Manage->Badges settings page to get started. As an example, you may award the 25 Star badge to a user who has sent in 25 approved reports. This can be a manual process where you assign badges to users or set up Action Triggers to do this automatically. Just experiment with the platform to come up with interesting achievements to award your users.

We need your help! This collection of open source badges belongs to the community. If you’re a designer, developer or just interested in all things badgy, you can support this initiative. Your efforts will impact a multitude of projects, ranging from projects that crowdsource information in crisis and disaster situations to projects that reward people for submitting delicious pictures of cheeseburgers. Please check out our badge site for more information.

We’re really excited to see what everyone comes up with. We hope to see the badge image repository grow so other projects can get some value out of our open source badge initiative. Let us know in the comments what you come up with!

Okay, so what does that mean to regular folks? How about: We care about our communities and the world around us. So, we need to protect and improve it. How can we know more and be actively involved in the real changes, even at a incremental level?

Call to Map it, Change it.

The UN has stacks of resources about RIO+20. The Future We Want is an initiative focused on opening up the process to: Share your ideas. The UN’s Sustainable Future site includes a list of organizations and movements who demonstrate the power of: What Can You Do?

We invite you to join the fray: What can you map? There are countless local and global stories related to sustainable development. Take map aim at an issue that you care about to highlight the need for real change.

Mapsters in Action

At the recent United States Rio +20 pre-event, Ushahidi had a chance to feature the work of amazing deployers trying to share, understand and change their world. These examples should get your mind spinning on some of the untold map stories that you could activate. Citizen crowdsourcing can elevate and visualize your subject. And, you may be surprised who you hear from and how you can collaborate.

The Cost of Chicken project works with kids from around the world to collect data on local food conditions. It uses Crowdmap to track and share information ranging from the cost of chicken, water, and, even, candy. Learn more from Olga Werby, mapster advocate:

Can those kids be any more inspiring in their search to understand and connect with each other over food production? Thanks to each one of them for sharing their passion for change.

Take a World Tour:

Deployers around the globe are mapping about sustainability. These are some examples we shared at USRio+20:

• Global Energy Shortages This map includes a layer of Ajay Kumar’s project Powercuts.in.
• Find Fuel in Nairobi, Kenya
• Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock: Nangarhar Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock ( DAIL ) (Afghanistan). More on this project: “A Moment of Discovery and Awe“.
• iWitness Pollution (Louisiana, USA)
• Spotting Fair Trade in North America (supporting sustainable products) (USA)
• Agrotestigo: Mapping Agricultural Social Networks (building collective resources about agricultural technologies) in Argentina
• Qiantang River Water Map 钱塘江水地图: A Collaborative Interactive Water Map for Qiantang River (China)

If you have more examples of great maps, please share them in the comments or add them to our Deployments Map.

And, when you create a new map, be sure to tweet to @UN_Rioplus20 and @ushahidi. Use the hashtags #futurewewant. We’d be happy to feature your map story on our blog. Simply drop us a line.

More Resources:

• Official United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD)
• UN Sustainable Future site
• United States Rio+20 Conference
• The Future We Want

Thank you: USRio20 participants and organizing team

Thank you to Noel Dickover, Richard Boly and Sarah Jessup for inviting Nat Manning and I to participate in USRio20. Special thanks to Carmelle Terborgh, ESRI, for supporting our participation.

We were delighted to meet participants and to brainstorm, learn and Speed Geek [video] about these important topics.

Thanks!

Heather L.

The first 72 hours of the SomaliaSpeaks deployment were particularly intense. The purpose of this joint write-up with Al Jazeera and partners is to share some of our early lessons learned in this novel collaboration.  Every deployment teaches us a multitude of lessons, so our partners at Al Jazeera, Souktel and Crowdflower joined us in this effort to share these. We look forward to future collaborations with them as we share this story with you.

This purpose of this pilot project was to let Somalis speak for themselves. For the first time ever, a prominent news organization, Al-jazeera, used crowdsourcing and SMS to let thousands of Somalis express for themselves how the crisis has been effecting their daily lives. More than 4,000 text messages were received within just a few days. Of these, over 1,000 were translated from Somali into English by about 80 translators. The resulting map of Somali voices received over 25,000 page views.

Before reviewing our lessons learned, we first wanted to thank K’naan and Sol for the initial inspiration behind this project. They got in touch with Ushahidi last year because they wanted to use the platform to help amplify Somali voices and show how capable the Somali people are. The initial version of this project was a prototype that was not activated. But thanks to Al- jazeera, Souktel and Crowdflower, we were able to revive the project to help amplify Somali voices in the international media.

Despite being a pilot, the project exemplified valid use cases in the application of pervasive technologies such as the web and mobile phone to news and information gathering. Somalia being a country run down by decades of neglect and war as well being rife with insecurity  provides one of the most challenging operational environments. Within a very short time we were able to curate information traversing through different parts of Somalia. This would have proved futile if not overly expensive or impossible had it been done using traditional news gathering techniques. Furthermore the information collected provides more insight on the realities of life in Somalia.

Projects like this involve a lot of effort and goodwill from the community and a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Therefore, building a strong community around the project goes a long way to solving problems and mitigating challenges. The community goes beyond the volunteer translators. We saw lots of support from the Somali blogging community, technology and media enthusiasts as well as innovators or innovation centric minds across the globe who all narrated or reported the Somalia Speaks project in their own ways. Having a strong community and inculcating a community ethos in  project operations and goals goes a long way influencing success. Without the community backing and promoting this project, it would have only been another temporary spotlight on Somalia.

The project worked as follows. Al-jazeera editorial selected the following question for interview:

“Al Jazeera would like to know — how has the Somalia Conflict affected your life? Please also include the name of your hometown in the response. Thanks.”

Our colleagues at Souktel distributed the question via text message to 5,000 of their SMS subscribers across Somalia. The responses were then forwarded from Souktel’s SMS platform to a customized Crowdflower micro-tasking platform. There, Somali-speaking volunteers translated and geo-located the text messages which were then manually uploaded to Al-jazeera’s Ushahidi platform.

There are three points worth highlighting in terms of lessons learned:

1. Messaging

While the question that was posed via SMS in no way asked for individuals to reply with their personal names, a small number of responders still added their names; some even added their full names. So these were deleted as quickly as possible. (Note that the numbers posted in the title of initial reports were not phone numbers but an assigned sequential number generated by the Crowdflower plugin). In hindsight, the SMS sent out with the question should have specifically asked that responders not include personal identifiers in their SMS replies.

2. Volunteer translation

While we had recruited a small number of trusted volunteers to translate the incoming text messages using a Crowdflower plugin, a decision was subsequently made to make the call for volunteers public to cope with the 2,500+ SMS replies received. This means that anonymous volunteers could see the original text messages, some of which initially  included personal identifiers. So we immediately reached out to Crowdflower for guidance to take the plug-in offline. We then began to manually delete several dozen text messages inside the Crowdflower plug-in that contained personal identifiers. Our colleagues at Al-jazeera took over this process and set up their own micro-tasking platform, removing all personal identifiers from the text messages awaiting translation and geo-location.

3. Security

One of Ushahidi’s community members tested the platform and identified a search security issue on Friday, December 9th. We quickly fixed this on the deployment. And, we issued a security patch to all deployers. (http://security.ushahidi.com)

In the future, for this type of “The People Speak” project,  we recommend taking the following steps:

1. On large multi-partner deployments: Global organizations work in multiple timezones, so communications plans need to include 24/7 points of contacts for each organization.
2. Text potential interviewees to ask whether they agree to be interviewed and to have their responses made public before sending out the main question.
3. Text those individuals who have consented to being interviewed with the desired question and ask them to include the name of their town but not their personal names.
4. Recruit trusted translation volunteers well in advance and ensure that the micro-tasking translation platform has no personal identifiers.
5. Stagger the launch of the text messages and the live map. That is, start with the SMS broadcast and spend however many days/weeks doing the bulk of the translation with vetted volunteers. The system that holds the raw text messages should obviously be fully secure. When the majority of text messages are processed, launch the live map and gradually add the already translated text messages to grow the map steadily over a period of days/weeks.

At Ushahidi, we’ve also made some plans to help all deployers in our community:

• We’re building a program for privacy and security education for our users in 2012. (Blog posts, webinars, videos and meet-ups.)
• Best practices for security and privacy will be included as essential documentation on our soon to be re-launched wiki.
• Ushahidi is open source and the community is a large part of what makes it work.  We’ll build a security working group focused on our software, but it’ll take your participation to make it work.
• Alongside our partners within the CrisisMappers community, we will participate in a security and privacy working group. This field is growing and collective lessons can only improve each map action.

Crisis mapping and journalism are both in the nascent stages of collaborating on real-time news connecting diaspora and citizens alike. Al-Jazeera is leading the fray in testing and implementing live maps into their fast-moving news cycle toolkit. We are thankful for all their efforts and look forward to further collaboration.

On November 28, 2011, elections began in Egypt as part of the political transition plan overseen by Egypt’s Supreme Council of Armed Forces. The full plan calls for elections for the People’s Assembly, followed by elections for the Shura Council, a more consultative body that along with the People’s Assembly comprises the Parliament. According to the plan, the Parliament will then choose the members of a constitutional assembly to draft a new constitution before presidential elections begin in late June 2012.

The Development and Institutionalization Support Center (DISC), an Egyptian NGO, is using Ushahidi to crowdsource election monitoring during the Egyptian transition. The project is called U-Shahid or Enta Shahid, which in Arabic means, “You witness.” DISC first set up U-Shahid to monitor Egypt’s 2010 parliamentary elections. This year, it has so far been used to monitor elections for the People’s Assembly, the third and final round of which came to a close on January 11, 2012.

In getting the word out about U-Shahid, DISC counted on social media. DISC utilized its online following, which includes, for example, over 65,000 Likes on Facebook. In addition, many people working on U-Shahid, whether as employees or volunteers, have thousands of followers.

With our partner NGO, the Egyptian Democratic Academy, we trained volunteers to act as monitors and send in reports during the voting and a team to help manage incoming reports. DISC employees acted as backup.

Those sending in reports were asked for a quick description of what they were observing. They also had the option to attach a photo or video as evidence backing up their report, or to include a link to such evidence. They also categorized their report in categories such as “Intimidation” in the larger category of “Violence” or “Polling station closed early” under the larger category of “Polling Stations.” And it wasn’t all doom and gloom, “All Went Well” was an often used category for reports. Visitors to the U-Shahid site could vote (yes or no) whether they believed received reports to be true, allowing people to contribute in a small way to verifying the accountability of reports. Additionally, Egyptians could sign up to get alerts about reports, particularly reports within a certain proximity to their home or location, allowing access to dynamic and personalized news.

Volunteers receiving incoming reports then checked the classification of the reports, expanded the description, and filled in the location, if it was absent. The final responsibility of verification fell to the administrators.

Our most common verification strategies were to corroborate reports by checking online news, looking at attached photos or videos, asking our local volunteers to investigate personally or through their local contacts, or contacting the sender. We had an additional team on the ground that could travel to investigate and verify reports of large-scale fraud.

Our verification volunteers also had two additional trainings. First, they learned how to use ICT4Peace’s verification matrix plug-in, which helped administrators ascertain the reliability of reports. Second, they had training from Reuters reporters, as traditional media has developed a range of intricate verification strategies in the face of their need to draw from social media.

In broad strokes, the reports recorded widespread illegal campaigning (such as campaigning to people waiting in line to vote – a banned practice), some evidence of vote buying, and plenty of examples of disorganization, but relatively little evidence of violence being used or systemic fraud. While all reports were of course made available in real time, reports such as this one, on the first stage of voting, were emailed to journalists and organizations that we believed would benefit from the information. As the Egyptian military proved hostile to the idea of election monitors, and in fact banned official international monitoring, our reports were only as valuable as the attention they gained among the public and among groups with a role in policy.

In evaluating the project, DISC found that U-Shahid was less successful than in 2010, receiving fewer reports and less media attention. A number of lessons can be learned and observations made:

-       U-Shahid was less well known in comparison to 2010, when it became so popular that it inspired four additional Ushahidi maps to monitor the election. This can be attributed to media focus being on the violence and protests in Tahrir Square in the lead up to elections, as compared to 2010 when a number of television programs featured U-Shahid. Also, in 2010 DISC purchased advertising space on Youm7, a popular Egyptian news service, but could not do the same this year, as our grants were less generous. This should serve as a reminder of the inadequacy of social media by itself and the necessity of a robust marketing campaign.

-       Two additional factors led to a decreased volume of submitted reports. First, this year saw even more election monitoring projects with and without the use of Ushahidi by organizations and newspapers offering cash to monitors. Depending on volunteers, we could not compete for reports with those organizations offering cash. And the proliferation of maps reduced the attention given to each. Attempts made to build a coalition with other NGOs and newspapers to work with DISC on U-Shahid were rebuffed due to a culture in Arab countries of organizations being more interested in getting credit than in forging effective partnerships. Second, monitors feared violent reprisals for documenting cases of fraud at the hands of police, the military, or hired thugs. During clashes on Mohamed Mahmoud Street in the run up to the election, for example, people recording abuses on camera were specifically targeted.

-       The feature allowing visitors to the U-Shahid site to vote on whether they believe a report to be true was rarely used and of no particular benefit

-       In December, the military raided a number of international and local NGOs as part of an “investigation” into the foreign funding of NGOs and their potentially suspect motives. This complements an ongoing smear campaign against NGOs. While this threatens DISC’s ability to continue work on the project, it also points to the resilience of crowdsourcing, as traditional election monitoring projects were cancelled by a number of NGOs in response to the military closing their offices and leaving their legal status in limbo.

-       DISC is planning a complementary follow-up project called Enta Sharek (“You Share”) in which focus groups in five areas will be shed light on their experiences during the elections. No reason that traditional information gathering techniques can’t be used to complement our efforts!