Development Loop : Apps for Development

Every year, the World Bank and other organizations fund billions of dollars in development projects all over the world. But how can these organizations collaborate on projects in similar locations, upload information from the field, and factor in local feedback? Development Loop is a powerful yet simple web and mobile app that allows users see who is doing what where, as well as add, edit, and visualize their organization's aid activities from anywhere in the world to make sure every dollar is being used effectively.

Development Loop is a simple, easy-to-use, app that tells the real story of foreign assistance by enabling users to add and edit their own project information at a sub-national level, including comments, pictures, and stories, and to view and share this information with others in both online and offline environments. Users can view their own projects alongside those of other organizations or important indicators, such poverty rates or maternal mortality. It can also be linked to beneficiary feedback. This prototype includes current development projects from the World Bank and the African Development Bank, several World Development Indicators, and, perhaps uniquely, local citizen feedback collected by the non-profit GlobalGiving. Development Loop uses these layers to create feedback loops that enable the social monitoring of development projects/programs and facilitate mutual accountability.

The sub-national World Bank and African Development Bank activity data was geocoded through the Mapping for Results project, a partnership between AidData (a joint initiative of Brigham Young University, the College of William and Mary, and Development Gateway) and the World Bank. The dataset being used in this prototype was built using the ArcGIS API for Microsoft Silverlight/WPF and ArcGIS Server technology from Esri.



via appsfordevelopment.challengepost.com