By Miguel Paz (Bio) on PBD Media Shift Idea Lab, October 6, 2011
In Santiago, Chile, more than 60 percent of the poorest citizens don’t have access to the Internet. In the rest of the country, that number increases to 80 percent, and in rural areas, an Internet connection is almost nonexistent. But there are more than 20 million mobile phones in the nation, according to the latest survey by the Undersecretary of Telecommunications. (That’s actually around 1.15 cell phones per capita in a nation of 17,094,270 people.) And in rural areas, cell phones are king.
As Knight News Challenge winners FrontlineSMS, Ushahidi and NextDrop have shown, mobile communications are crucial for citizens living in rural areas, where being able to reach other people and access relevant news and public services information make a huge improvement in people’s lives. Plus, cell phones are tools that most already have.
What if, apart from efforts to widen connectivity in isolated areas and government programs to provide computers for schools in rural areas (which has been a very good, but slow, undertaking, and not an attractive business for telecom companies), governments of underdeveloped countries create and provide easy ways to access public information and services on mobile phones with an application or open-source web app that could be downloaded from government websites (in Chile it’s Gob.cl)? Or cellular service providers could pre-install an app or direct access to a web app on every smartphone or other devices?
This could mean a great deal for people, particularly in rural and impoverished areas where the biggest news is not what’s happening in Congress or the presidential palace, but what is happening to you and your community (something Facebook understood very well in its latest change that challenges the notion of what is newsworthy – but that’s a topic for a separate post).
People could do things like schedule a doctor’s appointment or receive notice that a doctor won’t be available; find out about grants to improve water conditions in their sector; receive direct information about training programs for growing organic food and the market prices for products they might sell; find out how their kids are doing in a school they attend in the city or if the rural bus system will go this week to the nearest town or not. These are just a few very straightforward examples of useful public services information that could be available on people’s phones. Such availability of information could save time and money for those who lack both things.