* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
By Kathy Calvin – CEO, United Nations Foundation
Last week, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was reelected to a second term, opening a new chapter in the U.N.’s work to tackle global challenges. Innovation, and in particular the skyrocketing use of mobile technology around the world, presents perhaps the greatest opportunity to accelerate the U.N.’s efforts to meet these challenges.
A new report, Mobilizing Development, spotlights ways we can harness the power of mobile technology to help the U.N. advance the health and welfare of people in the developing world. It evaluates the nearly $30 million Technology Partnership between the United Nations Foundation and the Vodafone Foundation and shares what we’ve learned from this collaboration: both the successes and the lessons learned.
Our work together has helped us identify trends in public-private partnerships and the use of technology to accelerate development. Here are five of the issues included in the report:
- The U.N. is increasingly open to in-depth relationships with corporations Describing the rise of U.N.-corporate partnerships, U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Robert Orr says in the report: “There has definitely been a shift in acceptability on both sides […] to a much more possibility-centered approach.” The U.N. Foundation and Vodafone Foundation partnership provides a model for how private companies can team up with the U.N., through the U.N. Foundation, to promote global good.
- Funders who act as incubators can see far-reaching results
By providing a funding stream outside of both the normal budget for U.N. programmes and the commercial context that demands bottom line results, the foundations created a safe space to experiment with innovation and learn from failure. Through a report series and events like the mHealth Summit and Technology Salon, the foundations provided a forum where sharing failure can help refine potentially game-changing technologies.
- More advocacy and implementation is needed to scale the use of technology to support health and humanitarian programs
Describing how ministries of health have taken up mobile tools to strengthen health-data collection after immunisation campaigns in Africa, Dr. Balcha Masresha of WHO says: “Let’s not forget this is a very novel way of doing things […]. Until we create a critical mass of health professionals who are conversant in the technology and who have seen firsthand the benefits of this approach to data collection, it will remain an elite or pilot kind of activity. We need to continue to sell the advantages that we have seen. We need to publicise and advocate for this approach by documenting the best practices and disseminating them as much as possible.”
- Real-time data collection via mobile devices is more than just faster; it enables processes and responses that are qualitatively different
The near ubiquity of mobile technology has also given rise to real-time data collection and dissemination. This phenomenon is creating new opportunities for both incentives and accountability in development and humanitarian work – but also new challenges as we look for new ways to effectively use this tremendous amount of new data.
- Technology is opening communications channels that will reframe how the world conceives of development and humanitarian work
The revolution in human connectivity that mobile communications has enabled means that increasingly individuals can articulate their needs publicly and to decision makers, and leverage technology to meet those needs. This is fundamentally reshaping the way we think of and provide development humanitarian assistance.
As Grameen Bank founder Muhammad Yunus writes in the report’s foreword: “The Technology Partnership has spurred innovation within the U.N. system and showed the private sector how the use of wireless tools for development purposes supports the business of doing good while doing well.”
We are proud of the accomplishments of our work with U.N. agencies, governments, social enterprises, non-profits and communities to improve health outcomes and strengthen disaster relief. Partnerships like ours show how aligning the business and humanitarian worlds enables success to be measured not just by the bottom line, but by the social good we create together.