[huridocs-tech] ICT Toolsets announces Winners of 2003 Grant Competition

August 23, 2004

In the fall of 2003, the ICT Toolsets project accepted submissions in
response to an international request for proposals (RFP). More than 230
proposals were received from 44 countries.

During October and November of 2003, the Toolsets initiative worked with a
group of external evaluators to select proposals that met and often
exceeded the RFP's criteria. The RFP aimed to support projects with a
global impact which would advance the goals of the Open Society
Institute's belief in promoting open societies. Many projects that the
Information Program were unable to support had great merit, but did not
specifically conform to the necessarily narrow criteria. See a full list
of criteria for the RFP.

During the second week of December 2003, all applicants whose projects
would not be funded were notified.

Although OSI is only able to support five projects directly out of the
2003 RFP, ICT Toolsets has started to work in other ways with many other
groups involved in the application process. The Information Program will
continue to promote collaboration between open source developers globally,
and to support toolsets development for the civil society sector.

Jonathan Peizer, Janet Haven, and others involved with the grant process
would like to thank all who took the time to apply. The five funded
projects are listed below.


2003 ICT TOOLSETS REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS: FUNDED PROJECTS

Project name: LiveSupport
Organization: MDLF/CAMP (www.mdlf-camp.net)
Location: Prague, Czech Republic
Project Description:
LiveSupport will be an open source radio automation system that will allow
stations to manage their daily broadcasts through an intuitive,
end-user-centered multi-lingual interface. LiveSupport will be accessible
over the Internet, allowing for remote management of on-air radio broadcast.
As a studio tool, LiveSupport will take care of all fundamental broadcast
operations and needs, such as playlist management, scheduling, accurate
transmission logs, support for a range of audio formats, and seamless
inclusion of Internet audio streams into on-air programming.
As a remote broadcast management tool, LiveSupport will take full advantage
of the Internet by allowing users to manage files stored locally or in the
LAN, the WAN, over WiFi connections or satellite uplinks. It will also be
able to play files from a central server over a satellite TCP/IP
connection. Anything that LiveSupport can reach in a network environment
can be scheduled and played or shared with other LiveSupport systems. As
such, LiveSupport could become invaluable in the developing world.
LiveSupport aims not only to become an open source project that will match
the functionality available in the most widespread commercial radio
automation tools, but also to revolutionize the concept of TCP/IP based
audio distribution.


Project name: Community Wireless Networking, Phase III
Organization: Urbana-Champaign IndyMedia Center
(http://wireless.cu.groogroo.com/index.html)
Location: Urbana, Illinois (USA)
Project Description:
The Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CWN) is building and
implementing a mesh-style community wireless network that allows anyone
within range of the Network to receive Internet access, free from monthly
fees, using off-the-shelf wireless hardware. CWN's software is open-source
(under the GPL license) and open-architecture.
Over the past three years, the Community Wireless Network has gone through
three distinct phases of development: Phase I – initial research and
experimentation; Phase II – initial software development and prototype
network rollout; and Phase III – software refinement and scalable network
implementation (the current phase).
The software consists of a "mesh" routing daemon, an innovative "ad hoc"
name service, a user interface, software for high-reliability, and on-line
software upgrades. CWN's routing daemon will be a major innovation in the
open-source "mesh" world. It will be the first open-source implementation
of Hazy Sighted Link State (HSLS) routing. HSLS enables exceptional
scalability in the wireless environment, and yet it has an uncomplicated
implementation.
CWN's grant from OSI will allow the organization to complete a scalable
prototype in Urbana, Illinois. Once tested there, CWN will form
partnerships with two to three wireless groups in the South for prototype
implementations of the mesh in a developing world setting.


Project name: Project Planning for a Clinical/Patient Management Application
Organization: Ninth Bridge, a project on Engender Health
(www.engenderhealth.org)
Location: International
Project Description:
OSI's grant to Ninth Bridge will fund a planning project toward the
development of an open source clinical/patient tracking application to meet
the needs of health care providers caring for HIV/AIDS patients across the
developing world.
Currently, large numbers of front line care providers in this sector are
without basic patient tracking/management capabilities. Considering the
staggering burdens under which these typically under-resourced providers
work, this lack of basic patient data management capabilities is a further
drain on their efficiency and effectiveness. These management practices
also severely curtail any ability to collect and use data for information
sharing, trends analysis, and advocacy and policy-making purposes.
Commercial and some open source solutions exist, but these have been
developed primarily for U.S. markets, and are overly directed at insurance
reporting and billing processes that are not appropriate for the developing
world.
Ninth Bridge will undertake to thoroughly assess, in collaboration with the
community of intended users—focusing on sub-Saharan Africa—the range of
tools currently available, as well as the unmet needs and opportunities in
the area of clinical patient management. The final report will not only
provide a comprehensive list of existing tools, but will define the
application requirements and functionality primarily through engagement
with front line health workers and their supporters in HIV/AIDS affected
areas.


Project name: PeerMaster and NetFlow
Organization: Packet Clearing House (www.pch.net)
Location: San Francisco, California (USA)
Project Description:
OSI is supporting Packet Clearing House in the development of open-source
software tools which assist Internet service providers (ISPs) in optimizing
the routing of their traffic, reducing the cost and increasing the
performance of Internet service as delivered to the public.
The "PeerMaster" toolset functions as a kind of "matchmaking service" for
ISPs, allowing the individuals within each ISP who are responsible for
negotiating network interconnections to find each other quickly and easily,
and facilitating the interconnection transaction. The NetFlow analysis
portion of the toolset goes one step further, analyzing ISPs' traffic flow
and prioritizing the other ISPs, other countries, and other regions with
which the ISP has the greatest degree of mutual
traffic, allowing them to make better-informed network interconnection
choices. Lack of an open-source toolset has previously made these functions
unavailable to all but the four or five largest international carriers, and
it is our hope that this toolset will begin to extend the same operational
efficiencies and economies to the parts of the Internet which can most
benefit from them.
In addition to software development, OSI's grant will allow PCH to do
outreach and training, to ensure that these open-source tools reach the
engineers and analysts who will best be able to employ them in reducing the
cost of Internet service in developing regions.


Project name: Legal Aid Center Case Management Tool
Organization: Internet Rights Bulgaria Foundation
(http://socialrights.org/spip/rubrique1.html)
Location: Sofia, Bulgaria
Project Description:
The Internet Rights Bulgaria Foundation (IBRF) will build an open source
software solution for the case management needs of non-profit legal advice
centers in Bulgaria. This will provide an alternative to restrictive
proprietary software at present being used for this purpose. The project
will also create the conditions for civil society organizations in Bulgaria
to cooperate with each other and with similar organizations elsewhere
through better communication and increased Internet visibility.
IBRF will also work with the Open Society Institute–Sofia on creating a
version of the software to be used in the Bulgarian public defender's
office. Further, the software will be integrated into a Bulgarian Linux
distribution by Interspace, a Bulgarian technology/media organization,
which will also assist with the training and installation of the
distribution and accompanying software at legal aid centers.



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