Tech Election Workshop - Technologies Used

Last week the iLab hosted a series of events called "New Tech at Work: Planning for Liberia's Elections and Beyond." The aim was to create a discussion about technologies that could be used to aid Liberia as it approaches the 2011 elections. At these events representatives from Google and iLab/Ushahidi Liberia spoke about relevant technologies that could be used by NGOs, citizens, and official elections bodies to help improve the way they collect, store, and share data. The events were made possible by Google's sponsorship.

As a follow up, the iLab team has compiled a list of technologies, software, and resources that were mentioned at these events. The list can be seen here at the iLab website: http://ilabliberia.com/links-resources/new-tech-at-work-liberia-s-elections-and-beyond

If your organisation would like a training on any of the resources mentioned please fill out our sign up sheet here: http://www.ilabliberia.com/use.

Thanks,

The iLab Team.

Tech Election Workshop - Day 1

Today *iLab_ Liberia, along with co-sponsor Google, conducted the first day of a three-day workshop on how technology can be used to ensure fair, transparent, and well organized elections.

Demonstrations and trainings were given by *iLab_ Liberia staff members. Today we covered back-up and file sharing systems, ways to curate data so that it can be easily found and used in the future, methods for ensuring that data collected in spreadsheets can be easily parsed and analyzed by automated systems, data recovery, creating online forms for data entry, and online project management tools.

Participants were IT and technical experts and managers from various high-level elections organizations in Liberia, both governmental and non-governmental.

Many of those attending the workshop said they had learned something new and were able to see how the technologies discussed today could fill the gaps in their current systems and projects. Many participants were exposed to technologies they never knew existed, such as online storage options, and expressed a strong interest in complementing their current data management methods with these tools.

We're very excited to have the opportunity to host such an event, and are eagerly looking forward to the next two days!