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Global Partnerships, Local ICT Solutions
Research Viewpoint
When trainees leave, however, they often battle to
find jobs. One of ICT4D’s HPI bursary students, Shikoh
Gitau, spent several months visiting the Learn to Earn
site, observing and interacting with the trainees to see
if she could discover how better to find them jobs.
Over time, she realised that employers were posting
jobs on websites; however, the trainees did not look
at these websites – their Internet access was mediated
through basic-feature mobile phones. In instances
where they did find a relevant job advert, they did not
have access to computing facilities to create a CV, and
were therefore unable to e-mail these to the potential
employers.
Thus, obtaining design input from the Learn to Earn
community, Gitau set about building a mobile service
for mobile handsets which took job advertisements
from popular websites and modified them so that they
could be accessed on smart phones. Furthermore,
the system would ask users a series of questions, the
answers to which it used to generate a CV from a
template, which could be sent to potential employers.
Although the system started with twenty users, it soon
went viral. When the number of users reached into
the thousands, another technology-based NGO, the
Praekelt Foundation, offered to invest in the system
and launch it as a free service on the Vodacom network.
This became the Ummeli system, which currently has
more than 100 000 users. Gitau has gone on to work
for Google in Kenya, designing systems that should
improve the lives of people throughout Africa.
Ummeli
Ummeli is a system aimed at finding jobs and training
opportunities for the unemployed. The idea for this project
came from an NGO based in Khayelitsha called Learn to
Earn, which trains people in a variety of skills.
The Transformation of
Information Systems at
UCT
A decade ago, the information-systems research agenda
at UCT seemed clear: statistically driven empirical research
in how information systems functioned (or, sometimes,
not) inside corporate organisations. Since then, three
key trends have emerged in the way in which research is
conducted and students are trained.
Firstly, the democratisation of Information and
Communication Technologies (ICTs) has ensured
that computerised information systems are no
longer the domain of large corporates, but rather
extending to small and medium-sized organisations.
Even more dramatically, information systems are
changing the way governments work and many
students now investigate e-government systems.
These environments have proved to be different
from those of a large corporate, with much of
the current information-systems research being
undertaken in these settings.
Secondly, Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, blogging
and social networking have wrested the control of
Internet content generation from big business and
yielded it much more democratically to ordinary
individuals. At UCT, researchers were thrust into
the social sciences by having to investigate how
individuals and communities were reacting to
information technologies. With this came a change
in mindset about the nature of data to collect, the
underlying paradigms, and the theories to use to
frame an analysis.
Finally, mobile phones hold the promise to give
every African his or her own computing device, and
with it, access to previously unimaginable amounts
of information and computer power.
The transformation of the discipline does not
stop there. New information technologies such
as cloud computing, 3-D printing and biometrics,
virtualisation, augmented reality, and big data
emerge at an ever-faster rate, forcing us to relook
the way we work and train students. Applying a
transdisciplinary approach puts researchers in the
prime position to explore topics such as technology
innovation and entrepreneurship, security, and
governance approaches.