Open Source SMS Gateways Catalyze Social ...

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Open Source SMS Gateways Catalyze Social Services and Innovation in Developing Countries Bitebo, A., MSc. Software Engineering student, University of Gothenburg, Sweden,[email protected]

Abstract Today’s world peoples use internet as the source of information and a major tool of communication. Also internet accessing in developing countries facing the following challenges like expenses of buying a computer or smart phones and the cost of internet services as well. Developing countries have small percentage of internet penetration and large percentage of mobile subscribers, so SMS gateways can acts as alternative way to improve communication and information in social and economic sectors in developing countries. On this paper I will highlight how open source SMS gateway like Rapidsms (http://www.rapidsms.org) improves health service in East Africa. Rapidsms was used in different projects to provide easy way of collecting, accessing and managing of the health data. Also this open source SMS gateway can be used as short message service-based reporting system in other social services like education systems. Keywords: SMS gateway, Open source, Social services, value creation, value capture.

Introduction

1

Rapidly evolutional of technology in our daily life is standardizing our way of living. Information is becoming more important in human life. Peoples need information before design and implementing their plans or business. Not only peoples but also governments, companies and different organisations require information to accomplish their goals. “District Health Information System (DHIS) in itself is a mirror that shows the picture of DHIS to managers and policy makers, in district and national level” -

(Raeisi Ahmad et. al 2013)

Internet is one of the major sources of information in our everyday life. With existence of modern technological devices like smart phones, tablets, laptops and personal computers made the process of accessing information through internet much faster, easier and efficient. But this is quite challenging to achieve full advantages of accessing information over the internet in developing countries. Large percentage of normal citizens in these developing countries they cannot afford to buy these technological instruments. Based on this factor governments put much effort of building internet infrastructure in urban areas to support less percentage of people who can afford to buy laptop and smartphones (Jørn Braa et. al. 2001). Other challenges are internet subscription costs and slow connection in most part of these countries cause very low percentage of internet penetration (ITU fact and figures 2013). Having less percentage of internet penetrations, developing countries need an alternative way of accessing and processing real time information. Since a lot of social and economic sectors nowadays needs a proper ways of exchanging information between peoples, so as to achieve greater satisfaction of delivered product or services in a certain society. The cost of implementation of that technology is another issue to consider if it will be feasible for governments and citizens of those developing countries. Also how that technology will affect the existing way of working in these sectors and peoples knowledge to operate and use the alternative technology. This paper is structured as follows. In section 2 I will discuss the difference literatures and come up with three research questions. In section 3 explains the method I used to conduct this study. Findings of my study are presented in section 4. Finally in section 5 conclusions is discussed.

2

Theoretical background – Value creation and value capture

In describing the study I conducted to analyse the possibility of using SMS gateways as alternative media of transferring data between remote users and information systems in developing countries. I will elaborate how open source SMS gateways can create social, political and economic values to the society. Then I will show how some of the development countries government takes initiative to capture that social value to improve their social services like health services.

Source of information

3

Governments, organisations and companies use available information to draft their economic, socials and political plans. Even individual peoples require information to accomplish their daily life planning. Today’s world peoples use internet as the source of information and a major tool of communication. We use internet to access millions of information from millions of websites hosted in different servers around the world. Information becoming one of the important part of human daily life. Example businesspersons needs to accesses important information before making business decisions whether to buy or sell their service or products. A farmer needs to know the price of crops before selling his or her products. Even a normal citizen needs to access information about public transport schedule, news, weather and sports. But all of this information will be faster and more efficient through using of internet. In developing countries still they use manual paper work to documents and collect data from different organisations (Caroline Asiimwe et. al, 2011; Jørn Braa and Calle Hedberg, 2002). In this paper I will focus on how social services can be improved through using information systems, but still in many developed countries they have the following problems in accessing internet. I.

Low percentage of internet penetration It was estimated that in 2013 the internet penetration is 31 per 100 inhabitants from developing countries and is 16 per 100 inhabitants in Africa (ITU fact and figures 2013).

II.

Poor connection signals (Slow connection speed) The connection speed in many countries in Africa is from 256kbit/s to 2Mbit/s (ITU fact and figures 2013; Jørn Braa et. al. 2001).

III.

High internet connection and subscriptions costs The price of mobile-broadband is 11.3% to 24.7% of monthly GNI p.c in developing countries and from 38.8% to 54.6% in African countries which is almost more than 50% of GNI p.c (ITU fact and figures 2013).

IV.

Less internet coverage Less percentage of internet services coverage in developing countries because most of internet infrastructures are built in urban areas (Jørn Braa et. al. 2001).

V.

Cost of equipment Personal computer is quite much money to be afforded by normal citizens in developing countries.

VI.

Computer skills Many officers or people working in different companies, organisations in development countries have low knowledge or skills of using or operating computer and information systems (Jørn Braa et. al. 2001; Raeisi Ahmad et. al 2013; Sundeep Sahay and Geoff Walsham 2010). Poor level of skills of maintaining minor damaged or technical problem computers lead to about more than 10% of computer were abandoned. (Jørn Braa et. al. 2001; Sundeep Sahay and Geoff Walsham 2010).

Due to those challenges developing countries facing to access internet and based on relevant literatures I come up with this research question which is Research question 1: “Can SMS gateways be used as alternative media of accessing and supplying information in developing countries?”

Methods

4

In order to explore the possibility of using SMS gateways to overcome challenges faced by developed countries to access information over the internet. I collect data from the following websites (https://www.rapidsms.org/projects/) by analysing different projects implemented in developing countries. 4.1

Data collection and analysis

Data collection process used to do this study is to explore different projects implemented by collaboration between governments and UNICEF in developing countries. Secondary data were collected from different projects websites and examine the implementation of the particular project. Most of data collected was from health information systems projects. Project name mTrac Liga Inan Nigeria Birth Registration Project Mwana Ureport EduTrac DevTrac Table 1.

Country Uganda East Timor Nigeria

Project URL http://www.mtrac.ug/ http://ligainan.org/ http://rapidsmsnigeria.org/br

Sector Health Health Health

Malawi and Zambia

http://unicefinnovation.org/projects/p roject-mwana http://ureport.ug/ https://www.rapidsms.org/projects/e dutrac/ http://www.devtrac.ug/

Health

Uganda and Burundi Uganda Uganda

Democratic Education Public service

Lists of project and which countries they implemented.

Projects descriptions

4.2

Most of the projects explored in this study are developed due to the initiative taken by governments to improve offering of health services. Although there are others implemented to improve other social services like education and public services. 

Liga Inan – East Timor Liga Inan which means (“mobile Moms”) project was implemented in Manufahi, Timor-Leste districts (East Timor). The project target to improve the health of expected mothers and new born baby. Another project target is to improve communication between healthcare officers and patients and also communication between healthcare officers themselves.



Nigeria birth Registrations – Nigeria The project used to collects real time data of new born babies at different districts in Nigeria. The initiatives of implementing this project were to decentralize the monitoring process of registering new born babies in district level. Also the project used to manage vaccination logistics.



Project Mwana – Malawi & Zambia The project Mwana was implemented to improve the maternity health of expected woman and new born child by ensuring secure delivery of HIV (Dry Blood Spot, or DBS) tests. Another is improvement of communication between health officers and also health officers and parents.



mTrac – Uganda The mTrac project was implemented to speed up the process of sending weekly reports from district level to central system. Also a project allows citizens to send complaints about health services they received or suggestions of improvements of offered health services.



The Pamoja Project – Kenya The Pamoja project was implemented to improve the awareness and encouraging health workers on HIV prevention, care and treatment services at health centres.



Ureport – Uganda & Burundi The project was implemented to improve the possibility of citizens to contribute their ideas and work together with community leaders.



EduTrac – Uganda EduTrac project was implemented to collects data from local schools administrators and people who are closely living near to these schools. The weekly or monthly reports about students, teachers, school facilities and may be other social problems or activities happens close to the school are sent to central education monitoring system.

Results

5

In answering this study research question, I study different information systems implemented in developing countries to improve social services. By using SMS gateways these developing countries were able to overcome challenges they faced to access internet to implement real time and accurately information systems. The projects studied shows that even though there are problems of internet accessibility in developing countries, SMS gateways acts as a media of communication between central systems and mobile phones from remote areas. The data collected was available in real time so as to support local actions and data managements (Caroline Asiimwe et. al, 2011; Jørn Braa et. al. 2001). Nature and type of data exchanged in these information systems are suitable to be transmitted through SMS gateways. “The intended purposes of standards and routine health information systems are to provide information for decision-making, surveillance and statistics” -

(Jørn Braa and Calle Hedberg, 2002).

Also the decentralization and scaling of health information systems in developing countries shows a clear view of the offered services from district level to national level (Raeisi Ahmad et. al 2013; Sundeep Sahay and Geoff Walsham 2010)

5.1

Nature of transmitted data

Most of the data collected in social sector like health sector are daily, weekly or monthly reports (Caroline Asiimwe et. al, 2011; Jørn Braa and Calle Hedberg, 2002). These reports can be number of reported cases, diagnosis, treatments and even stock level (Caroline Asiimwe et. al, 2011; Jørn Braa and Calle Hedberg, 2002). Since the data transmitted over these information systems are short words and numbers, can easily be designed to “SMS form design” in which SMS can be designed to different block of words to fulfil report requirement and minimize the risk of errors (Caroline Asiimwe et. al, 2011). (More forms images at Appendix A)

Figure 1.

5.2

Sample of SMS form designed to collects test results from health centres (Caroline Asiimwe et. al, 2011).

Decentralization of the health information system

Decentralization and scaling of health information systems to districts level was done in developing countries to try to improve the health care services. In this case health centres are responsible to send data to their respective datasets, which will improve the focus on local analysis and usage of information from district level (Jørn Braa et. al. 2001).This will be easy for the people works on managing these information systems and also easy allocation of technical staffs to works of certain geographical area (Sundeep Sahay and Geoff Walsham 2010). 5.3

Reminder services

One of the useful features in health information systems is ability to send reminders to the system users. This can be health officers, patients, parents of the new born baby and may be system administrators. These reminders sometime need quick action or systematic preparation to handle them. The reminder can be sent to user at a quicker and about 90% read rate, if it will be sent inform of SMS (https://www.smsglobal.com). This can be achieved easily by using SMS gateways to handle the schedules of the system reminder settings.

5.4

Broadcasting services

Broadcast SMS service offered by SMS gateways can be used to send SMS directly to target user group. Example announcement of vaccination dates in a given region can be sent to all targeted users mobile phones instantly. Also these broadcast SMS can be used as a media communication between midwifes and registered patients in a given village (http://ligainan.org/).

5.5

Skills or knowledge required

Sending or reading a message in a mobile phone is common practices among large number of adult people in a society. So it will be easy process to integration of these health information system services to users. Also for the nature of the SMS service does not require installation of any software in a mobile phone because large number of people living in remote areas uses basic mobile phones (Caroline Asiimwe et. al, 2011). Also training of use these information systems to healthcare workers is not so complicated process, because its only needs them to follow standard of SMS form designed (Example as shown in figure 1 above) so as to reduce error on transmitted data (Caroline Asiimwe et. al, 2011). “One-day training was conducted for each district. Two frontline healthcare workers, the health center In-Charge and the records focal person, all from each health center, were designated for training on the use of the SMS-based reporting system.” -

(Caroline Asiimwe et. al, 2011)

5.6

Integrate and visualize real-time data on maps

The presentation of collected real time data in central web application in a well summarized and visualized way. Integration of these real-time data to the map by spotting the source of data so as can be easily processed and interpreted by policy maker and other stakeholders (Raeisi Ahmad et. al 2013).

Figure 2.

Screen capture of http://www.devtrac.ug/ to show how collected real-time data are presented. (More screen shots at Appendix B.)

“Whatever information transparency with assistance of proper and efficient information technology, and integrity in its components, shows a better picture of the organization, organizational units and services delivery methods” -

5.7

(Raeisi Ahmad et. al 2013).

Using of existing GSM network infrastructure

Another advantage these developed countries get on implementing these projects is existence of GSM network (Global System for Mobile communication) which is almost all over the country. Since SMS gateways used GSM network to link users to central information systems, it was found that less equipment was procured during implementation of those projects (Caroline Asiimwe et. al, 2011)

Discussions

6

In this study I presented different projects implemented in developing countries to improve social services. The collaboration between these countries government sectors and UNICEF improves the social activities like exchange of information between remote areas and central information systems. UNICEF innovation unit develop open source SMS gateway so as to improve the process of data collection in remote areas. “In his book on competitive advantage, Porter (1985) contends that, new value is created when firms develop/invent new ways of doing things using new methods, new technologies, and/or new forms of raw material.” -

(David Lepak et. al. 2007)

Based on the referred quote above, this tool creates a new value to the society by brought a new and easy way of communication to the users of the system who are in remote areas. Also these SMS gateway overcome challenges of accessing internet in developing countries and let government use this value created to develop decentralized health information systems to district levels. 6.1

Challenges of using SMS gateways in developing countries

Even though SMS gateways seems like a solution on improving communication between remote areas and central information systems. Still there are some challenges may hinder the implementation of these systems. 

GSM network coverage

As explained in (Appendix C) SMS gateways uses GSM network to complete communication between these information systems and mobile phone users. And still in some parts of the developed countries remote areas facing a problem of receiving GSM network signals (Caroline Asiimwe et. al, 2011).



Error proneness

The process of following SMS design form must be done very carefully because incorrectly submission of messages will cause transmission of wrong informations. Example if health office submits number of positive RDTs was greater than number of RTD tests performed signals (Caroline Asiimwe et. al, 2011). 

Personal factors

In one of the study was observed that, health care works does not want to use health information systems because these reporting systems seem as the way to legitimate their work. .

7

Conclusion

The UNICEF innovation unit initiatives of developing open source SMS gateway brings a new way of communication in our society especially in developing countries where they have low percentage on internet penetration, internet infrastructures problems, high internet subscription cost, price of smartphones or computers and lack of skills to operate or maintain computer information systems. Now having nearly 200 contributors in its community, rapidsms has been able to operate as robust and large scale SMS gateway (Linus Dahlander and Mats Magnusson, 2005). Furthermore in most of the project explored in this study, were successfully implemented in developing. On using open source SMS gateways these development countries were able to establish way of transmitting information from remote areas to central information systems. Also these SMS gateways was designed to detect errors or messages that did not pass built-in data logistic tests and send notification to a user submitted that data (Caroline Asiimwe et. al, 2011).On which they improves the process of collecting real-time and accurate information and transparency of the data collected helps governments and other stakeholders to perform required actions. Developing countries government can take advantage of these open source software like rapidsms developed by UNICEF’s innovation unit to improve not only social services like health care which is most covered by this study but also economic and political sectors as well.

References Asiimwe, C., Gelvin, D., Lee, E., Amor, Y., Quinto, E., Katureebe, C., Sundaram, L., Bell, D. and Berg, M. 2011. Use of an innovative, affordable, and open-source short message service--based tool to monitor malaria in remote areas of Uganda. The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene, 85 (1), p. 26. Braa, J. and Hedberg, C. 2002. The struggle for district-based health information systems in South Africa.The information society, 18 (2), pp. 113--127. Braa, J., Macome, E., Mavimbe, J., Nhampossa, J., Da Costa, J., Manave, A. and Sit\'Oi, A. 2001. A study of the actual and potential usage of information and communication technology at district and provincial levels in Mozambique with a focus on the health sector. The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 5. Dahl, Er, L. and Magnusson, M. 2005. Relationships between open source software companies and communities: Observations from Nordic firms. Research Policy, 34 (4), pp. 481--493. Devtrac.ug. 2013. DevTrac | Real time reporting on public services in Uganda. [online] Available at: http://www.devtrac.ug/ [Accessed: 15 Dec 2013]. ICT FACTS AND FIGURE 2013. 2013. [e-book] Geneva, Switzerland: ICT Data and Statistics Division, International Telecommunication Union. pp. 1-7. Available through: http://www.itu.int/en/ITUD/Statistics/Pages/facts/default.aspx [Accessed: 15 Dec 2013]. Lepak, D., Smith, K. and Taylor, M. 2007. Value creation and value capture: a multilevel perspective.Academy of management review, 32 (1), pp. 180--194. Ligainan.org. 2013. Liga Inan - Connecting pregnant women & their midwives. [online] Available at: http://ligainan.org/ [Accessed: 15 Dec 2013]. Mtrac.ug. 2013. Home | Mtrac. [online] Available at: http://www.mtrac.ug/ [Accessed: 15 Dec 2013]. Oluwarantil, A., Afolabi, B., Abiona, O., Olugboji, T., Onime, C. and Kehinde, L. 2013. Design of a university-based information service centre with SMS notification (Obafemi Awolowo University as a case study). pp. 1--6. Raeisi, A., Saghaeiannejad, S., Karimi, S., Ehteshami, A. and Kasaei, M. 2013. District HealtH information system assessment: a case stuDy in iran. Acta Informatica Medica, 21 (1), p. 30. Rapidsms.org. 2013. RapidSMS: Projects. [online] Available at: https://www.rapidsms.org/projects/ [Accessed: 15 Dec 2013]. Rapidsms.org. 2013. RapidSMS: eduTrac. [online] Available at: https://www.rapidsms.org/projects/edutrac/ [Accessed: 15 Dec 2013]. Rapidsmsnigeria.org. 2013. Birth Registration Dashboard - RapidSMS. [online] Available at: http://rapidsmsnigeria.org/br [Accessed: 15 Dec 2013].

Sahay, S. and Walsham, G. 2006. Scaling of health information systems in India: Challenges and approaches. Information Technology for Development, 12 (3), pp. 185--200. SMSGlobal. 2013. SMSGlobal | Global SMS Gateway With Web SMS, Email SMS and APIs. [online] Available at: https://www.smsglobal.com [Accessed: 15 Dec 2013]. Thesms.in. 2013. SMS Gateway Solutions Bulk SMS Gateway India-Thesms.In. [online] Available at: http://thesms.in/india-bulk-sms-services-delhi/bulk-sms-gateway-solutions.html [Accessed: 15 Dec 2013]. Unicefinnovation.org. 2013. Project Mwana - UNICEF Innovation. [online] Available at: http://unicefinnovation.org/projects/project-mwana [Accessed: 15 Dec 2013]. Ureport.ug. 2013. Ureport - Voice Matters. [online] Available at: http://ureport.ug/ [Accessed: 15 Dec 2013].

Appendix A: Sample report forms

Form used before implementation of health information system (Jørn Braa et. al. 2001).

Form used before implementation of health information system (Caroline Asiimwe et. al, 2011)

Appendix B: Screen shot of different project websites

Screen capture of the website http://rapidsmsnigeria.org/br

Screen capture of the website http://ureport.ug/

APPENDIX C – HOW SMS GATEWAY WORKS SMS gateways are used to handle communications between desktop or web software application and mobile cellular network (Global System for Mobile Communication). In this case a user can send direct SMS from desktop or web software application to different mobile phone. Also a user can receive direct SMS from mobile phone to the desktop or web software application (Oluwaranti, A.I.et al).

Image shows how SMS gateway operate to connect information system users and mobile phone users Image downloaded from the following URL (http://thesms.in/india-bulk-sms-services-delhi/bulk-sms-gateway-solutions.html)