Karen Turner: Harnessing the Power of Mobile Devices

In the past few years, mobile phones have emerged as the most readily available technology in the developing world. So what would happen if this new access to cell phones could be harnessed to foster international development?

This is the question that Karen Turner and the Global Development Commons team at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) asked themselves and their partners in July of 2008.

Out of this question came the 2008 USAID 2.0 Challenge, an open, global competition designed to spur innovative ideas for using mobile technology to "improve the way international development is done." In the process, Turner and her team have begun a quiet revolution, one still in its infancy that could represent a sea change.

"For many years, international development was top down. This project is about having citizens participate in their own development," said Turner. "The best part is we are really making a contribution. We're blowing it open. Not only are we going beyond the Beltway, we're bringing in the whole world."

The USAID competition reached out to nontraditional sources -- students, budding entrepreneurs all over the world, and anyone with a good idea -- and asked them to submit their ideas online for harnessing the power of mobile devices to solve an important problem of their choosing in developing nations. There were 115 submissions, which were listed online and open to the public for suggestions to help improve and refine the ideas.

Erik Hersman works for the small start-up Ushahidi, one of this year's winners. His organization was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008.

"We took the feedback sent to us by people on the site, and via e-mail and phone calls, to fine tune it. This is the type of process we enjoy, because it forces us to do our best work," said Hersman.

Ushahidi won for its program that enables people to provide information about international crises in real time through mobile devices. The group seeks to verify the information with local nongovernmental organizations, and make it available online.

Turner, a Washington, D.C. native, started her career as a Wall Street lawyer but joined USAID in 1985, and has worked in Asia, the Caribbean and the Middle East.

Turner, 53, has been instrumental in highlighting the value of Web 2.0 technology to many of her peers who are admittedly less tech-savvy than many of the agency's younger employees.

"The challenge that we found is that the decision-makers are different from the new staff coming on board -- we understand the value of things like blogs, but we don't use them, so we had to persuade people that this is valuable to our development work when it's not something that they do themselves, and let them know that this is a vital part of the agency's mission," said Turner.

By adopting the community-based technique known as crowdsourcing through use of online and mobile technology, Turner and her team are making USAID's approach more open, more collaborative and certainly more tech-friendly.

"It's an effective way to unearth the compelling projects going on around the world and bring attention and funds to building them further," said Lisa Croel, director of the Tech Museum of Innovation in California. "By helping pull these people together, you also cut down on duplication of effort or very similar efforts around the world and you allow humanitarian solutions to be found and deployed faster."

For Turner, it's all about results. Asked what her favorite part of her job is, she replies "solving problems."

This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Visit www.ourpublicservice.org for more about the organization's work to recognize the men and women who serve our nation.