One-woman IT show

BBC NEWS | Technology | Mature villager joins digital era

I like anecdotal stories about succesful IT deployments in the developing world. I like them partially because to a certain degree they vindicate my interest in deploying Internet and Communication technologies in the developing world.

And interestingly enough most of the succesful anecdotes focus on small projects, either research projects, or ideas developed by locals to solve local problems and where IT is an afterthought rather than the raison d'etre.

And especially those projects that were started by people with no IT background, based on an identified neeed and with an explicit problem to solve. In fact my ideal line of work would be helping people who see those needs use IT and the Internet more effectively to solve those problems. I don't want to (and can't) identify the needs of locals in the developing world, but I can solve problems, visualize potential and make things happen.

This story on BBC News is exactly the story of a local woman who is using IT to solve a very real problem. Low-cost, grassroots and cool to the bone.

"Water is very precious in Rajasthan. It is so useful to have a water map," she said at a workshop in Bangalore on technology and development.

"All the details of the surveys of water resources are incorporated in the maps. There are 3,000 women in 250 villages working on such surveys," she said.