Challenge
Help the Population Reference Bureau leverage the Internet for information sharing among the many NGOs, including small and remotely located organizations, working to improve living conditions in less developed countries.
Forum One Solution
The Population and Health InfoShare aims to improve living conditions in less developed countries by advancing knowledge in child health, reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, and population. The InfoShare provides a means and incentives for organizations to share important information and lessons learned.
Forum One Communications was hired by PRB during the conceptual phase of this project. Initial challenges included:
- Motivating small organizations to contribute their information.
- Making participation, including the technology tools, easy and intuitive for low-bandwidth and non-English speaking users.
- Initiating and growing the base of contributing organizations.
- Growing the base of users accessing this information routinely.
- Ensuring quality control of the information contributing organizations make available through the InfoShare.
Following an analysis of the interests and constraints of target partners and users, Forum One Communications developed the following components:
- a database to store information about the partner organizations and the documents they submit
- a public Web site where anyone can view, search, and sort the full document library in the database, including a number of Web features to highlight quality materials, like display of the most recent and most frequently read materials
- a special Web page and unique URL for each partner organization, so that they have their own Web page that describes their organization, contact information, and their own document library
- a database-integrated email system which lets anyone retrieve documents from the InfoShare via automated email request without having to visit the Web site, and which lets people subscribe to automatic monthly email updates listing all new documents received on the topics they're most interested in
- private access administrative pages for the partners to manage their own information and upload new materials.
- a special monthly email to all partners listing statistics about how many times their InfoShare Web page and materials have been accessed by users.
As of March 2005, more than 1,200 documents had been submitted by 115 contributing organizations, and these documents had been downloaded via the Web and e-mail tools more than 20,000 times.
Forum One Communications continues to advise the Population Reference Bureau on the management and refinement of the InfoShare.
|
