October 2010: In view of the increasing need to qualify and verify crowdsourced information, the ICT4Peace Foundation helped the development of the Matrix plugin for the Ushahidi platform. Used in the Ushahidi instance set up to monitor the Tanzanian national elections on 31st October 2010, this plugin essentially requires pre-trained reporters in the field tagging reports with the following for reports they enter into the system:
- Source Reliability
- Information Probability
When the reports are filtered into the back-end, administrators via the analysis plugin would then see the attached matrix on tagged reports, which helps with making analyses’, finding related reports and/or possibly creating new reports to shield the actors involved in some of these reports.
Click here for larger version.
The Matrix plugin can also complement technologies such as SwiftRiver by Ushahidi, providing a more nuanced view of ground reports that can feed into more timely decision-making, plus providing a more robust foundation for accountability.
For more details and screen grabs of the plugin, download this one-page PDF.
Update: Ushahidi has a compelling write-up of the plugin on their site. Visit the page here, or download the post as a PDF here.