Ushahidi, one of the winners of USAID's 2008 Development 2.0 Challenge, was highlighted by the World Economic Forum as a "disruptive innovator" in information technology for not only developing groundbreaking products and services, but also redesigning business and society.

The ninth annual Tech Museum Awards, which celebrate social entrepreneurs and innovation, were held on November 19 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center.  Fifteen "Tech Laureates" were selected from the fields of environment, equality, economic development, health, and education; five won cash prizes of $50,000.

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) should be a tool for a development and not viewed as a pancea for all development challenges in emerging markets, panelists agreed at the Net Impact 2009 conference in Ithaca, New York.
 

On November 3, during her remarks at the Forum for the Future in Morocco, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced the Civil Society 2.0 Initiative.

Perhaps taking a page from Hans Rosling's extremely popular presentation of development data at the 2006 TED Talks, the World Bank now has its own publicly accessible tool for data visualisation. This first version of the tool contains 49 indicators for 209 countries taken from the World Development Indicators.

The Mobile Citizen Project, which aims to fund and support mobile initiatives for social change in Latin America, launches today. The program is a project of the Science and Technology Division of the Inter-American Development Bank, with the support of the Italian Trust Fund for Information and Communication Technology for Development. MobileActive.org is a media partner, powering the Program's "Ideas Box."

USAID is perhaps an exemplar of a government agency using open-source technology to achieve its goals. The agency has already launched initiatives that have opened dialogue on international development, long before President Obama openly cited a need for new media in the government.

Two days ago I posted an analysis on the flow of news and crowd-sourced reporting during a crisis situation. It touched upon recent events here in Kampala as well as the Mumbai Attacks, and events in Iran and China. The observation was that many of the current tools that people use during these situations, aren’t designed to be as useful as they could be.

Andrew McLaughlin, Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer for Internet Policy, said during his closing keynote at yesterday's Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington that his 'things to get to' list contains an intriguing potential to-do: an official, searchable intranet where federal government employees each have a individual profile that would list areas of expertise, core competencies, and, naturally, contact information so that folks could connect up with one another.