Welcome to the Global Development Commons!
What is the Global Development Commons?
The Global Development Commons is an office within the United States Agency for International Development that promotes innovations for international development through knowledge sharing, partnerships, and collaborative problem-solving. Identifying and fostering innovations through open approaches can improve our ability to deliver on our core mission at USAID. We seek to enable any citizen of this world to co-create solutions to common problems because no single actor can solve today’s global challenges. Dave Ferguson is the Director of the Global Development Commons.
Why does the Global Development Commons have a website?
GlobalDevelopmentCommons.net: where technology, innovation and international development meet.
The Global Development Commons created the www.GlobalDevelopmentCommons.net site to provide an online space for anyone interested in international development to identify, strengthen, and promote the best new ideas. In its first and current version, GlobalDevelopmentCommons.net aggregates stories about the top technologies with innovative international development applications, and events and programs that promote open and transparent collaboration. The GDC is currently working to build a richer and more dynamic platform which will be able to host an online community of technology innovators and international development practitioners from around the world to share ideas and collaborate to improve the development efforts.
What is the Mission and Vision of GlobalDevelopmentCommons.net?
The mission of GlobalDevelopmentCommons.net is to create an open, online platform for anyone who seeks to improve opportunities in developing countries. Development practitioners, company leaders, and community activists in developing and developed countries come here to connect and collaborate, innovating together to solve some of the world's greatest development challenges. GlobalDevelopmentCommons.net seeks to become a thriving, collaborating community (both online and off) who co-create opportunities by sharing localized and regional challenges and working through them with others so that more people may elevate themselves out of poverty.
Why is the GlobalDevelopmentCommons.net site important to USAID?
Through GlobalDevelopmentCommons.net, USAID will demonstrate how the U.S. Government delivers transparency, collaboration and participation in international development. Discussions on the site will identify and promote awareness of potential innovations for USAID. As an "innovation sandbox," it will provide the experimental discussion that lets the community source, vet, and bring forward the best innovations for better development.
Why should you visit?
At GlobalDevelopmentCommons.net, anyone has the opportunity to be at the center of international development as active, empowered and empowering members of an online community. As our website develops into a dynamic community, development practitioners from agencies around the world have the opportunity to share specific challenges and results with students, practitioners and citizens in a number of fields who may have unusually-linked but most appropriate solutions for one another's challenges. As the site evolves it will become the online host of competitive challenges, digital brainstorming experiences, online collaboration and innovation around specific projects, policies and goals.
What does the Global Development Commons do?
Shares information— news, investments, forecasts, resources, training, data; the GDC has built www.GlobalDevelopmentCommons.net, a site that profiles and promotes successful applications of technology to international development efforts.
Builds communities around tools that help disseminate and interpret information; for example using open source intuitive 3D mapping systems to match needs with opportunities and inform decision-making around the African trade corridors and disaster response in Bangladesh. In the future, the GlobalDevelopmentCommons.net site will become an online community.
Taps innovation through competitive challenges designed to bring the best new technology into development work; last year the GDC launched the 2008 USAID Development 2.0 Challenge to solicit cutting-edge mobile technology applications to implement in development work. The next Development 2.0 Challenge will be launched at the end of 2009.
Identifies technology solutions through pilots that improve access to market information, health resources, and education services; the GDC sparked the integration of advanced Google search tools into USAID, and advises parts of the agency on the best practices in new technology, increasing access for all people to agency information and projects. The Global Development Commons works to promote new ways for people to collaborate online within USAID, within the U.S. Government, and around the world.
Partners with other development actors, including companies, donors, governments, and non-profits, to take successes to scale.
USAID seeks partners who bring a dynamic vision for the Commons.
Together, we can find solutions to development challenges.
Download USAID's external fact sheet for the Global Development Commons.
Send us your ideas for how to make GlobalDevelopmentCommons.net a better place for you to share your story!
Learn more about the initiative and this site from this Devex article.
"It's more than an acknowledgment, it's an enthusiastic embrace," of new technology, Wilson said. "The business of USAID is creating change. One of the most powerful forces in change are networks. What Web 2.0 represents to us is a new way of doing business. The way that these new technologies allow us to do things in a better way opens up all kinds of opportunities for us as a development institution."
Here are some videos that demonstrate the power of the Global Development Commons approach:
Bangladesh Disaster Response Commons
West Africa Food Security Commons
Click here to learn more about USAID, the US government agency through which the American people offer foreign assistance to developing countries.
The Global Development Commons began in 2007 as an initiative of former USAID Administrator Henrietta H. Fore. You can also find us at the USAID Global Development Commons site.
