Mapeando para mejoramiento social.

Monitor.

June 4th, 2009 Mapping a better world From The Economist print edition. Software: Interest groups around the world are using mapping tools and internet-based information sources to campaign for change.

Areas with fewer parks (lighter rather than darker green) have higher rates of childhood obesity (larger red circles)

CONVINCING people about the evils of housing segregation can be tough, says Barbara Samuels, a campaigner for fair housing at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Maryland. "People say, 'What's so bad about living in an all-black neighbourhood?' " she explains. But using a map that displays all the vacant houses in a segregated neighbourhood, how few jobs exist there and how little public transport is available, "you can show graphically how people are segregated from opportunity," she says. "Maps help you take complex information and portray it in a clear, intuitive manner. You can show segregation in a way that talking about it doesn't do." And compiling such maps is much easier than it used to be, thanks to new mapping tools and sources of information on the internet. Ms Samuels remembers, for example, the tedium of trying to draw basic data on maps by hand in the 1990s. But in 2005 she was able to use maps that displayed 14 indicators of opportunity—created for her by a mapping-technology specialist—to help win a housing-desegregation court case. For most people it is merely a handy tool to find a nearby pizzeria or get directions to a meeting. But mapping technology has matured into a tool for social justice. Whether it is to promote health, safety, fair politics or a cleaner environment, foundations, non-profit groups and individuals around the world are finding that maps can help them make their case far more intuitively and effectively than speeches, policy papers or press releases. "Today you are allowed to visualise data in ways you couldn't even understand just a few years ago," says Jeff Vining of Gartner, a consulting firm. Along with web-based resources, coalescence around more advanced tools has also helped, such as the emergence of ESRI, based in Redlands, California, as the market leader in mapping software. And the rise of open-source projects such as MapServer, PostGIS and GRASS GIS have made sophisticated mapping available to non-profit groups with limited resources. All this has made it much easier to create maps that explain—at a glance—something that might otherwise require pages of tables or verbiage. "A percentage or a table is still abstract for people," says Dan Newman of MAPLight.org, a group based in Berkeley, California that charts the links between politicians and money. "With maps, you can show people how an abstract concept connects to where they live." Wendy Brawer, founding director of GreenMap.org, a mapping site based in New York used by people in 54 countries, says maps can make a point even if they are in a foreign language. "Maps are really helpful for that 'Aha!' moment," she says. For example, "The Grim Reaper's Road Map: An Atlas of Mortality in Britain", published in 2008, reveals that the places with the highest numbers of smokers also have the highest rates of death from lung cancer. No surprise there. But the collection of maps from a British publisher of public-policy books also shows that cervical cancer is more likely to strike those in the north of England, and brain cancer is more prevalent in the south of Scotland. Such revelations can lead to investigations and eventual health improvements. The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in Columbus, Ohio, which created the maps used in Ms Samuel's ACLU court case, has made "opportunity" maps of several American cities. The aim is to help people find neighbourhoods where jobs, health care, safety and public transport are in better supply—or to spur the creation of more such neighbourhoods. Rob Breymaier of MoveSmart.org, a non-profit group that encourages people to "move to opportunity", recalls using Kirwan's maps in Chicago in 2006 to help a family of eight. "They ended up finding a place in the north-west suburbs, which is a huge change from Chicago's south side," he says. The children ended up in better schools and stayed out of trouble, he says. Others have used maps to expose violence. Ushahidi.com was launched by four technologists to map citizen reports of post-election violence in Kenya last year using Google Maps. "We're building a platform that makes it easier to gather information around a crisis so that governments, or whoever is trying to hide the crisis, can't do it anymore," says Erik Hersman, Ushahidi's operations director. Sequences of maps can also be used to debunk misconceptions. Many in Los Angeles were pleased, for example, to learn that gun violence had decreased since the mid-1990s. But by developing a series of maps showing where shootings continued to happen, a local non-profit group called Healthy City was able to show that for some Los Angelenos, gun violence was as bad as ever. MAPlight used a similar time-lapse approach to show the influence of money on congressional votes. Starting in January 2007, it tracked which states (those growing sugar-beets and sugar-cane, it turned out) were making the most generous political donations in the run-up to a vote in July 2007 on subsidies for the sugar industry. But once the vote was tallied and the subsidy granted, states that had appeared bright red with political contributions suddenly revert to tan, indicating an instant drop in donations. "We make visible and real something that is usually invisible and abstract," says Mr Newman. Changing the way American politics is funded is a tall order. But some map-based campaigns have already produced clear results. For example, the Food Trust, a campaign group based in Philadelphia, used maps as part of its fight to reduce diet-related disease and malnutrition in urban parts of America. "I remember the first supermarket-commission meeting," says Jennifer Kozlowski, special assistant for the environment to David Paterson, the governor of New York. "Some of the maps in the report mapped obesity-related deaths and access to produce markets. It was as clear as day that something needed to be done." In January Mr Paterson announced the Healthy Food/Healthy Communities Initiative, including $10m in grants and loans for supermarket projects in under-served communities. Such examples underscore why campaigners are rushing to make the most of map technology. "We don't just want to be about mapping," says John Kim of Healthy City. "Maps don't change the world—but people who use maps do."

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June 03, 2009. New strides in mobility signal opportunity calling "The immediate need for mobile technology in today's economic times is to lower costs of doing business." Right now there are over three billion cell phones in use throughout the world, which easily eclipses the installed base of personal computers. So how can midsized businesses get more out of the explosion of mobile devices? Think more employee efficiency, says David Brigida, a business executive for mobility and end-user services at IBM. "I think these handheld devices—the smart phones—are getting so powerful that they're really becoming a great tool, specifically in communication and collaboration," he says. "They're going to be effective in increasing employee productivity." Brigida's enthusiasm is understandable. As our systems and processes become more interconnected, our mobile devices need to evolve to keep pace with the new ways we work and live. And as mobile capabilities continue to evolve, midsized companies are discovering new ways to work smarter to be more flexible and responsive to customers. Today's pocket-sized devices can make work smarter—and midsized businesses more competitive—by providing a host of new capabilities, such as instant messaging and presence awareness. To leverage them for the sake of a smarter workforce, consider some best practices in mobile security and provisioning. Pilot program boosts the IQ of mobile phones Low cost, high bandwidth, wireless access, and better browsing capabilities are accelerating the promise of the mobile phone as a compelling platform for accessing information services. A glimpse into the very near future of mobility can be found in recent work performed as part of IBM's first-of-a-kind (FOAK) BlueStar pilot, which recognized this paradigm shift and developed automated mobile management services for insurance claims processing. The pilot enabled an insurance company to significantly reduce the amount of time required to process claims by leveraging technology to locate—and contact—the most appropriate and available claims adjusters for each case. The right agent was identified through a combination of GPS location technology, presence awareness capabilities and calendaring functions, and the case information was sent to the agent. Integrating new technology and business processes like these are a big step for many industries, explains IBM's Randy Moulic, manager of mobile services research. "There's a challenge to get insurance companies into a more computerized environment for most of their field workers—truly computerize and mobilize their business processes. It is a huge step for them." In order to make this big step, Moulic says, smarter devices like advanced handhelds needed to be provided in a way that ensured security. On the back end, BlueStar ensured that mobile workers at the insurance company could access information securely as well as more effectively. "We only put corporate and policyholder confidential information out onto the phone during the time period of the transaction of the claim," Moulic explains. "The agent in the field does the processing, and then, boom, all the critical information is sent back to the server, and information on the device is wiped clean by the back-end server so the field agent is not carrying around a whole lot of customer data." This policy-based approach to configuring information for on-the-go staff simplified the maintenance of mobile service products. Rather than having information dispersed on hundreds—or even thousands—of handheld devices, information briefly provisioned by a central server can be better monitored, upgraded and secured. The BlueStar pilot has demonstrated how to successfully deploy and manage mobile devices out to field workers. The approach enabled not only smarter device management, but also a smarter way to work. By leveraging BlueStar, the insurance company was able to integrate new technology and business processes, empowering mobile workers and boosting their productivity. The mobility menu expands According to Moulic, BlueStar capabilities are likely to be generally available by the end of 2009. But in the meantime, midsized businesses with employees on the go can investigate a number of mobility advances that are either available now or will be shortly. In the future, adds Brigida, traveling executives and road warriors will find even more ways to spur productivity and efficiency with mobility. As an example, he points out that many people use separate phones for personal and company business. "You don't want to carry multiple devices with you, a personal device and an enterprise device when you're traveling," he observes. "I think the dual-mode phone is something that in the short term—maybe in the next two years—could change the way we operate." Professionals in a number of industries are also likely to find more ways to quickly capture information remotely or while on the go. "Mobile technology can be used in a number of ways in healthcare—certainly to create and capture information quickly and at once in a hospital environment so you get that electronic medical record," Brigida explains. "I also see where mobile technology can be used for patient monitoring—connected to devices that do critical measurements in the home—being able to lower costs." Learn more from presence awareness to smarter grids, see how cities like Masdar City in the United Arab Emirates are getting smarter. Beyond BlueStar: See how IBM is making strides in Mobile Web Research and what's on the horizon for consumers and businesses alike. Whitepaper from Frost & Sullivan: Enterprise mobility applications for the small and midsized business. Presence awareness appears likely to be another big draw. For example, technologies are now available that allow users to set parameters for how they would like to be contacted at different times of day, or in specific situations. And just ahead, says Moulic, presence awareness seems poised to play a big part in making cities smarter. He points to the pilot smart city program in Masdar City in the United Arab Emirates as an example of what the future may hold. There, commuters will soon use mobile devices to order driverless electric cabs. Built-in presence awareness capabilities based on GPS and context-based awareness technologies, he says, will ensure that residents of this planned smart city will get to their destinations on time. Four steps to making smart mobility work In the here and now there are several things midsized businesses can do to start taking advantage of new mobility capabilities—while also setting themselves up for future advances. It all starts with security and provisioning, Brigida says. As he notes: "You have an asset out there that can easily be lost or stolen—and device management becomes very important." With these concerns in mind, he suggests that midsized businesses consider four areas critical to securing and provisioning mobile devices and technologies: Use asset management and tracking. As Brigida notes, technology is now available that allows IT departments to easily deploy—and delete—data over the air, or remotely. This, he explains, cuts costs in making mobile workers more productive, while also helping to secure critical information. Keep data safe—regardless of what happens to the phone. Because these devices are small, they are easily lost and stolen. This makes a disaster recovery plan essential—not just to protect critical data, but to remain in compliance with data regulations that require companies to be able to track and manage devices containing sensitive information. It's important, says Brigida, to be able to "back up and restore my devices, either on a user-initiated backup and restore or on a predetermined basis set by my policy. So if something happens to the device, I can quickly send out a new device to someone, and they can simply restore it over the air." Give employees access to real-time support. Ensuring that employees stay connected and more productive should be an important consideration for midsized businesses, Brigida says. "Have the ability to solve problems real-time. You don't have to send that device back to the office just to reconfigure the device," he advises. Choose a hosting platform ready for universal access. Hosted support should take into account all the ways in which mobile technology is used. "You have many carriers and you have many devices—the challenge is being able to take advantage of various devices in an enterprise and also personal devices in an enterprise across a variety of networks," Brigida says. Put together, these steps can go a long way in making the workplace smarter. "The number one thing they want to do out there is improve worker productivity," says Brigida of companies with mobile workforces. "The immediate need I see for mobile technology in today's economic times is to lower costs of doing business," he adds. But as mobile devices begin to eclipse other kinds of electronics, such as personal computers, midsized businesses can get ready to connect with new opportunities for greater competitiveness. Open article at ibm.com About IBM

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