Call for Problems

"Do you have a problem that affects thousands of people that could potentially be solved through mobile technology? Then, submit it to Mobile Citizen!"

In respond to our "Call for Problems" open from October 20th to November 19th, we received a total number of 124 problems from 22 countries.

The team is now in the process of carefully reviewing each proposal.
The organizations with the preselected proposals will be notified by end of December.

Have a look at the map for more details:

The Call for Problems is now closed! Thanks to everyone who participated!

We are looking for practical and real-world problems. This initiative would ultimately create viable and sustainable mobile technology-based services that address these challenges and spread social and economic benefits in developing communities and countries in the LAC region.

More than anything, we need to hear from you what your needs are through the Call for Problems (CFP). We hope to receive problems from strong institutions that are deeply involved with the community, aware of underlying and/or systemic problems, and capable of being a catalyst for changes.

If you would like to participate, read our guidelines, fill out the problem submission form and send it to mobile@iadb.org..

The CFP begins at noon Eastern Time (EST) on Tuesday, October 20, 2009 and ends at 06:00:00 PM EST on Thursday, November 19, 2009.

The Program will provide technical and financial support, ranging from $30,000 to $100,000, for the development of citizen-centric services that benefit the majority of people through innovative use of mobile technology.

Who can participate?

This Call for Problems (CFP) is open to any public or private institution, for-profit or non-profit organization, research and development center, and academic institution in the LAC region.

Participant institutions are encouraged to ally themselves with appropriate partners in order to allow public-private links and to balance between technology and development experience. This will also provide the foundation for implementing the solutions and forming the appropriate grant scheme.

1. The "Call for Problems (CFP)" is open to public or private institutions, for-profit or non-profit organizations, research and development centers as well as academic institutions, (Collectively, "Participant"). Individuals and multilateral organizations are NOT eligible.

2. The CFP is open to Participants from all IDB borrowing member countries (for more information: http://www.iadb.org/countries).

3. Participant Organizations must be familiar and directly involved with the problems that they are submitting. The institution must deal daily with the problem they describe.

4. Those Participant Organizations that currently have or previously have had a project at a pilot level using mobile technology, but want to scale up the solution, are also eligible to apply.

5. All Participants must be legal entities in their countries, i.e. be legally registered as a business, institution, organization, etc. They must have the legal capacity to enter into an agreement with a multilateral institution like the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

6. Participants are encouraged to ally themselves with appropriate partners in order to allow public-private links and to balance between technology and development experience. This will also provide the foundation for implementing the solutions and forming the appropriate grant scheme.

7. Selected Participants should contribute towards counterpart support. The selected participants will also work together with IDB and partners to support the mobile services implementation.

8. Participants are welcome to seek and use third party financing (resources and technical support). These additional sources of support must be highlighted in the Problem Submission Form.

9. Participants are strongly encouraged to work closely with universities and other research organizations.

10. The CFP is looking for citizen-centric, real-world problems and will not support any arrangements for institutional strengthening proposes.

11. The official rules and the decisions of the IDB and independent judges are final and binding in all respects. All applicable federal, state and local laws and regulations apply.

12. The Participants acknowledge and agree that the IDB does not have now, nor shall it have in the future, any duty or liability, direct or indirect, vicarious, contributory, or otherwise, with respect to the infringement or protection of any copyright in and to his/her application.

The program will provide funding in the form of grants ranging from $30,000 to $100,000 USD. These grants will be used to develop and implement a maximum of 8 mobile service projects to tackle concrete and severe problems affecting low-income citizens in cities and rural areas of the LAC region.

The selected organizations, which are the institutions with the selected problems, are encouraged to contribute additional funds for the project implementation as counterpart financing. This counterpart funding will provide extra resources for the project and will allow the grantee organization to demonstrate their commitment toward the project.

The selected organizations will work together with local partners in the private sector that will add on to the financial support and that will provide further technical assistance in the implementation and deployment of the mobile services

Health: mHealth (mobile health) is largely defined as health practices supported by mobile devices. It can improve the efficiency and efficacy of existing systems, advance new systems, and ultimately distribute health care benefits across society.

Potential benefits include, but are not limited to, the following: support remote diagnosis and treatment, enhance clinical outcomes and productivity while reducing costs, collect and monitor real-time health data, increase equity, advance health education and research in even the most remote and resource poor environments, reduce the distance between health facilities and people, among others.

Education: mLearning (mobile learning) is a valuable tool for delivering educational services, tools, and materials anytime and anywhere, increasing the access to education for all and taking advantage of the learning opportunities offered by mobile technologies.

Potential benefits include, but are not limited to, the following: overcome physical distance, reduce educational costs, enhance educational quality, enable schools and teachers to more effectively deliver educational materials to students through unconventional channels, increase equality of educational opportunity, among others.

Government: mGovernment (mobile government) represents an evolution in eGovernment, offering additional transformative opportunities for government agencies and citizens. It enables innovative government services and applications to run on mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and other mobile wireless devices.

Potential benefits include, but are not limited to: easy access to the most recent information available, reduction in administrative paperwork time and costs, more efficiency and quality of government services, better accessibility for citizens to public services, more transparency and accountability, and elimination of physical traveling for government officials.

Commerce: mCommerce (mobile commerce) enables the buying and selling of goods and services through mobile wireless devices, as well as the access to marketing information. Today, many more people have access to mobile phones than to desktop computers, which means they can access services wherever they are. mCommerce offers significant opportunities for small and medium enterprises to reach out to consumers and suppliers faster and easier than ever before.

Potential benefits include, but are not limited to: improved access to information such as stock quotes and weather forecast, bringing the demand closer to the available supply of service and products, collection of up-to-date information to deliver effective services, increase in income and decrease of consumer prices, improvement in access to markets, among others.

Employment: A novel approach in facilitating access to employment opportunities through mobile phones. Possible features include: receiving job opportunities via SMS, job search, career advice, matching of job-seekers with recruiters and employers, completion of simple tasks like translations or transcriptions etc.

Potential benefits include, but are not limited to: Increased participation of low-wage workers without access to computers in employment and work-related activities, help for job-seekers and employers to get in contact anywhere and anytime, and dynamic job creation.

Social protection: The topic refers to policies, strategies and programs aimed at assisting the most vulnerable segments of society such as the poor, people with physical, mental and developmental disabilities, people that reside in remote rural areas, immigrants and others. Projects should promote social assistance, help capacity building, attempt to build efficient labor markets, diminish people's exposure to risks, and so on. Government agencies and organizations can leverage the potential of mobile phones to provide such services and information to the vulnerable population, as well as the general public.

Potential benefits include, but are not limited to: communicate human rights violations, communicate vaccination campaigns, practice reading and writing skills using the mobile phone.

Need more inspiration? Check our Ideas Box

The Mobile Citizen Selection Committee is comprised of IDB specialists in the fields of ICT and other areas of interest. The Committee will also include a Technical Advisor from the Italian Trust Fund for ICT for Development (IID), as well as external advisors and mentors.

Aligned with the priorities of the IID, problems from El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador will have higher priority.

All problems will be carefully evaluated and the Committee will decide which ones will receive financing. An estimated 5 to 8 problems will be selected for funding. However, the IDB reserves the right to award fewer grants. The Participant Organization of the selected problem will be notified at the end of the 1st Phase (Problem Selection).

Note: Participant Organizations committed to provide a higher level of co-financing will have higher priority.

The Selection Committee will review and select the problems based upon the following criteria:

1. Relevance, severity and responsiveness to need: relevance and severity of the problem to be solved in terms of social inclusion and economic development (e.g. impact caused by the problem, number of people affected). The problem must be based on the pre-identification of real needs, actual or potential demand from the poor.

2. Quality and feasibility of solving the problem: appropriateness of budget, scope and scale, and technical feasibility of solving the problem. The potential to use mobile technology in implementing a reliable and affordable solution to address the problem. Indicators of scale may vary depending on the focus of the solution: sophistication of service, number of users, area to be covered, among others.

3. Institutional and organizational capacity: the degree of co-financing offered by the Participant or from other sources will be strongly considered. These additional sources of support demonstrate the institution's commitment towards the implementation of the solution. The Committee will also evaluate the institution’s experiences and accomplishments. Such criteria are proof of capability to carry out the work on implementing the solution.

4. Alliances with other organizations: degree of involvement and partnership(s) with companies, universities, institutions and non-governmental organizations; the program strongly encourages all forms of alliance and allows cash/in-kind contributions from other organizations.

5. Evaluability: The degree to which the effectiveness of the outcome can be demonstrated. This includes the objectives, indicators of interest and a proper evaluation plan. Preference will be given to projects that are compatible with an experimental evaluation design (i.e. random assignment of the intervention to the beneficiaries).

6. Replicability: the solution for the problem should have the potential for being replicated or adapted for broader needs inside the country or beyond.

7. Development impact and focus on the majority: solve the problem should be conducive to positive economic or social development effects for the poor. Participants are encouraged to consider gender and diversity issues.