IMPACT AT HUMAN SCALEToday, over 1 billion people living in the Asia Pacific can access critical information and communication technologies that just a decade earlier were largely out of reach.

By 2020, a billion more people globally, many of whom are living in emerging Asia, will access the Internet for the first time. Underemployed, below the poverty line, and living with only the most basic education, these newly minted “netizens” will undoubtedly benefit from a new level of access to information technology. More and more people will solve real problems using eGovernment apps, voter information tools, open education platforms, online business services, and public safety databases.

At the same time, new challenges will emerge as local leaders struggle to keep up with demand for services, unexpected conflicts arise, and innovation disrupts old economies. This is an unprecedented period in history with staggering implications for aid assistance and The Asia Foundation.

As these changes accelerate, The Asia Foundation is working in new ways to improve the lives of millions of people across the region. I invite you to learn more about how we are using technology and innovation to combat old challenges, and to consider how you can support this work during a time of accelerating opportunity and change.

David D. ArnoldPresident

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where citizens have a voice

where justice is effective

where leaders are ethical

The Asia Foundation

Together with our partners, we are

committed to Asia’s continued

development as a peaceful, just,

and thriving region of the world.

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THE NEXT 1 BILLIONIn the next 5 years, more people in Asia will access the Internet for the first time than have done so in the previous 30. This will have a profound effect on the rate of economic, political, and social change in the region.

Already home to more than 1.7 billion of the world’s unique mobile subscribers, the Asia Pacific is the global smartphone market’s largest region. But with only 5 out of 10 people in Asia subscribing to a mobile service, there remains an astonishing growth opportunity. By 2020, the Asia Pacific’s unique subscriber base is forecast to rise to 2.4 billion, with 70 percent of all users connecting to services using a smartphone.

As a result, mobile apps and services are rapidly expanding into emerging Asia, making it possible for previously excluded communities to access financial, government, and information services for the first time. This is a socio-economic transformation that will reshape the region and impact the lives of potentially billions of people. It is also profoundly altering the way international development organizations work in Asia.

We see this as an incredible opportunity. Our projects already connect millions of people to mobile-based services; we employ innovative data and analytics software to solve complex policy problems; and we leverage mobile collaboration tools to help our partners stay connected and work together.

The promise of Asia’s next billion drives everything we do.

THE NEXT FIVE YEARS

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In Asia, it’s mobile first. Our partners are using mobile devices to collaborate, share, and interact in new and unexpected ways.

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areas of focusOur projects help improve the lives of millions of Asia’s citizens, and three important areas of innovation enhance the impact of our work:

ACCESS

Smartphones are now connecting millions of

people in Asia. We’re leveraging this critical link

to connect citizens with a global ecosystem of

information and services.

DATA & ANALYTICS

We’re promoting new tools that help Asia’s

policy makers, civic activists, and small business

leaders rapidly collect and analyze a range of

data previously unavailable to them.

COLLABORATION

We’ve integrated social media tools into our

programs to connect our partners more fully,

and promote diverse, grassroots networks

capable of working in new ways.

how we workWe develop solutions tailored to local needs, deployed in local languages, and integrated into a larger, strategic approach to change.

context mattersTechnology solutions don’t solve problems unless they are practical,

politically viable, and embraced by the communities they aim to serve. So

before even a single line of code is written, Foundation political analysts

and local project teams work closely with citizens, software developers, civil

society, and government partners to identify the real challenges and concerns

of local communities.

We then emphasize lightweight, sustainable solutions that leverage local

knowledge, existing libraries, and common frameworks. We insist on open

standards to promote interoperability. And we support open source initiatives

because we believe anyone should be free to adapt, modify, and build on

our efforts.

Our technology initiatives can rapidly prototype, test, and go to scale because

we place an emphasis on low cost, replicable solutions that fit neatly into larger,

ongoing Asia Foundation development projects.

That’s why our projects have the impact they do.

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Indonesian Election Information Apps

ACCESSOver the next decade, more than one billion new citizens in Asia will connect to the Internet for the first time, and their first and possibly only link to the rich resources of the web will come in the form of a smartphone.

The Asia Foundation is committed to leveraging mobile in ways that put relevant, impactful information and services into the hands of underserved people. We’re employing connected devices to support marginalized groups, including women, link citizens to critical services, and distribute and collect essential information on a range of important development issues. We also recognize that the mobile revolution is transforming business and government in important ways, so we invest in efforts to help government and civil society rethink approaches to data and information. By building data platforms that are open and transparent, governments and social entrepreneurs can work together to unlock public information in ways that are relevant to local communities and the private sector.

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INDONESIANational & Local ElectionsIn recent years, Indonesia’s 50+ million smartphone users have turned to their mobile devices in search of informa-tion on local and national elections. Many of the mobile apps they rely on for access to candidate data and elec-tion information are powered by API Pemilu - the largest on-line database of election data ever assembled for an Asian election, and the result of an innovative new partnership be-tween the Indonesian election organization, Perludem, and The Asia Foundation.

To encourage the creation of the widest variety of apps and services possible, Perludem and the Foundation employed an open API strategy: building and releasing an API (applica-tion programming interface) to give software developers free and open access to the project’s massive database of election data. The partnership then hosted Indonesia’s first civic tech hackathon, and invited software developers from across the country to help build election apps using the available data. More than 300 of Indonesia’s most creative developers used the API to build over 30 election-focused mobile apps and web services.

API Pemilu apps provides voters with access to election information and services previously unavailable to them—including direct access to the profiles of 30,638 legislative candidates, information on campaign finance issues, and answers to common questions about election procedures and regulations.

To date, apps produced by the project have registered over 7 million unique users and 100 million election data requests. The database continues to support new applications built using the API, and has recently been expanded to cover local elections in partnership with Indonesia’s national election commission.

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DATA AND ANALYTICSFrom disaster risk reduction, to urban planning, to conflict mapping, innovative new approaches to data collection and analysis have far-reaching implications for a wide range of policy issues.

The Asia Foundation employs a battery of advanced data and analytics tools to assess the political, economic, and humanitarian dimensions of development issues in Asia. Our efforts aim to improve local development initiatives through enhanced understanding and knowledge. We also work with Asian governments, policy makers, researchers, and entreprenuers to raise the visibility of new and low-cost solutions that can improve data collection efforts. And finally, we recognize that the promise of new technologies is intertwined with the global Open Data agenda, and depends on broad access to research data, public information, and social media content. That’s why we also pursue a broad transparency agenda through initiatives designed to help Asia’s leaders grapple with the challenge of access to information in the digital age.

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MONGOLIAUrban ServicesThrough the intelligent use of remote sensing tools, advanced mapping, and UAV technologies, The Asia Foundation’s Ger Area Mapping project has not only helped Mongolia’s marginalized and poor access better urban services, it is also helping policy makers and city planners better understand and prepare for Ulaanbaatar’s future.

Three quarters of a million nomads from across Mongolia now inhabit Ulaanbaatar’s “Ger Areas”—a ring of unplanned communities and low-income neighborhoods surrounding the nation’s capital. In the next decade an estimated 400,000 additional low-income residents are expected to settle there, making the Ger Areas of Ulaanbaatar one of the largest unplanned settlements in Asia.

Some of these unplanned areas are so new they aren’t even on a map, while satellite imagery accessible to the city is of-ten of a low resolution or obscured by cloud cover. As the gov-ernment struggles to provide water, education, transportation, and other basic urban services to the Ger Areas, a key chal-lenge to city planners is a shortage of good data. Without good geospatial data, planning for the delivery of basic services is nearly impossible.

Working with the City of Ulaanbaatar, The Asia Foundation collected high-quality imagery and elevation data for the city using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and earth-imaging satellites. These high-resolution images were used to create detailed maps complete with elevation data, and labeled neighborhoods, roads, buildings, landmarks, and other fea-tures. And in a bid to make this information open and accessible to all, the maps were shared with Open Street Maps (OSM), a world-wide, community-driven mapping project.

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India’s SafetiPin Mobile App

COLLABORATIONAs the largest community of social media users in the world, Asia’s citizens are poised to leverage new networking and collaboration technologies to create powerful information-sharing, reporting, and advocacy tools.

Just as platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter first helped communities network and share information in novel ways, entirely new collaboration tools that emphasize crowd-driven, distributed approaches to problem solving are helping Asia Foundation partners address a variety of challenges in unexpected ways. Distributed, decentralized, and massively scalable, these tools are making lightweight, low-cost, and typically cloud-based forms of work accessible to anyone with a connection to the Internet. So whether the focus is on women’s safety and security, urban governance issues, anti-corruption initiatives, or election monitoring—new networking and collaboration tools have fundamentally changed the way we and our partners work across the region.

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INDIAWomen’s SafetyLeveraging India’s over 300 million mobile phone sub-scribers, Asia Foundation partner, Saftipin, is transforming the way women obtain safety and security information from within their local communities. Using the Saftipin mobile app, Indian women are crowdsourcing a map of safe streets in communities in which they live, and, in the process, making a lasting contribution to women’s safety and awareness outside the home.

SafetiPin is an Android and iOS app that is free to download and employs location services and an open-source map to allow users to rate a neighborhood or a specific street’s rel-ative safety, while also showing how others have rated that area. At the core of the app is the Safety Audit. Users rate the safety of a given area based on key parameters such as the availability of working street lights, the presence of po-lice and other security personnel, the number of men or women on the street, and the overall mood on the street.

User data is aggregated by SafetiPin and fed back to the appropriate government agencies to advocate for better infrastructure and policy change. To augment data submitted by users, The Asia Foundation worked with SafetiPin to provide professionally trained auditors to collect additional safety-related information on communities and cities.

SafetiPin builds on the premise that community participation and engagement will make India’s cities safer. By leverag-ing the crowd, SafetiPin is taking a bottom-up approach to addressing a serious challenge faced by many local governments in Asia: providing citizens with safe and secure public spaces.

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SRI LANKAThanks to an innovative partnership between The Asia Foundation and Sri Lankan local government officials, Android-based tablets are now employed to collect community feedback on government infrastructure projects. Using one of the country’s first tech- enabled social audits, citizens can now express their views on a range of issues related to local governance— from the quality of water supplies to roads and city services—with feedback delivered directly to local officials in the form of a data-driven visual scorecard.

MYANMARAs Myanmar emerged from decades of isolation and internal strife, The Asia Foundation partnered with Google and members of the Myanmar diaspora community to help fast track the launch of a Myanmar language version of Google.com and adopt Myanmar 3 (MM3) as the default character set. By selecting a Unicode-compliant font such as MM3, Google ensured that the other languages of Myanmar (Mon, Karen, Kayah, Pali, Rumai Palaung, and Shan) could now access the country’s new local language version at www.google.com.mm.

CAMBODIAThrough a collaborative, human-centered design process, The Asia Foundation is bringing Cambodian women activists together with software developers to combat violence against women and girls. Working together, teams of local and internat ional designers and developers, activists, and survivors are prototyping and building mobile apps capable of delivering safety-enhancing information and services to girls and women throughout Cambodia.

BANGLADESHMobile money is helping improve women’saccess to credit. In Bangladesh,The Asia Foundation is working with United Commercial Bank and Banglalink, one of the largest telecom operators in the country, to provide local women entrepreneurs access to e-commerce opportunities and mobile banking services. For the first time, these women are reaching new markets on the road to realizing their full potential as entrepreneurs.

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Our projects reach millions of Asia’s citizens because we recognize the importance of working locally.

This is our greatest strength.

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things

impact at human scale

Afghanistan : Visualizing AfghanistanResponsive web site and data visualization of eight years of Afghan public perception survey data.

Sri Lanka : Mobile Citizen Report CardsEmploying tablet-based report cards to collect, analyze, and act on citizen feedback.

Bangladesh : Mobile Banking & WomenSupporting women entrepreneurs’ access to mobile banking and e-commerce services.

India : Crowdsourcing Women’s SafetyAudit support for the mobile application, Safetipin, to improve mapping of unsafe urban areas.

India : Anti-Corruption ReportingDesign and development of mobile apps to expand the user base of IPaidABribe.com.

India : Mapping Government ServicesMapping local infrastructure in the wards of Chennai to help improve public services.

Myanmar : Open Election Data and Mobile AppsSupporting an election data hackathon, candidate data- base, and the creation of voter information mobile apps.

Myanmar : Promoting Local Content and AccessSupport for localization of Google’s top-level domain in Myanmar www.google.com.mm.

Myanmar : Revising the Electronic Transactions LawExpert legal advice and guidance on ETLs provided to Ministry of Communication and Information Technology.

across the region

China : Open Data and Environmental PolicyPromoting open data and improved environmental policy making through local partnerships.

Philippines : Human Rights and Digital ActivismTechnical assistance and training on human rights through digital activism.

Vietnam : Empowering Citizens Supporting online citizen input to promote public engagement on national policies.

Cambodia : VAW and Mobile Developing mobile apps to improve women’s safety through human-centered design.

Mongolia : Remote Sensing and Urban PlanningUsing remote sensing tools to support evidence- based policy making to improve Ger District public services.

Mongolia : Ulaanbaatar and OpenStreetMapsPromoting community mapping and citizen engagement via OpenStreetMaps.

Indonesia : Interactive Candidate MapCreating Indonesia’s first web and mobile interactive candidate map for the 2014 Indonesian elections.

Indonesia : Civic HackathonsHosting civic hackathons in Jakarta and Bandung to build election and voter information mobile apps.

Indonesia : Open Candidate and Election DataDeveloping and structuring Indonesia’s Open Election and Candidate Database and Public API.

Indonesia : Public Candidate and Election APIDesign, implementation, and training support for a public election data application programming interface.