Innovations Lab Kosovo

The lack of statistically sound and internationally comparable data is a widely recognized and significant impediment to the work UNICEF and its partners do in Kosovo to serve Kosovo’s youth and children. The Innovations Lab Design Center projects directly designs and implements projects to serve data and information needs of UNICEF Kosovo, Kosovo’s institutions, and Kosovo’s youth and children.
The Design Center leverages the recent advances in mobile, open source, and social technologies, which have all provided unprecedented ability to develop software at scale to serve the most vulnerable populations of the world. We work with user-centered methodologies to develop solutions that focus on the needs and frustrations of the users, and work on problems identified directly by institutions working on behalf of youth and children in Kosovo. Currently we are working in these PROJECTS.

Key Objectives

• Harness mobile and open source technologies in order to provide solutions to UNICEF and Kosovo public institutions’ most urgent problems.

• Create a results-based approach, in which UNICEF provides mentoring to Kosovo computer science students, who will ultimately provide the driving force and creativity to problem solving as well as maintenance of the products.

Beneficiaries

Public Institutions: Ministries, National Institute of Public Health, Schools, Health Centers, Computer Science Students in Kosovo, Tech Community in General.

Process

The Design Center has created a robust approach to problem solving, capable of matching any institutional problem the Center will face. The basis for this approach is a fixed conceptual approach to problem solving; simply, a five-stage, directional process of collection, processing, dissemination, visualization and social media.

• Data Collection – Best exemplified by the urgent problem of birth registration. At present, between 7-10% of births across Kosovo, are not registered - Children whose births are not registered may be unable to claim access to basic services of health and education.

• Data Processing – Even if data is collected, it is not cleaned and saved in a properly designed database, greatly reducing its value.

• Data Dissemination – An issue when data falls into the domain of multiple public institutions or geographically dispersed institutions. For example, consistent tracking of vaccine stock between medical centres and central authorities.

• Data Visualisation – If authorities have software to present data in various maps, charts and graphs, advocacy and analysis will be quicker and more effective.

• Social Media – The ultimate means of distributing data, highlighting awareness to the general public. Can also generate problem solving ideas from the public.

Problem Categorization Approach for Design Center

Technologies

• Open Source – The foundation to any solution from the Lab. Existing open source programs because they’re customizable, already very well tested and free.

• Mobile – Providing an opportunity to reach out and solve problems in communities and places where an internet connection is not in place. UNICEF has secured the support of one of the mobile operators in Kosovo to provide free SMS messaging. We hope to apply UNICEF’s own RapidSMS framework to improve birth registration numbers in the region.

Future

An expansion into broader institutional problems is targeted. To achieve this, we will need the ingenuity and dedication of Kosovo students to undertake thorough research into further identified problems. Problems include Disease Surveillance, Rapid Communication on Water Quality Testing, Mapping, Data Visualization and a Platform for reporting violence against youth and children. By tasking current students with thorough case studies, innovative solutions can be mapped out, and ultimately implemented by the Design Center. Furthermore, the Design Center will seek to establish partnerships with the private IT companies in order to refer the best interns for local job opportunities.