The idea

My idea is to develop a social networking platform for international development cooperation organisations. They can generate their organisational profile on which they publish key information about their work. COOpen.net will show existing linkages between organisations (e.g. joint projects) and potential new ones (like your Last FM neighbours). It will also have have a number of integrated applications, for example sharing and tagging of training materials, online project management and wikis. COOpen.net will be an open social network. Everyone can see the profile information: development organisations, their donors, the general public and the people who’s social needs are being addressed.

What social need does it address?

There are thousands of organisations working in development cooperation: community-based organisations, international NGOs, UN agencies, the Worldbank, national governments, foundations, funding agencies, labour unions, universities, a growing amount of companies, etc. Together these players are addressing various social needs in developing countries, focusing on micro, meso, and macro level. There are many examples of coordination, collaboration and sharing of good practices between these organisations and levels. At the same time, there are many more examples of competition, of organisations working in isolation and of overlap of their work. There is an urgent need to create transparency in the complex and elusive way these organisations and levels are (or should be) connected and working together, urging the players to improve coordination and cooperation with others, and to improve the sharing of successful experiences and the lessons learnt from failed attemps.

By developing a social networking platform for development cooperation organisations, COOpen.net will improve transparency with regard to WHO does WHAT, WHERE and WITH WHOM, and create opportunities for online collaboration. It will provide the critical general public with more insight in the way the development cooperation system works, how problems and solutions at various levels are connected, and what the added value of each organisation is. Of course COOpen.net will also point out which organisations are not networked and collaborating in broader programmes, it will highlight missed opportunities for collaboration, and it will raise questions about the need for certain projects. This information is not only very valuable to the donating general public, but also to funding agencies that want to make informed choices when deciding on funding proposals. COOpen.net will provide the transparency that will urge and stimulate the players in the development cooperation sector to rethink and possibly change the way they are working. At the same time the social networking platform will provide the tools to do just that.

Finally, COOpen.net will also increase transparency for the people who’s social needs are being addresses by the development cooperation sector. They will have the opportunity to hold the development organisations in their area accountable, and an Amazon-style recommendation & validation system may prove an interesting new way of evaluating longer-term effectiveness of the development programs.

What’s new about it?

For years now, issues like transparency, collaboration and coordination between the growing number of development cooperation players, learning from experiences and evaluating long-term effectiveness are challenging the development cooperation sector. With the possibilities of the social web, we finally have the opportunity and technical possibilities to address these challenges and make a step towards ‘development cooperation 2.0′. Because of the scale, my idea may seem ambitious. However, I can’t image that we will NOT have a open social platform for development cooperation in a few years time. The needs are urgent, social technology is the only way to address the needs of the sector, and the uptake of the software can be pushed at various levels. The general public can show a preference to donate to organisations that are on COOpen.net (COOpen.net as certification) funding agencies can push development cooperation organisations to show their networks (COOpen.net as funding requirement) and as a results of these push-factors development cooperation organisations will invite other organisations they are working with to show their organisational linkages (COOpen.net as viral application).

The envisioned software is very innovative. At the moment there is no overall overview of who does what, where and with whom in international development cooperation. Aggregated global ‘development cooperation data’ from all programs and campaigns in the world does not exist. Existing and well-functioning social platforms for organisations (instead of individuals) are very limited. Some INGOs run social networking platforms with the partner agencies they are supporting, but these networks seldom include organisations that are outside this direct donor-recipient relation. COOpen.net will stimulate organisations to look outside their traditional partner network, to provide more openess about the way they work and their results, and to show they are learning organisations. This is in line with a movement that I see in the corporate world (enterprise 2.0).

What inspired you?

I have been inspired by my own experiences while working in the development cooperation sector, both in developed as well as developing countries. I got more and more frustrated about conferences and meetings where it was reiterated that development cooperation organisations needed to link up, coordinate, cooperate, share and learn better, while in the end so little changed. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that the amount of existing and possible organisational linkages and the amount of lessons that can be shared and learnt can just be too overwhelming. I realised that a technological solution was needed to support the management of relationships and learning within development cooperation networks.

A year ago I started formulating the COOpen.net idea, reading related blogs, and using a lot of social networking applications (e.g. Last FM, Facebook, del.icio.us, and twitter). This thinking, reading and practical experience confirmed my idea that a social networking platform for development cooperation organisations is feasible and that it can bring the innovation that the sector needs.

Idea submitted by Arjen Mulder

Arjen works for the Netherlands Red Cross as a programme manager in a health programme in the Dominican Republic.