We are pleased to have started work on the next iteration of The Internet of Good Things (IoGT), a UNICEF initiative and set of websites which enable life-saving and life-improving information (maternal health, hygiene, emergency information on diseases, HIV and sexual health advice for adolescents, Internet safety, positive parenting techniques and more) available for free, even on low-end devices.
IoGT includes multimedia elements and two-way communication features, used to capture feedback and local best practices from communities. Since its launch in 2015, more than 30 million users have accessed IoGT – 60% between the ages of 13 and 24. Local IoGT mobile sites are made accessible free of data charges in 61 countries and territories. IoGT hosts content modules in up to 13 languages. There are currently a total of 50 IoGT mobile sites and 91 mobile operators supporting free of data charges access to IoGT.
IoGT V2 is designed for tablets, desktops and smartphones as well as feature phones. It will replace V1 allowing all of the current features while fixing many of the bugs and adding new features such as offline access, and supporting larger screen sizes. It will also provide a better base to further develop the product with push notifications, improved administration tools, and better analytical capabilities.
Software development started in earnest in April, using Wagtail/Django as it allows us to move quickly and create sophisticated data models relatively easily. By June, we learned that we would also need to manage the hosting of the sites as well as software development – an unexpected event and a major challenge for our small team. In order to keep the project alive, an external web development team was brought in to assist with software development, while IDEMS focused on creating a new hosting environment and deployment pipeline, using containers in Kubernetes. It was a hard slog, but by November, we were ready to launch the first V2 site having completed a minimum set of features.
We plan to ‘go live’ with the first V2 site early next year. There are also other features we want to develop in the coming year, such as dashboards to analyse usage and inform future focus, and a chatbot, initially to share parenting advice but could also be a channel for other content.