OpenPhone project update showcased to funders
27 July 2005

The Open Society Initiative (OSI) and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), who are jointly funding the Meraka Institute’s OpenPhone project, participated in a collaborative workshop on 20 July 2005. The Meraka Institute reported back on progress regarding this particular project, which involves the creation of a platform aimed at developing technology and applications that allow access to information through ordinary telephones.

Held at the Institute’s building 43 on the CSIR Pretoria campus, representatives from OSI, OSISA, Ungana-Afrika and the Meraka Institute discussed issues relating to the project's R&D. The project builds on work from the Government to Citizen e-governance project, supported by the Department of Science and Technology under the Lead programme for International Cooperation. The platform addresses barriers to access by utilising one of the most pervasive means of communication. It will simplify development and deployment of telephony applications, contributing to the creation of an inclusive information society.

Beneficiaries of this technological development include government, the private sector, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society in general. “Existing solutions are expensive and too complex to set up and maintain. Moreover, most of them are from abroad and do not cater for local needs, such as making provision for South African languages,” says Merryl Ford, Domain Specialist in Education, Youth and Gender at the Meraka Institute.

“We are impressed with the progress of the OpenPhone project,” said Janet Haven of OSI. “We envisage that the final product will provide an invaluable tool in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) arena, aimed at closing the Digital Divide.” Not only does OpenPhone build on existing open source components but it will be released and further developed as open source technology utilising past learning on open source development on the Coefficient platform.

Presentations included an overview of the Institute by Laurens Cloete (Manager, Innovation Programme), a project progress update by project leader Riėtte Easton, and an exposition of the graphical authoring tool, which significantly simplifies the creation of complex telephony applications, by researcher Francois Aucamp. Professor Etienne Barnard who is part of the Human Language Technology (HLT) research group outlined aspects of HLT’s contribution to the OpenPhone project while Kim Tucker and Nhlanhla Mabaso of the Institute’s Open Source Centre (OSC) reported on progress relating to the 'Free Knowledge Communities' initiative and the 'Education out-of-a-box' project in their capacity as Business Area Manager and Centre Manager respectively.

Kobus Roux (Business Area Manager, Innovation Programme) and David Johnson (Research Leader) briefed participants on the progress within the Institute’s Wireless Africa initiative which examines the application of some of the concepts from the open source movement to the rollout of affordable and pervasive communication through technologies such as mesh networking. A discussion was also held on a pioneering approach to strengthening ICT capacity in other NGOs initiated by Ungana-Afrika.

Free, open and effective: This OpenPhone screendump illustrates the technology's interface which will provide access to information through landline telephones.