As it turns out - most of human infrastructure is built on (arguably) secure, dumb pipes. It’s what enables us to rely on infrastructure without constantly worrying that it’s being used against us. Confidence in the security of dumb pipes is why we drink water from taps (or bottles), trust pharmacists, and express some of our most personal things to our loved ones, over the phone. In fact, one of the things that makes Signal such a growingly popular app is that its lack of commercial motivation means that it doesn’t have to make the revenue-driven turn to user exploitation. Signal can stay smart about being intelligently secure, dumb (wilfully ignorant, really) pipes.
Messaging: From Apps to Architecture
Data Governance: from Frontline to the WHO
There is no perfect set of data governance principles or practices, yet - and like most governance, we are a long way from realizing our espoused ideals. But, when policymakers and service providers and frontline technologists work together to advance the common goals of realizing our values in digital ecosystems, we bend the arc just a little closer to justice.
From the Frontline (Team)
The Cost of SMS (is a feature, not a bug)
Frontline Honored by Nominet 100 2014
Frontline at Nine
\Re/Launch of FrontlineCloud
Homes for the holidays
Landesa and FrontlineSMS are delighted to welcome and share the announcement today of a US $1.5m Google Global Impact Award, which will enable them to use mobile technology to transform the way that the government in the Indian state of Odisha helps landless families gain secure rights to their land and homes.
A status update on FrontlineCloud
Introducing FrontlineCloud
The View from 100,000
Here at FrontlineSMS, we’ve been making software for a long time. When we first released Version 2 of our software, a little over a year ago, we were one of a few SMS management platforms available- one of even fewer that was free and open source. At the time, we were proud to have around 25,000 downloads and an active user community. You can imagine our surprise when we checked our download numbers last week and learned that FrontlineSMS has been downloaded more than 100,000 times- more than 75,000 times in a little over a year. We were so excited, we got a cake. You have to understand, when things get serious at FrontlineSMS, we get serious about getting a cake.
The Data Divide
Do you remember when grocery stores didn’t know you were pregnant before your parents? Or when newspapers couldn’t find naked pictures of you by looking through your phone? Boy, those were the days (When did I get this old?). Still, there’s no escaping it. Things are digitizing. Everywhere. Whether you’re registering to vote in Washington State using Facebook or banking on your mobile phone in Kenya, there are, all of a sudden, a bunch of third-party organizations involved in the most intimate parts of your life that weren’t there before. And, for the most part, that’s a good thing. Services are delivered more quickly, collective action is easier to organize, and you can do, well, almost everything, better.
A Few Words About Problem Solving
As anyone who knows me will tell you, I’m a bit obsessed with words. Not just words themselves, but how we use them, what that shows us about how we think, and what it means when their definitions creep. It’s a side effect of having been trained as a lawyer and a journalist, I think. Or at least, that’s what I blame it on. Either way, it’s gotten me thinking about something. We have to change the way we talk about solving problems. Let me explain.
Designing Behavior and the Importance of Being Multi-Channel
We spend a lot of time talking about the ubiquity of the mobile phone at FrontlineSMS. So much time, in fact, that we've now forbidden the use of the word in the office. It's not the word's fault, though, that it's been so difficult to get an accurate idea of exactly how many people, how many unique entities, have mobile phones. Mobile network operators hold on to that data pretty tightly, so we go with the best data we can find.