Tech Matters: Using tech for positive social change

Data is a bigger and bigger topic in social change. We need to do a better job of understanding social needs, both to improve our programs and measure their ultimate impact. I spend more and more of my time talking to leaders in the sector, helping advance the use of data for action and impact. I encourage groups to begin collecting data as part of their basic program activities, and I make the claim that it will eventually allow them to connect their data to other, larger databases and maybe begin to take advantage of big data. Imagine how my mind has been blown by learning about a huge international income database that has microdata on millions of households from more than 50 countries, all harmonized to make the same kinds of analyses possible across any of these countries! This database should be critically important for understanding poverty at a detailed level. I just had the thrill of spending an hour with Janet Gornick, the Director of LIS, an international data archive...

Meet Kevin and “Sophia” (who anonymously shared her story with my team). When Kevin was in kindergarten he had an organic brain injury, which forced him to have to relearn everything from walking to using the bathroom. There were several years where Kevin struggled in school because his vision was blurry and this made reading normal size print grueling. He could no longer keep up with his peers in the classroom. One day when Sophia was in fifth grade, she suddenly went blind from an inexplicable disease. Sophia and her family were left confused and concerned about her future in the classroom. Braille books saved her from isolation and she became an insatiable reader. However, she soon encountered the frustrating “accessible book famine” because very few books available were available in Braille. This reality changed when both Kevin and Sophia learned about the accessible online library  Bookshare , an initiative of Silicon Valley technology nonprofit  Benete...

This post originally appeared as part of an online debate about How Big Data Can Have a Social Impact, which the Harvard Business Review Blog Network hosted jointly with the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship . Right now I'm in Oxford, England, for the annual Skoll World Forum! Big Data is all the rage in Silicon Valley. From Facebook to Netflix, companies are tracking and analyzing our searches, our purchases, and just about every other online activity that will give them more insight into who we are and what we want. And though they use the massive sets of data they collect to help create a better experience for their consumers (such as customized ads or tailored movie recommendations), their primary goal is to use what they learn to maximize profits. But can Big Data also create positive social change? Many activities in the social sphere also generate lots of information. Massive amounts of data are collected on the pollution in our cities and the changes in our...