Talk by Ajay Kumar at the Sahana Conference 2009, Colombo. Sri Lanka. March 24-25 2009.

1. Sahana Community Building in India
Ajay Kumar
Sahana Evangelist
ajuonline@gmail.com
24-03-2009, Sahana 2009 http://sahana2009.foss.lk http://www.ajuonline.net

2. Agenda
Sahana – Bihar Deployment by IBM India
Requirements
Deployment Information
Lessons Learned
Beginning of the Sahana – India community
Efforts/Work done so far
Approach followed
Lessons learned
Thinking Global, Acting Local
Generating local clusters of Sahana community for the
Global good.
Ways to generate interest and contributions of and by
the community
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3. Bihar Floods 2008
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4. Sahana Response
Started by setting up a team from IBM
Kolkata
IBM India took over and expanded
Evaluating Sahana & showcasing it to
the State Government.
Chief Sponsors – Secretary, IT, State
of Bihar.
Actively supported by the Sahana
community members.
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5. Requirements of the Bihar Scenario
Initial Requirements:
Tracking relief camps
Tracking NGO's supporting
operations
Tracking relief material flow
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6. Requirements of the Bihar Scenario
Other Interests:
Missing Person Registry
Victim Tracking, with a view to
capture impact & potentially
compute compensation
Donation Management
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7. How did Sahana fit for the purpose?
The needs match with the following modules with/without
customizations:
Organization Registry
Disaster Victim Registry
Missing Person Registry
Shelter Registry
Request Management System
Possible New Modules:
module to accept data entry according to the
government data capture forms → Designed by IBM
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8. How did it really go through?
IBM Team does customizations,
testing and trains the users around
15-20.
The trained officials imparted training
to authorized field collection officers
identified by District Collectors.
After a complete training and
handover, government officials took
care of data entry
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9. How did it really go through?
Government changed its collection
approach
Funded and authorized the officers in
the field to collect the data, later to be
entered in the system centrally.
Data collection two of the five affected
districts - Saharsa and Purnea.
Central server at Patna, the capital.
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10. Learning outcomes & Experience
I am a student!
I am an Indian!
I am a FOSS enthusiast!
I had contributed to Sahana!
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11. Indian FOSS Community
Source: Google OSPO Blog
http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2008/04/two-top-10s-for-google-summer-of-
code.html
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12. Indian FOSS Community
Advocacy Localization
INDIA Deployment
Development
Events Organizational Support
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13. Conclusion
“... global need, global community,
global effort, global impact.”
- Leslie Hawthorn, Program Manager, Google Summer of Code,
Google Inc.
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14. Special Thanks to
Sunil Raghavan, IBM India for sharing his
insights and experience from the Bihar
deployment.
Mark Prutsalis, Globaliist Inc. for sharing his
experience on Sahana's history and how things
work in the DM/EM Area.
Leslie Hawthorn, OSPO, Google Inc. for
sharing her views on community building.
Sahana PMC, Board and the LSF for their
constant support.
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15. Thank You!!
Ajay Kumar
ajuonline@gmail.com
http://ajuonline.net
This presentation is
licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 3.0
Unported License by Ajay
Kumar
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