Tech-savvy

With US elections still roughly two years away, most reports are about fund raising, for example Obama's grassroots approach and McCain's recent struggles. It is no secret that US politics is a big money game: in 2004, Bush spent $367 million. Or $1.25 per US citizen (2004 pop.).

By contrast, the campaign period in Timor Leste is limited, by law, to two weeks (15 days), with a two day blackout period prior to election day. Campaign coffers are measured in the tens of thousands, not hundreds of millions.

This is where blogs come in. At least half of the candidates use free blogging services for their official websites. FRETILIN has at least four: two campaign blogs and party sites in Tetum and English (1,2,3,4). This approach is very clever. By tweaking the blog's journal-like format, the parties have created chic, user-friendly websites.

As someone working with an international elections NGO, it is very cool to see parties innovate and pull together tech-savvy campaigns on a shoestring. The creators of Blogspot.com probably had trekkies and heartsick teens in mind when they launched the site, not providing the internet muscle behind Third World presidential campaigns. This approach could be used anywhere.

Finally, website creation has become a standard feature in proposals involving organizational development, usually budgeted at about $1,000. These sites require a webmaster to make updates, and the associated costs mean that many sites become obsolete quickly and often misinformation sits online, uncorrected.

Too often development organizations equate bigger money with better solutions or outcomes. In the case of website development, an elegant solution may already exist. For free.



Photos: From my visit to the National Museum, Jakarta (above). The museum is known for its collection of Javanese gold; the crown pictured below stood out as almost arte nouveau amongst the more precise, Indian influenced pieces. Bunny for Jess!