Tania Lee
Caktus is proud to announce that we endorse the Principles for Digital Development or “Digital Principles”, a set of best practices that support technology creation for international development. We feel strongly that they help technology companies like us improve our contributions to the Information and Communications Tool for Development (ICT4D) community. In offering technical design and software development services, we often work alongside our clients to help shape the tools they need. Because of our influence in this process, having established principles are helpful to use as a guide in our conversations and design of the tools we build.
The Principles
Back in February 2016, Caktus joined over 150 organizations at the conference on Digital Development: From Principle to Practice in Washington, DC. The conference called on the ICT4D community to not only support but also deeply engage in practicing and reflecting on the 9 Principles of Digital Development:
- Principle 1: Design with the User
- Principle 2: Understand the Ecosystem
- Principle 3: Design for Scale
- Principle 4: Build for Sustainability
- Principle 5: Be Data Driven
- Principle 6: Use Open Standards, Open Source, Open Data and Open Innovation
- Principle 7: Reuse and Improve
- Principle 8: Address Privacy and Security
- Principle 9: Be Collaborative
Each principle is meant to be a guideline aimed at improving the way technology is designed, funded, built and implemented in development and humanitarian efforts. These principles exist and will continue to evolve to promote technology and program design that is contextually appropriate and sustainable. Please see the report “From Principle to Practice: Implementing the Principles for Digital Development” for a great in-depth look at each principle.
In coming blog posts, we’ll discuss the principles that stood out to us right away— specifically using open source and design with the user.
