SPIDER is happy to welcome Phandeeyar Myanmar Innovation Labs as a new SPIDER partner and to announce the first SPIDER project in Myanmar.
Phandeeyar focuses on bringing together the tech community with change agents like Civil Society Organisations, social enterprises and independent media to accelerate change in Myanmar. Phandeeyar has recently launched the Open Development Myanmar portal.
During the past 2 years Phandeeyar (which means creation place) has had great success in fostering a civic-tech community in Myanmar through hackathons, events and capacity building. See for example the video below.
The work SPIDER supports will make open data sets publically available through maps and stories but also provide capacity building to stakeholders who are interested in learning how to use data in reporting and advocacy. Phandeeyar has adopted the Open Development platform developed by East West Management Institute and will focus on sharing the available raw data and infographics, building capacity among local stakeholders to use data in their advocacy and work and one on one support to a few partners in their work with evidence based advocacy.
Open Development platforms form a regional network
After the launch of the first platform Open Development Cambodia in 2013 and its regional sibling Open Development Mekong in 2014.
Spider is very happy to support yet another addition to the Open Development family. Spider will continue supporting and enabling Transparency and Accountability by supporting open data and making more information available to all stakeholders.
ICT in Myanmar
In 2013 Myanmar opened up to private sector telecommunication and has since then experienced a rapid growth in the adoption of mobile phones.The prevalence of smartphones is over 80%. Political changes have also lead to an opening up of the country in general and many international development agencies are now establishing in the country. After almost 50 years of military rule, Myanmar is opening up and going through a wave of change.
Read more about the Open Development Myanmar project
