[02-24-2004] Problem Statement Revision #2
Researchers in the field of IT and Regional Development have the complicated task of researching field projects and academic literature. Field projects are usually located in developing regions, often focusing on the implementation of a technology solution in an underserved region. There is no comprehensive existing directory that serves as a starting point for research in this area of work, and users often turn browsing the Internet through search engines, and following that up with searches on a variety of more generic databases (such as digital libraries) and web resources (such as sites of international agencies).

In addition to the time lost in scattered searching, a major disadvantage in this model of interaction is the lack of access to experiential knowledge, for instance, that of third-party field observers who observe some of these projects. The experiences of such observers, is usually available only to the agencies they operate under, though researchers agree that such knowledge would be invaluable if easily available and reviewable. Similarly, there are academic research and case studies conducted on this topic throughout the world, which do not get widely disseminated due to the lack of a well-known and open-structured data repository for researchers and professionals to share information.

Researchers also add a second layer of complexity: they have their own opinions and comments on literature and on field project implementations, which they would like to share with others, just as they would like to know of others' opinions. Usually research in one country is limited to that country, and valuable input from other people in other countries is never shared. There is a need for a system that is open, highly interactive, and equipped with useful features to allow users to annotate and interlink online data.

[02-03-2004] Original Problem Statement
There is no comprehensive existing directory that keeps track of the various existing projects on technology for developing countries. The user must go to multiple websites or mailing lists and collate information in order to find research on a specific area. Furthermore, this field is one of the most difficult to get authentic information. Most of the available information on technology projects for developing countries is available through the project sponsors, and there is little access to the case studies and reviews in the open realm.

However, people working in this field benefit greatly from interactive information sharing. Field practitioners need information on how projects are doing, and the group of people working on these projects is scattered all over the world. Nonetheless, this is a community of people, as most people working in the area tend to know each other, and conferences and gatherings tend to repeat the same researchers.

Students and researchers would use our system to find academic information for their papers, reports, presentations, etc.

There are several main goals for the group of non-profit and non-governmental organizations and development professionals. One goal is to determine which projects to fund. Our proposed system would help them keep up-to-date about ongoing projects in certain areas and to determine best practices. For development professionals, it would be a resource for finding employment.

For persons working on corporate social responsibility, the system would be a source for gaining exposure for their company. The person would be able to search the project database for appropriate projects to fund and get their company involved with. The company would then gain exposure and open new possible target audiences.

We plan to find participants for our project through contacts established by the group members. Currently, we are in contact with individuals working on corporate social responsibility at Hewlett Packard and other Non-Profit Organizations (NGO). We are also aware of other campus researchers and academics who would be willing to participate in our project. We hope to find multiple participants from all three of our user personas.

We plan to build a user interface that covers many issues involved in accessing the repository, but will mainly focus on the annotation part of the project. This annotation feature will allow users to manually add their own annotations to a project. One possible scenario is when the user will select a certain text, right-click, and be given a window to add their annotations.

We are also thinking about automating the annotation process by using a term dictionary, which contains specific names, places, acronyms, terms, etc used in the literature. Whenever users enter any data with any of these special terms, the documents will be interlinked automatically.