Sri Lankan IT also rises

By Eden Estopace | Dec 26, 2011

Kavakatu, the Sri Lankan word for compass, is also now the name of a web app. Developed by Sri Lankan IT company Infoshare, the application helps non-profit organizations manage, monitor and evaluate development projects for maximum impact.

"Technology for the development sector is very mature now, yet a lot of the discussion revolves around what technology can do to benefit significant sectors of society. Little is done to do applications for the non-profit sector and we wanted to do something significant in this area," Anuruddha Edirisinghe, Chief Executive Officer, Infoshare Sri Lanka.

Infoshare itself is a non-profit social enterprise working to create innovative technology solutions for international organizations, governments and civil society, especially in areas such as post-war recovery, human rights, anti-corruption, election monitoring, peace building, good governance, media and economic growth.
 
Among its projects in the past include a labor inspection system for Sri Lanka's Department of Labor, a job seeker database for the Foreign Employment Bureau and an election monitoring system for the Maldives election.

"We wanted to know if could we replicate what we are doing in Sri Lanka elsewhere in Asia," Edirisinghe said.

At the official launch of Kavakatu at the Accelerating Asia Pacific Conference in Kuala Lumpur early this month, he explained that from a non-profit perspective, project management tools such as Kavakatu can help organizations track and measure progress, plan better, see the big picture, analyze the results in depth and stay on track with its mission.

"What if you can measure the change you make in the world?" it said in a teaser. With Kavakatu, this may be possible.

Clair Deevy, Citizenship Lead, Asia-Pacific, Microsoft, said the concept for Kavakatu and the notion empowering non-profits through technology was hatched in May this year at the Asia-Pacific Tech4Good Summit for non-profit organizations in Colombo.

"We talked about what was missing as far as applications and technology to help them (non-profit organizations) do their jobs. As part of that, we launched the app.incubator to develop solutions for the non-profit sector, using Microsoft's web infrastructure, technology and tools for non-profits in the Asia-Pacific region," she said.

Six months later, Infoshare's Kavakatu was ready for use and initially issued for use by 50 non-profit organizations belonging to the Microsoft partner ecosystem. Edirisinghe, however, said the app will be eventually rolled out to other organizations that request them.