Voice of America (VOA) has started an online portal that will help the people living in the once war-torn Somalia to air their views on the upcoming constitution without fear of victimisation.
The radio broadcaster has used the Google App Engine, and is in partnership with Google Ideas, an arm of the search engine that helps in creativity.
Somalia has been in war in over two decades and having political opinion in this nation could put one in danger. This project helps Somalis to air their views freely.
“That’s the challenge today in Somalia, which hasn’t had a permanent government since 1991,” Brendan Ballou and Yasmin Dolatabadi, of Google Ideas said, in their blog post.
“Somalia is in the middle of drafting a new provisional constitution which will be ratified later this summer, and with this process has come new opportunities to increase citizen engagement,” the post added.
Using Google App Engine, Google Voice, and Google Docs, VOA now can conduct public opinion polling in the war-torn Eastern Africa country.
VOA said it incorporated questions such as: Should there be a strong central government? Should Sharia law be the basis of the constitution? And should there be a requirement that women be included as elected officials?
The application that was already running by April has already posted its third round results on the VOA website.
Google ideas and VOA are now giving the source code for the application free, to be modified and used by any country.
Ushahidi is an application that was developed during the Kenyan post election violence in 2008. The application now is being used to help users map areas where there is distress.
