metaLAB – metaLAB

CareZone

CAREZONE (UK Treasury and Local Authorities in England and Wales)

The average UK child moves home twice between the ages of 0-18. One in seven children in care moved home three times in 2001-2002 alone. Despite improvements in care, the result is that children suffer a lack of permanence, stability and emotional support; friendships are lost, education is derailed and support networks are broken.

The Who Cares? Trust, a national charity that aims to improve the lives of children in care, identified this need and developed CareZone, the world’s first secure online services for these vulnerable and under-resourced children, to help them achieve their potential. This next generation service combined virtual worlds, two factor authentication, smart agents and much else in new ways. metaLAB were the lead advisers to the Trust from inception to pilot implementation.

Digital Doorways

A South African joint initiative between the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the CSIR that has as its vision to make a fundamental difference to computer literacy and associated skills in Africa. We envisage this happening through the innovative approach of minimally invasive education (MIE).

MIE differs fundamentally from other ICT provision interventions in that it holds that everyone has the inherent cognitive ability to teach themselves, provided computers can be made easily accessible to potential learners and an environment can be created in which they can learn through experimenting.

Between 2003-2009 metaLAB worked with the Project Team to create a replicable and sustainable Business model that will support the roll out of up to 35,000 units across the country within 5 years. Now in 6 other African countries.

Open Dgroups

Dgroups is the starting point for fostering groups and communities in international development. It is run by Bellanet, World Bank, DFID, IICD, HIVOS, OneWorld, ICA and UNAIDS as a partnership which caters to both individuals and organisations by offering tools and services that bring people together.

Whether a group is trying to support a team, a group, a network, a partnership or a community, D-Groups aims to provide the capacity to do this in an environment, which is simple, non-commercial, respectful of privacy, and targeted at low bandwidth users in the South

In 2003 the partnership decided to create an Open Source version. This collaborative development is hosted and managed by metaLAB on behalf of the DGroups Partnership. Since July 2004 metaLAB has been working with CSIR South Africa to develop an initial open source version of Dgroups based on Coefficient for formal evaluation by the DGroups partners and members.

By July 2012, Dgroups counted 2136 active communities, with around 195.892 registered users. It delivers around 400.000 email messages each day, half of which are exchanged with and within African countries.

Research Africa

metaLAB was responsible for putting together a consortium and securing significant funding from DFID for this project to improve African science and technology human capacity across the board. Research Africa provides services to meet the practical and professional needs of principal researchers and consultants, young researchers, research and innovation administrators and managers.

The original vision for Research Africa was a viable and practical approach to strengthening pan-African research support services in ways that will ultimately yield tangible contributions, generated in Africa, to the goal of poverty alleviation.

Trade Point

Special Programme for Trade Efficiency/Global Trade Point Network

UNCTAD launched the Trade Point Programme in 1992. Its main objective is to facilitate access for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to international markets, in particular using the most up-to-date technologies in electronic commerce. Through the electronically interconnected network of Trade Points in many countries of the world, SMEs can gain access to the latest information and telecommunication technologies and services, make their products known to potential customers and find business partners in other countries and from countries with economies in transition – in international trade.

Wireless Africa

A unique pan-African initiative led by the Meraka Institute of the CSIR, has named three reference sites (in Nigeria, Ghana and Uganda) to lead the first phase of the project in setting up and studying community-owned information networks to benefit poor and rural African people.

Access to International Trade

DESKTOP ACCESS TO INTERNATIONAL TRADE

metaLAB produced a feasibility study for the UK Dept of Business, Innovation and Trade (then SITPRO) on desktop access to international trade by small and medium enterprises (SMEs). We also outlined the design requirements for an XML based approach. ElecTra was the early manifestation of such an XML service. It allowed UK traders to complete and verify their trading documentation on-line. They could have these official UN documents communicated without delay by computer (EDI or Internet), or by paper, to the appropriate authorities, notably Customs, across the world.

This approach has now become the basis of the UN’s eDOCs system. (UNeDocs UK is the national implementation of UNeDocs).

National Accessibility Portal (NAP)

The National Accessibility Portal (NAP) is a five-year research & development project aimed at addressing the marginalisation of people with disabilities from the mainstream economy and society. The project was conceptualised and developed by the CSIR in partnership with a representative group of Disabled Persons’ Organisations (DPOs) and the Office on the Status of Disabled Persons (OSDP) in the Presidency.

Approximately 4 million people in South Africa are disabled and access to information, services and the ability to effectively communicate is a key need. Significant technological challenges exist in making services accessible to people with different forms of disabilities in an affordable way. Existing devices and software that allow people with disabilities to interact with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems are prohibitively expensive and have not been designed with South African context in mind. Technical challenges that are being tackled include; research and development in Text-to-Sign-Language, support for South African Languages, development of quality Open Source technologies including Text-To-Speech screen reader and measures to enable DPOs to operate the portal. The Institute will also explore R&D collaboration with South African Universities and Industry as well as partnering with International peers in Europe and the developing world.