Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), one of the leading international development contractors, has deployed Open Atrium to help its GIS team in Islamabad communicate with its office in Peshawar and headquarters back in Bethesda on a capacity building project. In addition to improving team communications, they decided to use Open Atrium to boost the project's transparency for USAID and to get a sustainability win by using open source software that can stay behind with the local team in Pakistan long after the mapping project is completed.
Below is a short Q&A I had with Andrew Ross from DAI's GIS office about his work and how Open Atrium is helping.
Can you tell us about your project and your team in Pakistan?
We are working on a capacity building project to assist organizations in Peshawar and develop capacity in many areas. Specifically our project currently has four GIS staff based in Peshawar, and we also have an office in Islamabad. We produce GIS products for a number of clients and share development statistics with other organizations. We are also developing systems to help share this data. Workflows are difficult to establish as our staff are frequently move between offices.
