Computer technology plays a major role in the DSS Triangle. This section will list subsequently software

• from own development efforts when working in the DSS Triangle, or
• by external parties, which seems to be usefull for the work on one of the topics.

A number of consultants working in the context of less developed countries do not like the idea of using computer- technology in developing countries. While one might assume mainly romantic or ideologic reasons - maybe even ignorance - behind these feelings, it has to be clearly seen that the use of computers has to be adapted to two major constraints:

• small funds resulting in small-scale hardware, lack of man-power, lack of licensed software.
• difficult working conditions caused by harmfull weather conditions and insufficient infrastructure.

Based on these limitations, it does not make sense to suggest the use of software, which is expensive to acquire, which depends on up-to-date hardware or which is difficult to use. Although I am aware that there other tools - and believe me, I have worked on lots of them - which might be much more powerfull than those mentioned, I will not list them here for the above mentioned constraints.

The three principles are (although there will be a lot of exceptions):

The first item of in the list of own developments is “Kabarole!”, a small reporting tool for district HMIS, which I tried to develop according to those principles in 1994 in Fort Portal, Uganda.

This site was created and web-published by Uwe Wahser (uwe@wahser.de) in June 2001.
Last update: November 2002.