How do we know when an Ushahidi deployment is successful? The answer to this question is no different than with any other project. If a given project has achieved the organization’s (or person’s) clearly stated goal and objectives, then the project is considered successful. If an organization does not specify a goal and set of objectives, then the project cannot be evaluated—or worse, critics will define these themselves and publicly label the project a failure. This is why it is important for organizations deploying Ushahidi platforms to publicly define their goal and objectives, along with associated outputs and activities. The goal is achieved by accomplishing a number of objectives; objectives are achieved by producing a set of outputs; and outputs are produced by implementing a series of activities—concrete events or services. Lets define our terms. When it comes to monitoring and evaluation, I often draw on the work by my colleague Cheyanne Church who is a recognized expert in this field. Much of this post borrows from her work. The goal is the broadest change in the environment that the deployment hopes to achieve. Project objectives describe the types of change that are perquisites to achieving the goal. Activities are the concrete events or services that program staff members and participants implement. The immediate deliverables or products from activities, which are often tangible, are called outputs. Organizations deploy Ushahidi platforms to affect some kind of change. They may hope to change relationships, behavior, circumstance, functioning, attitude, knowledge, skills, maintenance, prevention, process and/or structure. This list, modified from Cheyanne’s book, is not exhaustive but a good place to start. Examples for some types of change are listed below: • Relationship: from disconnectedness to solidarity • Behavior: from disrespecting immigrants to respecting them • Circumstance: from politically marginalized to able to vote • Functioning: from nontransparent to transparency • Attitude: from apathy to hope Organizations may seek to affect more than one type of change. Either way, these changes are what necessarily inform the project’s goal, objectives, outputs and activities. That’s why it is ridiculous to focus exclusively on metrics like number of reports and criticize organizations when their Ushahidi deployments do not garner some (completely) arbitrary number. Yes, the number of reports may be an output produced from a given activity to meet a certain objective, but that number need not necessarily be in the hundreds or thousands to achieve a stated objective. It all depends on what the objectives are! When I was consulting for the Conflict Early Warning and Response Network (CEWARN) in the Horn of Africa, dedicated field monitors were documenting incidents of violence in the region’s cross border areas using a basic web-based platform. Ushahidi could also be used for this purpose. In any case, one of the objectives of CEWARN was to catalyze more collaboration and communication between governments in the Horn and thereby build trust at the intergovernmental level. Meeting this objective had little to do with the number of reports submitted to CEWARN. In sum, it is really important for organizations to clearly articulate their goal, objectives, outputs and activities. In fact, I highly recommend they do so in the “About” tab of their Ushahidi deployment before going live. Otherwise, critics will have a field day tarnishing all the efforts that an organization has put into their Ushahidi project by unilaterally labeling the initiative a failure even if the project was in fact successful.