Capture local facts and opinions in real-time, anywhere in the world.
VOXS is a real-time data acquisition tool to directly engage ordinary people to share vital on-the-ground facts and opinions through any phone, nearly anywhere in the world, while enabling distribution of relevant information back to them. By combining VoIP and IVR technology with web-based, real-time tracking (maps, visualization, stats, raw data), VOXS can be used by any organization interested in hyper-local analysis.
Why did we build this system?
Data acquisition is difficult.
Given our professional background in international affairs, we realized that real-time, on-the-ground facts and opinions from ordinary people are very difficult to acquire and only rarely available. Current tools offer a limited view of local sentiment, and communities are not engaged en masse in the process. Existing methods are also not scalable, where data is slow and expensive to acquire, often susceptible to error, and quickly outdated.
Operating environments are challenging.
In most parts of the world, access to communication networks and infrastructure is limited, operating environments are restrictive (due to geography or environmental disaster, for example), and a large subset of the population is typically illiterate. The combination of these variables makes data acquisition and dissemination problematic for most organizations and companies working in these regions.
Intransparency is prevalent.
In a majority of countries, accurate information is frequently obstructed due to issues surrounding poor governance, misinformation, endemic corruption, and many other risks and uncertainties. We wanted to change that by building bridges directly with people in local communities in an anonymized way, to learn about the invaluable insights they have to offer, while also informing them about the very issues that directly affect them the most.