As Afghan citizens go to the polls today, a DAI-supported initiative -- the U.S. Agency for International Development's Global Development Commons -- is helping to provide timely online reporting and mapping of election-related violence and other incidents.

The Global Development Commons is partnering with Fortius One's GeoCommons, Google, Development Seed, Relief Star-Tides, Synergy Strike Force, and others to enhance the transparency of the August 20 election and generate data for subsequent analysis and policymaking. You can see the current maps and layers of data uploaded here.

Volunteers from the Synergy Strike Force, which supports humanitarian relief and stabilization efforts in post-conflict environments, are on the ground in Jalalabad, collecting and sharing local data in real time by means of an SMS platform developed by Ushahidi, one of the winners of the Global Development Commons' USAID Development 2.0 Challenge.

The open source platform allows anyone interested in contributing to the effort to upload data here. People in country may report incidents by text message to 93 79 404 0569.

The potential uses of this data are numerous. Mapping election-related incidents with an overlay of demographic data, for example, or against levels of turnout may shed light on the legitimacy of the electoral process and yield lessons learned for future elections. You can read about the potential uses of the maps at www.GlobalDevelopmentCommons.net. For more information about the partners and tools involved, click here.

The Global Development Commons initiative seeks to catalyze innovations for better international development results. It is supported by staff from the DAI-implemented Global Development Alliance Strategic Support Program.