Need Analysis of Culture-Based Genealogy Software for Indigenous Communities

Edwin Mit Institute of Social Informatics & Technological Innovations Centre of Excellence for Rural Informatics (ISITI-CoERI)

Universiti Malaysia Sarawak 94300 Kota Samarahan, Sarawak, Malaysia

edwin@fit.unimas.my

1Noor Hazlini Borhan, 2Muhammad Asyraf Khairuddin

Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak

94300 Kota Samarahan, Sarawak, Malaysia 1bnhazlini@fit.unimas.my 2kmasyraf@fit.unimas.my

Abstract—This paper presents the results of a need analysis study of culture-based genealogy software for indigenous communities in Borneo and the challenges while introducing a software application proposal to the communities. Introducing a new software application to the indigenous communities which may change their way of living is not an easy task as they have been practicing their norm of life from generation to generation. Therefore, initial study is necessary to assess their readiness and understanding on how new technology may affect their daily life, cultures and beliefs. Their cultures relate to every stage of their life. It is a very complex body of knowledge, which needs a proper technique in order to capture, analyse, preserve and interpret it. At this stage of research, the work is focused on the marriage culture which is strongly related to genealogy. However, comprehensive component of the proposed software is essential, so that it provides a robust platform for other remote communities beliefs and cultures models. According to the study on 20 respondents, aged between 17 until 59 years old, 80% of the respondents are willing to use the genealogy software, 25% of the respondents never knew about the genealogy software and 36% of them are not sure about the software. Finally, the prototype of a new genealogy software that integrates indigenous community cultures is presented.

Keywords- requirement engineering, knowledge modeling, cultures, software model

I. INTRODUCTION In the olden days most of the indigenous communities in Borneo put into practice beliefs and cultures in their daily life. Due to modernization some of these beliefs and cultures are seldom practised by the communities especially by the younger generation. This is due to the lack of awareness of community’s good values in their cultures and beliefs which can be manipulated to be adopted into new environment. In this case the environments can include the new technologies. The manipulation of the good values of indigenous community beliefs and cultures are necessary in such a way it can be integrated with the current technologies, for example integrated with software applications which is expected to benefit the community itself. Rapid changes in technology changes the community living style, indirectly has impact on their culture and their social-economics status. Therefore the

introduction of new technology, in this case the information and communication technology (ICT), needs to be considered from several viewpoints, such as security, ethical and awareness. The awareness of these ICT impact to their living style are crucial. The assessment has been carried out by [1] in five countries in Asia-Pacific between 2009 and 2011, to identify the communication and information needs of indigenous peoples with approximately 70 percent of the world’s 370 million indigenous peoples live in Asia-Pacific. The assessments focused on major development issues faced by indigenous peoples, including in terms of representation in state agencies, media and communication landscapes–encompassing freedom of expression and information, the safety of journalists, and community media, particularly radio, including the potential of new modes of digital communication and ICT [1] The community must understand the affect of ICT technologies and its application so that they can get benefits from it and at the same time avoiding being a victim of those who try take advantages from their limitations. In order to reduce the risk, the ICT awareness training can be carried out to the indigenous community. However, the training on technologies and software deployment only [2,3] are inadequate to avoid the misuse of technology by the communities and vice versa. In order to reduce this risk, the community needs to be equipped with awareness on how the technology can affect their living style, and their socio-economic.

Understanding the indigenous community cultures is the most important stage of this research project before proceeding with the software design decision. Studies are conducted before introducing new software application to identify their needs. This is essential in the software design decision that needs to fulfill the community requirements, can fit into their social-economic, and deployed in parallel with their cultures and beliefs. Many commercial and open source genealogy systems and tools are available for different OS platform and different system architecture [4]. Current genealogy system supports the multimedia data storage such as photo and video. With these features, individuals can upload a variety of data into genealogy system such as medical data and photos, scanned thumb print and so on. Face

detection technique is also used to detect the face in the uploaded photo and auto trace the friend and family member within the genealogy database. Multi-language support is also available in many genealogy systems. Now the usage of genealogy application has been extended to community sharing systems such as PhpGedView [5] deployed the web-based that allows the online collaboration with other register user, and Chinese Genealogy Information System [6] that allows the visualization of more three nodes.

Culture is a set of socially transmitted and learned behavior of all products of human work and that characterize the functioning of a particular population, profession, organization or community [7]. It concerns similar viewpoints and understanding of particular belief, this makes them feel belonging to a parallel experience, or otherwise it is an isolated knowledge [8]. Knowledge is awareness or familiarity which is gained by experiences. The same experience can be interpreted differently in different environment. Therefore, understanding the meaning of knowledge and how to utilize it in different environments is essential. In this research project integrating cultures into genealogy software is essential, so that the events (cultures) related to marriage process are recorded. This can help younger generations understand their culture better, and at the same time the study or the extraction of good values from indigenous community culture can be derived.

The aims of this study is to define a typical culture model that can represent cultures of indigenous groups in Borneo (i.e. Sarawak and Sabah), and these include the extraction of the good values from their beliefs which can be manipulated to be integrated into modern technology. Sarawak is the largest state in Malaysia, it has a bewildering diversity of culture with over 30 ethnic or indigenous/native groups. Iban, Bidayuh, Malay, Melanau, Chinese, Sebob and Orang Ulu. There are various Orang Ulu groups which comprises the Kenyah, and the smaller neighboring groups of the Kejang, Kejaman, Punan, Ukit, Penan. Lun Bawang, Lun Dayeh, Murut, Berawan and the plateau dwelling of Kelabits [9]. In this research, typical model is defined based on Penan in Sarawak and Kadazan-Duzun in Sabah. This is due to these community having a simple culture and taboo relate to their life. The current typical model will be refined to accommodate other indigenous group in Borneo.

This paper presents part of the work in defining the typical culture model for indigenous communities in Borneo, in particular, present the result of need analysis of culture-based genealogy software for indigenous communities in Borneo and the challenges introducing a new software application proposal to the community. Introducing a new software application to the indigenous communities is not an easy task as they have been practicing their traditions from generation to generation. Therefore, initial study is necessary to assess their readiness and understanding on how new technology may affect their daily life, cultures and beliefs. This approach is similar to the technology acceptance model (TAM) theory; that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness of the new technology in their relation between systems characteristics

and the current system that is used [10]. The paper is organized as following, section II discuss the data elicitation process for need analysis of new genealogy software for indigenous communities. Section III presents the result of the study, Section IV discusses and evaluates the outcome from assessment study for the need of genealogy software section V present the prototype of a new genealogy software that integrate cultures into the application and Section VI concludes the study and highlight future work

II. DATA COLLECTION In order to understand the indigenous community needs on culture-based genealogy software a team of researchers conduct a visit to indigenous community site. This visit is necessary as most of the communities conversant in their beliefs and cultures stay at the village. Each visit, the researchers will stay with the community for two to three days to observe their living style (daily life), beliefs and cultures. During the stay, the researchers join their daily activities; go to their farms, socially interact with locals, playing, eating etc in order to understand and to learn more about their cultures. The observation technique is used to complement the main technique used; that is the questionnaire.

The purpose of this data collection is to find out whether they are willing to expose their cultures to the outside world and allow technology to come into their daily life. For this purpose, we have identified potential respondents aged between 17 and 59 years old so that we can get different type of opinions from different generations. It is not easy to invite communities to take part in the study. This is the main challenge in the data collection, some of them are not available due to their daily task working at their farm from morning until dusk, and will be very tired to participate in the survey at night time. In order to get as much sample as possible, the questionnaires were distributed by the trainers after church service at the community place, as most of them are Christian and will gather at church for Sunday mass. In order to make sure that the questionnaires are well understood by the respondent, we trained a local translator (i.e., trainers) to assist respondent in answering the questions. Another setback in gathering the information is that nearly all of the people here already got their own religion, and most of them are Christian. Therefore, they no longer practice their old customs and traditions. The information that we have here are mostly told by the old generation that can still remember the old cultures. Some of the information such as rhyme, song, and poem are very limited because the lyrics are not properly recorded and only available via oral tradition from generation to generation.

The questionnaires are design to capture four categories of information, namely (i) knowledge on genealogy software, (ii) the need of genealogy software, (iii) genealogy and cultures, (iv) beliefs and consequences. The analysis result is as discuss in section 3.

III. NEED ANALYSIS This section discusses the findings on the needs of culture-

based genealogy software for the indigenous community. Likert Scale 1 to 5 (strongly agree, agree, not sure, not agree and strongly disagree) was used in this evaluation respectively. The data in this analysis was performed by using SPSS 16.0. The results were presented using percentage and random group of respondents were chosen to fill up the survey form. All of the respondents were aged between 17 until 59 years old.

TABLE I. KNOWLEDGE ON GENEALOGY SOFTWARE

Figure 1 Knowledge on genealogy software

The first part of questionnaire is trying to find out either lineage is vital in the community and assess their awareness of software that support the family tree. Table I and Figure 1 show the knowledge of respondents on genealogy software. The finding from this construct is that the respondents can use the computer (80%), 16% of them not sure about it and only 4% of the respondents do not know how to use the computer. Apart from knowing how to use computer, 76% of the respondents also know on how to use or surf the Internet to use email, facebook, website and etc. According to the analysis, more than 25% of the respondents never know about the genealogy software and 36% of them are unsure about the software. 80% of the respondents are willing to use the genealogy software to get to know their family tree. This shows that the respondents are highly motivated with the idea of using genealogy software in order to know their family tree.

TABLE II. THE NEED OF GENEALOGY SOFTWARE

Figure 2 Need of genealogy software

The second part of the questionnaire is trying to assess either the community like to preserve their family tree and either they need support tool (genealogy software) to do the task. Table II and Figure 2 show the need of genealogy software for the community. Almost 100% of the respondents agreed that they want their posterity to remember them when they are deceased. More than 70% of the respondents like other people are able to see their family lineage. This shows that they want their family tree to be visible to others instead of keeping it to themselves. The analysis shows that only 8% of the respondents do not like other people to know their family background. Furthermore, 92% of the respondents stated their readiness to record their origin if given the opportunity for them to do so

TABLE III. GENEALOGY AND CULTURAL

Figure 3 genealogy and cultural

The last part of the questionnaire is trying to assess either the community willing to expose their marriage culture and belief via genealogy software. Last construct is the analysis on the genealogy and culture. This is referring to the Table III and Figure 3. More than 70% of the respondents stated that they know about their taboos related to the marriage. The respondents want other races respect their customs and almost 76% of them stated that they want other people to know their culture and belief that are related to their marriage. A majority of the respondents, which are (92 % of them) prefer to record their race marriage culture for the future generations

IV. DISCUSSION AND EVALUATION Based on the study conducted, most respondents can use computers and also could surf the Internet such as using facebook, email and going on web site even though they stay in the rural area. They can use computers and Internet due to the presence of community telecentre in their village that can provide them high speed internet and communication services. The existence of this telecentre exposes the communities to a number of Internet applications.

Most of the respondents have never heard of genealogy software because previously there are no systems used to record their family tree. The only way of getting to know their ancestors is via oral tradition, from generation to generation. Through responses given by respondents, they have shown great interest in using genealogy software to enable them to record and identify their history and origins. Besides that, they would also like other communities to understand and know their cultures, taboos and their origin (or family background). It shows that they want their existence to be appreciated and acknowledged by other surrounding communities although they are only the minority group in Sarawak.

The respondents also indicated that they are ready to record their origins if given opportunity to do so because they want to know their family tree in more detail and consequently can be made as a guide and reference for the next generation in the future. Furthermore, most of the respondents know about taboos in their community especially related to their marriage culture. At the same time, they also want other ethnic groups to respect their taboos and traditional practices.

More than half of the respondents still adopted taboos in their lives. This means that some of them still maintain the traditional norm practiced by their ancestor until today. They also shown positive responses to record their indigenous marriage culture so that it can be used by future generations as a guidelines. Based on good responses given by them in recording their culture, we could assume that they want to integrate their cultures into genealogy software to ensure that their cultures and customs can be kept and recorded, so that it will not be extinct.

V. PROTOTYPE OF THE GENEALOGY The newly developed genealogy software for indigenous

community not only has normal features available in other genealogy software but has several features that allow the user to record the marriage event, which is related to their cultures and taboos. Figure 4 shows the interface screen that allow the user to enter the event (culture or taboo) related to the marriage process. It also allows the user to record the history of a particular person in the family tree. It is a web-based system which enable user to access it anytime, anywhere. This feature supports the online sharing of the genealogy data from the same family tree.

In addition to normal search, adding and editing function, the new proposed genealogy software also supports the tracing or creating record of former spouse and their children. This is done by enabling the user to create a new spouse, and at the same time enable the user to create or expand the former

spouse record. This can be done by clicking the link between spouse as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 4 Culture screen

Figure 5 Family tree screen

VI. CONCLUSION Most of the communities agree to preserve their cultures and make it known to the outside world. Based on the study, the younger generation understand Internet and computer application better, compared to older generations. This is due to their education background, but they have limitations in remembering their ancestor, compared to older generations, which can tell up to five generations back. This is true since

the older generation rely on oral traditions to remember their ancestor. This study concludes that the need of culture-based genealogy software is necessary for the indigenous community. It is not only to preserve the family tree hierarchy, but to preserve the culture and in future work. The next step in this research, will be to study and extract the good values from the cultures which can be manipulated and integrated into modern technologies, so that it can be accommodated into indigenous community norm of life, and the integration of good values from their cultures with modern technologies is expected to give benefit to them

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank Universiti Malaysia Sarawak for providing the funding to publish and present this paper, and the Institute of Social Informatics & Technological Innovations Centre of Excellence for Rural Informatics (ISITI-CoERI) for allowing the studies to be conducted at the remote Telecentres. The research was partially supported by the short grant scheme, UNIMAS, Project No: 02(76)/811/2011(10).

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