Question 1: ICTs for collecting agricultural, socio-economic, or M&E data (Open 11 June)

This blog shares the experience that Text to Change has with regard to data collection using the mobile phone. Please take time to read through and dodnot heistste to ask any questions.

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Technology is only a tool. Having a free platform to use for data collection does not mean any organization can run a successful data collection program without thinking through the entire process from project design, implementation and evaluation. Text to Change has extensive experience in providing support throughout the complete project cycle, from developing the initial concept to doing data analysis and evaluation. Formhub plays an important part in this process as we will see in this example.

More details: http://www.texttochange.org/blog/data-collection-using-mobile-phones-rig...

Thanks

With kind regards

Maureen

We have initiated this at Global Broadband and Innovation (GBI) of USAID but there is a shift in the program focus and therefore the work on the database is currently suspended. I however have a longer list which is not available online - ICTs for M&E at GBI Portal. Note this portal will be taken down by the end of this month.

Thanks

Ben

We at Text to Change make extensive use of mobile technology to monitor and evaluate projects for topics in the sectors Health, Education, Economic Development and Governance/Advocacy. By using SMS, supported by voice for the (technological or alphabetical) illeterate, and data collected through the Open Data Kit (ODK) app we can gather data for many different purposes in many remote settings. Despite the coverage of mobile internet, there is usually a mobile connection that allows to send and receive SMS messages. We can set up the survey in the form of a quiz, still keeping in mind that maximum length of messages is 160 characters. The advantage of SMS that every mobile device, regardless of brand or age, can send and receive text messages. The end-users send and receive the text messages for free, the Telecom provider bills the partner or us for all messages send and received. Technically you need to connect the Text to Change platform to all the networks, or only one specific network when all users are on the same network. Additionally you can think of an incentive-based system, where monetary incentives, like airtime, are distributed next to social incentives, like the knowledge that you give away. The data can be collected 24/7 and displayed on a website, or accessed by a stakeholder real-time through our platform that runs online. Subsequently a detailed report can be created and shared with stakeholders. Some advantages exist, besides earlier mentioned advantages, but especially the accessibility and empowerment for base of the pyramid users. Would be happy to discuss usability and method in further detail.

Are these SMS services free for inclusion of common mass?

Hi PDey.  I'm not sure if I understand your question correctly, but if you ask if the SMS is free for the end-user the answer is yes. The respondents interact with the platform through SMS at no cost at their side.

      Thank you firstable to make an e-platform for agriculture , for NTIC injection in agriculture we must assure that farmer's around the world have a media tool's minimum just a laptop or simple computer to use software's for software we are here like an agro-tech scientist i worked 2 year's ago to make app's just for farmer's exactly in fruit's and vegetables production , with a simple app's for irrigation,fertilizer science and crop's protection data .

     I hope that the world and FAO like a world wide organisation must interest and use the power of new technology of informations .

    I invite you to see my free app's collection's in  http://www.hortisoft.ae.ma

Thank you all for your participation in this forum.  For those that have implemented iFormBuilder or ODK M&E systems, can you tell us a little more about the system architecture and output?  I am particularly interested in understanding how you use the data uploaded to your system to monitor your project.  How do you query the data or create simple reports?  Do you move your data into Excel or Google spreadsheets?  Or do you have some kind of "front-end" application that enables you to do basic data analysis/visualization/reporting?  Thanks!

There are some great detailed use cases from the CRS ICT4D Event (http://www.crsprogramquality.org/ict4d-2012/).  Particularly The CAR Seed Fair and the KAP Malaria presentations from the Day 2 presentation show detailed architecture used for the projects.  

iFormBuilder and many ODK implementations allow for easy access to data.  iFormBuilder's admin console gives users access to field data via Data Views for simple reporting and Data Feeds in the following formats: XLS, XML, JSON, ATOM and RSS and also provide and XML post functionality along with filtering tools to easily create feeds that only have relevant data.  With the emergence of new visual BI tools like Klipfolio, Gekoboard, RoamBI and Google to name a few, live data feeds can populate these tools for real-time visulaization of the data.

For couple of our project we build custom data aggregation interface to pull data to dashboards and GIS mapping platform. In one of our project we used build in export feature to Excel from iFormBuilder to pull data into Google table app that provides user with flexibility of create custom analysis reporting and GIS representation. Currently we are working on M&E projects that would aggregate data from multiple projects into a single data store and will provide features to user to build project specific reports and will have agency standard M&E reports.

I would like to briefly introduce Cropster (www.cropster.org). We provide online tools for sustainable supply chains - including producers, traders and processors of agricultural products. As of this year we include also an M&E tool (additionally to farm, production and quality control) enabling efficient data collection and exchange within producer groups and between producer groups and NGO's or commercial partners. The novelty is, that this tool is not a classical M&E platform where data is only available to the questionnaire managers, but also to the ones, who are providing their answers and valuable insights. This creates more a bottom-up approach. The tool also combines data generated through commercial processes (production, quality, price) with questionnaire data. I am excited to see the different approaches here in this forum and open for discussion.