Digitising Data Collection from Rural India

[Shivangi Desai]

Hey All,

I work for Goonj. (You can find more information regarding it on our website: https://goonj.org/)

Distribution of material for relief/aid is a big part of Goonj’s work. During the distribution the field staff captures various data points, such as - geographical information, recipients information, type of material given, work done etc. This data is currently being captured on a printed paper. 

The distribution happens in rural areas where the mobile network coverage is inadequate (if available at all) and the staff doing the distribution have very basic smartphones.

Keeping these constraints (collection of offline data using basic smartphones) in mind and in order to help simplify their work, we are looking for solutions that can be used to move away from the generic paper and pen model for collecting data.

In regards to this I am trying to figure out what the different organisations across the world are using to capture information in similar scenarios.

Is there any particular application, tool or form that you have used and found suitable? 

As of now other than developing our own mobile application the only viable option seems to be Kobo toolbox. (jot forms is expensive)

Any insight would be really appreciated.

Thanks,

Shivangi

[Devdatta Tengshe]

Hi Shivangi,

My experience with offline data collection is quite old, circa 2013; But we had great success using ODK. The project has evolved quite a bit since then, and can be accessed at : https://getodk.org/

Do let me know if you need some help setting this up.

Regards,

Devdatta

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[Suvajit Sengupta]

Hi Shivangi, 

I second Devdatta. 

If it is about data collection offline followed by sync with network availability without much processing at server end, ODK does the job well. 

We have earlier done mobile app and few reporting capabilities on top ODK. Can share if it is useful for you. 

Regards, 

Suvajit 

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[Shivangi Desai]

Thanks Devdatta and Suvajit.

Will definitely look into ODK, shall reach out if I get stuck or need help.

Thanks,

Shivangi 

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[naveen ramisetty]

Hi Shivangi,

We are using Avni App to collect information at village well. We are using the same app for the followup activities as well. 

Copying Arjun from Avni team. 

Thanks,

Naveen

On 12-Nov-2021, at 10:33 AM, Shivangi Desai <shivang...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Thejesh GN]

Kobo Toolbox is great. It's based on the ODK, has better UI in general. And is maintained. I used it multiple times last year with great success. 

You can also look at their Restful APIs and Webhooks if you plan to pull the data out into your systems for analysis, and it works pretty well.

Thej
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[Shivangi Desai]

Thanks for getting back Naveen, Thejesh and Arjun.

Thejesh, yeah i did have a look at Kobo toolbox and will look at the webhooks and restful APIs too as i do need data for analysis purposes and need to sync them into the salesforce platform as well.

Arjun and Naveen, the Avni product does sound good. Will set up time to discuss this with you in a separate email. 

Thanks and Regards,

Shivangi

On Fri, Nov 12, 2021 at 2:51 PM Arjun Khandelwal <arj...@samanvayfoundation.org> wrote:

Thanks Naveen for looping me in.

Hi Shivangi,

I think Avni can solve your problem. It's open-source. Rich case management, flexible and powerful modeling capabilities to create your own MIS using its App designer, offline data capture, hosted service in India, APIs for integration with third party softwares and being easy on pockets are some of the areas where Avni shines.

Do checkout the following

Website : https://avniproject.org/

Some case studies : https://avniproject.org/case-studies

An interesting client story describing what Avni provides over and above Kobo : https://avniproject.org/blog/shelter-journey-remoulding-data-collection-paper-kobotoolbox-avni/

I am one of the core team members of Avni. Nonprofits easily moving away from paper based systems without having to build their own MIS from scratch is one of the visions with which we have been developing this platform which is now used by close to 30 projects.

If this interests you, please feel free to drop an email to me or schedule a call from the Avni website for knowing more about the platform.

--

Regards,

Arjun.

Product Lead, Avni

Co-founder, Samanvay Research and Development Foundation

[Yogesh Karyakarte]

We at BAIF use Epicollect, ODK, and Kobo toolbox.

We found that Epicollect is very simple and easy to use for field staff.

With best regards,

Yogesh Karyakarte
BAIF, Pune.
www.baif.org.in

[ambari...@gmail.com]

Hi Shivangi,

We have used epicollect5 for one of our projects. It served the purpose. It can be accessed at https://five.epicollect.net/.

Thanks

Ambarish Narayanan