Many NGOs are thinking of adopting software technology for their data management and reporting (instead of paper) - for their community/field-based programs. When evaluating such projects usually there is a lingering doubt about the extent to which technology can be used in these programs. What is the anthropological and economic feasibility of doing so?
In this article we have:
- created a checklist of issues to help you in doing an assessment of the profile of technology that can be rolled out.
- done a classification of different data storage options
- provided one example of how one can think about using hybrid approaches. Since almost all such technology solution deployments use multiple data storage options i.e. they are not fully digital or completely paper-less.
Checklist of issues to consider
- Infrastructure
- Electricity availability - There is a bare minimum hour of electricity required so that the devices used can be charged. The minimum hours depends on the extent of usage you expect.
- Electricity quality - The electricity should be such that it doesn’t harm the devices (via voltage spikes for example), requiring very frequent maintenance or replacement. Gathering anecdotal evidence from each cluster may be sufficient to determine this if one is not sure.
- Anthropological issues - Many of the village/slum or even higher level community workers are not fluent in using smartphone apps. They still don’t have a smartphone of their own. But before you get disappointed by this and make a decision, it is better to look deeper put people into four groups, look at the breakup, and then decide - based on what the breakup looks like.
- Community workers not literate in the reading/writing in the local language
- literate in written language but not used to smartphone and probably not trainable yet
- literate in written language, not used to smartphone and but trainable
- literate in written language and use smartphone already
- Cost
- What will be the total cost of mobile devices, data connections, repairs, and replacements?
- This can be easily calculated by using excel.
- If you will be dependent on the external trainer to train your staff in technology usage, then the induction of new staff will require training as well. In our assessment train-the-trainer approach works quite well and hence we feel that attrition/replacement is not an issue other than adding one more item to your training curriculum.
- How much value you will derive by spending on technology per field worker? What is the percentage value of this cost compared to all other costs associated per field worker?
- What will be the total cost of mobile devices, data connections, repairs, and replacements?
- Data strategy - Please note that you may be dealing with different types of data and your issues may not be relevant to all types of data.
- Is it time-consuming to enter data into a mobile app? Yes, the speed at which data can be entered into mobile is slower compared to paper. But this tells only half the story. One should also factor in how much of the client interaction time for the community workers is in entering data versus talking, listening, thinking, travelling/switching between clients. Usually, it is a very small percentage and even a two-fold increase in data entry time has negligible impact on the overall client interaction time. In our view, you should not factor this point in your decision making - unless the data being entered is free-text notes. Free text notes, above tens of words, could start adding significantly to interaction time, also be quite error-prone, and frustrating for the user.
- Should one keep backup of data that is entered in the mobile app in paper records - otherwise how would the fieldworker access data if the mobile app is unavailable because of mobile breakdown. Do consider the following factors:
- Do you have beneficiary retained records? If yes, do they serve as a backup in need?
- How many outages of mobile phone are probable in a year?
- How much service outage of the community worker, for their clients is realistic?
We project that you may get a non-binary picture even after considering all of the above. But hopefully, now you have more concrete data to base your decisions on. To further deepen our understanding of the utility of the technology, let us compare various types of data storage and access mediums.
Types of data storage
There are three types of data storage options - paper, paper scanned (or unstructured digital), and structured digital. When thinking about data management, it is important to view paper and scanned paper also as a data tool so that we can do comparisons and understand tradeoffs.
The term structured is applied from the perspective of whether computers can fully understand the contents. Unstructured to structured is a spectrum not a binary as computer’s ability continue to improve. For the generally available “mainstream” technology, we would consider it to be binary though and assume that computers can tell us very little about the unstructured content in a practical sense (practical being the operative phrase here).
1. Paper
Advantages
- Everyone in your organization knows how to use it. It is an implicit entry criterion to an organization which we don’t have to even think about.
- Paper is flexible and efficient to use for large data-input and reading it. Beneficiaries record many a time have a lot of information like health record, agriculture plan. e.g. One of the main reason digital has not replaced health records is for this reason.
- Paper has almost no upfront or one time costs.
Disadvantages of paper
- Mobility - Data on paper moves slowly, i.e. it has to be moved physically to another person for them to access. This restricts several useful applications of such data related to information sharing, speed of availability, timely action based on the information and so on.
- Paper records cannot be "queried". One cannot ask a set of paper records any question and get an answer unlike digital. e.g. One cannot ask patient records room in a hospital “how many patients have diabetes and hypertension both” - and get a count as an answer!
- Paper quality deteriorates over time. Paper records can get lost. One can get around both by making copies of the paper, though.
2. Paper scanned
This gets around two of the disadvantage of paper - mobility and quality deterioration. Mobile technology is good enough to perform scanning of paper and can be transmitted easily over data networks (though it does require slightly better networks than transferring structured digital records which are quite a size efficient).
3. Structured digital
This does away with all the disadvantages of paper mentioned earlier. Although it has a few disadvantages of its own - which we have discussed in the checklist of issues in first section.
Example of a hybrid approach
Most community programs that employ software use paper also. In a way, they are hybrid even when they are using technology extensively. Since you as a reader of this article may have already come across how mobile applications have been used in community programs, we restrict ourselves here to discuss one uncommon but an interesting approach which may help you think in creative ways about getting around the issues we discussed at the beginning.
Paper records scanned but with associated structured digital metadata
Context
- Village water survey has to be conducted and submitted to the block level office.
- Block-level office checks the survey and approves it.
- This water survey record is of interest to the wider community.
- There is no requirement to perform data analysis of the water surveys from different villages, except for a few data elements like village name, date of survey, duration of the survey, etc.
A solution
- Village resource person (VRP) surveys using paper forms.
- VRP scans the paper forms using mobile and submits into a software system.
- Along with scan of paper VRP also fills a small structured form on the mobile app with information like date of survey etc mentioned above.
The salience of this solution
- Our technology instinct will take the paper forms and create mobile forms and VRPs fill the mobile form with hundreds of data points. But in this particular case, there is not much value in having all the data points as structured data. Secondly, the user will use this app only once in a year hence getting trained in using a more complex app is not required.
- Few key data points captured in the structured form allows for the basic analysis to be done. These structured data points will also allow for searching of the water surveys online. Once found, the scanned images of water surveys themselves can be viewed.
Conclusion
Ultimately, we use technology to solve problems. Deployment of technology without considering its feasibility and its impact on the problems is pointless and wasteful. At Samanvay we brainstorm with our nonprofit customers and come up with solutions that use paper and software together. As organisations and the context of use evolves, the solution usually evolves to using more software steadily.
Author: Vivek Singh
Date: 14-October-2020