Cisco is proud to help Akvo, which offers knowledge companies and tech options to growth companions within the water, agriculture, and local weather sectors. We all know that knowledge is vital for efficient decision-making, collaboration, and accountability. Akvo helps companies and governments around the globe to enhance their applications to allow them to obtain lasting impression.
This submit comes from Pleasure Ghosh, Akvo’s Tech Lead. Pleasure has been working within the subject of information and expertise for growth for the previous 10 years, and makes a speciality of constructing knowledge platforms for the agriculture and water sectors.
Pleasure Ghosh, Akvo’s Tech Lead.
Right here’s how knowledge is often collected within the growth sector. Let’s say a challenge is about as much as enhance the earnings of smallholder farmers or obtain secure water entry in a sure area. Enumerators are despatched out to gather knowledge on the communities that are impacted by these points. Interventions are then put in place to enhance the outcomes and contribute in the direction of impression. On the finish of this system, enumerators are despatched out as soon as once more to gather knowledge and monitor change. However what if we might complement this tried and examined technique of information assortment with steady enter from the sphere, reasonably than simply baseline knowledge at the start and the top of a program? And what if, reasonably than knocking on doorways to gather knowledge, neighborhood members had a platform to share data on their challenges and wishes. What if we might use knowledge assortment as a software for steady neighborhood engagement?
With help from the Cisco Basis, we’ve been growing applied sciences to make this a actuality. Unstructured Supplementary Service Information (USSD) and phone-based knowledge assortment is commonly seen as a cost-saving different to subject knowledge assortment — superb for conditions in which you’ll’t go into the sphere attributable to well being or safety emergencies. However this expertise must be seen as a complement to in-person subject knowledge assortment, and the advantages go far past lowered prices and safety challenges.
A hybrid strategy to monitoring
In the present day, enumerators are despatched out into the sphere to search out respondents from whom to assemble knowledge. This conventional technique of information assortment has clear advantages – enumerators can observe first-hand what’s happening within the subject, and challenge managers obtain complete, high quality datasets. Nonetheless, there are additionally quite a few drawbacks.
In-person knowledge assortment is resource-intensive and subsequently periodical. The dearth of steady, well timed knowledge signifies that usually, interventions are indifferent from the realities on the bottom. Area-based knowledge assortment offers snapshots into the present scenario, reasonably than steady suggestions that enables program managers to fill within the context, and regulate methods based mostly on proof. Utilizing a hybrid strategy to knowledge assortment – distant and in particular person – might assist to finish the image. Program managers can use distant knowledge assortment to achieve a broad understanding of a particular downside, after which in-person knowledge assortment to give attention to potential downside areas. Alternatively, in-field knowledge assortment might be performed at, for instance, annual intervals, after which distant knowledge assortment can fill within the gaps and supply context regularly. This might enable program managers to see change because it happens, permitting for extra well timed responses, focused interventions, and higher outcomes.
In-person knowledge assortment can also be a bodily exhausting course of. The sheer logistical challenges might result in enumerators accumulating knowledge from 10 individuals in a single village and none from the encompassing 5, leading to a skewed pattern. With distant knowledge assortment, you’ve the potential to exceed your pattern, reaching a a lot wider geographical scope with considerably much less sources.
Lastly, in-person knowledge assortment makes it troublesome to hunt out native change makers in the neighborhood, and brings to the fore questions of information possession. What are the incentives for respondents to present away their time and their knowledge? Does the information nonetheless belong to them? And the way, if in any respect, does the information get fed again into the neighborhood? Improvements in distant knowledge assortment expertise might enable for a extra citizen-centered strategy.
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Harnessing the facility of distant in Kenya
In Kenya, Akvo created a system for distributing, accessing and responding to surveys through radio and textual content messaging in cooperation with county governments of Kajiado, Laikipia and Kwale, Central FM Kenya Radio, and Africa’s Speaking, an area USSD aggregator. Akvo and Africa’s Speaking collectively produced an Software Programming Interface (API) integration that enables surveys, historically administered by a cellular surveying utility, to be obtained and accomplished through textual content message. We partnered with Central FM Kenya Radio to ascertain a schedule for broadcasting USSD codes to listeners, analyzing and decoding knowledge alongside Well being Authority Officers, and distributing survey outcomes.
Radio DJs that host interviews with representatives of Kenya Water for Well being Group obtained knowledge course of coaching after which broadcast the USSD codes to listeners. Every time a survey was introduced, the DJ would clarify that solutions from accomplished surveys could be mechanically despatched to county databases and dwell knowledge visualizations (maps, charts, and graphs) could be up to date. DJs actively distributed survey codes, noticed responses coming-in, up to date dwell knowledge visualization dashboards, interpreted outcomes along side Well being Officers, and communicated up to date data again to the neighborhood concerning two thematic areas: built-in water administration and gender-based violence.
Radio DJs from Central FM Kenya Radio.
This strategy permits organizations to ask the neighborhood straight for enter, be it in relation to their water services, healthcare, meals safety, or every other societal challenge. This has a bunch of advantages, together with:
Elevating consciousness across the challenge at hand by broadcasting it
Gathering knowledge at common intervals through broadcast for a fraction of the fee
Figuring out people in the neighborhood who care about and actively take part in neighborhood points, as a result of they arrive to you, reasonably than you going to them
Introducing incentives for feeding in knowledge repeatedly and on a well timed foundation (via gamification, for instance)
Feeding knowledge straight again to the neighborhood — they’re conscious and concerned in the issue and empowered with alternatives to contribute to the answer
This pilot is considered one of many who we’ve been testing in varied sectors and contexts with help from the Cisco Basis, and exhibits how conventional knowledge assortment strategies within the growth sector might be innovated to enhance outcomes. On the time of scripting this weblog we’re in a scaling part, aiming to help a further 10 companions (authorities and organizations) this 12 months with crowdsourcing options resembling USSD.
What’s subsequent for the sector
Similar to the swap from pen and paper knowledge assortment to smartphone-based knowledge assortment, this evolution will take time and studying. There are quite a few advantages to distant knowledge assortment if utilized in the correct method and in the correct context, however we’ve got to be taught which strategies are greatest suited to which contexts, and what the drawbacks and challenges are. Past that, we’ve got to suppose in another way about how knowledge must be collected based mostly on the completely different mediums. For instance, you possibly can’t run the identical survey on USSD as you’d in an in-person survey as a result of it will be too lengthy and too cumbersome for the respondent. That is the place design considering comes into play, and program managers take into account what knowledge is required, how that knowledge is greatest collected, and what obstacles there could also be.
We’re persevering with this work to determine the very best practices, challenges, and alternatives, with monetary help and technical recommendation help from the Cisco Basis.
