Simplifying and improving mobile based data collection

Social programs often require collection of demographic and program related information. Pen-paper surveys have been the most favorable way of collecting such information. However, with proliferation of smartphones, low cost mobile connectivity with good coverage and availability of several data collection applications that can even work around the connectivity concerns, pen-paper surveys are now being replaced by mobile based data collection. In this work, we discuss the enhancement of Open Data Kit (ODK), an existing mobile based data collection application, with features such as pre-filling and validation SMS. The additional features were motivated from the real world requirements of reducing the data collection effort and minimizing the discrepancies in records for a project requiring information dissemination to beneficiaries of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), a government of India scheme. Data collection exercise, using our extended tool, is currently ongoing in two districts across two different states in India. Preliminary results from one deployment indicate that even with 8% of pre-filled fields in a form, there was a 16.1% decrease in the errors. Additionally, time per survey reduced with the pre- filling option. Preliminary results from another deployment indicate that 35% of the pre-filled forms had mismatched or changed information when compared with the data available in government records.