UNIQUE IDENTIFIERS AND DATA COLLECTION TECHNIQUESInformation Communication Technology for Development

Unique Identifiers

Unique identifiers (UI) refers to techniques for confirming/establishing identities of beneficiaries

UI’s are useful in the case of; Decentralized service delivery

Especially when there are multiple partners Targeted programs

Benefits accrue to select beneficiaries Contexts with high levels of corruption or

mismanagement

Advantages of UI’s

Streamlining service delivery and implementation

Effective data management and analysis

Facilitating Monitoring and evaluation of programmes

Reducing inclusion and exclusion errors

Ensuring transparency

Applications of UIs

Case study 1: USAID-funded Drug Demand Reduction Program (DDRP), Central Asia UI Type: Individual code

First two letters of mother’s first name First two letters of father’s first name Gender (single letter M/F or number 1/2) Year of birth (last two digits)

Advantages Low probability of duplication of id's Low start up costs

Limitations Not very robust in the context of polygamous marriages- In cultures using

patronymic naming systems and/or polygamous marriages, the likelihood of duplicates arose.

Application: Tracking of individuals BRAC programmes: MNCH or BEP

Applications of UIs (cont.) Case study 2: Maternal Heath care, India UI type: Smart cards and Photo id-

Beneficiaries (Expecting mothers) receive a photo ID and smart card. Cards are scanned to record services

received with acknowledgement from the beneficiaries and to report any customer feedback.

Advantages This new system determines effectiveness -

more emphasis on ensuring that feedback is coming directly from beneficiaries.

Determine gaps in the service delivery process Limitations

High start up and maintenance costs

Application: Centralized Service Delivery Centre’s BRAC programmes:: BRAC health facilities

(Shasthya Kendros)

Applications of UIs (cont.)

Case study 3: Flood Emergency Cash Transfer Project (FECT) Project, Pakistan

UI type: Biometric UI cards The beneficiaries were enrolled in the program through biometric

verification with a national ID database and cash grants were disbursed through debit cards by engaging the private banking sector.

Advantages Avoiding inclusion and exclusion errors

Limitations Tedious and time consuming process of verification and High costs

Application: Identity of beneficiaries is important especially in cases of targeted programmes BRAC programmes: Microfinance programmes

Frontline Data Collection Frontline data collection technologies improve data

management and effectiveness Reduce time spent between data collection and data entry, i.e.

automate data aggregation Reduce errors in data entry

Types of Frontline data collection strategies PDA- Personal Data Assistant (laptops or tablets)- electronic

forms Mobile phone technology

Eelectronic forms: containing numeric fields and multiple-choice menus,

SMS: where users enter delimited text messages according to printed cue cards,

Voice: where users call an operator and dictate the data in real-time. Optical mark recognition- automatically extracting expected

data from noticeable fields, Such as checkboxes and fill-in fields, on printed forms.

Applications of Frontline Data Collection techniques

Case study 1: Child malnutrition Programme, India Type of Technology: CommCare, a low-cost mobile phone data

collection solution (electronic form) Advantages:

Improved data management and effectiveness in comparison to paper based system

User motivation high- overcoming literacy limitations Adaptable to complex infrastructure challenges- phone can be

charged in 1.5 hours, internet connectivity not required Limitation

Unsupervised use of phones Network connectivity required

Application: complex infrastructure challenges and large scale interventions BRAC programmes: Health, Microfinance and Education

Applications of Frontline Data Collection techniques (cont.)

Case Study 2: Mifapro CCT programme, Guatemala

Type of technology: Episurveyor a Java-based application (electronic forms)

Advantages Cost saving-“freemium” model, offering

a free basic version Access to real time data- cloud-

computing application User friendly Real-time visualization of the survey

responses Limitations

Some resistance by interviewees not familiar with mobile phone technology

Applications: Real time data is of import BRAC programmes:

Applications of Frontline Data Collection techniques (cont.)

Case Study 3: Community Health Programme, India Type of Technology: Voice interface with Mobile technology Advantages:

Lower error rate as compared to electronic and SMS based applications Lower literacy requirements Flexibility in data gathering Decreased training time

Limitations Cost considerations:

Cost of live operator- however in labour surplus contexts the increased cost of a human operator can be compensated by the decreased costs in other overheads

Voice call costs often higher than the cost of SMS Application: Literacy of data collector is low and cost is a key

concern BRAC programmes: Health programmes such as MNCH

Other technologies for Frontline Data Collection

Technology Programme CountryDigital camera- An image of the completed survey will be captured by a digital camera and securely and privately stored onto a memory card. A software program will interpret the image capture and report the brightness values of to a .csv table, to then be imported into an excel database where it is managed and sorted

Midwifery training programme

Haiti

PDA- Palm Pilot m500 series; Palm Inc., Santa Clara, CA) programmed using Pendragon Forms software version 3.1

Clinical surveillance activity

Gabon

PDA- Psion Organiser II XP hand-held computer,

Malaria morbidity survey Gambia

Mobile technology-Open data kit currently provides four tools to this end: Collect, Aggregate, Voice, and Build. Collect is a mobile platform that renders application logic and supports the manipulation of data.

Treatment protocols for treatable diseases

Tanzania

Mobile technology EpiHandy tool, a mobile health data collection and record access program enabled by PDAs, 

medical records Uganda

Mobile technology-iFormBuilder An iOS mobile data collection platform that features an application that requires no paper or connection and is available worldwide.

Agriculture-Distribution of seed vouchers to beneficiaries

Central African republic