At MERL Tech DC 2017, Oxfam’s Emily Tomkys Valteri and I teamed up to lead a session on Mobile case management for multi-dimensional accountability. This blog post shares some highlights from that session.
Background
In their Your Word Counts project, Oxfam is collaborating with local and global partners to capture, analyze, and respond to community feedback data using a mobile case management tool. The goal is to inform Oxfam’s Middle East humanitarian response and give those affected by crisis a voice for improved support and services. This project is a scale-up of an earlier pilot project, and both the pilot and the scale-up have been supported by the Humanitarian Innovation Fund.
Oxfam’s use of SurveyCTO’s case-management features has been innovative, and they have been helping to support improvements in the core technology. In this session, we discussed both the core technology and the broader organizational and logistical challenges that Oxfam has encountered in the field.
Mobile case management: an introduction
In standard applications of mobile data collection, enumerators, inspectors, program officers, or others use a mobile phone or tablet to collect data. Whether they quietly observe things, interview people, or inspect facilities, they ultimately enter some kind of data into a mobile device. In systems like SurveyCTO, data-collection officially begins when they click a Fill Blank Form button and choose a digital form to fill out.
Mobile case management is much the same, but the process begins with cases and then proceeds to forms. As far as the core technology is concerned, a case might be a clinic, a school, a water point, a household – pretty much any unit that’s meaningful in the given context. Instead of choosing Fill Blank Form and choosing a form, users in the field choose Manage Cases and then choose a particular case from a list that’s filtered specifically for that user (e.g., to include only schools in their area); once they select a case, they then select one of the forms that is outstanding for that case.
Behind the scenes, the case list is really just a spreadsheet. It includes columns for the unique case ID, the label that should be used to identify the case to users, the list of forms that should be filled for the case, and the users and/or user roles that should see the case listed in their case list. Importantly, the case list is not static: any form can update or add a case, and thus as users fill forms the case list can be dynamically revised and extended. (In SurveyCTO, the case list is simply a server dataset: it can be manually uploaded as a .csv, attached to forms, and updated just like any other dataset.)
Oxfam’s innovative use case: Your Word Counts
In Oxfam’s Your Word Counts project, cases represent any kind of feedback from the community. Volunteers and program staff carry mobile phones and log feedback as new cases whenever they interact with community members; technical teams then work to resolve feedback within a week, filling out new forms to update cases as their status changes; and program staff then close the loop with the original community members when possible, before closing the case. Because the data is all available in a single electronic system, in-country, regional, and even global teams can then report on and analyze both the community feedback and the responses over time.
There have been some definite successes in piloting and early scale-up:
- By listening to community members, recording their feedback, and following up, the community feedback system has helped to build trust.
- The digital process of recording referrals, updates, and eventually responses has been rapid, speeding responsiveness to feedback overall.
- Since all digital forms can be updated easily, the system is dynamic and flexible enough to adapt as programs or needs change.
- The solution appears to be low-cost, scalable, and sustainable.
There have been both organizational and logistical challenges, however. For example:
- For a system like this to truly be effective, fundamental responsibility for accountability must be shared organization-wide. While MEAL officers (monitoring, evaluation, accountability, and learning officers) can help to set up and manage accountability systems, technical teams, program teams, and senior leadership ultimately have to share ownership and responsibility in order for the system to function and sustain.
- Globally-predefined feedback categories turned out not to fit well with early deployment contexts, and so the program team needed to re-think how to most effectively categorize feedback. (See Oxfam’s blog post on the subject.)
- In dynamic in-country settings, staff turnover can be high, posing major logistical and sustainability challenges for systems of all kinds.
- While community members can add and update cases offline, ultimately an Internet connection is required to synchronize case lists with a central server. In some settings, access to office Internet has been a challenge.
- Ideally, cases would be easily referred across agencies working in a particular setting, but some agencies have been reluctant to buy into shared digital systems.
Oxfam’s MEAL team is exploring ways to facilitate a broader accountability culture throughout the organization. In country programs, for example, MEAL coordinators are looking to use office whiteboards to track key indicators of feedback performance and engage staff in discussions of what those indicators mean for them. More broadly, Oxfam is looking to highlight best practices in responding and acting on feedback and seeking other ways to incentivize teams in this area.
Oxfam’s work is ongoing, and you can follow their progress on their project blog.
Mobile case management: where it’s going
While Oxfam works to build and support both systems and culture for accountability in their humanitarian response programs, we at Dobility are working to improve the core technology. With Oxfam’s feedback and support, we are currently working to improve the user interface used to filter and browse case lists, both on devices (in the field) and on the web (in the office). We are also working to improve the user interface for those setting up and managing these kinds of case-management system. If you have specific ideas, please share them by commenting below!
