Field data, with or without a signal
An Android app for field officers collecting household surveys where the network comes and goes, and a dashboard for the people reading the results.
- Client
- Shurokkha Foundation
- Year
- 2024
- Services
- Mobile apps · Software development
- Outcome
- 4,200 households surveyed offline
The problem
Surveys were collected on paper and typed up weeks later. Handwriting was lost, duplicates were common, and a programme manager could not tell what had been collected until a quarter had passed.
What we did
- 01Offline by design: the phone's local database is the source of truth and the server reconciles when a signal returns.
- 02Forms built from a schema the foundation maintains itself, so a new survey does not need a new release.
- 03Photo and GPS capture compressed on the device, queued, and uploaded on wi-fi to keep data costs down.
- 04A dashboard that shows coverage by union and by officer, refreshed as soon as a phone syncs.
The results
- Households surveyed
- 4,200
- Records lost to signal
- 0
- Paper to dashboard
- 3 weeks → 1 day
