UPDATE: In an email conversation with Yaw, he pointed out a few additional noteworthy things about the Open Data Kit.
Here is how our client is different:
As researchers we want to push the boundaries of what organizations can do today to collect their rich data. We want users to own, visualize and share this data without the difficulties of setting up and maintaining servers. We want the tools to be easy to deploy, easy to use, open source and freely available. It is only now that technology (hardware, software and infrastructure) which matches our above ideals have become available.
ODK is more than open source, it is open standards, easy to work with and available today. We use xforms standard for input and output. Organizations can start with low end java phones and run Javarosa. When they are ready to collect data on a more powerful platform, they can move up to the ODK Collect on android phones and all their forms will still work. Results can be sent to any compatible xforms server (in fact, RapidsSMS support is coming soon).
For developers, the code base is easy to use. For example, if you wanted to add barcode reading or submission to Openmrs servers over wifi, it will take very few lines of code. We already have local African developers working on similar functionality.
We've piloted the application and are scaling rapidly. We started with twenty devices in Uganda which were used to collect over 1000 geotagged forms with images. Our upcoming deployment will be a couple of hundred devices collecting millions of forms.
ODK also has a ton of features and we adding more each day. Touchscreen UI with swipe navigation and progress bar, xforms compatible gps and photo support, question grouping, repeats and constraints, answer defaults and constraints, logic and branching in forms, and much more is coming. We put the roadmap at http://code.google.com/p/open-data-kit/wiki/RoadMap
We think we've pushed the state of data collection a bit forward. Certainly, ODK Collect is not for every organization who wants to do data collection, but for our partners who are using it now, it is providing a lot of value.
Open Data Kit (ODK) is a suite of tools aimed at resource-poor organizations to collect, transform and report their data. Developed by Yaw Anokwa and Carl Hartung from the University of Washington, ODK Collect enables mobile data collection on the Android platform. ODK is one of a growing number of mobile data caollection apps, many of which are reviewed here and here on MobileActive. This video gives an overview of the Open Data Kit. You can download the source code here.
Erik Hersman, our excellent colleague and friend over at White African writes about a new mobile data collection tool for Africa focused right now on survey and field data capture. His review is reposted here with permission. Great stuff, thanks, Erik!
I was contacted about a month ago by Mark Fowles who works at Clyral, a web and mobile development company based in Hillcrest, outside Durban, in South Africa. He was emailing me to let me know about a new mobile data collection platform called Populi.net.
