Switching from Paper to Digital
A handy list of tools & key features to take your field surveys online
Mukta Deodhar, Lakshmi Pranuti, Srushti Paranjpe and Shilpa Swaraj
Do you, as a researcher, or the organisation you work for carry out data collection and field surveys often? Do you head to the site with a sheaf of paper questionnaires, maps and other documents? Or are you armed with a single device — a mobile phone or laptop — which records reams of information in different formats?
Under CSEI’s Food Futures Initiative, we spoke to a number of civil society organisations to find that a majority still carry out data collection and mapping on paper (as of 2021). Data is vitally important and yet very little of it is openly accessible, and the process of collecting and recording new data is cumbersome and slow.
In this blog post, we write about why switching to digital can help improve programme planning and list some key concerns that came up during our conversations with CSOs.
Download pdf| A directory of digital tools to move your surveys online.
What CSOs do now
Our work is focused on improving the livelihoods of farmers by connecting water, agriculture and energy, so the CSOs we spoke to are also engaged in these important sectors. These are complex areas of work involving vast amounts of data that need to be collected and analysed. Such data drives interventions, which have to be designed carefully as the livelihoods of millions of people depend on the agrarian sector.
Read | Is data informing decisions in rural water security?
Since a lot of this is primary data, the CSOs seeking to implement a new programme at a new site have to collect this data from scratch, i.e. field teams collect baseline data (before the project) and endline data (after) through door-to-door household surveys. Examples of such data include sources of income and expenditure, landholdings, crops being grown etc.
They also map features such as land use, tree cover, water sources, structures relevant to the programme in the village (for instance, a watershed programme team will map all check dams in the village). For some programmes, they also install sensors and rain gauges to monitor local rainfall, stream flow, runoff, soil erosion rates, etc. Most of this data is used for monitoring and evaluation purposes.
But there are many disadvantages to recording such data on paper:
- It is resource intensive, in terms of time, number of people needed to conduct this exercise and money spent. The entire process of data collection and analysis takes anywhere between three months and one and a half years to complete.
- Papers are often lost or damaged, risking loss of data that had been painstakingly gathered.
But despite these serious concerns, CSOs continue to conduct paper-based surveys. We identified three main reasons why.
- Capacity gap: Not everyone may be tech-savvy and can easily figure out how to navigate digital tools for data collection.
There is a need to build capacity in field teams to use these tools by first raising awareness of the gamut of digital tools that are available to them, and then conducting training sessions to learn the tools that might be most appropriate for their work
- Network and connectivity issues: In some regions, field teams cannot use their devices due to poor communication links dissuading researchers from switching from tried-and-tested paper surveys that don’t require access to the internet.
Since this is a big factor, many creators of digital tools are rectifying this by adding more offline features.
- Language barriers: Since most tools are available only in the English language, there are times when field teams cannot use these tools due to language barriers.
This underlines the need for features that enable translations.
But these are challenges that can be addressed and the benefits of shifting to digital tools eclipse these difficulties.
What is digital data collection?
This is the process of electronically recording, analysing and storing information through technological devices such as a mobile phone, a tablet or laptop. Not all digital tools do all tasks — record, analyse and store — and may specialise in one.
Planning and implementing projects related to water management or agriculture rarely have a clean start and end point, rather projects need to be revisited and revised. But, currently, programme planning cycles are more linear causing older iterations to get lost at the end. Paper-based surveys are a big part of a system that does not feed into new planning cycles nor is it shared with other agencies. Data has to be created anew. This inability to reuse and share data causes a lot of redundancies.
To make data-related efforts more circular and usable, we need to understand the different steps of the data lifecycle.
Digital data collection tools address all the cons of paper-based surveys mentioned above; they save time and money and the data is more securely stored and not prone to damage by the elements. Additionally, data collected through digital tools is easier to analyse, store in knowledge repositories and share. To improve efficiencies in programme planning and implementation, it is critical that we work towards integrating digital tools into the data lifecycle of programmes.
These datasets can help future programmes in the same region and avoid duplication of effort, wherever possible. Digitising data repositories is the first step towards more data sharing across different programmes and organisations.
In the spirit of sharing data, we put together a compendium of digital tools and recorded key features that will help you appraise what is best suited to your line of work.
This is only a start; here’s how we can work together:
You help us co-create: If you are already using a digital tool that is not listed above, please send us details of those tools so that we can include them in this work-in-progress compendium.
We help build your capacity: If you are new to using digital tools for data collection and need to prepare water security plans or assess the water budget for agricultural interventions, we can help. CSEI developed a digital tool called Jaltol, a free and open-source water accounting tool. Please reach out to us so we can help train your field teams on using such tools.
Watch| Jaltol Video Tutorial
You could also join the Jaltol community to know more about Phase 2 and the new features being developed. Sign up here to receive updates about the tool.
Edited by Kaavya Kumar
If you would like to collaborate with us on this project, please reach out to us: csei.collab@atree.org.
To stay updated on our work, join our mailing list.
