Collecting data in the open for social good
A spotlight on Open Data Kit, a 2018 Global Sprint project
Hélène Martin (@purplespatula) works in global development helping organizations with mobile data collection needs. With a background introducing underrepresented groups to computer science, her passion is computing for social impact. Hélène was selected to join the current round of Mozilla Open Leaders with her work on Open Data Kit.
I interviewed Hélène to learn more about Open Data Kit and how you can help at the Global Sprint 2018.
What is Open Data Kit?
Data collection is a key component of social good efforts ranging from polio elimination to rainforest conservation and Open Data Kit (ODK) helps thousands of organizations collect data quickly, accurately, offline, and at scale.
ODK includes several core tools which are all open source:
- ODK Build enables users to create complex forms using an easy drag and drop interface
- ODK Collect is an Android app that non-technical users collect data with
- ODK Aggregate lets organizations receive collected data in one central server
- ODK Briefcase is a desktop app to receive data even if don’t want to set up a server
ODK is powered by a worldwide community of amazing people building and deploying those tools! Reading through some of the introductions on the forum is a great way to get a feel for who is involved.
This community is always coming up with new and wonderful ways to improve the ODK ecosystem. For example, most users now develop their forms using XLSForm, an easy to use Excel-based form description language that was first developed at Columbia University.
How are people using Open Data Kit for social impact today?
My favorite category of the ODK forum is the Showcase in which different users of ODK tools share the projects that they’re working on. There are many fantastic writeups there of projects in completely different fields ranging from potato farming to health to disaster relief. Two specific examples that I played a part in over the last few months come to mind.
In February, a campaign to vaccinate 726,000 children against polio was conducted in Somalia. ODK was used to provide timely updates on campaign progress to make sure that coverage was complete. ODK is currently in use in many countries as part of their polio surveillance systems to help quickly report on paralysis cases which could be caused by polio, to track vaccination campaigns and more. I had recently traveled to Somaliland to meet with the team that conducted this effort and it was very impressive to see what they were able to do with the small amount of training I helped provide.
ODK is also used extensively in election monitoring. One great recent example is a citizen election observation exercise conducted in Albania. Around 2,000 citizen election observers were deployed to observe elections and report their findings using ODK tools. Some of us who work on software releases received a request for an emergency release of ODK Collect including Albanian translations. We were able to do the release and the project went very well! Collect is now available in 56 languages other than English.
What will you be working on during the Sprint?
Our focus will be on getting feedback on the new website draft and fixing high priority issues to get it ready for launch. We hope to get lots of first impressions from people new to the project to make sure the site is complete and easy to understand.
We will also be soliciting feedback on documentation and hope to get help closing some of the issues there. Of course, if any Sprinters come by itching to write some code, we have plenty of fun code issues to work on as well!
What challenges have you faced working on this project?
As with many open source projects, we often have a code review backlog. We encourage everyone to participate in the review process. If you’re a software developer and interested in participating in the community, we encourage you to check out some open pull requests and provide your comments!
What kind of skills do I need to help you?
Anyone can help! Newcomers to ODK are particularly well-positioned to identify parts of the documentation or website that are unclear and help make them clearer. We also can always use help on copyediting, translation, design, and software development. Check out these quick ways to contribute for other ideas.
How can others join your project at #mozsprint 2018?
Read this forum post to get started and learn what community members are Sprinting on!
We will be available in Slack during Pacific time (UTC-7) business hours to Sprint and help guide new community members.
What meme or gif best represents your project?
Join us wherever you are May 10–11 at Mozilla’s Global Sprint to work on many amazing open projects! Join a diverse network of scientists, educators, artists, engineers and others in person and online to hack and build projects for a health Internet. Register today
