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No pen and paper, we're going digital!

Ashfaqul A. Joarder
**Mobile phones have become a major communication device at the family level, covering approximately 50% of all families in Bangladesh (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics). Mobile phones are viewed as a great tool to build and expand digital communication in Bangladesh.**
The traditional labour-intensive method of manually capturing data from different socio-economic interventions is time consuming, expensive and often requires excess material. The alternative of using mobile phone technology for survey data collection allows for real-time data analysis that can be used to improve project implementation, increase the effectiveness of field interventions, and significantly decrease the use of paper. Thus using mobile phone technology to collect monitoring data is a potentially major breakthrough for real time data collection and analysis systems.
The Economic Empowerment of the Poorest (EEP) programme is a partnership between the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the government of Bangladesh with the goal to lift 1 million people in Bangladesh out of extreme poverty by 2015. A national NGO recently signed a contract with mPower to develop Java-enabled software on mobile phones to monitor and evaluate projects of over 30 NGOs across the country. The success of the pilot phase in January 2011 has resulted in an expansion of the programme to disburse 100 mobile phones across 23 districts.
Mobile phones have become a major communication device at the family level, covering approximately 50% of all families in Bangladesh (Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics). Mobile phones are viewed as a great tool to build and expand digital communication in Bangladesh. Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) data shows that the number of subscribers reached 80.91 million in September 2011, and it continues to grow. The rapid dissemination of mobile phone technology will further facilitate the success of the programme.
This innovative technology is being used as part of the NGO's Change Monitoring System. The monthly mobile phone surveys will allow it to answer questions such as:
It is proposed that the programme, which is undergoing a second pilot, will eventually be rolled out across the entire portfolio of beneficiary households and will collect data on a monthly or quarterly basis. The primary purpose is to produce a frequently updated comprehensive database of all the funded households using a common format that is connected to the baseline and database (through household unique identifiers). This will allow each project to track changes at the household level, improving the impact of interventions on beneficiary livelihoods.
EEP/shiree and NGO partners collectively believe that this form of mobile data collection will replace existing paper-based systems in Bangladesh. Data technicians are already transitioning to the new system and realising its potential to collect data on a wide-range of crosscutting issues affecting beneficiary households.
The writer is MIS Manager at shiree. E-mail: ashfaqul©shiree.org