I’ve been mostly mute about what I’m going to do generals and hopefully dissertation on. The silence is mostly because I had nothing to say, but after some hard thinking, I think I have an idea worth blogging about.

There is a widespread need for tracking and reporting of data generated in the developing world. This data is often captured on paper forms that serve as the information store for many organizations. These organizations are often required to generate external reports and make evidence based decisions – tasks which paper does not easily enable.

While popular tools such as Excel and Access are sometimes used, they are often not powerful enough to meet the data needs for many organizations. At the same time, these tools cannot create easy to use systems to track and report on data.

To better address the frustrations with current tools we are planning on building a free and easy to use software framework called Karatasi. We envision Karatasi as a set of applications to enable data entry and report generation, but with less training than is currently required using programs like Microsoft Access.

Before we build the software, we wish to understand the data entry and reporting needs of organizations. We have a few broad questions we hope to explore.

• How much of your data is stored on paper? How are computers or mobiles used to capture or process data?
• How do you gather data for your most important forms and how do you generate your most important reports? How much effort on a weekly or monthly basis does this require?
• What computer-based solutions to digitize data have been tried and what successes and failures have been encountered? What have been the key contributors to success or failure?

I’ll be heading to Tanzania and Rwanda from April 14 and May 5 to discuss the above questions with some organizations. The time will be spent gathering information primarily through informal interviews and photographs, so stay tuned!

P.S. Brian and I started the change group and that’s where you will find some of the other developing world work.