Opinion and discussion

Meet the team: Vikas Arora on quality data and public health in India

Meet the team: Vikas Arora on quality data and public health in India

Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing my colleague, Vikas Arora, who has over a decade of experience in the public health sector. Prior to joining Dobility India, he worked in the pharmaceutical industry, taught public health courses at university, and managed mHealth projects in rural areas. I asked Vikas about his work and the opportunities he see to further engage public health researchers in India.

Continue Reading Meet the team: Vikas Arora on quality data and public health in India
Thoughts from MERL Tech UK

Thoughts from MERL Tech UK

MERL Tech UK was a small, intimate gathering by conference standards (just under 100 attendees), but jam-packed full of passion, accumulated wisdom, and practical knowledge. It's clear that technology is playing an increasingly useful role in helping us with monitoring, evaluation, accountability, research, and learning -- but it's also clear that there's plenty of room for improvement. As a technology provider, I walked away with both more inspiration and more clarity for the road ahead. Some highlights...

Continue Reading Thoughts from MERL Tech UK
Data quality and measurement: A call to action

Data quality and measurement: A call to action

The true front line for data quality – the place where the battle for data accuracy is often won or lost – is the point of original data collection. This is the reason why we have been focusing our SurveyCTO efforts on how to help our users collect higher-quality data, and the reason why we’re painfully aware of the so many ways that we and our users could do better.

Continue Reading Data quality and measurement: A call to action
Humility, iteration, and learning

Humility, iteration, and learning

“Big data” seems to get all of the news and enthusiasm these days, but there is a quiet revolution in small data that is sweeping the world, sector by sector, organization by organization, department by department. Fueling this revolution everywhere is a new-found value in humility, iteration, and learning...

Continue Reading Humility, iteration, and learning
Quality data key to achieving global goals

Quality data key to achieving global goals

There is a critical difference between data and quality data. In this new era of #2030NOW, we must push for more than numbers that fill spreadsheets; we must push for good, quality data that reflects the needs of all members of society—young and old. We need data that covers conflict-ridden areas, refugee camps, and remote, disconnected areas. Read how inclusive, high-quality data will be key to achieving the new Global Goals...

Continue Reading Quality data key to achieving global goals
Beyond just talking about human-centered design

Beyond just talking about human-centered design

People have been talking about human-centered design for years, and there is always much enthusiasm for how the core principles might apply in the development context. In this blog post, I try to bring things down to earth, discussing ways that project and in-country teams might use SurveyCTO to put good design principles into practice.

Continue Reading Beyond just talking about human-centered design
On SurveyCTO: An open letter

On SurveyCTO: An open letter

It started as a modest experiment in electronic data collection embedded within a much more ambitious experiment involving microfinance in rural India. Today, SurveyCTO has grown into a mature technology platform used to collect data in hundreds of projects around the world. This inaugural blog post seems like a good time to look briefly back, and then forward to where SurveyCTO is headed...

Continue Reading On SurveyCTO: An open letter