Developing an Application for Social Workers in Tanzania

Daniel NufferAnthony Velázque

Community, Needs and Solutions

• The targeted community is social workers in Tanzania

• They need a more efficient manner of entering and accessing data from the field

• We are investigating creating a cell phone application to meet these needs

Social Work in Tanzania

• Demand for social work has been increasing due to AIDS.

• AIDS has created an epidemic, 2.5 million children have lost at least one parent to AIDS.

• Fewer than 6% are currently receiving outside assistance.

Sources:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7239047.stmhttp://www.twinningagainstaids.org/documents/OVCProgramOverviewSummer2008_001.pdf

Social Work in Tanzania

• The problem is exacerbated by crippling poverty rate.

• 36% of Tanzania’s population lives below the poverty line.

Social Worker Resources being Stretched

• Only 1/3 of the 126 Tanzania districts have a trained social worker.

• Nearly 8,000 workers will be needed to meet increasing demand.

What’s Being Done

• Training more social workers– In 2007 the Para-Social Workers Training Program

was launched to train community-based caregivers social work training for orphans and vulnerable children.

– Training can be completed in 8 days with 6 months of follow up supervision.

– Has created 516 Para-Social Workers, 40 district social workers, and 55 master trainers in the 2007-2008 year.

Problems Still Prevalent

• A report from a similar program in Kenya showed problems with monitoring.– Volunteers want a user-friendly monitoring tool to

enroll orphans and vulnerable children and provide assessment of their needs.

– Current form based monitoring is inconsistent and large numbers of forms quickly becomes cumbersome to keep track.

Current Forms of Monitoring

• HIV/AIDS Monitoring is done through TOMSHA– Paper forms completed by workers.– Submitted to a Council HIV AIDS Committee

(CHAC).– CHAC digitizes forms and sends them onto Local

Government Monitoring Database.

Database Connectivity

• The HIV/AIDS monitoring uses Microsoft Database Access Objects.

• However, this is just for HIV/AIDS monitoring, information on the database tracking social workers may be different.

• Further research is necessary on how monitoring of social workers is conducted.

Infrastructure

• Cell phone prevalence– 5.7 million current cell phone subscribers in

Tanzania– 97% of Tanzanians have access to a mobile phone.– Kurumuna discussed not only the widespread

presence of cell phones but users’ aptitudes for text messaging.

TTCL

• Tanzania Telecommunications Company LTD. (TTCL)– Offers a 3G digital wireless network.– Purchase Rafiki Top-Up Cards.

Celtel Tanzania• Created after privatization of TTCL• Largest Company Based on Coverage Area:

Source: GSMworld.com

Coverage Issues

• Clear that coverage may still be a problem.• Large sections of Tanzania still rural.• 2007 University of Washington study on data

collection in Tanzanian disconnected environments with mobile phones.– Proposed a hop based routing system to connect

to an Internet server– May be implausible with 10 week program.

Solutions

– We need a solution that runs on as many cell phones as possible

– Usability is a large concern– We would like to employ pre-existing APIs or

other work in our solution

Existing Projects

• HealthLine• CAMBrowser• OpenROSA• Epihandy

HealthLine

• Being developed by Carnegie Mellon University.

• Speech-based health information access tool.• User calls a server which responds to voice-

commands to access health information and medical texts.

HealthLine

• Pros:– Speech technologies address low literacy issues.– Speech technologies do not require installations

on all phones.

HealthLine

• Cons:– Technology currently only designed and tested for

information access. Data entry is theoretically possible, but untested.

– Requires a central server and landline infrastructure to handle call requests, which may be difficult to set up.

CAMBrowser

• Mobile phone application for collecting information from remote areas.

• Utilizes mobile phone cameras to capture barcodes from paper forms.

• Mobile phone camera barcodes and numerical indexes tracks the progression through the forms.

• Completed forms are sent using SMS.

CAMBrowser

• Pros:– Camera based and numerical indexing simplifies

menu navigation for low-literacy users.– Form changes occur through SMS and MMS

communications. Upon an SMS request for updates an MMS message is returned containing XML code for new forms.

– Usability test in India: After three days receipts could be processed in 30 seconds with a less than 1% error rate. Ongoing studies continue.

CAMBrowser

• Cons:– CAMBrowser is designed for smart phones. While

cell phones may be prevalent in Tanzania, we will almost certainly need a solution that works on a wider range of technology.

– CAMBrowser requires phone local memory, the size and prevalence of phone memory cards is questionable.

OpenROSA/JavaROSA

• A consortium attempted to establish a standard for developing mobile phone data collecting applications.

• A J2ME framework created corresponding to OpenROSA’s standards for Java-enabled mobile phones.

OpenRosa/JavaRosa

• Pros:– Java-enabled phones are prevalent in 2009. Club-

Java* lists hundreds of phones currently supporting J2ME.

– Working with an established consortium is a positive for future support as well as extensive documentation available when creating a new applications.

*http://www.club-java.com/TastePhone/J2ME/MIDP_Benchmark.jsp;jsessionid=33D16056AE430FB72D5A99C68E7EEB92

OpenRosa/JavaRosa

• Cons:– While Java-enabled phones are highly prevalent,

they are not ubiquitous. Statistics about the actual phones social workers use are difficult to find and will require ground work.

– Installation of applications will be required on mobile phones.

EpiHandy

• Collection of tools for mobile applications designed for collection and handling of data using mobile devices.

• Capable of sending and retrieving data over SMS, Bluetooth, and HTTP.

• A founding member of the OpenROSA/JavaROSA community.

EpiHandy

• Pros:– EpiHandy is already written and deployed.

Utilizing EpiHandy speeds up the development process allowing us to get to fine tuning and deployment effectiveness rather than spending substantial time in development.

– EpiHandy Mobile extension designed for low-end phones while retaining EpiHandy functionality

EpiHandy

• Cons:– Will have to be installed on phones. EpiHandy

mobile requires some method of transfer between a computer and the mobile device. Additionally Nokia models may require the Nokia PC Suite.

Web-Application

• Any of a number of possible web design mechanisms to develop a form submittal application over the Internet.

• Can be accessed by kiosks or any available Internet connection.

Web-Application

• Pros:– Substantially larger toolset. Designing for the web

has a robust set of ways to solve the problem.– Ease of developing user interfaces makes

developing a software that is user friendly to use much easier.

– We may design a web-app to deal with more complicated administrative tasks than can be done through a cell-phone app.

Web-Application

• Cons:– Accessibility to computers much less Internet isn’t

possible in many areas.– Computer literacy may also hamper workers

abilities to submit data.

Remaining Questions

• Since much of this is sensitive information, we will need to be very conscious of security issues.

• Developing training for the mobile phone applications.– Users may not be used to cell phone applications.– Installation may be difficult.– We will need to establish a permanent server

somewhere.

Questions?