ODK right for my company?

Hi,

The charity I work for uses ODK 1 for data collection and we are really happy with it. It beats paper form data collection and the offline feature is definitely very useful.

We do some fairly basic surveys which don’t require any additional capability but we’re looking to expand.

Being able to do more dynamic surveys with real time updates would be useful and I think could be possible with ODK 2.

The issues I see are that:

  • Our enumerators are not always technically savvy and may struggle with the increased capabilities.
  • I am essentially a one man team and have additional duties so I could only work on implementation and upkeep part time.
  • I would need to learn a little bit of coding (not too much) like HTML and some Java.

Is this something you feel is possible to be roled out within 6 months?
Does it sound like a useful thing to bring into my company?

I would appreciate your thoughts on the merits of ODK 2 versus ODK 1.

Cheers,

Stuart

Hi,

I am at the same situation as you. Considering what you are doing is achievable by using ODK1. However, it would a great idea to learn about ODK2 as you never know your requirements may change. If you are even new to programming, 6 months is good enough to learn to fulfill your requirements, I believe.

Thanks,
Imran

I think 6 months seems like a reasonable amount of time. I find that the bigger challenge is getting people to agree on the business processes and the data structure, not coding the tool! With ODK2, it may end up being a bit harder to implement changes to the data collection process depending on the type of change.

Additionally, we’re glad you’re here on the ODK forum. If you get a chance, we’d love to know more about your experiences with ODK on the introduce yourself here forum topic. I’d also encourage you to add a real picture as your avatar because it helps build community!