00:00:00 Introduction

Thanks Fay so much for that introduction. Welcome everybody, it's nice to see such a big turnout here today. We're going to talk about ActivityInfo for international development assistance, stepping away from the humanitarian context that ActivityInfo is often used for, to look at how it can also be a huge help in development assistance projects.

We're going to look at an introduction for those of you who might be unfamiliar with what ActivityInfo is. We will take a quick look at database design, what that means, and where it fits into a development program. Then we'll jump right into the software; we'll look at all of the different features it offers in the context of a realistic project. Finally, we'll look at what's involved in choosing ActivityInfo for your project or program, and of course, we'll have plenty of time for questions.

00:01:15 What is ActivityInfo?

Just a quick introduction to ActivityInfo for those of you who aren't familiar: it is an end-to-end platform for data management specifically designed for working in humanitarian assistance and international development. It helps support data collection online, offline, mobile, desktop, laptop, or via import. It helps you bring the data into a central repository wherever it's coming from. It helps define validation rules to clean up data, make sure that your data is well integrated and correct. Finally, it assists with data analysis, helping you to make sense of the data, take action based on the data that you've been collecting and managing, and ultimately deliver better outcomes for our end beneficiaries.

ActivityInfo is used in over 70 countries. We've been around for 12 or 13 years. We work with NGOs, governments, and of course the United Nations, from UNHCR to UNICEF. We cover the spectrum from humanitarian operations to agricultural market-based interventions for a wide variety of organizations.

00:02:30 Database design for development programs

ActivityInfo is the technical component, a management information system for a program. Before you get started with ActivityInfo, you want to have a program design. You want to understand what you're trying to achieve, and how you're going to measure the outcomes, the outputs, and the impact of your project. At that point, you're ready to design your database in ActivityInfo, and then finally train your staff and start using it.

Why would you use a database at all? Why not just use Excel or a mobile data collection tool? The answer is that a relational database like ActivityInfo helps develop a complete picture of your beneficiaries. It helps you link together all the different moving parts in a program, from farms to firms, individuals, and the activities and impact that your organization is undertaking. If you can't link a survey snapshot or two annual surveys to the same farmer, it's very difficult to be able to actually understand what kind of impact you've had for that individual. This kind of relationship between all of the data is really central to programs of this type. We want to establish relationships between our activities and beneficiaries and attribute results over time to beneficiaries and to our activities.

Practically speaking, this often takes the shape of a couple of different kinds of forms in ActivityInfo. Of course, there is reference data that's probably not changing very often, such as geographies, provinces, districts, or categories like product sizes, crops, and markets. You might also be tracking macro statistics provided by a government institution. For our program, the registry forms are really important. We want to register the individuals, the farms, the firms, and the loans that we are working with. We want a master list of individuals so that we know exactly who we're working with. If we provide training to the same person twice, we want to make sure that we don't double count the individual.

For our day-to-day activities, we'll have a set of tracker forms. These track activities as your staff are providing trainings, visiting farms, or providing one-on-one services. These are the forms that you'll record those activities in, linking back to the registries. Finally, a fourth category of forms typical in these kinds of databases are annual, biannual, or regular surveys where you're taking a sample of your total beneficiaries to track changes and outcomes over time.

00:05:45 Example scenario: Pennsylvania maple syrup

For the demonstration today, I wanted a realistic example, but of course, the data that people collect with ActivityInfo is confidential. So, I spent a bit of time putting together a fictional scenario based on my own youth in rural Pennsylvania. We're going to look at trying to improve Pennsylvania's maple syrup sector.

Some of the indicators that we'll look at for this example program include outputs like the number of farms enrolled, number of individuals benefiting, and number of individuals accessing agricultural finance. We want to track outcomes, such as seeing the total yield per farm increase by 20% and the yield per tap increase by 10%. The ultimate impact is that we want Pennsylvania to grow their total yield by 20% compared to 2019 and see a total of 200 new farms start tapping maple syrup.

Our database design will include reference data for counties and townships, registry forms for farms and individuals, and activity tracking for loans, trainings, and communications. We will also have an annual farm survey to see the progress on these outcome indicators.

00:07:45 Navigating the ActivityInfo interface

Let's turn to ActivityInfo and look at how the software works. I am logged in as an administrator and I've got most of the database set up. You can see the folder structure here is pretty close to what I showed on the slides. We have reference data, including a list of counties in Pennsylvania and their locations. I can always look at these counties on the map as well.

We have a built-in Geo-database where you have most geography from most countries in the world readily loaded so you can get a fast start. You can always choose between using our Geo-database or uploading your own from shapefiles. Back in our reference data, we also have macro statistics. I pulled in the crop reports from the USDA which keep track of Pennsylvania's number of taps, yield per tap, and total revenue.

Let's take a look at my registry forms. These are tracking the most important entities in my program. We have a list of farms that our team has registered. I have basic information about each of these farms. If I add a new record, I have to enter the name of the farm, website, mailing address, and choose the producer association that this farm links to. I can capture the geographic location and make a link to the individual that owns the farm. I can also enter basic information about the farm, such as acreage and whether they are currently tapping for maple syrup.

00:10:30 Mobile data collection

Using the web form is one way to bring data in, but it's probably easier for your field workers to use a mobile device. I'm going to simulate a mobile interface in my browser. You can see I have the same view of my database on my mobile phone interface. I can download that for offline use so that I've got a copy of this database on my phone or tablet, because cell coverage in rural Pennsylvania is not 100%.

When I'm ready to register a new farmer, I can go ahead and fill out the form. This might look very similar to other mobile data collection software, but the difference here is that this is fully integrated with the rest of the system. It's not just a one-way submission; I'm linking data here to my farm. When I register a new producer association, it shows up here automatically. I can capture my current GPS location and link this to the farm owner that I might have registered already or add somebody new.

If I'm with my tablet or phone, I can also go to any of the trackers to record work in the field. For example, if I'm doing a training, I can list the participants and select them from the list. That way, I don't have to worry about double counting people; I'll have exactly the data that I need.

00:13:15 Importing and cleaning data

We looked at bringing data into ActivityInfo through the web interface and the mobile app, but another strength is being able to bring in data from the Excel spreadsheet importer. Let's say I have a partner that's helping me register farmers and they've supplied me with a list. Rather than type that in one by one, we can use the ActivityInfo spreadsheet importer to bring that in and clean that data.

I can copy the data from the spreadsheet and paste it into the importer. Even if the header names aren't quite the same, ActivityInfo helps me match them. ActivityInfo will flag problems, such as typos in coordinates. You can download the records with errors, make corrections, and bring them back later. The importer also informs me if records match existing records, allowing me to update existing data rather than adding duplicates.

In the data management interface, you have a full overview. I can bring in related data, such as the gender of the farm owner, to sort or filter. I can also use the map to check my geographic coordinates. For example, I can see a point collected from our office in The Hague, which is incorrect, so I can delete that record.

00:16:00 Survey forms and form design

Let's look at our last group of forms, which are the survey forms. We have our trackers for loans and trainings, but let's look at what the annual survey looks like. The idea is that we've created a survey instrument based on a real USDA survey. I'm going to use the same instrument throughout the course of the program. This way, I have all of the information in one place and it's linked back to my farm registry.

Every time I do a survey, I add a record. I can choose from the farm that we registered earlier, pulling in information about the location and owner. Then I choose the year and go through the survey questions regarding activity, taps set, total yield, and sales data. I have validation rules here; for example, if the container counts don't match the total volume, I get an error. Also, I cannot do a duplicate survey for the same farm in the same year.

If you need to make changes or add additional questions as the program progresses, that's really easy to do. You can open the form designer and add a new section or question. As soon as I make a change to the questionnaire, any of my mobile devices that are connected will be updated automatically.

00:18:45 Data analysis and dashboards

The goal is to use this information to monitor our program, identify problems, and evaluate impact. ActivityInfo is a one-stop shop for everything from data collection to analysis. I've set up a dashboard for my key indicators. For example, I need to track the number of farmers recruited against our targets. I can see that we've been doing better on recruiting existing farmers compared to new farmers. This is useful for project managers to ask why we are unable to recruit new farmers and adjust the strategy.

I can also create maps to show where existing and new farms are located. These reports are easy to set up and change. I can add layers to the map, such as overlaying the existing yields from the annual survey.

We also have notebooks for analysis. I created a notebook analyzing the macro data from the USDA to compare Pennsylvania to other US states. This allows us to see trends and evaluate our ultimate impact. Notebooks allow you to add text commentary and charts. For example, I can look at the yield per tap to see how efficient Pennsylvania farms are compared to the US average.

We can also drill down to the farm level to look at changes over time. We have a feature called calculated measures which allows you to use DAX functions to calculate complex indicators, such as percentage change in yield over time.

00:23:15 Advanced analysis and integrations

For really specialized analysis, you might want to use external tools. ActivityInfo's API makes it easy to pull data and connect with tools like Power BI, Tableau, ArcGIS, or QGIS. I've set up a project in QGIS where I brought in crop use layers based on remote sensing. I've connected my farms directly from ActivityInfo using a GeoJSON link. If I make a change to a farm in ActivityInfo, that gets reflected automatically in QGIS. This opens up a lot of advanced analysis capabilities. We also have an R package available on GitHub, allowing you to query data directly into R Studio for statistical analysis.

00:25:30 User management and audit logs

User management is another strength of ActivityInfo. It helps you give access to exactly the right people. You can define your own roles. For example, an extension service agent might only have view access, while a partner might only see records related to them. You can control this on a very fine-grained level.

The audit log gives you a full record of any changes to the database. If you ever need to see what happened to a record, you can see what users have done. In the event of user error, such as deleting a record, you can go back and undelete it. It is also a great tool for security to monitor user activity.

00:27:00 Multi-language support

If you are working in a multilingual environment, you can provide translations of your forms. We have an integration with Google Translate to get a quick translation, which you can then manually correct. This allows users to work in the language that is comfortable for them, including system messages and errors.

00:28:15 Choosing ActivityInfo

ActivityInfo is a paid software package; that is how we fund development and maintenance. Pricing is based on the number of users. We offer two versions: a cloud-based version hosted on our infrastructure (ISO 27001 certified) and a self-managed server version that you can install on your own servers. Both come with a free 30-day trial.

We have a library of templates, including the one used in this webinar. We also offer extensive documentation, training webinars, and one-on-one onboarding support.

00:30:30 Q&A Session

Jonathan: I wanted to find out if we could have access to the database for free or is something that we need to buy?

Alexander: You can go to our template section and start a free trial account to use the software for free just to try it out. To make sure the software is sustainable, we do ask for a yearly contribution if you use it in an actual project.

Galuba: What sort of features does ActivityInfo have over other platforms?

Alexander: What sets ActivityInfo apart is that it is a relational database. It allows you to connect all important elements of your program together. Software focused only on mobile data collection makes it difficult to match up results over time. ActivityInfo simplifies the process compared to building a custom SQL database, allowing you to quickly set up forms and relationships without needing to write code.

Greggy: Where does the data we input go, and how does ActivityInfo manage privacy and confidentiality?

Alexander: We offer two versions. The cloud-based version is managed by our team. You are the database owner, and we do not access your database without your permission. We are ISO 27001 certified and audited regularly. We store data in three data centers with synchronous replication. If you prefer, we have a self-managed version where you host it on your own servers and have complete control over the data.

Muhammad: If I develop two survey questionnaires, A and B, and I need information from survey A for survey B, is it possible to pull specific data?

Alexander: Yes, definitely. You can use a calculated field to pull information from a linked form into the questionnaire. For example, when selecting a farm in a survey, you can pull in the owner's gender from the registry form.

Muhammad: Is it possible to attach an external Excel dataset into an existing project?

Alexander: Yes, you can import it so that it lives inside ActivityInfo. You can take survey data collected previously, copy it, and use the import function to paste it into the same structure, matching the columns and data.

Mariel: Can this platform be customized to fit the context of different regions and countries?

Alexander: Yes. You can start with a template or create a new database from scratch. You can use our Geo-database for different countries, write forms in any language, and define your own data model and validation rules.

Mariel: I've been using Kobo Toolbox and had issues with data missing when uploading from offline. Can you clarify the security based on that?

Alexander: Offline synchronization is tricky. We do a lot of testing and quality assurance to make sure synchronization goes as smoothly as possible. If there is a problem, our team gets involved to help resolve it. We also have options to export data as a backup from a device if it cannot connect to the internet.

Ritu: How does one adapt the software to fit individual needs? To what extent does ActivityInfo customize the software?

Alexander: Our vision is that you as the user can do all of the customization you need through the user interface. You can create new forms, folders, relationships, and validation rules yourself. Our team is here to help if you get stuck, but you don't need a consultant to spend months setting it up.

Martha: Is it possible that this webinar is given divided into several topics like database design, data entry, and reporting?

Alexander: We will think about it. We do have those tools available to navigate to specific sections, and we will take that into consideration.