Back in Addis and things are looking promising. I was back in Somali Region at one of our offices that’s been having problems last week, ironing things out. It was a good trip, we had a followup training session which went well and provided a lot of valuable feedback (good ideas for tweaking the tool to a new version), and I ironed out some ICT glitches that ultimately produced some ”lost” data from the last couple months– exciting!
Overall, we’ve gotten some good data out of the units in Somali Region, and we’ve also now done some things from the WFP side to increase data collection. We’ve tightened the requirements for incidental collection, looking at specific field mission plans and giving field staff specific assignments, and we’ve also had the WFP country director issue a statement that data collection is now a mandatory part of field staff ToRs. This should help immensely (it already has) and we can expect a steady inflow of data from the original 10 units this month.
Also, we are currrently floating a tender to local transport companies who we’d like to contract out to do assertive collection in specified priority areas. In discussion at WFP, we decided that this would be the most economical and resistance-free option for assertive collection (as opposed to hiring national consultants who would then have to be provided vehicles, drivers, security clearance, etc). I’m hoping that by next week we have this lined up but I can’t say for certain how long it will take.
RCMRD staff are slated to come up to Addis and collaborate on training either additional WFP/UN field staff or transport company employees in using the device. This should happen the last week of September.
The only negative thing to report is that I am having a lot of trouble with the new PDAs that I brought back to Addis a couple weeks ago. Mainly, to put it in my high tech lingo, they are buggy, and since I got here I cannot get them to acquire a gps fix. I loaded one unit up when I was in the States and all looked good, and though I had trouble getting a GPS fix at first, it eventually took– normal when a unit is new. So, the application loads correctly at first but then seems to devolve and stop working as time goes on. I’m not sure what’s going on… details are too many to go into here, but I’ve spent a couple straight days now troubleshooting this to no avail w/ our software developer, Mark Yarmoshuk. As it stands now, I may have to conduct my next training with a ”simulation” application of the tool (basically, the gROADS app minus a gps fix) I made today. This will at least get everyone trained properly, but we’ll need to figure out a solution to whatever’s going on asap.
In terms of data flow, I anticipate a steady but manageable inflow for the month of September, and a much increased inflow starting in October and running through the end of the data collection period (Nov 30th). This is assuming of course that we get the new PDAs up and running.
[Since writing this post, we’re happy to announce that the new PDAs are now running.. a hidden parameter deep in the PDA’s settings that controled applications’ access to GPS and that simply needed switching. As so often the case with IT, 2 days of searching for a 2 second solution.. but all is well, the new PDAs are ready for deployment]
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