E-Mobile data collection to improve data quality and speed of results: Lessons from Angola

Many global health monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems rely on paper-based data collection and verification in the field. Supervisory staff inadvertently overlooks data errors during quality control, and data clerks often commit data entry errors when transferring data from paper forms to electronic databases. Project staff spends significant time transporting data from remote villages to data centers and entering data from paper forms. These challenges affect data quality and accessibility and impede decision-making to improve project operations.

In October 2013, the President’s Malaria Initiative-supported Africa Indoor Residual Spray Project (AIRS) piloted e-mobile data collection and verification in Huambo, Angola. The project initially tasked 48 field staff to record data on smartphones from 12,000 households and electronically submit data to a cloud-based system accessible to M&E staff at the home office. Eight supervisors were provided Android tablets to simultaneously review data quality and monitor staff performance. Phones were programmed with validation checks to prevent skipping mandatory fields and avoid data errors common on paper forms.

Due to low literacy, we reassigned 23 staff exhibiting poor e-mobile understanding to paper-based data collection during the first week of the pilot.  Overall, thirty-three staff successfully mastered e-mobile data collection and verification while the M&E team cleaned and analyzed data concurrently.  We recommend extending the length of training from 3- to 7-days and using the pre-spray, community mobilization campaign as hands-on, practical exercise. We also propose an enhanced data integration and visualization platform to improve data cleaning and management and project reporting.