Developing an Application for Social Workers in Tanzania

1. Developing an Application for Social Workers in Tanzania Daniel Nuffer Anthony Velázque

2. 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

3. Social Work in Tanzania Sources: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7239047.stm http://www.twinningagainstaids.org/documents/OVCProgramOverviewSummer2008_001.pdf 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.

4. Social Work in Tanzania • The problem is exacerbated by crippling poverty rate. • 36% of Tanzania’s population lives below the poverty line.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

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

12. Celtel Tanzania • Created after privatization of TTCL • Largest Company Based on Coverage Area: Source: GSMworld.com

13. 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.

14. 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

15. Existing Projects • HealthLine • CAMBrowser • OpenROSA • Epihandy

16. 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.

17. HealthLine • Pros: • Speech technologies address low literacy issues. • Speech technologies do not require installations on all phones.

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. 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.

21. 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.

22. 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.

23. 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

24. 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.

25. 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.

26. 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

27. 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.

28. 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.

29. 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.

30. 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.

31. 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.

32. Questions?