The DataWinners website provides government and NGO program managers with a tool to quickly and easily create a mobile phone survey platform that dramatically reduces the cost of data collection and works in even the most remote locations in the developing world.

The Fine Print: HNI’s DataWinners web service revolutionizes mobile data collection in the developing world. DataWinners is a high-impact web-based “engagement” service that allows non-IT professionals to design and deploy mobile data collection projects with no programming or specialized IT expertise involved. Project managers worldwide can use the web-hosted application to create an unlimited number of fast and inexpensive data collection programs that work with simple cell phones and the most basic cellular infrastructure. Users log into a hosted web application where they can define mobile data collection forms (questionnaires), gather data from the field, and draw on visualizations to monitor progress, evaluate impact and report on results. Built-in analysis features supplement standard visualizations. After designing their questionnaire, program managers instruct field staff to send in the requested information via SMS to an assigned number; the data is then automatically populated in an online database. By using DataWinners, program managers can obtain an accurate, timely and complete set of crucial data that they need to make evidence-based decisions and continually fine-tune their work. Concrete examples of possible rapid assessment applications: Monitor progress (map mosquito net distribution points), track inventory/deliveries (ARV stock levels in clinics), supervise field staff (incentive/payment), reporting (medical records). DataWinners hosted service is based on the Mangrove data collection framework, an open source project that develops core tools for mobile data collection, aggregation, analysis, and visualization targeting SMS, Web, J2ME and Android via XForms. The Mangrove initi