Many humanitarian and development programs struggle with the challenge of collecting basic data about their activities, as old methods of exchanging Excel files by email proves time-consuming and error-prone.
ActivityInfo is an online tool that helps organizations collect, manage, map, and analyze indicators — including those related to assessments, outputs, and impact.
With ActivityInfo,
- Program managers can define their own databases of indicators online, through a simple web page
- Program managers can control which users have access to the database, and what rights they have to view, add, or change data
- Partners can report their results through an easy-to-use web page
- Partners with intermittent or unreliable internet connections can enter data offline, and synchronize when a connection is available
- Partners can map their activities using an interactive map, even if they don’t have GPS coordinates
- All stakeholders can generate tables, charts, and maps that summarize their results
- Program managers can update or add indicator definitions as the program evolves, assuring that the system stays relevant
- All stakeholders can choose to receive email updates upon new results, or subscribe to standard reports on a weekly or monthly basis
Get more out of your monitoring
ActivityInfo allows you to create tables and charts based on the most recent data. You can review results over time, by geography, by partner, or some combination, and export the results to Word, PowerPoint or Excel.
ActivityInfo has been designed from the beginning to fully integrate with Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Interactive mapping assures that all data provided by the partner is already georeferenced, greatly facilitating the production of high quality maps. All stakeholders can quickly produce their own maps from a web page and professional GIS staff can access the geographical data directly from ArcGIS or other software.
“Last year they sent me 11 separate Excel sheets with distribution sites. They were all with different structures, just hundreds of village names. There was no way I could track them all down, and the map never got made. With ActivityInfo, it’s different. I get one dataset with proper coordinates. I can work with this.” — OCHA GIS Officer, North Kivu DRC
Spend less time on reporting
Field staff often spend considerable time reporting and re-reporting the same results to different stakeholders who each ask for slightly different indicators with a slightly different format. With an ActivityInfo database in place, field staff enter detailed results once, as activities are implemented, and stakeholders can access the data as needed.
“I used to have everyone knocking at my door for data — from OCHA, from the WASH cluster, from the Education cluster, from area managers within the donor, and THEN the donor’s finance office… and everyone has their own spreadsheet. Now I take the time once a week to update ActivityInfo and I send everyone directly to the site.” — Program Coordinator – Rapid Response Mechanism, South Kivu DRC
Secure your data
When an organization creates an ActivityInfo database for their program, that organization controls completely who has access to the data, and the rights each user has to view, add, or change data. For example, if a program has many partners, you can choose to allow partners to see the results of all other partners, or, if you so choose, only their own results.
The ActivityInfo server — at ActivityInfo.org — is hosted on the Amazon’s Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) — the global leader in computing infrastructure, so you can be confident that your data remains as private as you choose, and remains safe thanks to continuous, multi-site backup.
Reduce your consultant and software costs
ActivityInfo reduces costs associated with managing your information in several ways.
First, there program managers can generally set up an ActivityInfo database with 1-2 days of effort. It is generally not necessary to hire a consultant to build the database, so your organization can focus on your mission rather than technology. As your logical framework evolves, program managers can update the definition of the database directly without needing to track down the original consultant.
Second, users require a minimum of training to use the system. In most cases, partners simply receive an invitation email with a password and a link to the site, and are able to begin using the system immediately
Third, using the system requires a minimum of IT support. There is no software to install, no server to maintain.
Finally, ActivityInfo is open-source software, which means that anyone can use and improve ActivityInfo at no-cost, but all improvements must also be shared. This means that users of ActivityInfo benefit from continuous updates, fixes, and improvements to the software contributed by a number of actors, including UNICEF.
The goal is to assure that organizations of any size have the ability to access to ActivityInfo.org at no cost. For larger organizations who want the assurance of phone or email technical support, annual support contracts are available from ActivityInfo.org.