Remote Support

Included Services

1. All mobile phone based data collection during the period of the assessment
2. Assistance in the use of XForm editors for the creation of surveys, including addition of complex survey features not supported by editors.
3. Provision of web servers and IT operations for management of surveys, storage of data and preliminary analysis
• Hosting
• Backups
• Restoration of data from backups
• Translations of the application into local languages
• If this is required we will provide the client with a file containing the sentences in English used by the phone. The client would then be expected to supply the local language equivalent of these sentences. We will then add these translations to the mobile phone application. (allow 3 days from the provision of the translated until the updated application will be available).
• Security
• Firewall configuration
• Patching, upgrades
• User Administration
• Monitoring of logs / Intrusion detection
• Unlimited access for reports, downloads of results, creation of surveys
4. Provision of a public Ushahidi server
• Configuration of automatic updates of selected data from the surveys to the Ushahid server
5. Help Desk to answer questions on
• Survey Design
• Mobile phone configuration and use
• Survey completion in the field
• Analysis
6. Training Materials
7. Application Maintenance and Support (bug fixes)

Excluded Services

1. Purchase and support of mobile phone handsets (See Field Support)
2. Conducting the surveys and analysing the results

Field Support

Pre-requisites

Included Services

Remote support is included with field support.

Provision of phones and a technical support person in the field for an assessment. The phones will be made available for the duration of the remote support contract, whereas the technical support person would generally only be required during set-up and training.

• Provision of phones
• Provision of back up phones in case of phone failure
• Provision of local wi-fi network and local server where Internet connectivity is not available
• Setting up wi-fi connectivity or GSM connectivity to mobile network
• Charging the phone batteries
• Maintaining a phone register
• Purchase of SIM cards and pre-paid mobile data
• Training of enumerators
• In field problem diagnosis and resolution
• Installation of non standard language fonts such as Amharic and Tamil

Customised Survey Tools

There may be cases where it is more cost effective to use a custom application to perform assessments instead of fieldTask which collects data based on a survey designed using XForms. For example:

• The survey is standardised and has only minor changes for each assessment
• Complex surveys that can’t be well represented as XForms
• High volume surveys where ease of use becomes more valuable than fixed up front cost
• Support is required for devices other than J2ME and Android. For example iPhone, Windows Mobile, Blackberry

These custom mobile phone applications will interface to the standard fieldTask servers so the assessment can use custom tools interchangeably with XForm based tools. Remote and field support of these custom tools will be covered by the remote and field support services.

We use an "Agile" approach to development with ideally a 2 week iteration between releases. This means that:

• There is reduced project risk as the fit of the project to your organisation's needs can be reassessed at the end of each iteration and the project can be continued, deferred, re-directed or cancelled based on these assessments.
• An expensive up front requirements stage is not needed. Requirements can evolve during the life of the project. Requirements can start high level, with only those that are the focus of the next iteration being elaborated.
• The development team can pro-actively make assumptions on unstated requirements that can be verified with the customer at the conclusion of each iteration (Every two weeks). This reduces development cycles as placing candidate requirements within the context of a prototype simplifies decision making substantially.
• Requirements can be defined as high-level business scenarios. At the beginnning of each iteration the development team will work with the customers business people to extract out the functions from these scenarios that will be implemented in the iteration.

IT Consulting

Our people have many years experience in designing and building IT solutions. We can apply this experience to help clients build customised solutions that are integrated with their IT portfolio.

Adding mobile technology to your business can cut costs and deliver improved business outcomes in many areas such as data collection and field force management. However the greatest benefit comes when it can be integrated into your core business processes and the IT systems that support those processes. Smap Consulting can help you achieve these sort of fundamental improvements to the way your organisation works.