Customer Profile
The World Bank is a multilateral development bank with mission to fight poverty
and improve the living standards of people in the developing world. It is one of
the largest sources of development assistance and provides loans, policy advice,
technical assistance and knowledge sharing services to low and middle income countries
to reduce poverty. The Bank promotes growth to create jobs and to empower poor people
to take advantage of these opportunities. It funds infrastructure development and
sustainable poverty reduction projects. In 2003 the World Bank provided $18.5 billion
and worked in more than 100 developing countries, bringing finance and/or technical
expertise toward helping them reduce poverty. It employs more than 10,000 professionals
from nearly every country in the world at its Washington DC headquarters and 109
country offices.
Business Problem
The World Bank needed to conduct an extensive socio-economic survey all across Mumbai
in connection with Mumbai Urban Transport Project of which the bank is one of the
principal funding agencies. This involved collection of response data to a very
complex questionnaire from several thousand respondents. The conventional method
of recording responses using paper and pen while out in the field by enumerators
is not only difficult and error prone but it also means that the information collected
cannot be analyzed very quickly. This process is slow and fraught with potential
transcription errors, and doesn't let the analysts act on up-to-date information.
One of the most important aspects of this survey was that data collected in Mumbai
was needed in the bank's headquarters in Washington DC, USA at the earliest, which
was not possible with pen and paper based conventional survey method. Another problem
faced during survey design was that due to the large questionnaire size, each complete
survey set ran into several pages. This created the problem that to administer the
survey each enumerator would have to carry bulky files with attendant potential
problem of missing pages and of storing the voluminous files. Another area of concern
was that to maintain the accuracy of data in relation to the point of data collection
as the interpretation of data was to a large extent dependent on where it was collected.
The World Bank was therefore looking for a solution that would:
• Enable the survey to be administered quickly and accurately in the field while enforcing
the complicated "skip patterns"
• Ensure accuracy of data collection
• Allow the transfer of survey data to the analysts in Washington DC regularly
• Obviate the necessity of handling, collating and storing large volume of paper forms
• Allow monitoring of co-ordinates of the data collection points
Solution Overview
Using Palm® handheld computers and Geographical
Positioning System (GPS) receivers, we developed an electronic survey administration
system. This system allows the enumerators to administer the survey in the field
on their handheld Palm® devices obviating the need to carry bulky paper files. The
system keeps track of the complex data collection rules and enforces data accuracy
by co-relating responses. Using GPS functionality built into the handheld, a GPS
reading was recorded and attached to each individual survey to ensure that surveys
are conducted on location and this data became extremely useful in plotting GIS
information on top of the response analysis. At the end of each day the enumerators
transferred the data collected into a small removable memory chip, which was used
as secure backup device as well as transfer mechanism for transferring data to a
supervisor's handheld device. The consolidated survey data from the supervisors
Palm® was downloaded to PCs and transferred
electronically to the World Bank.
Technology Used
The survey was deployed on Palm® handhelds.
The data is downloaded to PC-based Microsoft®
Access database and then transferred to World Bank for analysis. Custom conduits
were developed by us to upload data from the Palm®
to the PC.
Potential Benefits
This solution helped the World Bank to conduct surveys efficiently and accurately
right in the field. It was possible to conduct more number of surveys per enumerator
per day and the total cost of survey was greatly reduced. The accuracy of data was
enough to satisfy even the most critical benchmarks of the World Bank. Our solution
provided the following solutions and benefits for each of the problem areas identified
by the World Bank:
• Palm® based survey application with customized "rules" engine
• Data validation rules
• Data could be transmitted electronically
• Download survey data to PC database
• Integrated GPS receivers stamp each data with location coordinates
|