Solutions for Non-Profit Aid Organizations

Program Reporting - The Challenge of Aid Organizations

Program administration in Global Aid Organizations is by its nature, geographically dispersed. Often the organizations are challenged with their ability to effectively collect, track and analyze program results in a timely and efficient manner.

For those organizations concerned with AIDs research or treatment, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) puts even more pressure on organizations to rapidly scale up program monitoring and improve tracking progress in order to provide empirical basis for program planning. In addition, the Office of the Global Aids Coordinator (OGAC) has issued reporting guidelines that include more than 30 core indictors, which all “focus” countries are required to report on biannually.

There are many challenges faced when reporting indicators using aggregate level data. Data is generated in resource-poor settings characterized by diverse health information systems where there is a slow or intermittent internet connection, electricity and limited computer availability for field workers collecting data. The outcome is often less than optimal data quality and may also result in repetitive data or significant opportunities for double-counting. In addition to these problems, organizations are faced with the task of supplying appropriate reports back to the federal agencies and other organizations providing the grants. Quality of donor reporting and their ability to quickly tie progress to positive program results affects a non-profit organization’s ability to raise funds effectively.

The Solution - Designed to Combat Slow Internet Speeds and Limited Infrastructure

Mandating expensive computer requirements or complicated software will inherently fail because the field organization does not typically have IT support or detailed trainers for their staff. Often these are program workers (doctors, nurses, volunteers) who will track and enter the data in addition to their day job of providing services to the population.

Acumen Solutions has developed customized solutions that leverage the simplest of equipment and processes to capture and immediately track results. With the only computer requirement being a browser and access to the Internet, we have built a bullet-proof system that easily enables the capture and reporting of data back to the home office in the most expedient manner. The process also has built in error checking to ensure the quality of the data before it is reported back to headquarters. Organizations will be able to trust their data integrity and efficiently produce reports for executives and donors.

This customized solution is designed to record program results at both the site and grantee level. In addition, the system is designed to provide quality checks that flag erroneous data before it is submitted to reduce cycles between the field and headquarters and speed up the availability of accurate data for analysis and action.

Acumen Solutions Delivers Award Winning Technology for Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation

In 2007, Acumen Solutions designed a web-based application for Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, an organization focused upon preventing pediatric HIV infection and eradicating pediatric AIDS through research, advocacy, and prevention and treatment programs. Their 3,200+ sites supporting programs for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMCT) are located throughout 18 countries and have varying degrees of staffing and IT infrastructure. Previously, their process for data management was manually intensive, inaccurate, time consuming and offered little insight on ownership of data. The organization wanted to enhance the process so executives and donors could make improvements to their programs.

To achieve this, Acumen Solutions identified the data sources and definitions for each required indicator. This provided the foundation for a web-based application designed especially for use in countries with limited infrastructure to collect and store quarterly site-level data. The uploading/data entry process is accompanied by automated data quality checks, which have greatly enhanced the organization’s confidence in the validity of the indicators generated. The system also contains a standard report feature, ad-hoc querying capability, and an automated report subscription option, all of which have expanded the ability of the staff to employ high quality program data in real time for multiple purposes, including program improvement.

Using the application’s warehoused data feature and its ability to filter data by site-level characteristics, the organization has developed an estimation procedure for tracking antiretroviral (ARV) uptake rate (i.e. how many women are given AIDs treatment) that significantly reduces common double-counting and better identifies gaps in treatment delivery in the field.

Part of the application also includes a portal to improve reporting between the foundation and its nonprofit organizations and grantors. Grant information and partner results can easily be viewed by users to determine program effectiveness. In addition, these reports can be structured in different formats such as graphs with advanced options including regression analysis. As a whole, the organization has benefitted by being given access to critical data in the form of accurate, instant reports and trend analysis.

Chosen from a pool of 20 nonprofits and selected based upon a four-part criterion including a description of how the organization is using technology in an innovative way to achieve greater programmatic and operational results, Elizabeth Glaser won the NPower Technology Innovations Award.