Open data kit: creating an open source community for mobile data collection

Open Data Kit (opendatakit.org) is a modular set of tools for building mobile data collection systems. It consists of both client-side and server-side components and was designed to be highly modular and exploit standard interfaces. The motivation for ODK came from the stove-piped systems that were locking many organizations into obsolete technologies and inflexible workflows. The goal of ODK is to enable users to mix-and-match the pieces they need to build their mobile information systems as well as develop their own components. ODK is now in use by many different types of organizations across many domains in a large set of countries. ODK is being extended to tackle even richer data and the system is being made even more easily extensible. This talk will present the basic ODK tools and use deployment examples to highlight some of the more interesting features as well as some case studies of modules generated by the greater ODK community. It will conclude with a discussion of future directions.