Behind the Digital Attendance App Pilot in Somalia

Falastiin Abdulkadir Ahmed (Dudumaale school headteacher) marking students attendance with the Digital Attendance App.

The Challenge

The Challenge of understanding school attendance within Somalia has been ongoing for quite some time due to displacement of communities, recurring disasters, and lack of correct information regarding school children. There are additional complications in cases where children may have similar names, or variations such as Muhammed or Muhammad. Although there is some record-keeping, it is done sporadically and inconsistently. In order to understand the causes of dropouts and the dynamics of variables like gender, there needs to be a more efficient and effective way of capturing and storing this data.

The challenge regarding school children attendance was identified by World Vision, a child-focused international humanitarian aid, development, and advocacy organization, through its education interventions. Research was conducted and several potential solutions were proposed. A collaborative approach was formed between World Vision and the Response Innovation Lab (RIL) leading to the identification of the Digital Attendance App (DAA) which showed the best potential to track school attendance. It had been utilized previously by UNICEF in some communities in Kenya. UNICEF had worked directly with a group of students at The University of Nairobi on the DAA platform, and they had since graduated to form their own company known as Sisitech (‘Sisi’ means ‘us’ in Swahili and translates to UsTech). Sisitech works to provide useful and sustainable technology-based solutions that meet local up to global markets.

“The RIL, a global collaborative body that supports organizations working within the humanitarian sector focusing on innovation within fragile contexts was founded by World Vision, Save the Children, Oxfam, Civic and George Washington University. ”

The RIL partners with a range of organizations across the private and public sectors including international and local NGOs, governments and academic institutions.

This diversity of thought allows the RIL to act as a broker - by providing innovations (whether local or international) that have been tested and may have proven success within the context in mind. Its working knowledge of humanitarian contexts, the skills developed and practices applied are appropriate, innovative and inclusive of the context in which they arise. Each context or situation is different and specific to that time, place and culture. The RIL has been invited to set up innovation labs within particular territories like Iraq, Jordan, Somalia, Uganda, and Puerto Rico. Using RIL’s online portal, The MatchMaker (and through rigorous consultations with actors in-country), problems are identified by local actors and worked through with the country lab to determine solutions that are out of the box, and that will utilize practical local knowledge from the actors involved. There is also the presence of higher conceptual thought and guidance from the humanitarian sector, and cross-sector collaborative innovative thought and practices.

Falastiin Abdulkadir Ahmed(Dudumaale school Headteacher) introducing RIL,World Vision Somalia Education team and Sisitech to Dudumaale school students

How has working together facilitated change or growth?

Once the challenge was accepted, and an innovation found, the RIL, World Vision and Sisitech began working together towards tailoring the DAA to work within a new context. A field visit by Sisitech to the targeted region of Puntland, north-eastern Somalia to determine whether it would be successful in this location was done. The exercise allowed both Sisitech, World Vision and the RIL to understand the contextual changes that needed to be considered including how roll call is structured differently between Kenya and Somalia. Since the app was not developed or built in a modular way originally, it had to be reprogrammed and translated to Somali language. Other revisions would be made as well as providing equipment (tablets, phones) or bundles of data to allow teachers accessibility and to incentivize use of the technology.

What to consider when navigating change or growth within fragile context

Enabling social change within emergency contexts is key to consider regarding innovations or technology. A multi-faceted approach to implementation that spans across humanitarian, public and private sectors to deliver innovation solutions is essential as they can share knowledge, learning and resources. This allows for innovative solutions to have a better chance of being sustainable in the long term. The DAA pilot has shown that it is possible to successfully pilot pre-existing innovative solutions in a fragile and complex context, and successfully contextualize it. This is an approach that can therefore be transferable.

Student in Subaan school responding to an attendance marking.

The impact of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused major disruptions to education in Somalia. With schools closed, the need for a digital platform to support teachers remain connected to their students will be critical.

The three DAA pilot schools that already had digital class lists have a better chance of teachers remaining connected with the guardians of their students. World Vision is exploring to obtain the caregivers’ contacts and use the platform to mark attendance during remote emotional support sessions once the remote Psychosocial Support Sessions guidelines are endorsed by the Ministry of Education. If the DAA system was at scale before COVID-19, it would have allowed for remote support at a larger scale.

There is need for more funding to scale up the system and integrate this with the Puntland government’s digital dashboard (which require manual data entry that happens once a year).

“With more resources the DAA system can digitize the data collection and integrate it to the  digital dashboard to provide real-time updates and allow for better information for decision makers to provide support efficiently. ”

It would also provide the infrastructure to remotely support teachers, and allow for follow-up with parents if their children are missing on the roll call.

What will RIL and its members need to scale this collaboration to the next level?

In order to progress the collaborations and for this innovation to reach more schools - there is need for an influx of funding. The is need for an estimated USD $100,000 for further development and testing to integrate the platform with the government’s dashboard and expanding to more schools. These collaborations  will benefit from the cross-sector approach and support to ensure the innovation reaches its potential. Once the DAA is integrated with the school system in Puntland, there will be another pilot to scale up the innovation to be implemented in other areas regions of the country

With existing partnerships and currently no duplication of systems between the government and DAA, once successful, an integration of systems will boost efficiency with no duplication.

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