Last Mile Mobile Solutions Project

Its been fun having you here …. but I finally got the dedicated website for LMMS up and running.

You can find us at http://www.lastmilemobilesolutions.com/

Please update your bookmarks!

A quote from the authors Sylvie Barak and Marc Speir from their blog entry on LMMS.

“ World Vision is an awesome organization (I invite you all to check it out), which amongst other things runs a “Cash for Work” program, as well as food and charity distribution to those in need. What makes it really special from our point of view, though, is the fact the organization has pioneered a really quick and painless way of registering people quickly and efficiently on handheld wireless PDAs. This means that rather than make Haitians queue up in food lines from 4 a.m. for five or six hours, the process now takes a matter of minutes. We have it all on film, including the distribution, so you can really see how quick and easy it is.

What’s also great about WorldVision is that it works with companies like Haitian operator Voila (for mobile payments) and the NetHope academy, training young Haitians to take over once the aid workers pull out. It’s a truly amazing organization.”

For an interesting read on the full article, take a gander at this link

Just learned today that WVI staff working under WFP projects in Haiti, ranked LMMS as the Number ONE best practice in WFP programs in Haiti. Way to go guys!

While learning that I also spent a chunk on time today trying to get some simple graphics to help explain LMMS to newbies. Thought it might be helpful to readers as well … so here you go (these show current WIP things as well as the bread n’ butter LMMS apps):

And this as well:

Dave Toycen, WVC President

Way before texting, there was Telex. That’s how we communicated when I first travelled overseas with World Vision in 1976. The clunky machine, like an oversized typewriter, allowed us to type and transmit reports back home. Sometimes—almost miraculously it seemed—we would receive a quick reply because the recipient happened to be loitering near the machine. I clearly remember thinking, “What could possibly be better than this!”

None of us had any idea what was to come. Technology just keeps changing the world. In the field of relief and development, and in the lives of the children we help, it seems to be for the better. The technology of today helps us reach out more widely, more quickly, more consistently and definitely more creatively, especially when it comes to communication.

I witnessed technology’s power first-hand in Haiti, as we informed donors and sponsors about what was happening and how they could help through images captured on cellphones. We posted the pictures on our website, through Facebook, via Twitter and on blogs. I participated in a question and answer session from the field over webcam with Canadian donors. Caring Canadians donated by clicking a button or texting a number. Technology allowed us to accept, record and provide receipts for donations in one swift electronic operation. Without it, we would have needed at least four times more staff and our costs would have increased exponentially.

It is out in the field—not in the office—where I am most grateful for technology. World Vision is leading the way by introducing new technologies to support the education, health, agriculture and disaster relief efforts that save lives and build communities where the well-being of children is a priority. One of our recent innovations is Last Mile Mobile Solutions (LMMS)—a technology that makes aid distribution faster and fairer for people in dire need. It was developed by World Vision Canada in partnership with the private sector

With the swipe of a photo ID card, families receive the right amount of food without the paperwork that is typical in a food distribution. The handheld device links wirelessly with a central computer that documents the who, what and where of the distribution, allowing us to monitor the process with greater accuracy.

Of course, it is the “who” that concerns us the most. LMMS helps World Vision ensure that those families that need food aid the most receive it immediately.

Less waiting. Better service. Exactly the things we love about technology in our own lives.

We’ve come a long way since Telex and mobile phones the size of a suitcase. Each innovation has helped us to help children and their communities grow in strength, capacity and hope.

Dave Toycen, President

Below is an article excerpt from Fast Company in which LMMS was featured:

By: Jocelyn C. ZuckermanJanuary 12, 2011

Lifeline: About 85% of Haitian households have cell phones, according to the Red Cross. Phonesenable cashless financial transactions and emergency messaging. | Courtesy of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Since the 2010 earthquake, not-for-profits and corporations have developed new technologies to better deliver services to Haitians, transforming aid in disaster areas everywhere.

Tracking-device technology was revolutionized by the quake as well. In particular, a program called Last Mile Mobile Solutions, or LMMS, which had been developed by a Canadian software company and the Christian organization World Vision, found an entirely new application. LMMS is a digital system that replaces paperwork associated with ration cards and registration. Capable of functioning in places without electricity or Internet, LMMS had been piloted in Africa but had never been used in a “rapid-onset emergency” situation. Nor had it entailed distributions of anything other than food. In Haiti, World Vision began using the system’s laptops and handheld devices to register people at distribution sites (beneficiaries receive photo IDs with scannable bar codes) and to track goods dispersed. The result was not only fewer errors but also vastly shorter waiting times: Instead of spending the entire day standing in the hot sun, Haitians now were able to join the line and walk away an hour later with their food and supplies. Similarly, the Salvation Army automated its distributions tracking, replacing handwritten ration cards with bar-code Trackpad technology, developed by the delivery company UPS to find displaced pets after Katrina.

Some look at the developments in Haiti and see the potential for a model wireless society — the first “copper-free” country in the world. Whether that comes to pass or not, the technological fruits of the Caribbean nation’s disaster are already spreading far beyond the country. World Vision hopes to soon roll out its LMMS system in Pakistan and China, and Otto Farkas, the organization’s director of humanitarian and emergency affairs, resource development, and collaborative innovation, has visions of LMMS one day being adopted by all aid organizations, in every emergency situation. “This is the holy grail,” he says, “to get real-time data that’s all integrated.” He concedes, of course, that such cooperation isn’t just about solving a few technological glitches. “We can’t just throw technology at the human challenges,” he says, “but certainly, technology can help.”

A version of this article appears in the February 2011 issue of Fast Company written by Jocelyn C. Zuckerman

Accenture Consulting (Accenture Development Partners) .. just completed Phase 1 of a study on cost benefits to LMMS. The numbers support a strong business rationale for adopting LMMS organizationally.

Field staff, know this already … here’s a comment that was emailed to me via a third party, from the Commodity Officer overseeing all of La Gonave’s activities in Haiti:

“I will be happy if  you could mobilize resources to ensure that we cover all the [Safety Net beneficiaries]. It is my wish to have 100% LMMS and do away with the tedious manual system and old way of doing business. We now have some IT compliant  Food Monitors that can do LMMS registrations and distributions on their own …. I will have a good reason to drop the manual/ old way of doing business and make my job easier, enjoyable and also cut costs associated with manual systems.”

LMMS was deployed in Haiti under a Rapid Onset Emergency – i.e. for disasters that happen with little, if any warning. Most of the previous deployments of LMMS have been in chronic, slow moving type disasters. The flexibility of the system to accommodate  both contexts has been proven.

We have used LMMS to distribute medical supplies, hygiene kits, emergency food supplies and even to support recovery through programs in which affected communities are given cash for their active participation in recovery efforts (thereby facilitating demand-driven recovery t of local businesses).

Below is a short clip of the deployment in Haiti with an example of a distribution on hygiene kits for victims of the earthquake.

The Oversees Development Institute (ODI) has just released a fascinating read on the state of food aid/assistance in humanitarian programming. Some points from the study and some questions that come to mind are listed below:

1. Food aid is increasingly being used in emergency programming rather than in longer term development programming. Within emergency programming, food aid is the largest component (accounting for 25 – 30%) of humanitarian assistance.

2. Untying aid – moving to local/regional procurement, is a growing feature of food aid. (what are the implications on Supply Chain Management systems, what are agencies doing to ready themselves for more local/regional procurement?)

3. Food aid is witnessing the emergence of non-OCED-DAC government donors. (how can aid agencies leverage their knowledge and system expertise to support the capacity development of emerging governments such as India or Kenya that are now playing a role in food aid?)

Clearly food programming (especially in emergency context) is, and will remain, a high priority. It behooves organizations working on humanitarian food interventions to look at how assistance is assessed, targeted and delivered. Effective programming requires different interventions. In some contexts, blanket feeding is most appropriate,  in others getting cash into the hands of those in need can support local markets, if those markets are functioning.

Innovations must therefore have the flexibility to support varying programming needs. LMMS represents one such system. In fact it has been a guiding principle in the design of the system. The Haitian experience is demonstrating how LMMS can work in a variety of humanitarian interventions under one deployment umbrella. This includes general distributions (food and non-food) to intricate programs in which Haitians are supported in their own recovery and rehabilitation needs through work programs. Currently LMMS can be used in cash based programs (in fact we are launching Cash for Work in Haiti in the coming weeks under WFP and CIDA projects). Our system design team are also looking at how we can further support cash programming by integrating LMMS with mobile phone payments that will get cash into the hands of recipients safely, quickly and we hope in a more cost effective manner.

The ODI study explicitly references LMMS, however, of more interest to me is the potential on how LMMS can grow to support better food assistance hinted at in the study. This will include system developments for better targeting of recipients, better analytical assessments on how aid (food and otherwise) is being used, and critically better monitoring on the impact of food aid through (mal)nutritional assessments. These are all natural extensions to a system that we have in place today in which food aid recipients  can be registered and enrolled to various food programming interventions.

For more info on the ODI study please retrieve the full report here.

If you have been reading this blog, you know that there has been an ongoing flurry of activity around the Last Mile Mobile Solution (LMMS) project.  For those of you who are just finding us, World Vision and its private-sector partners (Fieldworker and Intermec) have created a more effective and accurate system of aid distribution that eliminates time-consuming paperwork.  Now, LMMS’s combination of wireless mobile technology, hand-held scanners and bar-coded identification cards reduces registration time by two thirds and greatly improves the accuracy of aid distribution and accountability for where that aid goes.

 Main achievements

• Released pre-tested alpha version of LMMS software for three modules:
  • General Distributions – with the capability to track Non-Food Items and Food;
  • Aid For Work – able to handle Cash and Food for Work programs;
  • Targeted Feeding – able to assign extra food to persons with particular health vulnerabilities.
• Purchased and installed LMMS equipment for Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Haiti.
• Migrated existing household data collected from the WV pilot programs (AIDC) in Kenya and Lesotho to each country’s LMMS database.
• Trained in-country technical support staff and end users in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Haiti.
• Defined beneficiary proxy management protocols.
  • Established country baseline databases in Kenya, Zimbabwe and Haiti.
  • Successful first use of LMMS in non-food item distribution.
    • Completed process mapping of Food for Work/Assets and General Distributions for documentation purposes.
    • Developed first draft of the staff training and user manuals
    • Negotiated site license and maintenance agreements with LMMS partner Fieldworker at partnership rates.
    • Working collaboratively with Intermec on new hardware needs for humanitarian sector.
    • In discussions with Univicity to use LMMS for commodity distribution and investigating other business applications.

Ongoing software development and improvements

•  Client enrollment application enables households to be registered once and then enrolled to multiple humanitarian interventions.
• Real-time inventory tracking application monitors the inventory being received at each distribution point and what is actually distributed in the field.
  • Field report generation tool allows for automated creation of Planned Distribution Lists, Master Beneficiary Lists, Distribution Plans, and Actual Distribution Lists.
  • Web-based mass enrollment utility stores beneficiary entries for uploading to the server after the registration process, to enable quicker beneficiary processing.
  • Expansion of LMMS is underway to accommodate cash payments for work activities using mobile banking applications through SMS texting using mobile phones.

LMMS in Haiti:

• obtained product donations from Intermec of CN-50 hand-held computers
• converted mobile hand-held device applications to the French language
• designed and pre-printed 15,000 bar-coded ration cards with French/Creole
• established project team staff in-country to support field operations with the World Food Program, USAID and CIDA
• hired country Project Manager and 2 local IT positions
• seconded LMMS IT person to help in-country
• allocated World Vision Canada IT staff for short-term support and technical training as needed. 

Field deployments 

Kenya

February 2010 – LMMS was used for an Aid for Work project in the Taita Taveta District and continued until the project finished in May 2010.   A total of 16,340 beneficiaries utilized LMMS under this project. 

Zimbabwe

March 2010 – The General Distribution application of LMMS was used for the vulnerable group feeding programs, reaching approximately 3,000 beneficiaries in Lupane and another 2,000 in Mangwe. 

April 2010 – LMMS was used in Aid for Work projects in selected urban areas in Bulawayo District until the projects were completed. 

Haiti

April 2010 – LMMS was used to register 1,310 households and issue scannable cards at Corail Internally Displaced Persons camp.   Three LMMS food distributions were conducted in Haiti under the World Food Program including the first non-food item distribution. 

June 2010 – Training has taken place in La Gonave and Mirabalais with USAID.  Two hundred households were registered in Mirabalais with a subsequent small distribution run in June and registrations have begun in La Gonave. 

Metrics 

• Time to register beneficiary households can range from 1.5 – 3 minutes depending on the detail of data collected for each program, whether or not household data was previously imported into LMMS, staff familiarity with LMMS, etc.
• Evidence from Zimbabwe reveals that it takes slightly more than 1 minute to process a beneficiary during distributions.  This included the beneficiary signing for his/her food items.  Without the signature pad being engaged, beneficiaries can be processed as quickly as 30 seconds per person.
• Preliminary evidence from the Corail distributions in Haiti (where dual processes are running) indicate that LMMS is faster than the manual process.  LMMS processing had to be stopped so that the corresponding manual process could catch up.
• Haiti field deployments showed that 8 mobile units (an unprecedented in LMMS history) could be connected to one roaming server. Doing so allowed for even faster completion of detailed data collection in the field.

DF

The World Economic Forum has recently included a profile of LMMS in action in Haiti. The report references the work we have been doing today in Haiti. While a little short on the extensive design, software development and roll out from the LMMS teams, it is still a good reflection of the work to date in Haiti and the power of partnerships. Take a read:

Case Study: World Vision and Automated Food Distribution

World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization founded in 1950, committed several years ago to improving the efficiency of its food aid provision. In 2006, it began working with a Canadian technology firm, FieldWorker, to reduce cumbersome paperwork processes for logging and processing food distribution. After several months of developing software and vetting systems internally, it launched a one-year pilot programme to test mobile technology involving hand-held scanners and bar-coded identification cards.

This system combined hardware from Intermec, a US-based company specializing in mobile computing systems, and FieldWorker’s software, which World Vision licensed at a reduced rate.

The result was a system that drew on best practices from the private sector and was customized to meet the needs of humanitarian agencies: food aid recipients were issued barcoded identification cards, and aid workers could scan these cards with hand-held, wireless computers.

The device would automatically calculate rations and log food distribution at the particular site. World Vision determined that the pilot study – which covered 20,000 recipients in Kenya and Lesotho in 2009 – was a vast improvement over the time-consuming paperwork: it reduced registration time from approximately three minutes to less than one minute. It also reduced errors in accounting for food distribution and decreased insensitivity towards illiterate beneficiaries.

Based on these promising early results, World Vision leaders wanted to implement the automated solution in Haiti. Intermec donated dozens of devices, and staff members were deployed for implementation. A limited number have been put into use in two resettlement areas. “The initial feedback from the ground is very positive,” says
Otto Farkas, World Vision’s Director of Humanitarian & Emergency Affairs, Resource Development and Collaborative Innovation. “The field workers love the
ease of the technology, and the beneficiaries are also very receptive of the new technology and the biometric ration cards that will allow real-time identification and data use.”

Despite the improved efficiency, deployment of the programme in Haiti was significantly delayed due to backlogs at customs and the inability to clear the equipment at the port. However, World Vision hopes that its experience drawing on the private
sector for best practices in information processing can be used to help other NGOs. According to Farkas, World Vision plans to offer this technology to other humanitarian agencies as a way of standardizing and automating many aid services.

The opportunity to use the technology in Haiti, where it is expected to improve service to over 500,000 beneficiaries, will prove invaluable in refining and demonstrating the benefits of such technology.

“Humanitarian actors shouldn’t wait for the next disaster,” says Craig Tyndall, FieldWorker General Manager. “Disaster is the worst time for innovation because people simply don’t have time.”

Guiding Principle: Foresight in experimenting with technology and testing collaborative development paid off in responding to the crisis in Haiti. While the disaster left little time for radical new ideas, humanitarian agencies and private companies that were nimble and had prior records of adapting to new ideas were able to roll out new solutions that improved efficiency of operations.

The full report can be found at here.