What is Open Data Kit?
Open Data Kit (ODK) is an open source suite of tools for building information services to collect, manage, and visualize data in challenging environments. ODK provides an ecosystem of tools that helps organizations author, field, aggregate and analyze mobile data collection solutions without programming.
Some key features of ODK include:
- ODK Build - A drag-and-drop form designer to quickly build mobile data collection forms. It supports features like constraints, skips, calculated fields etc.
- ODK Collect - Android app that allows field personnel to collect data on various phones, tablets and other Android devices.
- ODK Aggregate - A ready to deploy server with RESTful API to store, aggregate and visualize submitted data.
- ODK Briefcase - Tool for data export and upload to ODK Aggregate server.
- ODK XLSForm - Tool to convert XLSForms in XML which can be deployed to collect data.
ODK uses XForms, an open international standard from W3C to define data collection forms. It has an active developer and user community with deployments in many countries globally. ODK focuses on information collection in areas with limited internet connectivity such as humanitarian crisis relief, healthcare services, election monitoring etc.