Case Study: Piloting the Digital Attendance App in Somalia [Video]

The Ministry of Education in Somalia is in the formative stages of developing an Education Management Information System (EMIS) and NGOs, including World Vision (WV), usually struggle to obtain authentic information on education indicators such as enrollment rates, retention rates, drop out etc. Digital Attendance App (DAA) is an application developed by UNICEF and students at the University of Nairobi’s C4D Lab who later formed Sisitech, a Nairobi-based global software design firm. The DAA tracks student attendance quickly, safely, and efficiently to support learning and school re-entry, thus providing insight on out-of-school children and dropouts. First piloted in Kenya, the RIL and World Vision worked with Sisitech to pilot the DAA in the Puntland, to keep children in school, learning, and in a supportive environment. The pilot schools were transitioned from a paper-based school attendance tracker to the DAA. The app is available both online and offline and is able to capture individual attendance of a student and generate an immediate report. Individual school data will be fed into the overall District/state data and can be dis-aggregated by the school, sex, and grades, allowing the school and WV to track trends in attendance. The web-based platform allows WV, headteachers, and the government to access the dashboards for planning and advocacy purposes. The DAA will most likely be taken up by the government and other partners to improve attendance tracking. Additionally, the Ministry of Education would like to have the EMIS and DAA integrated.