What decides whether a system is used.
Technology is rarely the problem. Adoption is.
Three factors
What separates a pilot that stops from a system that reaches scale is almost never the technology. It is adoption by users, and adoption rests on three things: tools genuinely sized for the context, the quality of the collaboration with government, and institutional and operational capacity building.
I never approach a project claiming to know the context better than the people who live in it.
I start by understanding the context and its constraints. Expertise comes afterwards, to guide rather than to impose. Without real ownership by the ministry, a system is deployed and then not used.
Capacity is a process, not an event
A three day workshop followed by a report does not produce users. Training has to run as a cycle.
Field notes
Support has to meet users where they are
On one deployment, a WhatsApp group worked better than a ticketing system. A field officer does not have time to open a ticket in a complex interface, and so does not do it. The right helpdesk is not the most complete one, it is the one people actually use.
A fragmented system often mirrors a fragmented organisation
On an interoperability assignment, the fragmentation of the information system turned out to be the consequence of fragmentation inside the ministry itself. The work was as much about getting divisions to collaborate as about connecting databases.
Local languages at community level
In Senegal, using local languages in community level training changed how quickly people learned. It does not transfer everywhere, but where it applies it is decisive.
The first week of an assignment
Identification and mapping of stakeholders and risks. Presentation of the assignment, and of myself, to those stakeholders. Preparation of the data collection instruments. The warning sign, from the first days, is stakeholders who are not sufficiently involved.
What we do not do
We do not work around a country's regulation to suit a funder's schedule or preferences. The tools and methods we put in place comply with the national regulatory framework and the local context. Where the two are in tension, we say so before starting rather than in the final report.
A project, a tender, a consortium?
Insight Santé works as a technical partner and can mobilise collaborators according to the needs of the assignment.
contact@insightsante.com
Dakar, Senegal