By Ingrid Siebörger and Clement Simuja
The Transforming Lives project organized a training workshop in Zimbabwe on 8th and 9th November 2018. The training was facilitated by MobiSAM to introduce the minimum viable product (MVP) of the MobiSAfAIDS web and mobile applications. The participants were drawn from the five SAfAIDS country offices, namely Zambia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and Lesotho.
The focus for the training was on the soon to be launched MobiSAfAIDS application – an application to support Mobile Social Accountability Monitoring within the Transforming Lives Programme of SAfAIDS; in support of Pillar 3 of the Transforming Lives Programme. The training centered around two aspects; firstly, the web application front end of the MobiSAfAIDS system and secondly the Mobile App for Android based phones.
On Day one, participants were introduced to the system by walking them through the system requirements elicited through a workshop with MobiSAM and senior SAfAIDS staff earlier in the year, in April 2018. This presentation was essential to flesh out the relevant users of the system, their roles and responsibilities, and required functionality. This resulted in a lengthy and robust discussion on the various users and roles within the system. Once all the participants were clear regarding the roles and various users within the system, the MobiSAM team then took them through the system, use case scenario by use case scenario. Each use case focused on the use of the system by a particular user type; such as a Youth User, Youth-led CSO user, Ward councilors, Healthcare facility administrator, healthcare service provider, and the SAfAIDS country level administrators.
Each participant had the opportunity to interact with the MobiSAfAIDS system as a youth user and create service delivery tickets around access to SRH services. From there they were able to track the flow of information through the system from the Healthcare facility administrator assigning tickets to healthcare service providers, who in turn addresses the concerns raised in the tickets, eventually resolving the issue when possible. The youth user is notified of the various changes in ticket status via email – participants were able to see how the information flowed through the various stages and ultimately close their tickets that they created after they had been addressed by the various stakeholders along the way. In addition, users were also introduced to the MobiSAfAIDS polling component. This allows country level administrators within the system to add polls (created by the SAfAIDS oversight staff) to their country MobiSAfAIDS sites in order to pose questions and understand youth sentiments around important issues related to access to SRH services
On Day 2, participants were introduced to the mobile application in greater detail and were able to utilize mobile phones, provided by SAfAIDS, to interact with the MobiSAfAIDS system. Again, they were able to follow the flow of information through the system by undertaking the various roles and users – from ticket creation to assignment to resolved and finally closing the tickets they initially created. At the end of the training the participants were asked to share their perspective on the training and the system.
“The system is quite easy to use…in particular, the youth will be excited to interact with the health clinics through mobile technology” Mr Ngoni Chibukire (Regional Team Leader – Leadership, Gender and Human Rights)”
“We are very excited to reach this point of having the system, our dreams have come true and this is the beginning of an exciting journey” Mrs Lois Chingandu (Director of SAfAIDS)
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.