Paul Mwijagye

KAMPALA, UGANDA - OpenXdata, a new software developed by the Faculty of Computing and Informatics Technology (CIT) is set to ease the tracking of pupil and teacher attendance in schools using mobile phones.

Unlike the traditional use of registers, the system enables schools to use mobile phones to compile data on the attendance of teachers and pupils.

A survey shows it has been difficult to track down teachers who absentee themselves from school because of the poor method of data collection.

Data transfer costs are as little as Ushs1 per transfer over mobile Internet and it costs Ushs100 for all the attendance records per week. The districts get access to this data within seconds," Ms Marion Alina, the Assistant Communications officer Makerere Faculty of CIT told East African Business Week recently."

Unlike current practice where schools collect attendance data for a whole month before submitting it to district education officers, OpenXdata will enable weekly collection of data.

"OpenXdata provides for gaps arising from the use of registers. For instance data is updated in the morning and in the afternoon and this helps establish whether pupils remain in school for the whole day," Alina said. 

In a pilot study, the Faculty of CIT launched OpenXdata software in 50 schools in Mbale and 50 schools in Kiboga district on  January 28, 2010. The Netherlands Development Organization, SNV, in collaboration with Makerere University availed the schools with phones.

The software can also be used in the health sector in to monitor drug distribution in health centres and also during the census exercise.