InForm: The new data tool saving lives in extreme conditions

Since the war broke out in Ukraine in 2022, children and families have endured forced displacement, unthinkable loss, and relentless destruction and violence. At least 560 children have been killed – the equivalent of a child dying every day since the war started - and over a thousand have been wounded. 

Kindergartens, schools, hospitals, and sources of water and energy have been damaged or destroyed by shelling, leaving children without access to education or health care. 

Connectivity, a crucial component of disaster response, is one of the first things that break down in times of conflict or natural disasters. Without communication lines into a disaster-stricken area, it is difficult - if not impossible - to determine the impact of the crisis, the number of people affected, or the type and scale of support immediately required to help people. 

Reliable tool for unreliable connectivity 

The InForm tool was developed to address this very conundrum. It is designed to collect a variety of real-time data to support, for example, psychosocial programming, cash transfers for school needs, distribution of supplies, and online education programmes. And with its online and offline capacity, it is ideal for crisis contexts where connectivity is sketchy. 

An example from Ukraine illustrates the way InForm works and how it supports crisis response. According to a U-Report survey from early 2023, about 70% of young people said their emotional state had deteriorated since the war began, with over two-thirds of them saying they need psychological support. A youth-led psycho-social programme was developed in response to this survey, to provide young people with access to counseling from university students, under the supervision of teachers and psychologists. InForm was used to collect data about the young people, and the students then provided psych support to over 870 of them. This project is part of the UPSHIFT programme, launched in 2018 to much success. 

“In a conflict zone, all needs are urgent, and technology needs to be reliable, robust, functional, and easy to roll out. InForm is the tool for this,” says Ram Manohar Mishra, a UNICEF Technology for Development Specialist based in Kyiv. “It has been incredibly beneficial for programme reporting and monitoring, and has helped ensure that children receive the life-saving support they need.” 

Monitoring fund usage 

When children and youth miss out on education because of shelling or infrastructure damage, schools are given cash transfers to cover children’s most urgent needs, including school materials and infrastructure repair. InForm is also being used – so far by more than 750 schools - for this purpose, powering the monitoring of fund utilization. 

“We find cash grants to be very useful because they are flexible, and we can use them according to our needs and priorities,” says Nataliia, a school principal engaged in the programme. “Sometimes, young people attend catch-up classes or extracurricular activities, through which we can then help them access basic school services. We hope the war will end soon so we can return to our normal lives.” 

InForm was also recently used to monitor distribution of humanitarian winter supplies - benefiting more than 40,000 people by the end of 2023. UNICEF’s Ram Manohar Mishra says the tool was crucial for the rapid scale-up, which took place over the past 18 months. 

Finally, UNICEF Ukraine distributed over 28,000 laptops for online education in regions heavily impacted by the war. To streamline this initiative, a web form was developed using InForm enabling schools to efficiently handle login credentials for children using the laptops. 

Secure real-time data collection 

InForm’s limitless capacity and strong data security seal its position as the optimal data collection tool in humanitarian contexts. Data is uploaded onto and hosted safely in UNICEF servers. It has capacity for a large number of users and entries, making it well suited for community and partner-based service delivery. 

UNICEF responds to over 200 emergencies affecting an estimated 535 million children every year. As the largest advocate for children in emergencies around the world, UNICEF informs and shapes these interventions to uphold the rights of children affected by humanitarian crises. As a UNICEF-developed self-service data collection platform, InForm is enabling faster and more accurate decision-making for planning and response in emergency settings. 

Since its launch in 2022, InForm is now being used in 34 countries, 21 of which are engaged in humanitarian response. Among its applications include incident access tracking in Myanmar, a complaints and feedback mechanism in Sudan, and monitoring of payment distribution and cash transfers in Afghanistan. By March 2024, the platform has received over 2 million submissions through its survey function, supporting an estimated 4.2 million people worldwide. 

And hopefully, that number will continue to grow. The most vulnerable among our children deserve the most effective and most reliable tools that help them survive and thrive, even in the most challenging of circumstances. 

For more information on InForm and how you can make use of it, go here. 

Written by Anna-Lisa Robertson and Valerie Crab , UNICEF.