Despite Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems and dashboards being popular in the social sector, many stakeholders fail to effectively use their data for decision-making at critical moments. Our AI tool, Ask-a-Metric, gives users access to any key metrics related to their M&E system through WhatsApp whenever they want, helping them make data-driven decisions.

The Problem

Over the years¹, we have seen that many of our government and social sector partners have set up extensive Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems in their organizations. Within these systems, dashboards are the preferred means of accessing analytics for decision-making. Despite these systems, using data for decision-making is difficult.

Why dashboards won’t save us

Let’s discuss difficulties by looking at the journeys of two users: a senior government official and a front-line worker at a non-profit organization…

Dashboards work best on laptops or computers. However, most users in low- and middle-income countries interact with the internet primarily through their phones[1][2], which are not well-suited for navigating dashboards. To even access dashboard data, one needs to satisfy the following criteria:

• Physical access to a laptop/computer whenever one needs dashboard information
• Time, knowledge, and computer navigation skills to log into a dashboard and extract the required information.

These criteria are often not met, as in the case of our fictional government official and front-line worker.

Dashboards typically offer only specific slices of data, which might not be relevant to everyone in an organization. This limitation means users often cannot find the information they need for their specific use cases. Further, one needs to know about the dashboard’s layout and where the relevant metric is—or if it is there at all.

To use dashboards, users need to know the language, most often English, in which information is displayed. Further, organizations in the social sector tend to use English at the management and leadership level. In contrast, non-management and front-level employees are more comfortable in their local language. This can also create barriers to data being used at every level of the organization.

However, using Large Language Models (LLMs), we can make decision-relevant data available to everyone in the organization in their preferred language. Imagine every employee in an organization, from a top-level government official to a frontline worker collecting the data, chatting directly with their database. No need for technical skills or familiarity with English. This is where “Ask-a-Metric” (AAM) comes in.

What is Ask-a-Metric?

Ask-a-Metric is an AI-powered data analyst designed to answer questions from your database. It offers several advantages over traditional data analysis systems:

• Access it on WhatsApp: AAM runs on WhatsApp, meaning you can use it from your phone. No need to own or access a computer. Also, it works in poor internet conditions like on 2G internet.
• Ask questions specific to your needs: You can ask any question specific to your needs and context from your database. There is no need to be limited to a few key metrics available on a dashboard.
• Ease of Use: Chat with your database in the language of your choice without using technical jargon.

Further, Ask-a-Metric has multiple guardrails and security features to enhance team and user experience. We can even help build custom guardrails based on the context.

Come, let’s collaborate!

We can help set up Ask-a-Metric for your organization. AAM is easiest to set up when your data is already stored in a well-organized database or data warehouse. For organizations in earlier stages of their data journey, IDinsight can help automate your data flows and organize your data storage, or even help set up data collection from scratch. The following illustration offers details.

If you want to know more about Ask-a-Metric, reach out to our DSEM Team using this Google Form. We would love to talk to you and see how we can help and collaborate with you.

For a more detailed technical overview of Ask-a-Metric, read our other blog post here.

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