GIZ: Developing an IT solution for Cambodia’s Poverty Identification System

Mainlevel’s contribution

Mainlevel supported the IDPoor programme in Cambodia. Mainlevel consultants David Haasner and Olaf Haasner flew to Cambodia regularly to meet the Ministry of Planning, GIZ team and important data users such as other Cambodian government ministries and NGOs.

Their Cambodian mission was set to understand the main challenges of the current software system and to conceptualize a flexible and future-proof IT-solution to be properly integrated to IDPoor processes and to fulfil the following tasks:

• Review the technical specifications laid out by the GIZ/MOP team;
• Technical development and programming of the system components and lead the User Interface/ User Experience design process;
• Design and carry out testing/piloting of all software components;
• Support and maintenance for eight months following the handover and user acceptance.

We began the agile development process for this project in April and did an early piloting phase with the IT core team from the Cambodian Ministry of Planning and GIZ. We are pleased to have a motivated and passionate team as well as early involvement of key stakeholders which encouraged dynamic feedback and fast learning.

Background information

As poverty has increasingly become rampant worldwide, there are various efforts from world leaders to identify and eradicate this global problem. The Royal Government of Cambodia, specially the Ministry of Planning takes a stand by identifying poor households in order to assist them to access various social services. GIZ on behalf of the Bundesministerium für Wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (BMZ) and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) support the development and implementation of the Identification of Poor Households Programme (IDPoor).

IDPoor is a targeting mechanism for the identification of poor households and thereby enables them to access various social services aimed at poor households. IDPoor is now implemented nation-wide in all rural areas of Cambodia. The implementation of IDPoor in urban areas using an adapted identification mechanism has started in late 2016; the first round of urban IDPoor data collection is currently ongoing. Every year, data is collected in one-third of rural areas in the country, thereby reaching a full cycle of coverage every three years. 10 rounds of rural IDPoor data collection have been carried out so far, and over 7 million household records have been registered in the IDPoor database.