By: Chris Gegenheimer (Chemonics) and Leslie Sage (DevResults) Back in September, Chemonics and DevResults spoke at MERL Tech DC about the inherent compromise involved when purchasing enterprise software. In short, if you want good software that does everything you want exactly the way you want it, cheap software that is affordable and sustainable, and fast software that is available immediately and responsive to emerging needs, you may have to relax »

Here at DevResults, we believe in transparency and openness. It's in our company culture code. It's why we support things like the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), both philosophically and technically. And as part of the international development community, we just think transparency and openness make sense. That's why we've been following the development and implementation of USAID's Open Data Policy, aka ADS 579, aka the Development Data Library (DDL) »

All of the world's major donors have agreed to publish their data using the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) standard. Many now require that grantees and recipients report back to them in IATI format. In 2017, DevResults responded by developing one-click IATI exports. Earlier this summer we expanded our IATI support to include additional activity information. Now we've added even more options to better serve our customers who face mandatory »

We're actively working to expand our support of the IATI activity standard. We've already enabled IATI exports for the activity data housed in DevResults and this next phase will expand the scope of information you can include. It is our intention to offer complete tools for adding and exporting the following IATI activity elements by July 15th, though you may see some of them go live earlier: recipient-country recipient-region sector »

On May 23, DevResults hosted a discussion on the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In partnership with Sonjara and SurveyCTO, we wanted to bring together our clients, partners, and the international development community to discuss GDPR and its implications for the community as a whole. With just two days to go before the law came into effect, the room was a mixture of stress, excitement, and uncertainty. Our »

You’ve probably received a dozen emails in the past few weeks from companies letting you know that they’ve updated their privacy policies and terms of service. The impetus for this is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) -- an EU regulation that seeks to protect the privacy of individuals -- which comes into effect on May 25. Why is this important? The new regulation means organizations (private, public, »

We shared what we built in 2017. Here's where we're headed next. Our team recently collaborated to lay out our 2018 goals for DevResults. From many competing priorities, we established a set of objectives that reflect the needs of our users, the direction of international development, and our vision for how to deliver excellent software and service. Not all of these goals will be accomplished this year but they will »

It's been happening again lately: I'll be working with an organization to figure out how we can help them manage their data. They'll be excited about working with our team, getting organized, and of course, a future filled with beautiful visualization and dashboards. Then, I'll get the call/email. "My boss/board/C-suite exec wants to know if we'll own the system." "Do we have to keep paying for the »

At the start of 2017, we laid out a fairly ambitious roadmap for the year. At a high level, we wanted to increase the usefulness of DevResults beyond the realm of M&E: to make it accessible, usable, and useful for a broader swath of users. To that end, we targeted improvements in two areas: data visualization and granular data collection (data tables). This is the majority of what »

Stage one is complete. We're in the middle of a big project to bring you relational data tables. Relational data tables will allow you to link one or more tables by information common to both. For example, you'll be able to have one table of trainees and a separate table of all the trainings they attend without needing to repeat demographic information (age, sex, etc.) about them every time. This »

For the past couple of days we have been busy proactively migrating our infrastructure to new machines due to a mandatory scheduled maintenance on Microsoft Azure that was rumored to be about the recent security vulnerability affecting microprocessors. We were planning to migrate the production infrastructure this weekend, before the January 9th, 2018 deadline at which Microsoft would automatically perform the maintenance. However, after Google came forward with full details »

What are relational tables? Relational tables let you link two or more tables using information shared between them. Imagine a table of beneficiaries and a table survey responses. The beneficiary table includes the beneficiary's ID and demographic information about them. In the table of survey responses, each response set would be identified with the ID of the beneficiary who took the survey. If these tables are relational, or "linked", then »

While there is no way to guarantee that M&E software will solve all of your problems or make all of your colleagues happy, there absolutely are things you can do during the discovery, procurement, and contracts stages to mitigate against the risk of getting bamboozled. #1 – Trust no one. Test everything. Most development practitioners I speak with are balancing a heavy load of client work, internal programmatic and »

On October 2nd, 2017, DevResults experienced intermittent availability between 07:01 am UTC and 12:24 pm UTC, with complete unavailability between 11:54 am UTC and 12:24 pm UTC. We understand how important DevResults is to our partners and we are deeply sorry for this event and any issues it may have caused. Below is an explanation of the cause, what we've done to correct the issue and »

After months of work and four months in beta testing and refinement, we are proud to announce the official release of our New Dashboards. Dashboards have been completely rewritten to provide snappier visualization, multiple and shared dashboards, customizable default dashboards, faster performance, more filters, and an updated look. Here's a rundown of the changes. New Functionality Multiple Dashboards - Create a dashboard for your own navigation. Create one for the »

We are pleased to announce our latest major visualization overhaul: the new Indicator Choropleth Map. What It Gives You The new version of the Indicator Choropleth Map (visible on the Indicator Reports tab under Map) will generate a choropleth map based on your indicator's data, just as it always has, and you can configure which reporting period and geographic disaggregation you want the map to display. But we've added several »

We know how hard it can be to manage an ever-growing suite of tools and software across your organization. While we work hard to keep improving DevResults to meet your M&E data management needs, we know we're not the only piece of software in your toolbox. We're continuing to look for ways to offer smooth and more seamless integration with your other tools, and so we're happy to »

We are very pleased to announce the Beta Release of our New Dashboard functionality! Unlike previous beta releases, this is available to all users directly in your live site by going to the Dashboard menu and selecting New Dashboard (Beta). With multiple, shareable dashboards and interactive widgets, the New Dashboard gives you more control over more engaging dashboards. Here's what you need to know to go test it out. What's »

We believe that development data is critical for transparency and accountability, and we're committed to making practitioners' work easier. That's why we're excited to announce one-click exporting of DevResults data in the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) format. The XML file that's generated can be published to the IATI Repository, used for reporting to funders, or shared with other organizations. 1 Why is this important? IATI was created to help »

One of the features our clients appreciate most is the submission, approval, and locking workflow we have for direct entry indicator data. Many of you have requested a similar process for data stored within data tables. This is much trickier, since each data table might feed dozens of indicators, with multiple date columns, etc. But never fear! The lovely and talented engineers here at DevResults put their heads together and »

The donors of the world invested $132 billion last year in global development projects, but most donors and implementers are still unable to account for results. And most development workers in the field still don't have the tools they deserve. The solution is not to keep trying to re-create commercially available software in-house. Some history: A few years back, before we made DevResults, we were a web development shop. Much »

Curious where we're headed in the next year? Here's a quick outline of our product roadmap for 2017. Background I'm taking a slightly different approach to the Product Roadmap this year. Last year I tried to lay out a high-level roadmap for the entire year with estimates as to when we'd deliver certain features. But as we worked more to systematize quarterly check-ins and further committed ourselves to agile development »

To all our partners and affiliates, we hope that your staff and their families are weathering recent executive orders. We're proud to work with folks from all over the world. »

2016 was an interesting year for us at DevResults. It was the first year that we laid out a transparent, public roadmap, and so for the first time I get to report back to you on how we measured up against these original targets. Quick Summary We added more communication check-ins with clients and have used these to better inform our own decisions. Due to the complexity of the projects »

When we first started on DevResults in 2009, our goal was to make it easier for projects to manage their work and use their data. Over time, we expanded the scope of our software to support entire USAID Missions, regional programs, and globally-distributed organizations managing portfolios across dozens of countries. Today, our goal is to make software that meets the local and evolving needs of practitioners in the field while »