BRACathon (Season 3.0) 2019 in Dhaka

BRACathon (Season 3.0) 2019 in Dhaka

BRACathon is an opportunity to put your creativity into action, to utilize your problem-solving skills to come up with an effective Technology solution to a particular challenge. Enthusiasts from across the country will attend and gather to brainstorm for creating an user-centric solution.

PROBLEM STATEMENT 2019

Challenge 1: Knowledge distribution in last mile health services 

The problem:

There are over 45,000 health workers working across Bangladesh, delivering lifesaving services to the last mile. Enabling them to stay up-to-date on medical developments in a rapidly changing world can be a challenge. The traditional methods of delivery sometimes also mean a wasteful use of time and resources.

Possible solution:

Develop a tech solution which will be a comprehensive learning tool for  BRAC’s health workers. It will allow content text, image and video.

Challenge 2: Real-time data from classrooms

The problem:

BRAC Education Programme operates thousands of schools across Bangladesh. Most of the schools are located in rural Bangladesh. It is hard to get real-time information on students’ attendance and performance, information that is critical for the management to design interventions to ensure quality and effective use of time. For example, teachers spend a crucial part of class time every day to record attendances.

Possible solution:

A tech solution to record data (student performance and attendance) from schools and make it available real-time across all levels of management.

Challenge 3: Measuring the quality of programme service 

The problem:

BRAC Microfinance reaches the unbanked population through financial tools and services. The programme serves 7 million clients through 2,272 branches across Bangladesh. The programme is continually evolving through new innovations, optimised business processes and systematic solutions. Quality services, effective supervision and performance management are some of the top priorities. The programme needs a supervision tool to drive the quality of its services and support supervision of its large number of staff.

Possible solution:

A dashboard to generate analytical reports of everyday activities of a particular branch. It will analyse and optimise the weekly schedule of the branch manager, workload distribution to ensure efficiency. It will also ensure client satisfaction through appropriate information for clients.

Challenge 4: Analysing data and visual trends from the field

The problem:

BRAC’s ultra-poor graduation programme is a globally recognised model for its innovative and holistic solution to ultra-poverty.

Every decision taken by the management is based on data collected from the field. Most of the requirements are addressed through MIS, but the programme needs deeper analysis based on MIS data, field observations, agenda from different meetings etc. Currently, the programme only uses manual data collection.

Possible solution:

A solution to develop a customised report template to send to teams in the field, who will then provide input to generate automatic reports. The solution may focus on data accumulation, visualisation and analysis.

Challenge 5: Knowledge repository to generate word map

The problem:

BRAC works through various programmes which also have numerous running projects. Different projects and researches generate a huge amount of valuable data. Due to the lack of an effective repository system, we face knowledge loss which ends up with redundant works.

Possible solution:

A simple, easily accessible repository system with levels of user accessibility. The user will be able to search using keywords etc. In addition, each document must produce ‘Word art’ that will generate a number of keywords to represent a particular resource.