Post Status:
Main Project Location: Cape Town
Project country/countries: South Africa
Project dates:  –
Last updated: 23 March 2022

Brief overview of the Case Study   

CheckIT is a flexible, event-based mobile inspection tool designed by VPUU to improve the delivery of essential services in Cape Town’s informal settlements. CheckIT gives the community a voice by enabling field reporting on the functional status of critical infrastructure, facilities and events. This ICT4D tool places the power of local knowledge into the hands of communities and their municipal partners, fostering practical conversations targeted towards people’s quality of life.

This monitoring tool aims to facilitate and standardise the process of reporting on the status of basic services. The mobile technology replaces paper-based system to ensure higher quality and accuracy with diverse data generated and collected by 

trained by community fieldworkers. The tool can be user-customised to report on a wide range of infrastructural and social incidents and events.

The challenge or problem

In many settlements, municipal administrations may record basic service levels as equal to the number of installed facilities (such as taps and toilets); but, in practice, the functional status and location of those facilities is often an unknown factor. Low-functional service levels of public infrastructure may lead to a severe scarcity of resources which can trigger safety issues relating to health and violence.

The solution that was implemented

CheckIT is a flexible, event-based mobile inspection tool designed by VPUU to improve the delivery of essential services. This monitoring tool aims to facilitate and standardise the process of reporting on the status of basic services. By replacing a paper-based system with this mobile technology, higher quality, more accurate and different varieties of data can now be generated and collected by trained community fieldworkers. The tool can be user-customised to report on a wide range of infrastructural and social incidents and events.

What results were achieved?

The quality and lifespan of basic infrastructure increases through the direct involvement of communities in monitoring and planning processes. CheckIT leverages social capital in marginalised communities and informal settlements by enabling communities to localise and report their own current needs for support and services. Community members and municipal staff are trained and actively involved in the data collection process in their own communities.

Case study images