Department of Education, The Philippines

Reports from over 1,200 schools instantly

With Open as App, the Region XI streamlines its reporting for Brigada Eskwela. Using an app based on Google Sheets, it collects and consolidates data of schools and shares them instantly.

Challenge – coordination of thousands of volunteers in only one week

Every year in the Philippines thousands of volunteers come together for Brigada Eskwela. The project is also known as the Schools Maintenance Week and it is observed in all public schools in the country.

It is a unique program of the Department of Education that promotes the spirit of volunteerism. People from different walks of life, either from the public or private sectors (stakeholders), are sharing their time, efforts, and resources to help the public schools to be ready and safe for the opening of classes in June.

Alim Maguindanao, government employee of the Department of Education (DepEd), Regional Office XI, Davao City, Philippines is a Regional Coordinator in charge of the program for Region XI.

His task is to ensure that the Brigada Eskwela program is implemented in all public schools in the region and that all schools report their Brigada Eskwela accomplishments to their respective Schools Division Offices. Then the 11 SDOs will consolidate these reports and submit them to the Regional Office. This reporting is vital to the program and a major part of it is done using Open as App.

“Since 2018, Region XI has been using Open as App. It was a great help, gathering almost 65% of Brigada Eskwela Reports from all public schools in our region.”

Alim Maguindanao, Department of Education (DepEd), Regional Office XI, Davao City

Solution – reporting via apps

Reporting is consolidated in Google Sheets. But prior to 2018, it was very difficult to receive reports from the Schools Division Offices on a daily basis. Each SDO has hundreds of schools to take care of. Some of these schools are located in faraway areas and most of them are suffering from lack of cell-site signals, lack of internet access, or both. Alim wanted to change this situation and was looking for an easy way to develop a mobile app. Via Google Search, he found Open as App.

Now, Open as App as the interface to the reporting, helping to gather information, consolidate it, and analyze it.

The apps are used by all Public Schools Coordinators who are the source and prime encoder of the data. The 11 SDO Coordinators who are in charge of following up the reports coming from the schools. And of course, by the Regional Office where Alim as the Regional Coordinator is primarily using the app and reports the data generated to his direct superiors.

“With Open as App, we have found a very excellent and helpful tool. It allowed us to automate the reporting process of all public schools in Region XI to DepEd Regional Office. We are very proud of our new solution.

Alim Maguindanao, Department of Education (DepEd), Regional Office XI, Davao City

With Open as App, all schools can directly submit their daily reports using the app as an interface. These reports are instantly recorded in Google Sheets. Based on the collected data is another app with a dashboard for the Regional Office.

When Alim found Open as App, he started building the app in his spare time, teaching himself with the Open as App tutorial videos. His app generates reports of the number of volunteers and the number of donations of our stakeholders. There is public access to this information as the donors helped the Department of Education by making sure that the public schools are ready, clean, and safe for the opening of classes in June.

Result – fast and easy data collection, instant reports, full transparency

Alim got very positive feedback from his users, in particular from those who are consolidating the data and putting together reports. For him, Open as App has revolutionized data collection. In his working history, it has never been so easy and fast to collect data. This way, his office was able to share the data with the Central Office on a daily basis.

Since the Region XI has been using Open as App, almost 65 % of Brigada Eskwela Reports from all public schools in the region were delivered via the app.

Now, Alim contemplates building more apps for example for the School Health and Nutrition Services, Public Schools Building Reports, and more.

“It was my first time building an app because I don’t have an IT background. It became a challenge for me and I’m happy to have made it. What I like most about the app is that I don’t need to know programming codes, partner that with Google Sheets, then it became perfect for me.”

Alim Maguindanao, Department of Education (DepEd), Regional Office XI, Davao City