What Is Gather?
Gather is a versatile, secure and performant platform for data collection. It can be used with existing data collection tools such as ODK Collect, and be extended with a wide range of functionality to ensure data integrity and interoperability. It provides easy deployment in a secure server or cloud environment and allows administrators to control which data fields can be exported. Gather is built on top of the Aether platform and can publish survey data directly into a CKAN portal, Elasticsearch stack, and any other Aether publishing endpoint.
It contains a set of tools for creating surveys and collecting data. It is analogous to ODK, and includes components that allow it to function with elements of the ODK ecosystem, such as XForms, XLSForms and ODK Collect.
Gather is for you if:
- you need people collecting data in the field by conducting surveys using mobile devices
- you need your collected data to be streamed in realtime to a third party system such as a data portal or analytic platform
- you need to control what fields get streamed to third party systems in order to ensure private data doesn’t go to the wrong places
- you have survey data that needs to be normalized or split into several data sets with common join fields (Coming Soon)
- your organization is required to maintain full custody of data collected and it’s distribution.
- your solution needs to be deployed to a production environment and begin collecting data hours and minutes, not days
- your organization needs to deploy to a local server or in the cloud (Currently supporting AWS - Google and Microsoft coming soon)
In very broad brush strokes, the Gather workflow is:
- An admin creates a survey using ODK XForms or XLSForms and defines where the data goes and who is allowed to access it
- Registered users with Android devices use the ODK Collect app to remotely collect data and upload to the Gather server
- The Gather server maps and routes that data to it’s proper destination
- Repeat