1 1. Seizing the Development Potential of The Mobile Phone Revolution The growth of mobile phones in the last decade has been exceptional. By the end of 2010, global mobile phone subscriptions are expected to surpass the 5 billion mark. In particular, mobile phone users in developing countries, including the poor, have benefited from this trend; frequently skipping fixed-line infrastructure and leapfrogging directly into mobile technology they now account for two-thirds of all mobile phone subscriptions. This trend is reflected in Latin America, where mobile phones have evolved from a luxury item to an essential good. Almost 90 percent of the region’s population now owns a mobile phone. In Guatemala, the number of active mobile phone subscriptions—17.3 million— even exceeds the country’s population of 13.3 million and network coverage extends to most of the country’s territory, including numerous historically marginalized rural areas highly populated by indigenous peoples. Cutting costs, boosting quality and collecting data real-time – Lessons from a Cell Phone-Based Beneficiary Survey to Strengthen Guatemala’s Conditional Cash Transfer Program by Christian Schuster and Carlos Perez Brito February 2011 Number 166 A regular series of notes highlighting recent lessons emerging from the operational and analytical program of the World Bank‘s Latin America and Caribbean Region (LAC). www.worldbank.org/enbreve Due to this rapid growth, mobile-based applications have penetrated areas as diverse as public administration, health, education, banking, agriculture, and business development—even in the remotest areas of the globe, reaching poor and isolated communities. For example, mobile-based applications can now be undertaken in a multitude of specific development interventions: financial services to store and send money, alerts to refugees about food aid deliveries, distance education courses, citizen polling station surveillance, remote health care consultation and diagnosis, and timely market information to fishermen to name just a few in a fast-growing list. While research to evaluate these mobile interventions has been growing, there are relatively few studies of the use of mobile technology itself as a research instrument in developing countries. Mobile data collection projects to capture outcomes are abundant, but there are far fewer large-scale and complex surveys using mobile phones. The potential mobile phones hold in this regard is striking; compared to a traditional process using paper- and-pencil forms with later transcription to a computer system, mobile devices offer immediate digitization and transmission of collected data at the point of survey, followed by automated data aggregation. As such, mobile phones promise faster, more cost-effective and more accurate surveys. In view of these advantages and to expand the evidence base on the use of mobile phones as a research instrument, a national survey of beneficiaries of Mi Familia Progresa (Mifapro), Guatemala’s conditional cash A 2010 Country Governance and Anti-Corruption (CGAC)- funded pilot in Guatemala employed entry-level mobile phones in conjunction with EpiSurveyor, a free, web-based software for data collection, to drastically reduce cost, facilitate accuracy and accelerate implementation of a nationally-representative beneficiary survey of Guatemala‘s conditional cash transfer program. As such, it illustrates the potential of mobile phone-based data collection to strengthen program monitoring, evaluation and implementation, in particular in remote and marginalized areas highly populated by indigenous peoples. Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized Public Disclosure Authorized