Field teams in rural Ghana — and across Africa — often work with zero connectivity. DCMS collects data offline and syncs automatically when a connection is restored.
Every submission is GPS‑tagged with latitude, longitude, and accuracy radius — verifying enumerators actually visited reported locations.
Replace costly error‑prone paper questionnaires with a dynamic builder supporting branching, media uploads, and validation.
Manage administrators, project managers, and field enumerators from one dashboard, with role‑appropriate permissions.
Drag‑and‑drop sections, reorder questions, text, number, date, radio, checkbox, dropdown, file upload, media‑linked.
Group questionnaires into projects with active/inactive/completed status. Filter responses by project, multi‑programme support.
PWA caches app & queues submissions locally. Auto‑save every few minutes — power cuts never cost a response.
High‑accuracy GPS coordinates at submission, stored with each record for spatial analysis and accountability audits.
Images, documents, audio, video captured directly. Handles base64 camera captures and voice recordings (10MB default).
Live stats: total responses, active questionnaires, unique respondents, GPS submissions. Drill into specific projects.
Built‑in backup API endpoint for full database state — supports data sovereignty and donor reporting standards.
CSRF tokens, bcrypt password hashing, prepared statements, RBAC, session timeout — security built from day one.
| Feature | DCMS | Paper forms | Google Forms | KoBoToolbox |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Offline data collection | Full offline + auto-sync | Always offline | Requires internet | Yes (app required) |
| GPS location tagging | Automatic per response | Manual only | Not built-in | Yes |
| Media upload (audio/video/photo) | Full | No | Images only | Yes |
| Self-hosted / data sovereignty | Full control | N/A | Google servers | Partial (paid tier) |
| Role-based access (3 roles) | Yes | No | Limited | Yes |
| Custom branding / logo | Fully white-labelable | Manual | Limited | Paid tier |
| One-time cost (no subscription) | Yes | Printing cost | Free | Freemium |
Your data never leaves your server. Critical for Ghana's Data Protection Act 2012 & donor data governance rules.
Self-hosted on affordable PHP+MySQL — shared hosting, no per‑user fees, no vendor lock‑in.
Set system name, upload logo, configure contact details — looks like your organisation’s own branded platform.
Bootstrap responsive — works on any smartphone, no app store required, enumerators use own devices.
Web‑based installer checks requirements, creates DB, seeds settings in minutes — no command line.
Standard PHP & MySQL, clean API architecture — integrate with reporting tools or external databases.
Add charts and cross‑tabulation, pie charts, bar graphs, choropleth maps using already captured GPS data.
One‑click export of response datasets for Excel analysis, highly requested by M&E consultants.
Conditional question display based on previous answers — reduces enumerator errors.
Notify supervisors when responses submit, alert enumerators of new assignments via SMS gateway or email.
DCMS is production‑ready, field‑tested, and built for the realities of data collection in West Africa.