Centralized monitoring system for Rohingya and host community humanitarian programs

The Need

CARE Bangladesh needed a comprehensive Management Information System (MIS) for their DFAT IV initiative, managing multiple humanitarian projects supporting Rohingya refugees and host communities in Cox's Bazar. With programs spanning education, protection, and livelihood support across several implementing partners and locations, CARE faced challenges in data management, monitoring, and reporting. Existing systems were fragmented, with different projects using disparate tools and spreadsheets, making it nearly impossible to gain unified visibility into program performance, beneficiary reach, or impact outcomes.

CARE required a centralized MIS that could streamline data management, monitoring, and reporting across all projects under their Humanitarian Action theme, while enabling efficient tracking of diverse program types—from education initiatives providing learning opportunities to displaced children, to protection programs ensuring safety and rights, to livelihood programs helping communities achieve economic self-sufficiency. With the goal of onboarding 100,000+ users including beneficiaries, field staff, and program managers, and the need to improve execution speed by 60%, CARE needed a scalable, integrated platform that could unify multiple programs (Nabapallab, Bijoyee, CNHA, DFAT IV) into one coherent data system while integrating with standard humanitarian data collection tools (DIP & IPTT).

The Solution

We designed a centralized MIS for CARE Bangladesh's DFAT IV initiative that transformed how they manage humanitarian programs, delivering measurable improvements in operational efficiency and program visibility. The Integrated Platform unifies Nabapallab, Bijoyee, CNHA, and DFAT IV programs into one comprehensive data system with DIP (Detailed Implementation Plan) and IPTT (Indicator Performance Tracking Table) tools. Rather than maintaining separate systems for each program, CARE now has a unified platform where all beneficiary data, activity tracking, indicator monitoring, and reporting flows through integrated workflows. The system maintains program-specific customizations where needed—different indicators for education versus livelihood programs, distinct beneficiary registration forms for Rohingya versus host communities while enabling cross-program analysis and consolidated reporting.

Integration with standard DIP and IPTT tools ensures compatibility with donor reporting requirements and humanitarian coordination mechanisms, enabling CARE to demonstrate impact using frameworks familiar to USAID, DFAT, and other donors. The Field-Led Feasibility approach involved on-ground technical analysis by the Kaz team to ensure seamless alignment with NGO operations. Before designing the system, our team spent extensive time in Cox's Bazar observing how CARE's field teams actually work conducting beneficiary registrations in crowded camps, tracking protection incidents while maintaining confidentiality, monitoring education attendance in temporary learning centers, and managing livelihood programs with intermittent connectivity. This field-led approach ensured the MIS aligned with operational realities rather than imposing theoretical best practices that would fail in actual humanitarian contexts. The system accommodates offline data collection, handles low-bandwidth environments, supports multiple languages, and includes workflows appropriate for the security and protection considerations inherent in refugee response. The Live Reporting Engine enables real-time insights, role-based access controls, and asynchronous notification logic. Program managers can access dashboards showing current beneficiary enrollment, activity completion rates, indicator progress against targets, and budget utilization—all updated in real-time as field teams submit data.

Role-based access ensures field staff see information relevant to their locations and programs, sector coordinators access data for their technical areas, and senior management views consolidated organizational performance. Asynchronous notifications alert relevant stakeholders when indicators fall behind targets, when beneficiaries require follow-up services, or when data quality issues need attention, enabling proactive management rather than reactive problem-solving. The Impact Efficiency Gains demonstrate the platform's effectiveness: achieving 30% faster program execution and 25% fewer delays through digital-first monitoring and evaluation processes. By replacing manual data compilation, paper-based tracking, and fragmented spreadsheets with integrated digital workflows, CARE dramatically reduced the time between activity implementation and data availability for decision-making. Field teams spend less time on administrative tasks and more time with beneficiaries. Program managers make decisions based on current data rather than outdated reports. Donors receive timely, accurate reporting demonstrating impact. The platform has achieved significant scale: onboarding 100,000+ users including beneficiaries registered in the system, field staff using it daily, and program managers relying on it for decision-making, while delivering 60% faster execution through streamlined digital processes.

The Challenge

The primary challenge was integrating multiple distinct humanitarian programs (Nabapallab, Bijoyee, CNHA, DFAT IV) with different objectives, indicators, and workflows into a unified platform without losing program-specific functionality. Each program serves different populations (Rohingya refugees, host communities, or both), tracks different outcomes (education enrollment, protection incidents, livelihood income), and reports to different donors with varying requirements. Creating a unified data model that could accommodate this diversity while enabling meaningful cross-program analysis required sophisticated system architecture. Building a system appropriate for the humanitarian context in Cox's Bazar presented unique challenges. The refugee camps have limited infrastructure, inconsistent electricity, and unreliable internet connectivity. Field staff work in challenging conditions with security concerns, protection protocols, and cultural sensitivities that affect how data can be collected and shared. The MIS needed to function reliably in this environment while maintaining the data security and confidentiality essential when working with vulnerable populations.

Implementing field-led feasibility that genuinely aligned with NGO operations required our team to deeply understand humanitarian principles, CARE's organizational culture, and the specific operational constraints of refugee response. We needed to design workflows that enhanced rather than disrupted established practices, ensuring field staff would adopt the system enthusiastically rather than viewing it as additional bureaucratic burden. Creating a live reporting engine with real-time insights and role-based access required architecting data flows that could handle asynchronous data collection from multiple field locations with varying connectivity, aggregate data accurately despite timing lags, and update dashboards promptly when connectivity was restored. The asynchronous notification logic needed to be sophisticated enough to identify genuinely important alerts without overwhelming users with noise. Delivering 60% faster execution and 30% reduction in delays required not just technical implementation but also change management—training field staff on mobile data collection, helping program managers transition from spreadsheet-based to dashboard-based decision-making, and demonstrating to donors that digital-first M&E actually improved accountability rather than just changing formats.

The Partnership

Our collaboration with CARE Bangladesh was driven by a shared commitment to improving humanitarian response effectiveness for Rohingya refugees and host communities. We worked closely with their program teams, M&E specialists, and field staff to understand existing workflows, pain points, and the specific requirements of managing complex multi-program initiatives in humanitarian contexts.The partnership employed a field-led feasibility approach where our team conducted extensive on-ground technical analysis in Cox's Bazar, observing operations, consulting with field staff, and understanding the environmental constraints that would shape system design. This ensured the MIS would align seamlessly with NGO operations rather than creating additional burden.

We built the complete technology stack using .NET Core for the robust backend handling complex humanitarian data management, Angular for the dynamic frontend providing dashboards and reporting interfaces, and Flutter for cross-platform mobile applications enabling offline field data collection. The platform integrates with open-source technologies for scalability, implements real-time data synchronization when connectivity is available, and adheres to USAID IPTT standards ensuring donor reporting compatibility. We delivered comprehensive training across user roles and established ongoing support mechanisms ensuring CARE's team could leverage platform capabilities fully as programs evolved. The measurable success—onboarding 100,000+ users and achieving 60% faster execution with 30% fewer delays—demonstrates how this collaborative, field-led approach created a platform that genuinely improved CARE's capacity to serve vulnerable populations while meeting donor accountability requirements.

The Tech Stack

We built the centralized MIS using .NET Core for the backend, Angular for the web frontend, and Flutter for mobile applications. .NET Core provides the robust, scalable framework for managing complex humanitarian data including beneficiary records, activity tracking, indicator monitoring, and financial management across multiple programs (Nabapallab, Bijoyee, CNHA, DFAT IV). Angular delivers the responsive, dynamic web interface for the live reporting engine, providing program managers with real-time dashboards, role-based access controls, and interactive data visualization. Flutter enables cross-platform mobile app development for iOS and Android, providing field staff with offline-capable data collection tools that synchronize when connectivity is available—essential for operating in refugee camps with limited infrastructure.

The platform leverages open-source technologies for scalability and cost-effectiveness while implementing real-time data synchronization ensuring dashboards update promptly as field data arrives. Integration with standard DIP and IPTT tools ensures compatibility with USAID reporting requirements. Asynchronous notification logic alerts stakeholders proactively when attention is needed. The architecture delivers the integrated platform unifying multiple programs into one data system, field-led feasibility ensuring seamless NGO operations alignment, live reporting engine providing real-time insights, and the digital-first M&E processes that achieved 60% faster execution, 30% reduced delays, and enabled CARE Bangladesh to effectively serve 100,000+ users across their humanitarian programs supporting Rohingya refugees and host communities.