New product: obtain reliable, up-to-date data with the real-time collaborative data collection form

Making reliable, high-quality data available to stakeholders, whether in-house or in the company’s ecosystem, requires specific tools. Organizations lacking these solutions are missing out on a great deal of quality data to feed decision-making at all levels and improve their efficiency.

To improve the reliability and quality of the data in your data portals, Opendatasoft offers new data collection form functionality that automates the enrichment and updating of information, saving you precious time.

Our new data collection form feature lets you edit, customize and share a form in just a few minutes. Once it has been filled in you can then use the data to automatically enrich both:

• existing datasets on your portal
• and/or a new dataset dedicated to the data collected through the form

Developed to facilitate reliable data collection, our form offers numerous advantages for both data producers and data portal administrators.

To deliver varied, high-quality and up-to-date data, portal administrators need to rely on the support of employees, teams in the field and the general public.

Our new functionality makes it easier to use forms to enable everyone to collect fresh data, enabling data portal administrators to:

• Save time, as forms can be built and deployed in minutes, enabling quick and easy implementation
• Automate the collection and updating of your data portal, thanks to collaborative data collection and interoperable forms.
• Guarantee data quality via advanced moderation and checking functions that enable administrators to validate data before publication.

Data producers are not always data specialists. However,whether they are employees, staff in the field, or members of the public they are the people who are closest to the data.

Our forms offer a seamless experience for your data producers, whether they are specialists or not. Thanks to 100% customizable forms, everyone can easily collect new data, and, by taking on the role of data producers, they also become part of the shift to the democratization of data.

Our forms are designed to facilitate seamless data collection. Fields can be configured to add specific information such as company registration number, employer identification number, zip code, etc.

Fields can also be configured according to an existing dataset on your portal, to avoid errors or the need to add additional parameters to your dataset.

Additional options allow you to maintain complete control over the user experience of your form:

• The form layout can be adapted to meet your corporate identity and design guidelines.
• Auto-complete fields can be configured according to the type of response requested
• Hidden fields can be added and reactivated at any time.

Our form-based data collection functionality has been developed to enable everyone to share data from any geographic location. Users can log onto a form from their smartphone and use a variety of features to make data collection straightforward:

• Geolocation to automatically fill in a GPS point
• Camera connection and one-click addition of attachments
• QR code generation to share the form and facilitate mobile data sharing by your users

Tip: See our customers’ form templates in the “inspiration” tab!

Connected directly to your portal, our data collection form provides strong moderation and verification options to manage the data as it is submitted:

• Centralization of modification requests from the form
• Automatic or manual validation of responses sent via the form
• Moderator rights management to ensure that the roles assigned are in line with your organization’s governance rules.

The Cap Atlantique municipal area uses data collection forms to publish municipal bylaws on its member community websites. For example, the town of Guérande has its own dedicated page, with the option of filtering by type of bylaw including land and heritage, institutions and political life, public rights, police powers and town planning.

Almost 1,000 bylaws are listed on the Cap Atlantique area data portal and on the individual sites of its member towns and villages.

These internal forms make it very easy for staff to contribute to the open data publication of these bylaws. The fields are custom-configured to enable the rapid completion of specific information: title and nature of the act, domain/locality of the decree, date of receipt, geolocation, download of the PDF file of the law, etc.

Thanks to the way that data from the forms feeds into the dataset on the Cap Atlantique portal and the sites of the individual communities, it ensures that information is always both comprehensive and up-to-date.

The Grand Paris Sud urban area has created several forms to help collect data and to speed up the processing time for certain requests. It now provides:

• A form allowing residents to request a new waste bin online: All requests are centralized on an internal dashboard allowing staff to read and process requests in record time.
• An audit form for fiber networks: these forms allow public sector employees to list all fiber concentration points and describe their location and condition.
• A form for language and digital inclusion courses: this lists all courses available to local organizations, helping spread their take-up.

Collection forms can be deployed in a variety of ways, to improve the efficiency of the data gathering process or to engage new audiences when collecting information. Contact our team to find out more!