When we started looking into other projects that were similar in intention and design to the application we were envisioning at the Human Rights Center, it became clear that there was a wealth of people trying to do the same thing. In the spirit of cooperation, many of these were open source projects.
A lot of these ideas are based upon one good idea, an extension of XML called Xforms. In short, this is a way of standardizing the way we create forms for computers, how we display them, and how we fill them out. Xforms alone is just a standard though. It's benefit is in providing a foundation to build on.
This brings us to JavaRosa. JavaRosa is pretty close to what we are trying to do. It is a package for collecting data on mobile phones, and it is based on Xforms. However, it is aimed at lower powered phones, and simpler data. We are trying to collect data that is more robust, including GPS coordinates, and multi-media.
Episurveyor from Datadyne is a very excellent package for mobile data collection, it is based on JavaRosa but it has many more features. It is however, limited to the Palm phone platform.
This brings us to The Open Data Kit, a javarosa implementation for Android phones. ODK is a suite of data collection tools that runs on Google Android phones. It's completely open, its easy to modify, and because it is open source, the Human Rights Center can sutomize the software to fit our needs.