Is Guardian Connector Right for Your Organization?
This page is for you if you're trying to decide whether Guardian Connector could be a good fit for your organization, or for a community organization you know or support, to help better manage data and information in support of protecting land, traditions, and future.
From this point on, this page is written directly to someone considering Guardian Connector for their own organization.
If you haven't already, please read the Overview page to understand what Guardian Connector is and how it works.
What kind of organization is Guardian Connector a good fit for?
Guardian Connector is a good fit for Indigenous and other local community organizations that need a durable, flexible way to manage monitoring data and other information while maintaining ownership and control. It is especially relevant for organizations that work with multiple data sources or tools, need stronger systems for storing and using information over time, and want infrastructure that can grow with their technical capacity and priorities.
1. Projects and goals that benefit from Guardian Connector
Your organization is likely to benefit from Guardian Connector if it has clear guardianship goals that depend on collecting, managing, understanding, or using data.
Guardian Connector is particularly useful for work such as:
👀 Watching over your territory: Supporting community-led monitoring of threats such as illegal mining or logging, as well as changes in local plants, animals, and ecosystems.
🗺 Mapping your land and traditions: Creating maps of territorial boundaries, sacred places, resource use, cultural heritage sites, and other places of importance.
📋 Collecting community information: Running surveys to gather information about your community, such as population, livelihoods, well-being, or access to rights and services.
📇 Bringing existing data together: Organizing information collected over time that may be scattered across devices, spreadsheets, paper records, or held by outside organizations.
📊 Understanding and visualizing your data: Turning data into maps, charts, dashboards, and other outputs that help identify patterns, changes, and priorities.
📝 Creating useful reports: Producing information for community decision-making, advocacy, legal processes, reporting, or fundraising.
💾 Preventing data loss: Keeping important community information backed up and protected from loss due to device failure, staff turnover, or other disruptions.
2. What Your Organization Needs
Guardian Connector works best when an organization has:
- Committed Leadership: Leaders who understand and support the work, including providing the time, equipment, funding, or staff needed to sustain it. Leadership is also important for making decisions about how data should be collected, accessed, and used.
- A Dedicated Team Member: A team that can plan and carry out activities such as mapping, surveys, or environmental monitoring with a reasonable degree of independence.
- Ability to Organize Projects: Your team should be able to organize and carry out data collection projects (like mapping or surveys) with some independence. Our goal is to empower your team to use these tools on their own, with our support.
- Interest in Local Experts: An interest in developing data and technical skills within the organization or community over time, so that more of the work can be understood and managed locally.
Different parts of Guardian Connector require different levels of technical skill. Some tasks can be carried out by most organizational users, while more complex setup, configuration, or troubleshooting may require help from a technical support partner. Over time, staff who are interested can learn to take on more advanced parts of the system.
3. What kind of information can Guardian Connector store?
Guardian Connector acts like a secure central repository for all your organization's important information, bringing together data that might otherwise be scattered across different tools, devices, or projects. It can store and connect information such as:
🗺 Maps and Location Data: GPS points, boundaries, maps created with tools such as CoMapeo, and other spatial data related to territory, cultural sites, resource use, or monitoring.
📊 Survey Data: Information collected from surveys using tools such as KoboToolbox, ODK, or Survey123.
📡 Satellite Alerts: Information about changes in your territory, such as mining, logging, fires, or deforestation.
🐆 Wildlife and Biodiversity Data: Media collected during fieldwork or generated by camera traps, drones, or other monitoring tools.
📷 Photos and Videos: Images and video clips from camera traps, drones, or collected during fieldwork.
🗄 Existing and Historical Data: Information from previous projects or studies that your organization wants to preserve and continue using.
Guardian Connector is intended to provide a private and organized place for large and diverse collections of data, helping reduce the risk of information being lost, forgotten, or scattered across different systems.
4. Technology that you will need
Guardian Connector does require some basic technology:
- Internet Access: Regular internet access is helpful, although it does not need to be continuously available. Guardian Connector integrates with offline-first tools such as CoMapeo and KoboToolbox, allowing much of the fieldwork to happen offline and data to be synchronized later.
- Computers and Phones: Access to computers and mobile devices is needed for collecting, managing, and viewing data. Ideally, the person primarily responsible for data management should have reliable access to their own computer.
- Ability to Meet Online: The ability to participate in online meetings is useful for training, troubleshooting, and ongoing collaboration with technical support partners.
5. What Guardian Connector is NOT
It is also important to understand what Guardian Connector is not:
- Not an all-in-one solution: Guardian Connector is not intended to replace every tool your organization already uses. Instead, it is designed to connect with tools that already work well for Indigenous and local community organizations and provide infrastructure for bringing data from those tools together.
- Not a full mapping program like QGIS or ArcGIS: Guardian Connector can store, organize, visualize, and provide access to spatial data, but it is not intended to replace specialist GIS software. Data can instead be used with tools such as QGIS when more advanced mapping or analysis is required.
- Not necessarily operated entirely without technical support: Many day-to-day activities can be carried out directly by organizational users, while more advanced setup, configuration, integrations, or troubleshooting may require support from a technical support partner. How much support is needed depends on the skills, interests, and capacity of each organization.
- Not dependent on CMI hosting (though we can help): Right now, CMI currently hosts and administers Guardian Connector for many partner organizations, but the software is open source and can also be self-hosted. The goal is always for you to own and control your data, no matter where it's hosted.
How you can work with CMI to use Guardian Connector
Guardian Connector is open-source software and can be self-hosted. CMI can also work with your organization to set up, configure, host, and support Guardian Connector according to your needs.
A successful collaboration usually involves:
- Clear Goals and Timelines: We work together to define what your organization wants to accomplish and agree on realistic priorities and timelines.
- Support from Leadership: Community and organizational leaders should understand and support the work so that it remains aligned with broader community priorities.
- Working Together to Build what's needed: Guardian Connector continues to evolve through co-creation with Indigenous partner organizations. Your experience, priorities, and feedback help shape how the platform develops.
- Building Skills Over Time: Different team members may use Guardian Connector at different levels of complexity. CMI and other technical support partners can help staff learn more advanced parts of the system over time where this is useful and desired.
- Ongoing Technical Support: Some parts of Guardian Connector may require technical support, particularly during setup or when introducing new integrations and workflows. We are here to support you throughout your data journey. Alternatively, you can work with another technical support partner to help you with whatever you need.