Every development program relies on geographic data. Yet this data is rarely governed. Each project creates its own geographic reference at inception, uses it for its duration, and leaves it behind at closure. When programs operate from different geographic references, coverage measurement becomes unreliable, partner coordination breaks down,and the impact of investments becomes harder to demonstrate.
Geographic data that is not actively maintained degrades quickly: within a few months, the map no longer reflects the territory. This isn’t a data problem. It’s a georegistry problem — the absence of a single, maintained, authoritative geographic reference that persists across projects and institutions.
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s map of health facilities
DISCOVER IASO
IASO is an open-source georegistry — a governed system for organizing geographic units in hierarchies, attaching GPS coordinates or simple shapes, and managing how that reference evolves over time. Sector-agnostic by design, it has been deployed most extensively in health and education, and can be used in agriculture, statistics, and water and sanitation.
IASO has been used – and continues to be used – for large-scale health facility mapping and geographic data management projects in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger, Cameroon, and Benin. In these contexts, IASO supports the long-term maintenance of facility registries and administrative boundaries beyond one-off mapping exercises, ensuring that geographic data remains usable for routine systems, campaigns, and planning activities.
Beyond routine data management, a strong georegistry is the foundation on which campaign digitalization and microplanning are built. Vaccination campaigns, distribution activities, and household surveys all depend on knowing exactly which geographic units exist, where they are, and how they relate to each other.
who is this for?
Development donors & funders
Implementing partners, NGOs
Government institutions
GIS & data professionals
Key features
The platform is designed to handle complex hierarchies and frequent updates, including GPS coordinates or boundary changes, facility openings or closing dates, and administrative reorganizations. This makes IASO particularly well suited for national-scale georegistries that must remain accurate over long periods.
Local-level change management and validation workflow — Field teams and local authorities can submit updates using IASOmobile application, including requests to create, modify, or deactivate geographic entities. These submissions are reviewed through structured validation workflows, ensuring that changes are verified before being incorporated into the official registry. This approach strengthens data ownership at local level while preserving national oversight and data quality.
IASO mobile application for georegistry modifications, validation on web, and feedback on mobile
Payments on validated updates — IASO can link validated updates to Mobile Money payments, creating a sustainable local incentive for continuous data maintenance.
Multi-source reconciliation — Multiple datasets – originating from different institutions, projects, or time periods – can be imported from different formats (DHIS2, Excel, etc.), and then compared, reconciled, and consolidated into a master registry.
Diagram showing the possibility in IASO of reconciling multiple data sources and updating data by sending field data that will be validated.
Full traceability — Versioning mechanisms ensure that changes over time are fully traceable, making it possible to understand how geographic structures evolve over time.
DHIS2 interoperability — IASO has bidirectional integration with DHIS2, so the geographic unit hierarchy stays aligned with the master registry. While DHIS2 focuses on health data collection, aggregation, and analysis, IASO specializes in managing the geographic entities that those data rely on.
Open source / on-premise — MIT license, currently installed on government servers in 8 countries.
Discover the 5 features that make IASO a leading geodatabase.
For countries or programs that want to share their geographic data openly, IASO supports the creation of powerful georegistry dashboards. This has been deployed for national geographic reference dashboards in several countries, providing a transparent, maintained reference for governments, partners, and the public.
IASO exposes a full API, making it straightforward to connect to any business intelligence platform. Organizations already using Apache Superset, Tableau, Power BI, or similar tools can build rich dashboards on top of live IASO data.
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