Introduction

Observer is a self-hosted case management platform for NGOs working with internally displaced persons.

The problem#

Small and mid-size NGOs working with displaced persons in Ukraine face a gap: paper ledgers don’t scale, but the systems that do — proGres, Primero, ActivityInfo — require UN partnerships, technical partners, or SaaS subscriptions these organizations can’t access.

Observer fills that gap.

What it does#

Observer gives your organization a private, secure system to track the people you serve. It runs on your own server — no cloud service, no subscription, no third party ever sees your data.

With Observer, your team can:

• Register people and families — record personal details, household relationships, and documents
• Track support — log consultations, referrals, and the type of assistance provided
• Follow movement — where people came from, where they moved, and why
• Control access — decide who on your team can see what, down to contact details and documents
• Generate reports — built-in breakdowns by sex, age, region, support type, vulnerability category, and more — filterable to match EU, USAID, and bilateral donor requirements

One person with basic server skills can set it up in under an hour.

Who it’s for#

Organizations with:

• 5 to 50 staff, one or zero IT people
• One or more donor-funded aid projects
• Reporting obligations to EU, USAID, or bilateral donors
• Data sensitivity requirements that prevent using third-party SaaS
• No existing UN agency partnership granting access to Primero or proGres

Why not the alternatives#

What makes Observer different#

You don’t need anyone’s permission. No partner onboarding, no SaaS agreement. Install it on your server and start working.

Your data stays yours. Everything runs on infrastructure you control. No data leaves your server unless you export it.

Access control is built in. Platform roles (admin, staff, consultant, guest) combine with project roles (owner, manager, consultant, viewer) and sensitivity flags that control who sees contact info, personal details, and documents.

Two-factor authentication is supported. Every user can enable TOTP-based 2FA from their profile. Login requires a 6-digit code from an authenticator app alongside the password.

Reports match what donors actually ask for. 12 report dimensions — consultation counts, IDP origin, sex/age disaggregation, support sphere, vulnerability category, region, office, tags, family units, and case status — each filterable by date range, support type, and demographic criteria.

Families are tracked as units. Typed household relationships (head, spouse, child, parent, sibling) power family-level reporting.

IDP status is computed, not guessed. A person’s displacement status is derived from their origin location and whether that area is a conflict zone — no manual classification needed.

Supported languages#

The UI ships with six languages: English, Ukrainian, Russian, German, Turkish, and Kyrgyz (Latin script). Kyrgyz uses a custom Latin transliteration because the official Kyrgyz Latin alphabet was adopted in 2023 and standard translation tools don’t support it yet — we maintain our own transliteration rules to provide accurate, native-feeling text for Central Asian deployments.

What Observer does not do#

Observer is not designed for:

• Inter-agency referral workflows (Primero territory)
• Biometric deduplication
• Cluster-level 5W/3W aggregate reporting (ActivityInfo territory)

If you need cluster dashboards, export your data from Observer to ActivityInfo.