As mobile technology is becoming more widely available, many statistical agencies have considered using mobile data capture for the 2020 round of population and housing census data collection. The introduction of electronic data capture into the business cycle of the census provides cost and time savings, but also allows users to take advantage of added features that can be programmed into mobile devices or linked to the data collection process. These features include, among others, integrated maps and Global Positioning System (GPS) and real time monitoring of fieldwork. This paper shows how Istat has designed such a monitoring system, integrated with the census data collection process supported on Android devices by CSPro, the public domain software package developed by the U.S. Census Bureau. The proposed architecture, implemented to support the Ethiopian population census within a project financed by the Italian Cooperation, is generalised and available to other potential users free of charge. It provides a simple solution for monitoring electronic data collection operations, particularly in cases where the technical and financial resources to implement such a system from the ground up are lacking.