Adding real charitable value through ICT
A lot has been written in recent years regarding the importance of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) staff understanding the business in which they work and therefore being able to add real value to the business through their selection and application of technology. Companies the world around have taken heed of this, particularly after noting the positive results generated for the trailblazers, and have explored ways of getting their ICT staff aligned with the organisation (instead of treating them as outsiders). Many specialist sectors tend to be a little behind in these trends, and it recently became apparent to me that possibly this message had not got through to the charitable sector, at least not in the UK or in a way that makes sense to me.
So for the benefit of charities and their ICT staff, here's my take on the how and the why.
First a brief history. Traditionally IT support (note not ICT then, as phones were commonly under operations or buildings and email was strictly for geeks) was a very specialised task, maintaining complex and fragile technology for the benefit of another, better embedded (although similarly misunderstood), group of specialists: the finance team. As computing technology became more mainstream the function naturally continued to report to finance, with whom, it turned out, they had little in common. Other than similarly esoteric sets of knowledge and language and an ability to strike fear into those who work in other functions...
As a result of reporting to a senior function that no real interest in IT challenges and opportunities, IT staff became quite isolated. The situation was then exacerbated by the rapid move to pervasive computing, leaving many non-IT people a little confused and resentful of technology and those geeky types who understood it; this was magnified by said geeky types' need to associate with large, noisy yet sensitive machinery: cue The IT Crowd.
The end result was an entire generation of IT staff who didn't (appear) to "understand the business" because the rest of the company basically ignored them. Or outsourced them. And then email and the web rose in importance as a way for organisations to communicate both internally and externally, then along came VOIP (telephony over the computer network). IT became ICT. The corporate communication solution is scary stuff to put in the hands of people you don't actually communicate with...
So to some thoughts on resolving the situation. First, all non-ICT staff note: actually, despite appearances, techie types are not just bright, they're mostly pretty sociable. Indeed the quietest ones (your perception) probably know and interact with more people from more countries, races and religions than you. It's just they don't know what these people look like, sound like, their real names, etc. because they communicate using technology such as online chat. And spend so much time communicating using online chat (commonly IRC, which considerably predates AIM, MSN and GChat) and email (around in its current form since the 1980s) that they have sometimes failed to develop face to face communication skills to the same degree. Nonetheless they communicate, and richly. Think on this: who do you think invented emoticons (smilies)? As in who saw the need to add emotional (social) content to text communication? Teenagers 5 years ago when they got mobile phones and AIM? No, geeks, a quarter of a century ago 
.
So act one is bringing ICT staff inside. Stop treating them as something that services "the business" and realise they are or should be an intrinsic part of the business. Realise that given the world is now heavily, for good or bad, dependent on technology and that your organisation stands to gain a lot from clever use of the same technology. Then realise that the people who are absolutely and utterly, without question, best placed to identify and implement new technologies that will be of benefit to the organisation are the ICT staff.
This means having representation of ICT at the most senior levels of the organisation. Not someone that ICT staff report to but does not have sufficient time in their day to actually appreciate or understand ICT, but someone whose job it is to think strategically about information and communication and how technology could support and improve their processing and use for the organisation. Someone who when talking to you does not have to worry about whether your laptop is working, just as the FD shouldn't have to worry about whether or not your pencil is sharp.
On to how ICT staff in charities can add real value... It can take some time for the best of us to identify technologies that will help in a given sector, let alone an individual organisation, but with charities there is a neat starting point - almost all charities depend on a single aspect of culture: the willingness of people to give, to volunteer; to spend some of their own time doing things for the benefit of others. Regardless of what else a charity does, educate, feed, heal, house, clothe, etc., it is essential to their success that the general populace has the desire and interest in giving freely, whether of time, skills, cash or a mix of the three. Anything that promotes this behaviour in our culture encourages charity and therefore allows charities to thrive.
This is the same positive aspect of cultures and individuals that allows open source software to thrive; people give of their time, their skills and/or their cash for the benefit of the greater good. So there is one simple thing that ICT staff in charities can do to add real charitable value; switch their charities to using open source.
Switch the charity to open source not because a given technical solution available at that instant of assessment and acquisition is "the best". Not because the use of open source allows you to ensure the chosen solution becomes the best (once in use and the success criteria far better understood). Not even because the same technical people interested in open source are more likely to be interested in working in the charitable sector even if that means lower pay. Nor for the other long term cost savings offered by open source. Think, for a moment, about the tendency of charities to be helping the under-privileged in the global society and how an open source solution, having no cost of purchase, is likely to permit adoption by those very same under-privileged people and how the charity's use of it will help to improve the software for all other users; let that influence the decision.
But in the final analysis, switch to open source because it promotes a charitable outlook in the greater society. The ultimate way to add value to your charity through technology. Technically not simple, but philosophically so, and ancient philosophies at that. Cultivate the desire to give charity; giving begats giving; do unto others as you would be done by.
To promote your charity, act charitably in your choice of ICT...
Posted at 07:08PM Nov 19, 2007 by Chris Puttick in General | Comments[0]