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May 26, 2008

At last week's Connecting Up conference in Australia, staff from various non-profit groups were casually discussing Web 2.0 technologies and the role that sites such as Twitter might play in their fund-raising plans.

Doug Jacquier, CEO of The Community Information Strategies for Australia (CISA) organised the conference and said "we in Australia have barely scratched the surface of Web 2.0. If we don't move on it soon, we will risk losing a whole generation of potential supporters and donors."

While many will say that next generation technologies are appealing, for resource-strapped charities, government service delivery branches and non-government organisations, just getting existing IT services to work properly usually is a tough and uphill battle in most cases.

Unfamiliar concepts like free and open source software such as Linux are unlikely to get a look in when the PCs are still running a pre-1995 desktop suite.

Many will agree that change is difficult in any industry, but even more so in minimally staffed organisations being pressured to deal with urgent social problems and unable to offer higher salaries in a very competitive market.

Amanda Kelly, business manager for the Windana Society in Melbourne said "we're not all that proactive about changing things. A lot of my work has been around allowing people to change. It's a long and very slow process.

Kelly previously spent five years working with the Australian Community Support Organisation. "They had a computer system and did all the information gathering of new clients electronically — and then they printed the information and put it in a paper client file. Needless to say, converting all those mountains of paper into an electronic format was a long and very tedious process."

"We had large numbers of people coming in, pulling out every staple and taking off every sticky note and getting them ready to be scanned. By the time I'd finished, we'd converted about 40,000 files. At the same time we had to work out how to change our electronic system to cope with the ongoing capture of information."

Resources are definitely on the limited side. "Our server room is a converted toilet. I spent two hours trying to put together our server cabinet. It arrived in many pieces with no instructions."

Kelly's current project is even more daunting. "At Windana, we have no computer system at all. We're starting from scratch." Of course, most staff don't need to know that, however. Avoiding technology terminology is crucial, Kelly says. If you mention concepts like wikis or RSS, "people just blank out. But when you say 'Do you want all your forms in one place?' they usually answer yes".

Something else Windana totally avoided was and still is open source. "For my preference, open source would be fantastic," Kelly said, but that's not the route Windana has chosen. "In our risk assessment, we said we can go open source and the software is free, but how are we going to support it?"

It goes without saying that the constant pace of change is daunting to say the least. "Open source is brilliant, but there's a new version of something almost every day so you need to monitor and change that all the time," Kelly said. "We simply didn't have the ability to do that."

Conversely, there's always plenty of people being trained in how to administer Windows and Office, Kelly noted. "If we choose Microsoft, there are Microsoft support people coming out all the time. They're not necessarily going to stay either, but if they don't we've got a fall-back plan."

Overall, there are other PC alternatives for Windana "we looked at Mac but the hardware for that was just too expensive."

Even organisations that have embraced open source urge restraint. Philanthropy Australia used the open source MediaWiki software platform built for Wikipedia to help centralise its knowledge resources in a wiki format. "Nearly all our software is now open source which works really well for us, but I always caution people that there's a cost in terms of the time and expertise needed," said communications and knowledge manager Louise Arkles.

She added "while it has saved us a bit of money up front, there are always some costs involved. Finding and keeping staff is a huge problem, and one emphasised in nearly every presentation at the conference. "We're not going to keep someone," Kelly said. "We can't pay to attract someone who is brilliant with open source."

Louise Fisher, special projects officer for the Rural Financial Counselling Service NSW was initially enthused after the service learnt about DonorTec from its IT provider. The service saved about $55,000 on its infrastructure via purchases through DonorTec, Fisher said. "That allowed our organisation to do a lot of things we weren't planning on doing."

So complaints about the dangers of locking in to proprietary software or equipment, however well-argued, are going to have a hard time being heard. Most presenters recognised that up-front costs were only the first element in the battle, but the reduced software fees mean that the focus remains clearly on staffing problems rather than software costs. "Free software isn't really free. You really have to work on it," Kelly said.

Overall familiarity and stability are also crucial to most people. Many organisations at the conference favoured well-established global hardware suppliers, particularly if they have to operate equipment in remote rural environments.

Needless to say, lack of research is also a big problem. "People will believe anybody and anything when it comes to IT. False authority is your enemy. Odds are your CEO is not an administrator and the person you should be getting technical advice from."

For those reasons, some don't buy into the Microsoft-is-evil argument either. "I'm not interested in getting into that proprietary vs. open-source discussion. I'm here to say what works for us. It's not to say that it's the only thing either."

Also, one idea that's often raised is that non-profits could use older computers that have been "end-of-lifed" by larger businesses, setting them up with open source packages. While these seem environmentally and economically sound, those who have experienced it say it often isn't worth the hassle.

"In fact, being offered free PCs can cost you a lot of money," said Heffernan from CYDN. "What we've found with free PCs for instance is that the software's missing. They're generally older PCs which are harder to maintain, usually lack CPU resources and memory, etc."

In conclusion, organizations should carefully weigh all their options, closely evaluate and scrutinize all costs involved, both direct and indirect.

Source: ZD Net Australia.

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