London Regional ICT Champion

Yes, I know I’ve been blogging about IT reports rather a lot recently, but hey, it’s all good and funders are always saying how much they like to see fresh research into voluntary sector ICT issues.

Anyway, in the spirit of bringing you the latest research into voluntary sector and non-profit ICT….

Evaluation of LB Newham’s Where ITs @ project

Here, we have Paul Ticher’s evaluation of the LB Newham Where IT’s @ project.

To recap:

• The Where IT’s @ project of Newham Council’s Social Regeneration Unit (SRU) began in January 2002, funded throughout from the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund.
• Stated aim of the project was to capacity build the ICT of Newham advice agencies to take advantage of new technology (broadband) and case mangement software – to better deliver their goals.

• 20 advice agencies with ‘under-developed ICT’ were selected for the project – all received health-checks, broadband and 4 software packages for case management.
• All participating agencies received training and support to help them take advantage of the new technology.

Findings:

As Paul explains:

“The evaluation exercise found a number of interesting things. For example:

• For some of the organisations the effects were spectacular – mainly where the project chimed with a manager who was keen for the organisation to do new things and to be managed better.
• Where the project worked well, it was the whole package that counted: provision of software, management training, technical support and provision of broadband internet access.
• Many of the small organisations that dropped out did so because they didn’t have the capacity to take on the work needed to make use of the ICT capacity-building measures. This parallels a recent finding from research commissioned for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and reported in Third Sector.”

The full report can be downloaded from: http://www.paulticher.com/articles/Newham.pdf (2.91Mb)