Feb 07 2007
Reports: Using ICT for Collaboration
One of the themes of this blog has been to talk about the potential to use ICT for collaboration between voluntary sector organisations and their stakeholders.
Two new reports from NCVO’s Collorative working Unit (NCVO is a partner of the ICT Hub) expand on this and aim to inspire organisations to see collaboration as a potential solution to the issues they face.
To summarise:
ICT tools to support collaborative working
ICT tools to support collaborative working identifies key areas where ICT may help your collaboration. ICT has great potential for enabling collaboration, especially for projects which involve multiple partners over large geographical distances. It examines a variety of ICT tools, looks at the benefits and pitfalls of each and is illustrated with case studies of voluntary and community sector experience of ICT.
- Download the PDF (248kb)
- Case studies include:
- DirectSupport: Extranet
DirectSupport is a free guidance and mentoring service for UK online centres, focusing mainly on community and voluntary UK online centres. DirectSupport uses an extranet for web based collaboration. - Charity Web Forum: Email group
Charity Web Forum is an email group set up by the Royal National Institute for the Blind to facilitate charities sharing information and knowledge about the web. - CAN-Online: Online database
Community Action Network (CAN) is a UK organisation for social entrepreneurs. CAN uses an internet-based contacts database which is managed by all its staff and partners. - Leicestershire County Council: Content Management System
has been building up an ICT community to help address rural isolation by providing information and services electronically. It uses a Content Management System to allow communities to manage their own information. - ruralnet|uk: Blogging
is a rural regeneration charity that promotes a living and working countryside and finds new ways to help rural communities improve and strengthen their local economies. ruralnet|uk distributes its daily online digest of development news in the form of a blog. - ladder4learning: Wiki
promotes learning for people and organisations in the community and voluntary in South East England. It uses a wiki to provide a regularly updated jargon buster for the voluntary and community sector. - VolResource: RSS feeds
aims to provide practical resources for people involved in the voluntary sector, making use of communications technology. It uses an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed to disseminate news items for the voluntary sector.
Collaborative working to make more effective use of ICT
Collaborative working to make more effective use of ICT aims to inspire organisations to see collaboration as a potential solution to the ICT issues they face. The report explores areas where collaboration can offer a way of addressing ICT support needs, examines the pros and cons of each method, and introduces a range of case studies.
- DirectSupport: Extranet
- Download the PDF (171kb)
- Case studies include:
One response so far
With such a wealth of open source web applications out there I have been surprised that there has not been a bigger uptake of collaborative systems within local communities.
With so many young people interested in online communities (My Space etc) it would seem that Council’s are missing a trick of providing local My Space equivalents to foster real life community involvement.