Launched in January earlier this year, the site already features a number of useful apps:

Twitterplan – Sends direct messages via Twitter when a planning application is lodged in as a Twitter user’s area.

Mi-Voice – A secure, web based participation tool that allows an organisation to set-up and run elections, consultations or referendums.

WriteToReply – A community driven site for commenting on and discussing public reports in  detail.

You can also follow their blog and Twitter feed.

RefugeeMap is an online collaborative Wiki providing easy and accessible information for volunteers, especially young people, working with refugees in the UK. This site seeks to gather in one place easily accessible information on refugee situations, news and policy, and volunteering opportunities around the UK.

If you would like to contribute to the site or have material posted on the site please visit the site at:

www.star-network.org.uk/refugeemap

ESRC: ICT, social capital and voluntary action

The Economic & Social Research Council’s ‘ICT, Social Capital and Voluntary Action’ (download PDF – 1.6Mb) report contends that ignoring the Internet is no longer an option for voluntary and community organisations.

It warns that those failing to embrace information and communications technology (ICT) risk having their work overshadowed by those who do draw on this new source of ‘social capital’ – the reserve of goodwill generated when people interact. And though local ICT initiatives are taking place, the booklet says that the smaller online communities they create need ongoing technical and funding support if they are to survive.

The report concluded:

“Our research suggests that top-down, centrally managed projects are prone to a range of problems that make their long-term sustainability doubtful in contrast to grassroots initiatives owned and managed by the communities themselves.

In other words, grassroots ICT initiatives may be more sustainable than those driven by outside policy interventions.”

You can download the full report from ESRC.

Watchers of voluntary sector ICT issues in the UK will no doubt be familiar with Dot Organize’s findings, since ICT problems tend to be fairly universal:

To grossly summarise, the report also finds that:

• Most organizations, whether three-person start-ups or 3 million-person coalitions, are struggling to keep their constituent databases in order, and as a result have difficulty embracing new and emerging technologies (such as, blogs, social networking, SMS/text messaging, GIS mapping, and wikis).

• 59% report being frustrated or really struggling with the complexity of technology.

• Many lack the capacity to use some of the most basic online organising techniques; 39% do not use email newsletters and 47% do not accept online donations.

• Regardless of the organisation’s size, money (57%), time (45%) and staff expertise (34%) prevent their organisation from fully exploiting databases and online tools.

• Inadequate data management emerged as a major impediment to effective organizing. More than half the respondents report using slips of paper, Excel spreadsheets, and personal address books to manage organizational data.

• Organisations across the budget spectrum experienced a similar lack of data integration in their systems. The ability to share data across platforms and between applications, such as contact databases and Web content management systems, reduces data duplication and errors, as well as time spent on manual data entry and manually synching data repositories. Only 7% of respondents reported that their current systems share data easily.

• Organisers also stress the significance of data integration in their daily operations. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 representing the importance of data integration to their work, nearly 70% of respondents chose ratings between 7-10, signifying that a vast majority consider integration to be both a key obstacle and solution.

As London ICT Champion, what I’m really interested in here is the similar struggle of the UK VCS (voluntary & community sector) to fully exploit existing technology and embrace new tools.

I’m seeing some early promoters of new technology – RuralNet’s I-See_T project which is exploring ICT for collaboration, and the Media Trust’s seminars on the benefits and ease of deploying a Blog or a Wiki to raise the profile of your charity – and the approach here is very much the ‘show and tell’ model I talked about in an earlier post. As ever, if you have a project looking into new technology, let me know as it’s good to share.

The Dot Organize report compiles insights from more than 400 US social change groups, technology providers, and nonprofit technology capacity builders, examining the needs of organisers working to utilize new technologies, and offering recommendations for how to meet those needs more effectively.

You can download the report from here.