{"id":2683,"date":"2021-05-19T15:10:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-19T15:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tutator.net\/?p=2683"},"modified":"2024-11-19T15:13:30","modified_gmt":"2024-11-19T15:13:30","slug":"a-sampling-of-what-information-technology-could-bring-to-your-organization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tutator.net\/es\/a-sampling-of-what-information-technology-could-bring-to-your-organization\/","title":{"rendered":"A sampling of what Information Technology could bring to your organization"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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When you close your eyes and dream-up a perfect setting for your institution to offer its services, a number of things may come to your mind. You may focus on various dimensions such as offering a more personalized service to each of your participants and thus improve your efficacy; improving your efficiency to get the most mileage out of your funding; improving the donor experience; having the ability to accurately monitor\/steer your institution\u2019s activities based on changing needs and context; ensuring security and respect of the participants\u2019s privacy; protecting your staff against risks of corruption; etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Information Technology can bring to you<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In this paper, we attempt to review all these wishes and see how technology can bring them to reality<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Personalization of services \u2013 Efficacy<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When all you have to manage your participants is a pencil and some paper (or even a simple Excel spreadsheet), you really can\u2019t focus on providing personalized services. Your focus is definitely on a \u201cone size fits all\u201d process and you end up with services that truly don\u2019t correspond to anybody while trying to satisfy everyone\u2019s needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The right technology will help your institution refocus on beneficiaries and provide personalized services that will tremendously increase the impact on them. It will provide you with a complete file on each participant with convenient access to all the elements of information you require in order to make an educated decision, including the family, economic, health, psychologic, social context as well as all the previous services you or another organization has already provided to that participant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This will dramatically change their experience and will give them back some pride as they will feel that your institution perceives them as individuals, not just as a number\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n

This lady judge in Nicaragua once told us: \u201cthis kid saw me open his file on my computer when he arrived in my office, stared for a couple of seconds at his own picture on my screen and marveled:<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So\u2026 Then you do know me, you know who I am<\/mark>!<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Best use of funding \u2013 Efficiency<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We all feel that it is an ethical duty to optimize the use of the resources that are made available to us. At the same time, our staff waste a very significant part of their time doing repetitive things, things that don\u2019t require much thinking if any, while they could make a much better use of their time and resources interacting directly with participants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Usually it happens that way because\u2026 well, because that is the way things were being done way back when, when alternatives were not available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nowadays, a well-designed tool can eliminate most of these time-consuming tasks, thus freeing up your staff\u2019s time for more important actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The design of such tool has to be done by a team that has an intimate understanding of the context and the needs as well as of what technology can achieve. Indeed, only this way will the tool achieve what it is supposed to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Optimization of the donor experience<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Up until recently, social institutions (both official ones as well as civil society) felt that they didn\u2019t have to account for what they were doing: neither for their impact nor for their good use of the resources they were receiving. It was enough for them to state \u201ctrust me, I am doing good!\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The World is changing: no longer can they get away with that. Accountability is the new key word, and\u2026 that\u2019s a good thing! Donors and supporters are expecting social institutions to be accountable for the use of the resources that were made available to them, be they funds or volunteers\u2019 time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social institutions need not only to be ready for, but actually to promote accountability. And this accountability should address both Efficacy (as in: \u201cbang\u201d) and Efficiency (as in: \u201cbang for the buck\u201d). Indeed, this is an ethical duty. Besides, this will be more and more expected by fund providers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having a tool that will collect in real time all the information about what you and your team are doing and will synthesize it for your donors and supporters without you having to spend an inordinate amount of time producing thick hard-to-read reports will help you make them happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A proper dashboard to manage your various activities<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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How can you, as manager of a social institution, effectively manage all the activities of your organization? How can you integrate all the evolutions happening in the communities you are working with, the various trends, be it in disease contagion, in crime patterns or in nutritional challenges?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order for you to make fully informed decisions based on real data, you need to have access to a dashboard, one that will be fed in real time on a daily basis with data coming from the ground operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Specific data and statistics need to be extracted and a graphical interface showing you the latest trends, (with needles and blinking alerts) will help you \u201cfly your organization\u201d, just like a proper dashboard will help the pilot fly a plane!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Security and respect of privacy<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When you offer social services to your participants, you gain access to a lot of personal information. It is your duty to protect this information and to make sure that no inappropriate use of it is made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is very difficult when this information is in paper form, oftentimes in overflowing closets. Each transmission of such data opens a further breach in the security of this data as it is usually done in the form of a piece of paper or a USB key.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this day and age, it is crucial to design the processes in such a way that no personal information ever be exposed to an unintended audience. It\u2019s not just a desirable feature, it is absolutely vital from an ethical standpoint. One cannot ethically put someone else\u2019s information at risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Protection against corruption<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When faced with someone from their community coming to them and asking for a favor or a preferential treatment, your staff is poorly equipped to respond. Let alone the temptation of money, social pressure can be extremely hard to resist. You know, this kind of pressure:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cCome on, you\u2019re one of us, just this one time,
do this for us\u2026
besides, no one will ever know\u201d<\/mark><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It is our duty to provide our staff with a work environment where they are protected from these very awkward moments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having the proper tools in place that will log every action so that it can later be traced to whoever did it and telling your staff that this is in place is one important way to deal with this. Most of them will indeed be relieved to answer with a straight face, when asked for a favor<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cSorry, I can\u2019t do that\u2026
The system logs everything I do
so I would then suffer the consequences\u201d.<\/mark><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Fondation Tutator \u2013 Our mission<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Marie and I have spent many years visiting well over 100 social projects in very many countries around the World. We were able to see first-hand all these challenges that are facing even the most well-meaning team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We established our Foundation with the goal of assisting social institutions cope with all these needs. We have a team of engineers as well as people coming from the social space and, together, they can really \u201cbridge the gap\u201d between what\u2019s needed and what technology can accomplish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coming back to the beginning of this paper: \u201cWe can develop for you the perfect setting for your organization, the one you see when you close your eyes\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

In an upcoming paper, we will be exploring the topic of sustainability. Beyond nice words, one has to think in terms of \u201cwhat comes after I\u2019m gone\u201d or, to be more precise, \u201chow to make myself redundant\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you close your eyes and dream-up a perfect setting for your institution to offer its services, a number of things may come to your mind. You may focus on various dimensions such as offering a more personalized service to each of your participants and thus improve your efficacy; improving your efficiency to get the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2684,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tutator.net\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tutator.net\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tutator.net\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tutator.net\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tutator.net\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tutator.net\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tutator.net\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tutator.net\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tutator.net\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tutator.net\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}