Supporting digital proficiency
Next week we celebrate International Women’s Day, a welcome reminder of the massive contribution women make in the community sector, and a call to action to ensure they have all the tools to take their work further.
While this work has predominantly centred on direct client care, ever more so IT is playing a vital role in delivering these services. When used well and teamed with proper IT planning, technology has the ability to enhance the work of service delivery agencies, increasing organisational efficiency and effectiveness.
Two female leaders in the community sector who recognise this and are working to empower their teams by making better use of IT are Jodie Willmer and Marianne Hubbard.
“As not for profits we have an obligation to be working the most effectively and efficiently as we can, using donor funds to the best of our ability. That means using technology that’s going to enhance the way we operate and deliver services to people who are vulnerable or experience disadvantage,” Jodie says.
“We are planning to broaden our reach of services across the region and use ICT to both increase access to specialist services in remote areas and provide connection to our multi-disciplinary team for outreach staff,” says Marianne.
“A light bulb moment came for me at one of the iTaNGO workshops when we were discussing IT planning and in particular linking it to strategic planning. This, of course, made immediate sense and given that we were in the process of developing our new three-year strategic plan I have been able to include IT as a clearly defined element.”
Both Jodie and Marianne will be sharing their experiences as part of the upcoming iTaNGO case studies presentation forum, being held 2 April in Melbourne.
The event will showcase a number of speakers from a spread of community organisations who will demonstrate how they have leveraged technology in their service delivery and the results it has awarded them.
*In 2014 iTango was incorporated into our suite of free resources, Improve IT