Information technology in the social sector – Prospects and problems for NGOs

Understanding technological change

Rapid technological change has been a staple feature of the last two hundred years or more across the world. This has expanded and deepened economic opportunities and societies have gone through dramatic transformations in their wealth and affluence. There has been widespread impact on social, political and cultural life too. It is no exaggeration to say that technological change has touched and fundamentally altered human lives and possibilities like no other force before.

Admittedly, the benefits and costs of this change are experienced unequally. Despite this history, the continuing technological revolution of the last fifty years seems to belong to a different order of complexity and sophistication. The transformation of work and lives directly resulting from changes triggered by digital electronics, communication, computing, and the internet seem unprecedented. These changes are global in nature and have had direct and deep impact on individuals and societies in a very short time.

No one seems to doubt that this digital revolution will continue to dramatically alter our lives, and faster than in the past. However, this is accompanied by global problems and challenges that strain the ability of local communities and nationalist politics to solve in any credible manner. But the stakes couldn’t be greater . Unlike in the past, the problems of climate change, ecological degradation and resulting crises of food, health and livelihood threaten all nations to some degree and may lead to large scale destruction in vulnerable parts of the world. There will certainly be, in a narrow sense, winners and losers. But from a broader perspective the uneven impact of technology and looming global crises together represent an existential threat to life on the planet.

Except under special conditions, commercial and proprietary software is unsuitable for the social sector.

It is in this context that the question arises whether digital technologies can be deployed more extensively to serve the cause of greater justice and good. It is unlikely that technology by itself is the primary solution to any social problem. In fact, many believe that the uncontrolled development and deployment of technology in the last fifty years, especially digital technology, is a likely cause, or at least the trigger, for many of the challenges that we face. The idea that technology can serve as the fount of solutions therefore needs to be established beyond doubt.

At Azim Premji Foundation, we hold that the challenges that societies face globally, of conflict, poverty, and unequal access to health, nutrition and education must be solved through political participation, enlightened policy, and core development action. These are not, at their core, technological problems, nor are they amenable to technological solutionism. Put bluntly, our problems have their roots in historically determined and fundamental socio-political processes and distortions that continue to operate What is the role of technology in this quest for positive change? While technology may not be the primary effector of change, no resolution can happen without active use or deployment of technological resources either. Put another way, while technologies may not bring about solutions to global problems, no solution can work fully either without the use of our technological prowess.

It is important to set balanced and realistic expectations within NGOs about what adoption of information technology entails. There should be recognition that existing processes will change, and so will the way various functions interact.

Technology for development

What can be done? We believe that governments and civil society will have to, sooner than later, confront the limitations of business as usual. As mentioned earlier, all effective responses to global and local crises will inevitably involve using human technological prowess.

This deployment of technology for the social good cannot be an accident of circumstance. Azim Premji Foundation aims to actively contribute to the debates in India that help us articulate the promise and challenges of technology, especially information technology. We will use our financial resources and people to help develop interventions and solutions, both at local and national levels. These interventions will be guided by the values of sustainable and inclusive development and will emphasize participatory involvement of communities that are key stakeholders.

Government of India (GoI) has, in the last decade, made concrete and focused choices for using information technology in governance and delivery of services. This has been implemented in many ways, including through capacity building in the government systems and implementation of large-scale technology frameworks and platforms for citizen engagement and service delivery. These include technology platforms that aid identification of residents, provision of systems that accelerate financial inclusion, and governance systems for provision of social services including education and healthcare.

Civil society and development

The efforts of the government in the development sector, important that they are, need to be augmented by civil society initiatives, which operate at smaller scale and more local contexts. These initiatives traditionally have taken two forms. The first one is the effort by communities and citizens to organize themselves for various purposes, including efforts to represent their voice to the state, create cooperatives and self-help groups to organize producers and consumers, or to organize workers to voice and defend their interests.

The other form that civil society initiatives have taken involves the creation of not for-profit ventures or non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These operate in specific development domains and geographies to serve public interest.

India has a rich history of both these forms across the country. There are, in addition to the above two, for-profit organizations that aim to serve public interest but expect to sustain their work through market linked operations. Given the prominence that legal and taxation systems give to not-for-profit activity, the last type has remained a small niche category.

Unless leaders of NGOs have a realistic understanding of what information technology can contribute and are also willing to commit time and energy at all levels of the organization, efforts to leverage technology can fail.

Both the civil society organizational forms mentioned above depend on either the state or private individuals and foundations for resources and financial support. In a context where development aid and funding from international sources have shifted away from India, local philanthropy and corporate social
responsibility initiatives have stepped in to compensate.

Azim Premji Foundation is supported by one of the largest global endowments for philanthropy. It has deep and direct field based activities in education. The foundation has also started public health initiatives in the aftermath of its humanitarian work during the Covid-19 pandemic. Azim Premji Foundation is also one of the largest funders of not-for-profit civil society organizations in the country today. A wide range of small and large not-for-profits are supported by the foundation with an extraordinary breadth of themes and geographic reach.

Azim Premji Foundation considers all NGOs,n whether part of its network or not, to have significant areas of operations that will be benefited by information technology. Identifying these areas and ensuring that NGOs have the tools to implement information technology systems requires more than just financial resources. The following sections discuss these aspects.

Technology for NGOs

How can information technology serve NGOs in their mission to support and facilitate sustainable development? As mentioned in the first section, Azim Premji Foundation does not consider information technology as the primary solution to development problems. Development challenges are socioeconomic and political problems. These need solutions to emerge from an understanding and resolution of these problems. The more participative and broad-based the solutions are, the better the outcomes are likely to be.

In addition, technology can be used in projects with poorly designed strategies. It can amplify negative outcomes, just as it can serve exemplary and positive efforts. That said, we believe that information technology can be a powerful facilitator both for NGOs and for the communities that they serve, when implemented carefully.

Civil society organizations are as diverse as their counterparts in the business sector. They vary in size, geographical reach, diversity of beneficiary groups, and the themes they address. All but the top quintile of NGOs top quintile in terms of total number of employees or total expenditure – would fall into the category of SMEs (small and medium enterprises) as used in the business sector.

Therefore, their IT system needs are also likely to be on that scale of size and complexity. This also indicates that this segment is unlikely to have applications that demand highspeed and real-time availability. This is unlike an organization with high volumes of real-time financial or other transactional loads.

Unless leaders of NGOs have a realistic understanding of what information technology can contribute and are also willing to commit time and energy at all levels of the organization, efforts to leverage technology can fail. This requires understanding three dimensions of what is involved in guiding organizational change through information technology.

Information systems: Understand the information problem to be solved through automation. Explore the costs and benefits. Analyse the organization’s patterns of information flows, areas for improvement and the anticipated costs and benefits of adopting information technology solutions.

Technology options: Understand availability and access to cost effective computing systems and resources, especially software applications, cloud platforms and internet resources.

People, implementation and support: Ability to access expertise, internal or external, to evaluate options available, make critical decisions and implement them to make successful transitions. This aspect includes the effort needed to prepare the organization to make the transition to different ways of functioning that the adoption of technology makes inevitable.

Supporting NGOs through technology transitions

It is important to set balanced and realistic expectations within NGOs about what adoption of information technology entails. There should be recognition that existing processes will change, and so will the way various functions interact.

There could be an extended period of learning and adjustment depending on the scope of the project initiated. This requires preparation, training and the ability to adapt to some measure of disruption.

The good news is that, in the case of well planned and successful implementations, these challenges are balanced by significant gains in efficiency, and overall effectiveness. The planning process, in addition to these issues, also includes the first step of the three stages mentioned above, the analysis and specification of the information system to be streamlined. This analysis is independent of the choice of technology.

Unless the NGO invests the time and resources to analyze the information processes it wishes to automate, choices down the line are likely to be suboptimal. There is also the tendency to choose the tool first rather than take the effort to understand the information problem. That would be a serious mistake. If the NGO does not have the ability to do the analysis on its own, it would be wise to allocate part of the IT budget to hire the expertise.

Most use cases in the NGO sector can be covered under three broad headings. Special cases include long duration projects in areas like education and health.

Operations: accounts, payroll, inventory, basic analytics, fundraising and compliance.

Communication: email, discussion forums, conferencing, reports and presentations.

Program management: beneficiary data, program delivery, analytics, case management, partner, and volunteer management.

The first two of the above functional domains are well understood and many choices exist in terms of information technology tools. Most NGOs are likely to have already successfully adopted some form of information technology to solve their operations and communications needs

Most of these tools are affordable. In many instances, commercial vendors provide these tools to charities free of charge or at very low prices. It is in the third functional area, that of program management, that NGOs encounter dynamic and unique requirements and therefore confront hard to understand decision situations. The next two sections discuss these challenges

The universe of FOSS

Except under special conditions, commercial and proprietary software is unsuitable for the social sector. In addition to price considerations, proprietary software’s “vendor lock-in” and opacity make it problematic for organizations that use philanthropic or taxpayer money to work for the social good.

On the positive side, free and open-source software (FOSS) today has matured, and large communities of developers and users offer solutions and support for most use cases. The fact that FOSS systems are part of internet infrastructure available today and that FOSS components are the foundation on which most commercial software is built is testimony to their power and usefulness.

That said, adopting FOSS systems is often harder. It requires more domain expertise than commercial systems. This is due to the voluntary and activist nature of FOSS development. We anticipate that philanthropic capital will have to be involved in creating and curating FOSS platforms.

This would make it much easier for organizations to put together the components of the suite of systems they would use, once the first stage of information system review mentioned in the previous section is complete. This work is already happening. Azim Premji Foundation is involved in identifying the FOSS systems it can support and promote for the social sector.

Five ways not to fail

There are numerous ways in which a transition to use of IT systems can fail in an NGO. Such failures are all too common. Understanding the risks of failure and preparing to avoid them is a significant part of the transition. While some of these are contextual and specific to particular NGOs, it is worthwhile to identify typical cases and causes of poor outcomes.

Poor preparation and planning: This aspect was mentioned above. It is worth reiterating that the time and effort spent at information system analysis, planning and preparation pays for itself through the benefits of a successful implementation. This step also calls for realistic expectations, which understand and accommodate the nonmonetary costs of the transition.

While technology may not be the primary effect or of change, no resolution can happen without active use or deployment of technological resources either

Choosing products instead of solutions: Many NGOs choose vendors and products instead of identifying the problems to be solved and the solutions that will help address them. Very often this is the result of decision making that has been influenced by advertising, anecdotal experiences, or special interests.

Paying the piper too much: One of the core reasons organizations choose expensive commercial tools when free options are available is the myth that high prices guarantee quality and stable implementation. There is no direct causal link between prices charged and the success of implementations.

While it is true that FOSS tools do not guarantee success, high prices paid do not, either. The biggest threats to successful IT transitions are that of decision making in ignorance, and the failure to understand and prepare for the trade-offs involved.

The myth of uniqueness: Many NGOS, deeply aware of the nuances of their contexts and the problems they face, assume that the solutions to information problems must be as unique as the problems themselves.

This leads to attempts to build unique products with all kinds of customized functionality specific to their needs. This is often a serious mistake. Information technology tools, like all tools, are prone to failure and the risk of faulty design. Every tailormade tool can fail in unanticipated ways. Building a new tool for your information problem is a decision that needs careful and rigorous justification.

No organizational buy-in: Transition to effective use of information technology cannot be driven exclusively from the top. More inclusive and participative the process, the better the outcomes. This would also prepare all organizational members to invest the time, effort and patience to make the systems work.

Conclusion

This article has touched on some of the prospects, challenges and promise of information technology for social sector organizations, especially NGOs.

The key message is that NGOs should begin with the realization that adoption of IT is not an end in itself. It must serve a clearly identified set of goals that are highly likely to make the organization more effective.

Challenges, both internal and in the technology itself, must be recognized and understood. Trade-offs are inevitable. The leadership of the NGOs must invest the time and resources to understand these factors and then lead the organization through the steps involved in planning, choice of tools, and training for implementing the transformation. Thus, especially in cases where the change affects many functional areas, it should be recognized that the transition could be a time of disruption and the organization must embrace that risk.