A few of us (volunteers from FOSS United Foundation and representatives from Ashoka Foundation, Tech4GoodLabs, Tech4GoodCommunity, Tech4Dev, ONI, Kalvium, TinkerHub Foundation), ReapBenefit who have been having these conversation in silos, met up in Bangalore to brainstorm and figure out actionables.
Key issues that were discussed:
- The social development sector severely lacks technical capacity (knowledge, awareness, skills, access).
- The tech world at large has little visibility into the social development sector.
- There is no easy or natural technology discovery mechanism for non-tech-savvy social development orgs. There is an inability to frame problems in a way where a readily available FOSS tech solutions can be discovered even via simple searches.
- A significant number of tech/organisational problems are low hanging fruits that repeat across organisations. Things like CRMs, data collection, management and reporting tools, inventory mechanisms, volunteer and project management systems, finance management tools etc.
- Many orgs also have an app-first, “not built here” view which prevents them from exploring FOSS solutions.
- Massive amounts of money, time, and energy are wasted on trying to build software from scratch, or are blown on proprietary systems that also result in vendor lockins. Most social dev orgs are not tech companies capable of building or commanding tech.
Actionable experiments:
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Identify the most common, long-hanging-fruit usecases and problem statements across social dev organisations. Identify out-of-the-box FOSS solutions for those and map them. Prepare an open framework + playbook + docs specifically from a social dev organisation perspective.
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Identify and onboard a pilot group of IT/tech vendors and consultants and equip them with this framework to offer installation/usage/support services to social dev orgs. Once an organisation is able to frame their requirements and map it against the framework, it should be possible for them to quickly turn to someone who can equip them with it. This should ideally cost only a fraction of what would otherwise be wasted trying to reinvent systems from scratch or getting vendor locked.
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Work closely with a pilot group of “role model” organisations to equp them with appropriate FOSS for their needs and training + tinkering experience. Present evidence for a number of usecases, high quality FOSS exists out there and no software has to be built. The criteria for an org to be a “role model” can vary and does not depend on its size or age. Such an organisation should be in a position to influence other organisations in the same space to adopt similar playbooks.
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Setup an internship+mentorship program to connect skilled tech students to social dev projects and orgs. Kalvium, for instance, has students who can dedicate time to projects for a whole year. The bet is that students get to work on meaningful real world projects with social impact and social dev orgs get to connect with the tech world. Even if a small percentage of interns start paying attention to social development projects as a result, that’s a win. This is a long term attempt in hopes for seeding a culture of volunteering.
Based on the outcome of these experiments (perhaps in a year or a year and half):
- Organise meet-ups, workshops, and a FOSS/tech/social development conference. Present case studies and evidence: “For most usecases, FOSS works out of the box. Don’t waste time and energy trying to build software from scratch.”
- Organise workshops for funders of social dev orgs and present the case studies and evidence. It is important for funders to know that their money will not get wasted on software development dead ends if FOSS playbooks are adopted.
This is the gist of the discussions. T4GLabs and T4GCommunity have very graciously agreed to be the program office for this project. Once things get going, a new thread can be started with specifics and progress, and once there is some semblance of a structure, a number of avenues for volunteering for everyone who has expressed interest here should open up.
I am personally very excited and deeply convinced about this. A project like this can ideally only “fail” upwards. Best case scenario, it increases awareness significantly and kick starts sparks of a FOSS+tech+social development ecosystem that may slowly grow and sustain on its own. Worst case scenario, we would have helped a handful of impactful social development organisations with technology and the general lessons can be documented and released as a research paper for posterity. Win-win.
It is important to note that the goal of the project is not to provide technology services for free (as in cost) to social development organisations. This is not “charity”. The goal is to bridge the massive gap in FOSS technology awareness, knowledge, and access between the tech world and the social development world, to enable discovery of high quality FOSS that solves common and widespread problems, and to enable social dev organisations to focus on their work without having to waste huge amounts of time and money on futile technology pursuits.
