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Location
and premises
Location is an important consideration
for community ICT projects, but an
early decision must be taken on whether
it is to be open to the general public
or not because this strongly influences
the choice of location. Where the
project does go down the route of
having an office open to the public,
the need to have a full-time reception
presence is rather quickly established.
The reception staff also dealt with
a sizeable number of telephone enquiries
and highlighted the benefit of differentiating
between general or customer enquiries
and 'technical enquiries'.
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Staffing
The project should aim to recruit
locally if possible, although recognising
that it may need short-term secondments
to get off the ground quiockly. In
the latter scenario, the temporary
contracts should last no longer than
6 months or the project begins to
roll into a series of rollover contracts
and becomes heavily dependant on the
temporary staff.
The WuC project managers developed
a very good grasp of the key skills
that staff need to run a WuC project
and most of the projects had the following
staff complement, where funding permitted:
Project manager, Technical manager,
Community outreach staff or community
networkers
Community Website Manager, Technical
installation/support team, Administrator,
Volunteers (ICT champions or otherwise)
Given the tight timescales for equipment
roll-out, the projects were under
pressure to recruit staff very quickly.
In most cases, a delay of two to three
months can result while the recruitment
process is undertaken. The majority
of the WuC projects did not have the
luxury of that time, so various arrangements
came into play for short term consultancy
contracts and secondments from local
authorities or voluntary sector organisations.
Pulling together a new team at relatively
short notice did impact upon the project
team. There was little time to settle
into the job before the project was
launched and roll-out of equipment
underway and in consequence there
was feedback to suggest that some
staff members had little or no opportunity
of getting to grips with the project
delivery plan and found it stressful
to be thrown in at the 'deep end'
in this way.
Generally, most of the project managers
felt the project had insufficient
staffing levels to deal with the following:
- Training and management of community
web editors
- Providing technical support in
a troubleshooter role
- Co-ordinate volunteer activity
- ICT champions and volunteers
- Development online learning materials
- Undertaking outreach with community
groups or individuals in the area
In the worst case scenario, the project
manager was left to undertake a variety
of administrative tasks such as invoicing,
answering phone calls, letter writing
and arranging publicity materials
as well as dealing with all the complaints.
The project manager ended up 'fire-fighting'
all the time and unable to progress
a number of things.
Policies
and Procedures
The projects were required to follow
the policies and procedures set down
by the 'accountable body' to meet
employment law, health and safety
legislation and equal opportunities.
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Useful
Documents
Induction
procedures for residents (Word,
zipped 9kb) produced in Blackburn
offers a detailed look at the process
to sign up residents.
In parallel the sample
list of set up tasks (Word, zipped
11kb) gives a good indication of the
work to be done. A sample
set up key tasks (Word, zipped
8kb) covers the main work, premises,
organisation, and services.
Included here is a sample
application form (Word, zipped
5kb). Other forms are listed under
the Legal
Issues tab
The remainder of the documents are
personnel related job descriptions
and specifications. They cover administration/
office management (Word, zipped
21kb), project
officer/managers (Word, zipped
30kb), content
managers (Word, zipped 5kb),
community network staff (Word,
zipped 12kb) and ICT
support volunteers (Word, zipped
9kb).
A sample
database (Access, zipped 145kb)
is an Access database used to record
and monitor progress of applicants
to a project: it can be used as a
basis and fields and queries added
as required.
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