Technology is not a one-time retail experience. Ongoing maintenance, support and management are essential, or the technology will degenerate. Proper support procedures and the resources needed to provide them are essential. An important part of the HSC program is a set of support and documentation materials. These materials help you with HSC program adoption, implementation, support, and maintenance. Below is an overview of the support and documentation materials. More detailed samples are located in Appendix 3.
Desktop User Support
Any organization that uses computers needs to have some form of end-user support. This can be provided in a number of different ways, but this support needs to be available. Lack of this first-level support is almost certain to result in significantly more costs, in staff time and data loss, than it will cost to provide.
Desktop support resources should be able to help you use desktop software and provide basic desktop troubleshooting skills and networking skills. Desktop support should also document problems and solutions. This documentation can be as simple as a paper log, or as complicated as an automated trouble ticket system.
There are two main approaches to provide this support: internal support resources, such as an IT manager or accidental techie, and external support resources, from a volunteer, mentor, or professional support organization.
Internal Support
Any organization that makes significant use of computers should consider having some level of internal IT knowledge. Someone with basic computer support training can solve most of the computer problems encountered by computer users and someone needs to be responsible for coordinating additional support resources as they are needed.
Smaller organizations may find their needs are best met by selecting and training an accidental techie, a staff member who has basic IT skills, but whose primary responsibilities are not IT-related. This role can be very useful both as a first responder to IT issues and as an interface with external support resources.
Larger organizations or organizations with significant investments in IT should have a qualified IT manager on staff, who can handle both the basic helpdesk functions and maintain and manage higher-level IT resources, such as servers and network equipment. For more information on these roles, see the staffing section below.
External Support
Most organizations need to have access to high-level IT expertise for those occasions where problems occur that their own staff cannot handle. Many organizations would rather not spend resources on internal IT, and look to external IT support providers for all support. In either case, organizations need to understand that the even though they do not have tech expertise, they need to maintain ownership of their technology and monitor the activities of external support providers.
Depending on an organization's needs, volunteers or mentors with good tech skills can be an adequate resource, though they may be unable to provide immediate emergency support. Professional support organizations can usually provide fast and effective support, though at a higher cost.
The TechSoup Web site has a number of articles on how best to manage consultants, available at http://www.techsoup.org/techsoup.cfm?id=1423.
Nonprofit IT staff fall into two common roles, the IT manager and the accidental techie. An IT manager is a staff member with an IT support background whose primary job responsibilities include IT support for the organization. This role is responsible for most IT decision making. An accidental techie is a staff member with basic IT skills, but whose primary responsibilities are not IT-related. Often the accidental techie participates with management to make IT decisions rather than taking sole responsibility for those decisions.
Not everyone is cut out for a tech role. When deciding on how to staff IT roles look for someone interested in technology; not necessarily a "gear head" but someone who doesn't mind digging into technical issues and who gets some enjoyment out of problem solving. As important, and often more important, are communication skills. One of the functions of a technical person is explaining technical issues to non-technical people, and understanding non-technical people's technology questions. Rather than looking for someone to address all the technical issues that might arise, look for someone who can listen and explain technical issues to both technical and non-technical people.
We have included sample job descriptions for both these roles in Appendix 3.
Regardless of whether you provide in-house desktop support or not, it is important to have some sort of tech representative on staff. This is the person who can help shepherd the HSC process, manage consultants, and arrange (and possibly provide) training. You may already have staff with specific technology responsibilities, perhaps a person to help restore backups, perhaps a person to be responsible for calling the consultant. The key is to identify these roles, and not let them just be ad-hoc positions.
Some sample internal technology roles and responsibilities:
Fancy IT systems won't do your organization any good unless your staff has the necessary skills and knowledge to use the systems, so make sure that resources are set aside to cover the costs of staff training. There are various ways to approach IT skills training, from formal classroom lessons, to informal one-to-one knowledge transfer.
Here are some basic recommendations for IT skills training.
Basic IT training for all staff.Any staff member who uses a computer for daily work should have some basic training in navigating and using the operating system, using the Web and safe computing basics, and common productivity tasks (usually MS Word and MS Excel basics). Classroom training in these skills is available from organizations such as CompassPoint or CiBER. Self-directed training courses are available on CD or online such as Microsoft's Electronic Learning Library (MELL), available as part of the Microsoft donation program from TechSoup Stock.
Training for specific procedures. Your organization has unique IT systems such server data organization, specialized applications, and internal IT processes like back-up system maintenance. Ideally, the documentation of these systems developed earlier in the HSC process can provide users with adequate training for most of these procedures.
Training in specialized applications. If your organization uses specialized applications, you will need to develop a process to train new users on these systems. You can provide external training on these applications, such as vendor workshops, or internal training, such as one-on-one training with a super-user. In instances where the cost of external training exceeds the available resources, we recommend that you choose one user to become the trainer. This user, often the accidental techie, should receive "train the trainer" training on an application so that person can train other staff members.
Role-based training. Often a role in your organization will have unique knowledge of the systems involved in that role. In a case like this you should transfer this knowledge to other staff, either through accurate documentation or through job shadowing or other one-to-one training.
Worksheet 6: Support and IT Staffing
General Documentation
Documentation is necessary for effective service and support of your technologies. This documentation should be updated regularly, but does not need to be exhaustive, though some organizations with complex mission-critical systems may need to keep careful records for these systems. Good documentation requires consistency in documentation methods and terminology. It also requires a process to validate the documentation, to insure that its users be able to complete their tasks.
The HSC program provides templates and guides for creating a set of documentation for your organization's IT systems.
Documentation should focus on the unique information about your IT infrastructure, including Internet service accounts and passwords, hardware configurations, software licenses, network configurations, server configurations, and application configurations. The objective is that a competent techie, starting from scratch, should be able to recreate your computing environment from the information in the documentation.
You should also document common procedures, such as back-up system use and management. This documentation should focus on how things operate, how to accomplish specific tasks, and how to respond to specific events.
You may also find you need to create custom end-user documentation, procedures for logons, directions for using common applications, etc.
Inventory
An inventory of your computers is one of the basic parts of your documentation. Various automated tools for inventory data collection exist, including TechSurveyor (a part of NPower's TechAtlas planning tool) and Belarc. Automating the inventory process allows central data collection and analysis. For larger networks, these tools may be worth the cost, in both money and staff time, to configure and test.
For smaller networks, these automated tools are most likely inappropriate because a manual inventory is just as effective, and less costly. Both the Windows and Macintosh platforms have easy-to-use tools to assist in the inventory process.
For Windows, the System Information program provides access to a wealth of information about a computer. The system information application is at Programs - Accessories - System Tools - System Information.
For Macintosh, the System Profiler program provides in-depth information about a computer. This application is located in the Utilities folder in the main Applications folder.
We have included full inventory templates in Appendix 3 and online to help you record your inventory information. This worksheet contains fields for the information that HSC considers most useful to record.
PoliciesYou should institute basic policies for computer use that include an acceptable computer use policy for staff, and a data privacy policy for clients and customers. You may need to develop other policies to meet programmatic needs or legal requirements.
A sample data privacy policy is included in Appendix 3. A sample acceptable use policy is here: http://www.techsoup.org/howto/worksheetpage.cfm?worksheetid=98.
BudgetsAll the tech know-how in the world won't help you if you are unable to fund the hardware and software you need. Include technology costs, hardware, software, training, and support, in your annual budget as line items. Include the costs of purchasing and maintaining information systems you need for your programs to be successful.
For more information on technology budgets, read these articles on TechSoup:
http://www.techsoup.org/techsoup.cfm?id=1521
http://www.techsoup.org/techsoup.cfm?id=1206
Worksheet 7: Documentation Checklist