We are approaching the end of 2007 and that means it is time to evaluate the work done the last 12 months. I did so in an article written by MS Tanzania information officer Pernille Baerendtsen, and posted on the MS Tanzania website yesterday. The article describes the steps taken on the road to enabling a number of local organisations in Tanzania to manage their own websites through Joomla.
Experience with training MS partners in web
management
Joomla Kabisa
During 2007 IT Adviser Jesper Mogensen launched a programme assisting MS
Tanzania’s partner organisations to either build or improve their websites. - A
project in many stages.
By Pernille Baerendtsen, Information
Officer17. December 2007
A total of eight organisations have worked with Jesper during 2007, and
currently four of them have created a new website, two organisations have
exchanged their old website with a new one, and another two organisations are on
the brink of launching a new website in the coming year.
The idea of the project is to give partner organisations the tools and skills
to manage the websites themselves without the assistance of a third party. At
the same time it is a good opportunity to revise the organisations’ online
strategies, and hopefully improve the design, communication and functionality of
already existing websites. It has been a project in many stages.
The first step was to find a package of software that was free, easy to use,
but at the same time accommodating the needs of the organisations in terms of
features and functionality. The choice fell on Joomla, a free, open source
content management system. Joomla enables the user to manage a website from any
computer with an internet connection, and only using a browser. No programming,
no special software.
Netshine and Kabissa
The next step was to find web hosts supporting
Joomla. Not all servers can host Joomla because it is database driven, and also
a matter of good support, and a matter of costs. As a default it is up to the
organisation to choose which web host to use, as long as the host supports
Joomla, but the majority of organisations has followed the recommendations of
Jesper and chosen either Netshine, a British host specialising in hosting
Joomla, or Kabissa, an organisation working with capacity building within IT in
Africa, and promoting a free hosting package.
Training
The websites themselves have been developed in
co-operation between Jesper and the partner organisation. In that way the first
training in how to manage the sites, was given even before the site was up and
running. The second training session was a three day course given at MS TCDC,
and representatives from all the implicated partner organisations were invited.
The training covered the basic web management procedures including optimising
photos for a website, but it also functioned as a consultation, where each
partner made plans and benchmarks for future development of the site. Last but
not least it was an opportunity for webmasters from various organisations to
meet each other and talk about web management.
The training at MS TCDC has since been followed up by individual one-on-one
training either at the office of the partner organisation or at the MS Tanzania
Country Office, and most of the concerned organisations are now able to maintain
their websites themselves or with little assistance from Jesper.
The future
In the beginning of 2008 Jesper will begin working on
new websites for a number of partner organisations, but the most important part
of the project in 2008 will be to make it sustainable. Therefore even more
training will follow, even for the organisations already managing their websites
without assistance from Jesper.
Jesper explains that this is very much a matter of learning the terms and the
possibilities of the media: ‘A website is much more organic than a magazine, a
report or a printed newsletter. A site can always be improved, new ideas can be
implemented and bad ideas can be changed. When a website is stable and regularly
updated, it is time to think about new ways to service the visitor. Online
newsletter? Forum? Photo gallery? Polls? It is all possible in Joomla, but it
takes both skills and time to manage.’
Time and resources
Especially time is a key factor. For some
organisations it is already a paradox: They want a well functioning, ambitious
yet low cost website, and they want to manage it themselves. But they don’t want
– or they can’t – allocate the (wo)man power to do it.
According to Jesper some of the partner organisations have chosen to
downscale their ambitions, which he reckons is fine: ‘It is better to have a
website with low ambitions but stable content, than a website promising too
much. A typical example of an organisational website promising too much is a
website with several months old news items displaying on their front page. Or an
events calendar with no events. There are already some examples of
organisational websites with problems finding the time or human resources to
maintain their websites.’
Jesper point to another issue which can threat the project’s sustainability:
‘Some organisations use their MS development worker as webmaster for the site in
stead of allocating resources to managing the site, simply because the
organisation will loose the capacity to maintain the site when the DW leaves.
The – rather poor – excuse is that the organisation doesn’t have the capacity to
manage the site otherwise, but in that case the organisation should rather face
the consequence and maybe not have a website at all, as a poorly managed website
can do more damage to an organisation than no website at all!’
Networking
As an alternative Jesper highlights that a much better
strategy is networking between the organisations: ‘There is no doubt that the
organisations using Joomla as a web management tool will build up human
resources within IT and web management, but the skills will vary tremendously
from organisation to organisation. It is a natural process in organisational web
management to abandon the tendency to see one’s own organisation as an isolated
island, but rather see it as one of many entities with a common goal.
Co-operation between organisation in terms of support or knowledge sharing will
benefit all the organisations and ease the burden of web management in the long
run.’
Therefore the training sessions are important, simply because people meet
each other, see each others organisational websites and talk internet and web
management. It is a step stone to future co-operation either on-line or face-to
face.
Blogging
Another tool for networking is blogging. Jesper has set up
a blog dedicated to web management through Joomla among organisations in
Tanzania:
http://guhle.typepad.com/joomla_kabisa/. At the moment the site
only features a few articles, and a single gallery, but it is the idea that the
blog will be used much more actively to support a network of webmasters in
Tanzania using joomla. Hopefully other webmasters will contribute with articles,
comments or questions on the future, or even put up their own blog.
Joomla Kabisa?
Joomla Kabisa is Kiswahili and roughly translated
it means 'total' and 'that's it'.
As part of MS Tanzania’s focus on ‘Building Local Democracy’, and after
several requests from its partner organisations, MS Tanzania has assisted a
growing number of partner organisations developing more transparency by using
their websites in a more active manner. Additionally, the intention is to
enhance areas like information, communication, fundraising, advocacy and sharing
of experience by giving the partner organisations improved access to managing
their own websites.
The process consists of a transfer of the responsibility of the website
management from private companies (typically the organisations’ ISP) to the
organisations. Through training MS Tanzania has introduced new systems for
updating websites without the partner organisations necessarily having a prior
knowledge of IT, html or web management.
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