ICT Management > Getting Support

On The Road Again - Reflections On Lasa's Circuit Rider Project 2002-2004

By Lasa Information Systems Team

Ian Runeckles of Lasa's Information Systems Team reflects on Lasa's first funded Circuit Rider Project which ran from 2002-2004

The Intro

Lasa started its 2-year Circuit Rider Project in September 2002. Funded by the Community Fund, 19 London-based member organisations from the Migrant Organisations Development Agency (MODA) and Advice^UK were selected to help them develop their ICT capacity using the circuit riding model.

Project members "signed-up" to effectively an 18 month intervention overseen by a steering committee. There is currently more information on the Project at www.lasa.org.uk/circuitriderproject although this is likely to be subsumed into the Knowledgebase at a future date.

The Project evaluation (pdf document), published in August 2004, pronounced it a major success. The evaluation was carried out in-house by Lasa's Phil Woodall in 3 stages and was very useful. It also meant that we ended the project with an excellent document which we can be proud of and use to hopefully persuade funders and sceptics of the power of circuit riding.

However, this article is a personal reflection on how things went from the point of view of the circuit rider. Without further ado...

Start Me Up - The Initial Phase And Healthchecks

I joined Lasa in September 2002, having previously worked as a proto-circuit rider for Newham Training Network. Having worked in a solo role for the last three years it was energising to join a small team and be able to concentrate on technology matters.

I soon found out that the Project I was to work on was considerably different to the one I'd just left where the emphasis was on technical support rather than strategic development. Luckily I'm a fast learner, I think!

After running a launch event we'd recruited most of the groups we needed and arrangements were made to start Healthcheck visits in January 2003. Except that one group was eager to get moving before Christmas because of pressing IT needs so we did a little bit of work before we were really ready and that in the long run was detrimental to the group's involvement, I felt, as they never really got the full Healthcheck or Action Plan.

We drew up pro forma assessment forms to help us give structure to the discussion with the group contact but soon found that was restricting - essentially once a discussion topic started rolling, it was difficult to get back to how the proforma questions were running.

Despite phasing the initial visits it soon became apparent that we were going to be very busy for the first few months as Healthcheck reports and action plans were going to need to be written and a follow up visit done. In addition, in early March we took off (literally) for the US Circuit Rider Round Up in Oakland California and it seemed like a long way to go for just 3 days - the trip was extended by ten days so we could see more of the Bay Area and visit friends in LA.Once back in the saddle (shall I quit with the western imagery now?) it was time to Healthcheck the next phase and for more reports to be written.

Looking back we should have made this part of the project easier for ourselves - perhaps a longer project period would have helped with groups starting at wider intervals. On the other hand this would have meant that it would have taken longer to have groups ready to be able to take part in seminars (dealt with later). Alternatively a larger team of riders working on this intensive period would have spread the workload (but maybe wouldn't have helped with the personal relationship between the Rider and the group contact).

All in all, the initial four or five months were incredibly busy but we managed to survive and it did allow us to move on the nitty-gritty of working with groups on advancing their action plans.

Travelling In Style - The Visits

I wonder how many cups of tea I drank on the project? Groups were always very keen to welcome me with a brew and very good they were too - biscuits were a bonus and definitely endeared me to them. One group brought out the best china and teapot which made me feel very important.

I digress. We envisaged that around 6 visits to each group would be carried out over the 18 month actual project period - in the end some had a lot more and others had less. For statistics junkies, we carried out 136 visits to 19 groups, including the Healthcheck, so that's around 7 visits per group. Having more visits did not necessarily mean more progress was made.

The visits were the heart of the project. Groups were not afraid to request visits although some had to be reminded that they were due a visit when we hadn't heard from them for a while. I was especially pleased when I visited one group, whom I hadn't been to for a while, to discover that they had made huge progress and had obtained funding, bought new PCs and connected them all to a peer-to-peer network.

Shake Some Action - Developing The Action Plans

Action Plans developed out of the Healthcheck report and were the main focus of the project's progress. They were generally used as the agenda for each visit and could be added to as necessary. On reflection there should probably have been more involvement of the group in developing the plan, and possibly management committees. (Note: We offered an evening training session to management committee members but this met with a poor response so wasn't run).

A spreadsheet workbook was used to track the action plans, headings from the Action Plan were listed and points recorded from each visit. This was then emailed to the groups after the event so they knew what they should be doing next.

Some groups galloped through the action plan which meant that they were then able to add new things - one group started the project with a ramshackle assortment of equipment, and, with help, put in new PCs and peer to peer network to share their new ADSL line (fast "always on" Internet access) which meant that they were then able to start looking at an organisational database and website.

(I Know) I'm Losing You - Why Some Groups Dropped Out

Three of the organisations that applied and were selected never got off the starting blocks. One dropped out because the impending Gulf War was making too great a demand on their staff resources; one we couldn't get in contact with either by phone, fax, email or letter to arrange the first visits; and another lost the member of staff who was to be the contact on the Project. One group had the Healthcheck but unfortunately couldn't commit a staff member to carry on with the Project after the contact went on long term sick leave.

We also discovered that not all the groups were embracing the 'holistic' strategic nature of the project - they had a single issue which they wanted fixed or addressed and that was it "never mind the backups, here's the website". This, ultimately, was depressing for the Riders and self defeating for the organisation.

Communication Breakdown - On Working With Support Companies

Building a relationship with a technical support company can be hard work, I discovered. In the main the companies we worked with have experience of the sector and are there to help out small organisations and do an excellent job for them. I've found that they will go the extra mile, realise that budgets are tight and will be flexible and accommodating. In some cases, however, we had to agree to differ on what the appropriate solution was for an organisation - and I still think that firewall is over specified.

We Can Work It Out - On Consulting

I can say that without fear of contradiction I learnt an awful lot about consultancy. I'm still learning - and still reading Peter Block's excellent Flawless Consulting (www.designedlearning.com). In the main the groups were wonderful and were generally not resistant. In some cases I wish they'd been more demanding as I witnessed some very un-strategic activities especially with regard to purchasing in a hurry - "Did you really need another printer?" We did try to impress on them that, even if they subsequently ignored our advice, they should call us before committing funds. You can't win them all though.

The Long And Winding Road - The Circuit Rider's Lot

Travelling to the groups meant that part of the job was spent travelling on London's wonderful tube, bus and rail system. In the main this was fine although I have memories of struggling up the Holloway Road with the temperature in the 30s in the summer of 2003 wishing I was somewhere else - and at the opposite end of the spectrum, waiting on Haringay Green Lanes station in a blizzard for a train which then broke down a few stops down the line.

The travelling element was useful for catching up on reading matter. My bulging rucksack usually contained the organisation's project file plus current issues of PCPro, PCPlus or something more esoteric and baffling like Linux Format. I estimate that between all the staff involved in visits we travelled for around 215 hours or 9 days - which means we could have travelled to Australia and back 5 times.

Computer World - Administering the Project

At the start of the Project we also looked at how we were going to administrate and manage it. Lasa's organisational database wasn't suitable, so I adapted an Access database I'd used previously which worked for us and was easily updated to take account of the data we wanted to record and report on. The database tracked general organisational and contact data, all the visits to the groups, seminar attendees and so on. It's now also being used by another eRider project, Ungana Afrika (www.ungana-afrika.org) in a modified form.

The Rider and project manager met on a weekly basis to discuss what was happening that week. We soon gave up on attempting to use Microsoft Project for project management - it was taking us more time to keep the charts updated than working on the Project itself. Instead, we came up with a spreadsheet on which was listed each group that we were working with and their current status and action points, previous and next visits. We also used it to keep track of the other elements of the project - seminars, website, training, staff holidays, important things like that!

Train In Vain - Seminars And Training

We organised a number of seminars and training sessions. These were nerve wracking (for me anyway) and took a lot of preparation but ultimately were very satisfying. The participants really enjoyed them - it was a day out of the office at least, and they were invaluable for community development and shared experience.

We mainly used the Gestalt Centre in Shoreditch, a therapy centre with some large rooms for hire which provided us with a good space and splendid Marks & Sparks lunches - the buckets of chocolaty things were especially enjoyed by all. I'm not sure how therapeutic it was for some of the Centre's other users to have us making a racket in their shared central space though - sorry about that, I hope we didn't cause any lasting psychological or physiological damage. I highly recommend the venue - (www.gestaltcentre.co.uk) - thanks, Jenny.

We also ran hands-on sessions at the Migrants Resource Centre concentrating on Lasa's own AIMS case-management software (www.lasa.org.uk/aims) and on using MS Outlook in a networked environment. These were chaotic and exhausting but fun (note to self: don't try to train on 2 different versions of the software at the same time, and you lose 45 minutes of the session).

Also thanks to Superhighways Partnership (www.superhighways.org.uk) who kindly offered places to our trainees on the extensive training programme that they run in SW London for voluntary sector organisations.

Let's Work Together - The Community Aspect

This was the area that I believe we found hardest to deliver on. Because there was no one unifying factor which linked all the groups (apart from all being advice giving agencies) it meant that we had to start from scratch in building up links.

We provided a mailing list which we assumed would take off and become a thriving information and self-help exchange but which fell pretty flat - generally it was used by Lasa to send out announcements to the groups and they then mentioned during the second phase of the evaluation that they were getting too much information. We then changed our email information delivery method to a once-a-month news digest which seemed to go down well.

In retrospect we should have run a session early on to allow group reps to meet each other in the flesh and explain how the tools worked (techies are generally at ease with blasting off message to mailing lists of hundreds of people that they don't know) non-technical people aren't.

However, we did have a number of Latin American groups and, having a client group in common, meant that they used the opportunity to communicate outside of the project.

Lean On Me - Supporting The Rider

I had two Project managers who worked for two days a week on the project - initially Sarah Lord Soáres who went off on maternity leave in December 2003 to give birth to her lovely baby girl, Bebelle, then Aba Maison. I don't think I needed a huge amount of supervision but I have very much valued their support - thanks for putting up with me. Essentially, though, it was a team effort and the other members of the Information Systems Team here at Lasa have also helped enormously by giving time and expertise when I ran out of either.

Mailing lists such as the UKRiders also helped out with peer support, advice and suggestions. Other mailing lists such as the US Riders lists and Interider were extremely useful and kept me in touch with Riders with enormous amounts of experience around the world. The Knowledgebase provided a wealth of information which was very useful for referring on to groups - "Here's an article about why you need to have appropriate security in place for your ADSL service" - along with TechSoup and many other sites.

Going To California / Philadelphia Freedom - The US Round Ups

One of the "perks" of doing this job has been the opportunity to travel to the US to attend the annual gatherings of circuit riders and non profit tech staff organised by N-TEN. I had an excellent time at both the Oakland 2003 Round Up and the Philadelphia 2004 Non Profit Technology Conference, and especially enjoyed the Days of Service where we'd work for a day with a local organisation.

I'm not sure how much I helped them but I learnt a lot from the Riders I was working with! Greetings to the Immigrant Legal Resource Centre in San Francisco and Community Legal Services of Philadelphia and thanks to the Riders I worked with - Josh Peskay at the Fund for the City of New York, Bruce Brown from the United Way of the Greater Dayton Area and Carl Scalzo of the United Jewish Communities of Metrowest New Jersey (www.ujcnj.org).

The conferences provided a mind boggling amount of information, resources and stimulation. I met some great people from all over the world and I’m hoping to go to Chicago in 2005. It's also great that we now have a comparable event in the UK - Lasa organised in conjunction with N-TEN a Circuit Rider Conference in September 2004 which was a great success.

And The Outro

Overall the Project was a hugely enjoyable experience for me - and I hope it wasn't too bad for the recipients of the service - thanks for taking part. I believe that most of them valued it and made progress with their use and management of ICT. We estimate 75% of the groups made around 75% progress on completing their plans.

Final quote - one of the group contacts said to me something like "When I started the project I was like a child and I was crawling - now I know how to walk". That's all the encouragement I need to go back out there and do it all over again with another set of groups.