Completed Project: South Carolina Bar Foundation – Technology Audit
Task: Joyce created and implemented a technology audit subsequently providing recommendations on strategic technology investments and educating the community on current technology trends.
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Shannon Scruggs, Executive Director of the South Carolina Bar Foundation, was looking for a way to use the current “down economy” to her best advantage. She determined that the best way to use this time was to create a snapshot of the status of all the legal aid programs she funded, especially with regard to technology.
After working with Shannon to determine what specific things she would like to know about her programs, it was clear that an online survey would be the most effective (and easily the least expensive) way to begin to gather that data. Using LSNTAP‘s Poverty Law Survey Tool I created a survey asking questions about everything from virus protection to website content creation. After the survey was completed by staff of each of the programs, I did followup interviews where necessary to understand the information provided or to gather additional data.
Next I did a standardized review of all the program websites (for those programs that had websites) and established a minimum standard for usability and content based on my own experience and generally accepted industry “rules of thumb”. This provided Shannon with an overall sense of how her programs made use of current online technologies as well as detailed information regarding specific capacities and functionality.
The final piece was to pull all the data together. I produced a written report comprised of three chapters: 1) Detailed Technology Review of Each Program, 2) Current Industry Trends and a Context for Making Technology Decisions, 3) Recommendations regarding Technology Investment In Priority Order. This report represented not only a thorough and comprehensive review of the technology infrastructure of each program but also a cogent and compelling set of recommendations aimed at positioning the programs to be able to embrace and exploit currently available technologies as well as future technologies as they evolve.
