Online services in the voluntary sector

Feargal O’Kane, web developer at the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action, reviews the various ways in which the sector uses information technology to enhance its advice services.

Recent discussions within the advice sector with regard to information and communication technology (ICT) have focused almost exclusively on the need for a common case recording system for the sector as outlined in the Department for Social Development’s Strategy for supporting delivery of voluntary advice services to the community. However, the potential for ICT to transform the way the advice sector functions reaches far beyond a common case recording system. This article, explores some of the ways the advice sector is already grasping ICT to enhance the service for end users and for members of the sector itself.

Advice websites

An online advice resource is usually the first step an organisation takes when entering the online arena. Examples in Northern Ireland include the Law Centre’s Encyclopaedia of Rights, Citizens Advice’s Advice Guide and Housing Rights Service’s housingadviceNI. These three sites are very different in their approach and content. The Law Centre’s site focuses on information for practitioners while both Advice Guide and housingadviceNI are public focused websites. Even these sites are markedly different, with housing adviceNI providing detailed Northern Ireland specific information on housing alone while Advice Guide provides more general advice as part of a UK-wide advice site.

Advice provision is obviously central to the work of the advice sector; therefore an advice website is the most obvious means of delivering online services. An advice website can function on numerous levels. Firstly, it can reduce the number of basic enquiries frontline advisers receive by providing answers to basic questions at a time that suits the client. Secondly, it should ensure that clients are better informed about their rights – leading to more informed and targeted opening questions, allowing the adviser to deal more effectively with the key issue and helping to avoid lengthy questioning to find out what the real issue is, if the client contacts an agency for further help. Thirdly, it can help empower clients and allow them to solve their problems themselves. Finally, an advice website can provide information to other practitioners. For example, non-specialist housing advisers use housingadviceNI as a handy reference site when dealing with non-complex housing issues.

Delivering an effective advice website is a complex and ongoing project. Launching the site is in many ways only the beginning. While it is of key importance to ensure before launch that the content is relevant and accurate, it is arguably more important to ensure that all the content on the site is up to date and legally accurate over the life of the project. A client need only find one small piece of information on your site to be factually incorrect for the entire site to be called into question.
Ensuring that you have the systems and staff in place to keep your site up to date with legislative changes - both large and small - is the key task.

Email advice

The next step for advice agencies is to develop an email advice service. This is very much a developing area in Northern Ireland. Citizen’s Advice has taken the lead but Housing Rights Service has also begun delivering a pilot email advice service as an integrated part of its online advice site housingadvice NI.org. While the ability to ask for advice online is much sought after, it can lead to significant problems for the advice agency. The immediate thoughts tend to shift towards problems around security, quality and confidentiality. However, in many ways the practical side of developing an email advice service is as much about planning how to manage your clients’ expectations as it is working out how you actually deliver the service. As the service is online, clients are likely to have a not entirely unreasonable expectation that their emails will be answered immediately.

One of the most important steps in delivering the service is developing effective standards of service and appropriate measures for referring clients between the email advice service, the website and any physical referral service. In addition, it is essential to reassure clients that email advice is not a replacement for face to face or telephone advice services, but simply an enhancement.The major issue with email advice from a service provision standpoint is ensuring an adviser gets all the information needed from the client. Constant monitoring of email requests and tweaking of the online form can make it easy for users to access an email advice service and ensure that advisers are getting enough information to be able to provide accurate advice.

One of the main benefits of email advice when linked with an advice website is that email requests provide invaluable feedback on the advice website. While statistical analysis can tell you what people were looking for and found on your site, analysis of email advice requests allows you to find out exactly what people are looking for but cannot find on the site. This allows more informed content production planning, leading to a site that is more focused on users’ needs. A by-product is that more users find what they want on your advice site, leading to less low level enquiries ant therefore allowing specialist advisers to spend more time on complex high priority cases.

The interaction available through email advice is a key development in the future of online advice services. The provision of email advice services provides the third element of an online advice site – easy access to an agency’s contact details for emergency cases, provision of relevant information for clients who feel capable of dealing with their problems themselves and access to email advice for clients who are unwilling to contact the agency either in person or over the phone. Added interactivity through the use of SMS text messages to notify clients when answers to their questions are ready is another example of an easy way to increase client satisfaction at minimal cost and effort. An example of this service is currently used by Shelter in England and Wales when responding to email advice requests.

Benefits

The major benefits for advice agencies who are utilising ICT are clear:

• an expanded reach of services geographically;
• the ability to provide a service to clients who would not traditionally use an advice service;
• the ability to provide a service to clients at a time that suits the client;
• increased knowledge among clients leading to more efficient and effective service provision.

Developments

ICT can also be used to increase the effectiveness of the advice agency itself. Obviously, agencies can use the advice sites mentioned above or the subscription based AdviceDirect to ensure they are up to date with the latest developments but there are a number of other innovative ways to use ICT. In this short space I can obviously only give a brief overview of these technologies and a taste of their potential for developing the advice sector.

Distance learning

Distance learning is currently being piloted by Housing Rights Service as part of the Housing Advice Training Programme during Autumn 2006. The distance learning software makes it easier for participants to keep up to date with the six week training course by providing course materials online, allowing participants to complete assignments online and also providing forums and chatrooms for participants to discuss the course. The initiative was introduced following consultation with members who were keen to sample the benefits of distance learning while ensuring that the all important face to face element of the course was not replaced entirely.

Email groups

Despite being one of the longest established technologies, email groups are still one of the most effective means of communicating among a widely spread group. AdviceNI’s advicelink is an excellent example of the potential benefits that a widely used email group can bring to the sector.

eConsultation

Online consultations have suffered from over expectation. At one time they were expected to replace paper consultations and allow ordinary citizens the chance to debate policy. While these original high hopes for eConsultations have now been downplayed, the success of AdviceNet by AdviceNI shows the potential for advisers to discuss not only day to day issues of importance such as the impact of tax credits but also policy issues such as the future of advice services in Northern Ireland in general.

With the massive steps being made by the advice sector in Northern Ireland, I feel it is clear that the sector will continue to embrace the potential offered by ICT and build upon the already impressive foundations.