Bridging the Knowledge Gap

The drive for technology in the social services sector also needs to be met with a different perspective – it’s a different world and the traditional processes of systems development may be adequate; but are certainly not optimized for success in this arena.

What’s the state in the social services sector now? I think Shelly McDonald, the general manager for CEDCO (Community Economic Development Corporation, Victoria BC) sums it up best. “Technology is not serving us. It seems we’re always serving the technology. The technologies we use are designed by architects in the technology industry, not by the architects of our business practices. So it doesn’t really work.”

After 20 years in the non-profit world, it was evident to me that business pretty much ignored this marketplace because they were under the assumption that non-profits didn’t have any money because they were always out seeking donations so they were a poor market place. It was only with the advent of large scale public sector reform movements in the last 15 years and the publicity that was generated through the problems of governments offloading services to community that business began to realize that billions of tax dollars were flowing from government to community. The secret was out and thesocial services sector (or as also known: the non-profit sector, the NGO sector, the 3 rd Sector), is now the latest competitive landscape for technology. The next driver for this marketplace however is its convergence with primary care.