Plans are underway to form a collaborative software development group which will bring together charities and vendors to design, customise and share products.
The project is being led by Peter Heather, head of IT and systems at WaterAid, who is hoping to be able to launch it in late September.
Charities and vendors will pay a membership fee to be involved as well as making a time commitment, and will be expected to share their software alongside any customisations they have made to it.
Using SharePoint as the principle communication tool, any work the vendors conduct will be paid for at agreed rates and conducted on an agreed engagement model.
Speaking to civilsociety.co.uk, Heather said the project was more than just a shared procurement exercise. “You can have a club with access to cheaper resources, but actually you’re paying less for doing same stuff.
“The real benefits here are around leveraging the good work others have done so you can take advantage more quickly and more effectively.
“All these things that are really quite simple but we don’t do them as they still take time and resources, here you can get them cheaper but you can also realise benefits more effectively.
“We have these very good enterprise platforms but you still need to build things on them; this model provides a mechanism to use vendors but also the skills of people who do this work.”
Eight organisations involved
Also closely involved in the project is Brian Scurfield of Practical Action, who heads the CCITDG’s SharePoint special interest group, while in total, four charities and four software vendors are involved.
In particular, Heather has been meeting with customer software development company ThoughtWorks to develop an “agile” methodology for collaborative software development.
Heather is hoping to get more charities on board in due course, and said he intends to announce further membership benefits closer to the launch date.
Heather will be speaking about the project at the Charity IT Conference 2011 on 21 November. To book your place visit civilsociety.co.uk/IT2011
