Charity IT departments should free themselves to focus on projects related to their mission by collaborating on commodity services, according to Stuart McSkimming, head of IT at Shelter.

In a Civil Society IT Conference session exploring how charities could increase their level of collaboration, McSkimming evoked the views of Edward Granger Happ, the global CIO of the International Red Cross.

“He says what they could be doing is the more enabling stuff, trying to connect with the aims of the charity.

“For example, at Shelter our IT department could be doing more things with technology that directly helps homeless people.”

McSkimming (pictured) added that charities should consider outsourcing or sharing services such as email and networking to free up internal resource.

Public sector model

He also professed his cautious enthusiasm for plans to share IT within the public sector, and the possibility that similar models could be created for civil society organisations.

“Government IT doesn’t really sound very good, but David Cameron is betting a lot on public service networks being able to share a lot more.

“They’re borrowing heavily from Apple with an idea for a government app store where people like the London Borough of Camden will be able to buy an HR app, rather than using their own systems.

“It sounds like a brilliant idea but I’m waiting to see what happens on that one; give it a year or two and see what the headlines are like.”