Civil society’s ability to use communications technology to reach out to service users and other stakeholders will be badly hampered by cuts to support providers’ budgets, the project manager in charge of Navca’s regional ICT champion scheme warned last week.

Paul Webster gave a poignant speech at the ‘Reality check for Big Society’ event run by Our Society Network last Thursday, his last day in the job. “I am one of the estimated 27,000 voluntary sector workers being made redundant today or around this time,” he told the audience.

Webster’s post was funded by Capacitybuilders, one of the 700-odd quangoes that also closed its doors on 31 March. He said: “My role is to help local support organisations and CVSs to understand how to use technology to be more effective in the work they are doing in outreach and in communities, and to be more ambitious in how they use technology.”

But Webster said people’s sympathies should not be directed at him, or at Navca, which will survive despite losing 12 staff last week.

“For me it’s about the organisations and people that I help to provide support to networks and communities, and the very small organisations that they in turn support.  In the three or four years I’ve been doing this I’ve seen how technology helps and how the use of it has come on so much more.

“We know that technology, social networks, collaboration, community reporting, hyper-local blogging, all these things, using Twitter and Facebook, do make a difference. They have to be the way forward.  I don’t think anyone can still be a naysayer and denounce the use of technology in the sector.

“But just as people are getting on board with this, just as they’re Skyping and videoconferencing etc, a lot of support structures and networks are being taken away. The work I’ve been doing, my project, will be more difficult now. I’m not saying we’re the only ones doing this stuff but things will be more difficult. People will have to reinvent the wheel, they’ll not know who to go to for support, they’ll have to make do and to find their own way through things."

He concluded: “I think without support networks these organisations may be weaker, and less well skilled to adapt and to see what is around the corner, what technology will be used next.”

Click here to read what others said at the Reality check event.