[UgaBYTES] Support centre discussion summary

[Ahmed Ndaula]

Dear members,

This is a summary about the recently concluded discussion on the impact of
the support centres to the telecentres.

*>> *The impact of the support centres to you and your community
Support centers may not give all the answers but they are able to trigger
responses to many posts from the pool of knowledge that comes from many
knowledgeable people in the various lists. The experiences in Asia and Latin
America and the provision of a knowledge hub for solutions cannot be taken
for granted. But we need to have many people sharing their experiences and
giving to others what they consider their own knowledge which the support
centers can then highlight. There is need for many specialists in ICT,
Management, Agriculture, Business, Finance, Policy etc, to be identified so
that we can have more vibrant support centers. I find too much learning and
focus to providing more and more data rather than information. We need to
have more stories on cases on impact rather than what has been said (by
Kiringai, Kenya).

Support Centre is very important for sustainability of Telecentres and it
plays a key role in building the capacities of Telecentre managers and
operators. Help desks are playing also a great role in knowledge sharing and
it helps Telecentre managers and operators to manage their Telecentres in a
quick way.  The remarkable statistics on the support centre displayed by
UgaBYTES, is a clear indication that the there's a good use of it though no
clear indication of it's impact on the telecentres.  I remember I wrote a
message to my colleagues in TC-MENA three months ago about the online Arabic
support centre, sharing the idea of UgaBYTES and I hope this is the right
time to start one. It can be one of the agenda to setup one in Arabic during
next month's workshop (by Ahmed Eisa, Sudan).

Support centres have played a key role in the sustainability of telecentres,
forinstance, the answers it provides for technical troubleshooting, helps
telecentre to save resources that could be spent to pay for the external
technicians. I support Cleopa's idea of Wiki-based help desk. I have made a
look on the two help desks  ( English and French)and I got a question of a
kind of "interoperability" between the different help desks. I think there's
a need to translate questions and having all help desks databases holding
similar questions. This means that a similar question can be found in your
preferred language help desk (by Nkurunziza, Burundi).

CAICC in Mozambique distributed a questionnaire aiming at finding out about
the degree of satisfaction with the CAICC support centre and priority needs
to all the delegates at the General Meeting of the Community Radio Forum
(FORCOM) - in other words, representatives from radios and CMCs from all
over the country. As soon as the responses are analyzed, they will be shared
on the list.

*>> *Suggestions:

Each of the help desks ( Bengla, French, English, Portuguese etc) get a
face-to-face small focus group of telecentre staff, network leaders to
provide specific responses to the same questions asked here? I would guess
that the  biggest number of practitioners who can use help desks may not be
online on regular basis. They may not provide feedback for that matter (by
Mayanja Meddie, Canada).

The approach of having a few experts research and answer the questions
posted on the support center is good because it takes relatively shorter
time to have feedback.  However I am looking at a more democratic and open
approach where we still have the team of technical experts but develop
something like a wiki which is editable from all corners but moderated by
the experts. This will be more inclusive and participatory (by Cleopa,
Kenya)

My suggestion to improve these help desks, is to add the frequently asked
question   **FAQs** on top of the pages of help desks and that will save
time (by Ahmed Eisa, Sudan)

>> Way forward
Because it's a multi-lingual help corner, I think it's necessary to have
such discussions in other languages like French, Portuguese, Bangla and
Spanish. This will help in getting a more detailed information on the impact
and a clear way forward. It could be that there were folks who wanted to
contribute but because of the language barrier they could not have their
contributions heard.


You reaction to this are most welcome.


Best,

-- 
Ndaula Ahmed
Program officer,
Technology management
UgaBYTES Initiative
Plot 2218 Ggaba Road, Kabalagala
2nd Floor, Kangave House
P.O. Box 6081 Kampala, Uganda
Mobl: +256 773 066 343 / 702 066 343
Off: +256-414-267247
Check our web: www.ugabytes.org
http://www.ahmedpanel.com


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