[liberationtech] ICT and Information Security Consulting Services for NGOs/Activist/Press?

[Nathan of Guardian]

Everything Gunner said +5. The long view is critical here. I am ashamed
Aspiration wasn't the first place I pointed to as a successful model,
but I know Gunner will forgive me.

On Tue, Nov 11, 2014, at 01:59 AM, Allen Gunn wrote:
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> Hey Jesse,
> 
> Thanks for starting this thread.
> 
> On 11/10/2014 09:35 AM, Jesse Krembs wrote:
> > Dear all
> > 
> > For a number of years now I've been ponderer the idea of ICT/IS 
> > consultancy organization focus on the NGO/Activists/Press  (N/A/P) 
> > markets. The basic idea being that there should be a boutique 
> > consultancy group that is focused on upping the over all ICT/IS
> > game of N/A/P world.
> 
> I would argue that lumping those three personas together is your first
> headache; in our experience, those three stakeholder groups have
> fundamentally different need sets, infrastructures, risk tolerances,
> resource profiles etc.
> 
> And just "NGO" as a needs profile is its own long tail; for every
> multinational United Way or Red Cross with substantial IT departments,
> there are literally hundreds of grassroots NGOs where the person who
> can type the fastest is "accidental techie" by default and tasked with
> web and database planning. And in between lies a weird assortment of
> outsourced, part-time and lone-full-timer IT staffing solutions which
> are too often janky or worse.
> 
> > There are some organizations out there doing this to certain
> > degree, (Securing Change, SecDev Group, ONI, Tactical Tech
> > Collective). But it feels like many are focused similar but
> > different targets, or not sufficiently funded. And funding is the
> > most key thing I believe. I don't see a standard fee for service
> > model working in this market (There just isn't the money inside a
> > client organization), so something else will be needed.
> > 
> > So a couple of questions. 1: Is there already someone doing this?
> 
> Our organization, Aspiration, is a US nonprofit focused on the "1
> level up" question of "what does an ecosystem of such intermediaries
> look/work like?" And it is at present an interesting patchwork of
> solution providers across the globe.
> 
> Should you happen to be in driving/travel distance, there will be
> a good bunch of folks in Oakland next week discussing related
> questions at our annual conference:
> 
> https://aspirationtech.org/events/devsummit14
> 
> > 2: Is there a market for this sort of organization?
> 
> Yes and no. It's a question we have wrestled with for over a decade at
> Aspiration. Some basic observations gleaned from my own travels:
> 
> * As you allude above, the super majority of organizations that need
> the offerings of such providers won't or can't pay for it; simply put,
> the most common pathology is even if they have the money, they feel
> institutional guilt at diverting resources from direct programmatic
> investment. Don't even get me started on the non-long-term-nature of
> that thinking. And alternately orgs that do have nontrivial tech
> budgets tend to invest poorly the majority of the time, at least in my
> experience, in part for reasons noted below.
> 
> * Thus you are left needing third parties to fund. And that gets into
> the many vagaries of NGO tech funding, which we have also studied
> quite a bit. You can likely get the latest shiny mobile app or Social
> Media <insert buzzword> Project funded, but getting core
> infrastructure or basic opsec funded is still a work in progress.
> "General support grant" is the great unicorn of NGO tech funding and
> we need lots more of those unicorns. I literally thank Edward Snowden
> every day that I wake up (really, thank you Mr. Snowden) because
> things have gotten notably better in the 18 months since he pulled
> back those curtains and institutional funders got a much clearer look
> at what might be at risk from an investment and impact perspective.
> 
> A related and unfortunate development of the past decade has been the
> de facto unification of two NGO technology personas: 1) "eRiders" who
> historically have focused on strategic advising of NGOs in a
> values-based framework that doesn't prioritize revenue, and 2)
> for-hire technology implementors/integrators (e.g. Drupal, Wordpress,
> CiviCRM, Salesforce, etc shops). The seemingly turnkey nature of the
> latter's offerings has effectively starved the former's market.
> 
> The net effect is that too many NGOs get their tech advice from
> vendors who are making money off them, a la John Candy in the movie
> Stripes coaching his young mentee on how to play poker and then
> robbing him blind.
> 
> (Blackbaud.com is hands down the most evil manifestation of this
> dynamic; they make the devil himself look like a nice old man.)
> 
> But there are plenty of web dev shops that don't have the missions of
> their clients at the top of their priority queue. We maintain a list
> of "ethical vendors" that we share with those we are advising, FWIW.
> 
> And we also offer free business advising and free proposal reviews for
> NGOs globally, and it kills me every time we get a call of the form
> "Was $100K too much to pay for our new basic Wordpress site? My
> colleague just told me it might have been..." Face-palm.
> 
> I don't mean to be universally disrespectful to NGOs, but I do feel at
> times like I am living Groundhog Day, if I may make 2 cinematic
> allusions in one post.
> 
> I am at the same time heartened by orgs like Witness.org that both
> carry out essential nonprofit mission while also innovating
> technologically and teaching that knowledge forward to their peers.
> But there aren't enough of those fine data points. Which is what
> powers our own mission.
> 
> SO in summary to your question: there is definitely almost unlimited
> demand in the market you posit, but the "transactional" dynamics are
> complex to say the least.
> 
> > 3: How do you make the funding work?
> 
> It's a longer answer than I'm game to type after 10pm PT, but I'm
> happy to discuss off list on some audio channel.
> 
> The short version of our answer focuses on cost reduction rather than
> on fund generation:
> 
> * We teach NGOs "minimum viable" thinking coupled with planning for
> scale, so they only acquire what they actually need in the near term,
> but in a configuration that isn't low-ceiling or limiting over time.
> 
> * We teach technology planning processes that draw from community
> organizing models and social justice principles so as to focus acutely
> on user needs and deliver appropriate tech. We strive to simplify all
> tech planning processes into "end user" language. You would be
> surprised how much this can reduce costing by holding techies
> accountable to explain what they are doing in non-technical parlance.
> 
> * If it's not free/open source, it's mostly not an option in our view.
> We stress the critical nature of organizations retaining control of
> their technology destiny. But yes, there are plenty of places where
> free/open offerings don't exist or don't cut it.
> 
> - From there we coach on traditional and non-traditional ways to source
> the needed funds.
> 
> This approach doesn't solve all the challenges, but such processes do
> reduce risk, reduce cost, and increase odds of success and
> sustainability. I describe it as the project management analog of
> "shrink the attack surface".
> 
> > Any thoughts on the matter either on list or off would be
> > appreciated.
> 
> As above, hope it's useful. Been doing this work since the mid-90's
> and it still mystifies me too much of the time :^)
> 
> peace,
> gunner
> > 
> > Thank you. -- Jesse Krembs
> > 
> > 
> > 
> 
> - -- 
> 
> Allen Gunn
> Executive Director, Aspiration
> +1.415.216.7252
> www.aspirationtech.org
> 
> Aspiration: "Better Tools for a Better World"
> 
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-- 
  Nathan of Guardian
  nathan at guardianproject.info