Strategic Innovations, Inc.

As some of you may recall, in the past I have written about the concept of applying ISO standards to the way that you operate a general government organization. As was noted, ISO already touches some of the functional areas typically provided by local government. Today it was revealed that a new tool in the march toward standardization exists with ISO approval of the OASIS Open Document Format specification. More information is also available from a press release issued by the ODF Alliance.

Why is this important? By complying with an ISO standard file format, you can improve both your internal and external sharing of data. By data, I am not referring to the pieces of information contained in a database. I am referring to the information that is contained in files like word processing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. The knowledge that is contained in the office documents your organization produces.

I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with non-profits in various roles. One activity I engaged in a few years ago was a task force for a non-profit that served as a kind of statewide umbrella for local “chapters” of this non-profit organization. The task force was formed to explore ways to ensure the financial viability of the local chapters could be maintained. One of the deficiencies in local operations that was noted was a lack of expertise in information technology. This was mainly due to the limited resources available – there just was no money available for the individual local non-profits to go out and hire someone exclusively to maintain their computer networks and other information technology. This is rather unfortunate given the depth and breadth to which IT impacts all business operations these days.

So, it was with great interest that I ran across the article How to make the most of your IT budget in the lastest issue of NetworkWorld magazine. This particular article focused on IT budgets of non-profits. Most of the information in there was solid and I think could help local non-profits. About the only problem I saw with the article was that it focused on large, national non-profit organizations. Below, I recap some of the recommendations and take a look at how the same concepts might be leveraged by a smaller non-profit.

Strategic Innovations, Inc., is pleased to announce that president Jeffrey G. Causey has earned the Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) designation from the Project Management Institute (PMI). PMI credentials, including the CAPM, are "widely recognized and accepted throughout the world as evidence of a proven level of education, knowledge and experience in project management".

Strategic Innovations is excited about this opportunity to provide additional assurance to clients regarding the level of service that can be delivered. As discussed in a recent article by Mr. Causey, employing standards is an important strategic step in improving customer service and satisfaction. Practicing what he preaches, Mr. Causey pursued the CAPM designation as a way to provide an independent, objective assessment of his project management skills. Hopefully clients and potential clients will be more comfortable with Mr. Causey's ability to manage projects from a variety of perspectives – scope, schedule, budget, quality, human resources, risk, communications, and procurement.

For more information on Strategic Innovations' project management services, please explore the web site or contact .

Right after I started work on this article, an interesting story appeared in the local newspaper. It had to do with a county government that was considering some local legislation that would, among other things, have an impact on how the municipal governments in the area operated. Unfortunately (and this is why it was news), some of the municipal government officials felt they had been left out of the discussions and deliberations and were very upset with the county government. The situation has very quickly degraded as officials try to defend the process used to get to the point they were at. In addition, there will likely be significant "rework" of the discussions and deliberations as the county government attempts to examine the issue, this time with municipal government participation. How did something like this happen? How is it that a county government's top management forgot to include a key stakeholder group? Perhaps most importantly though, what could have been done to prevent this from happening in the first place?

I would like to propose one solution you may want to consider – the introduction of a quality management program (that is, management of quality) for your organization. I know the concept of a quality management program may sound funny in a world based on buying from the lowest bidder (and the corresponding perception that one is getting the lowest quality as well). Please read on though as I hope to show that a quality management program can help you to control costs and achieve the goals you have along with a host of other benefits.

In this article, I'm going to focus on laying the groundwork by describing some features and benefits of a quality management program built based on the framework of the ISO9001:2000 standard. I will follow up with another article that digs deeper into the actual implementation of quality standards in a local government organization.

Late in September and early October, I reported on some potential savings through the use of the OpenOffice 2.0 office suite/OpenDocument format instead of Microsoft Office/proprietary Office document formats.  A new article came out yesterday (Nov. 9th) in the UK edition of ZDNet concerning a decision by the French tax agency(the equivalent of the IRS I think) to deploy OpenOffice to all of their desktops.  The nice thing about this latest article is the cost information included that helps quantify potential savings.

In this case, the tax agency had an estimate that upgrading from Office 97 to Office XP would cost about $34.6M.  With 80,000 desktops impacted, this comes out to a cost of about $433 per PC.  Since most PC's that can be acquired at government prices for a standard desktop are going to run less than $1,000, this means you would have to spend an amount equal to about half the investment in the physical hardware just to have an Office suite (pretty basic) available for employees.  Keep in mind this calculation only covers the upgrade from Office 97 to Office XP.  We do not yet know how much the next version of Office will cost, but it will probably be comparable.

In contrast, deploying OpenOffice to all 80,000 desktops will only cost about $235,000 or $2.94 per PC.  Yes, you read that correctly - less than $3 per computer to deploy a solid, world-class office suite.  Needless to say, the scale of possible savings is truly amazing.   As officials in the article noted, in addition to these cost savings, they will also achieve other benefits like avoid the cost of upgrade cycles, ensuring data and documents are in a standard file format, and avoiding vendor lock-in.

I hope you are already trying out OpenOffice for your organization.  If not and you would like to discuss potential benefits in more detail, just get in touch with me.  If you are considering or have already deployed OpenOffice, I'd like to hear from you as well about what you learned through the process.

Jeffrey G. Causey
President

How to use mind mapping and mind mapping software to improve your creativity and productivity

Introduction

Over the years, I have researched and tried a variety of techniques and tools to improve the quality and productivity of my work. From learning about filing techniques to how to process e-mail efficiently to my current work on project management certification, there seems to always be ways to take yourself to the next level. A few years ago, when I had a tablet PC, one tool I tried was a product called MindManager. The concept of MindManager was to generate a mind map using the drawing/pen input capabilities of the tablet PC. I no longer have the tablet, but I am finding more than ever lately that I could use a tool for generating mind maps – preferably something on the computer instead of drawing them by hand.

Fortunately, I recently came across such a package – FreeMind. A few primary features made this an excellent candidate:

• it is open source;
• it is free (both as in freedom and as in “no cost”);
• it runs on a variety of platforms (basically, any operating system)

That last point was especially important for me as I run a Linux based network and desktops. Being able to use mind mapping software once again reminded me how powerful the concept is. I think you may be able to use it effectively in your work as well, so this article is written to help you learn more about mind maps and the software you may be able to use.