The Centre for Acceleration of Social Technology has today announced a set of ten principles to help the charity sector develop better digital services.
It has been created in collaboration with over 50 charities and funders and aims to demonstrate “what ‘good’ looks like when developing digital services”.
There is a dedicated website, betterdigital.services, for the principles, which also includes examples and case studies from Breast Cancer Care, Refugee Action and others. The site also includes posters that people can print off and use to communicate in their offices.
The full list of principles is:
1. Start with user needs and keep them involved
2. Understand what’s out there
3. Build the right team
4. Take small steps and learn as you go
5. Build digital services not websites
6. Be inclusive
7. Think about privacy and security
8. Build for sustainability
9. Collaborate and build partnerships
10. Be open.
Dan Sutch, co-founder and director at CAST, said, “Too many charity services are still failing to respond to the changing digital behaviours and expectations of their users.
“Digital service delivery urgently needs to become a core competency, not a ‘nice to have’.”
Janet Thorne, chief executive of Reach Volunteering, added, “At Reach, we’ve found that if you are designing or delivering digital services, conventional methods won’t work. You need to approach things differently, so it’s really useful to have a set of clear, jargon-free principles that spell out what ‘good’ looks like so that everyone, including staff, trustees and funders, understand the approach and can pull in the same direction.”
|
Related articles
