Non-Profit Organisations

Challenges

This article is mainly about the UK government and public sector however most other countries have similar regulations and frameworks.

Accessibility

The UK Cabinet Office guidelines say that all government web systems should be accessible to users with disabilities or who are using non-standard equipment. The requirement is to be rated A under the Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines. mailmanager 2.1 exceeds this standard and is rated Double A.

The US Government requires all Federal agencies requiring them to make their technology accessible to people with disabilities. More details are at http://www.section508.gov. mailmanager 2.1 complies with Section 508.

e-GIF

It is mandatory that all new government systems involving communication between UK Government and citizens, businesses and other oraganisations comply with the e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF) specifications and policies.

mailmanager uses the e-Government Metadata Framework so that all of the email in the system can be accessed by other systems. For example, an Enterprise Search Application would be able to search through email using the same metadata as applies to all of the other compliant systems.

Freedom of Information Act (FOI)

The Freedom of Information Act (FOI) and the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) both allow Requests for Information (RFI) to be made through email. mailmanager is useful for complying with these RFIs.

Additionally, when responding to RFIs the mailmanager system can be useful for retrieving email relating to a particular subject.

Evaluation

The National Computer Centre has a test lab which will evaluate Open Source software applications such as MailManager to assess their suitability for service delivery. The assessment service is free for UK Local Authorities and can be used by other parts of the public sector too. More details are available from the NCC

Case Studies

Amnesty International is one of the world's most respected non-governmental organisations. It has chosen Logicalware's MailManager to help manage its inbound email.

MailManager was chosen because of its ease of use and its straightforward, seamless integration into existing systems. The product will be used to sort email enquiries to ensure that they reach the relevant individuals within the organisation. The emails and their responses will also be tracked to aid improvements in communications systems.

Donald Cameron, managing director of Logicalware, said: "We are delighted to have welcomed Amnesty International to our family of clients. To be working with such a prestigious organisation is a tremendous honour."