If you’ve read Part I of our series, you might be wondering about what other challenges organizations face during the planning phase of portal implementation. During Volume II, we will address other challenges. In Volume III, our series will wrap up with successful tips for making eGovernance successful.

We’ll begin in media res. Back to the challenges:

3. “I upload the content the board wants but they never visit the portal.”

In an ideal world, an administrator would upload the content, the board would read it, make informed decisions and the world would be a better place. While this can happen over time this isn’t a process that happens overnight. In addition to having online meeting materials and a shared calendar, eGovernance supports engaged governance by streamlining committee deliberations, board development, strategic planning, staffing and appraising the chief executive position.

A portal provides the board with the opportunity for the board to think and work differently and that kind of human behavior change takes some time. Think of implementing a portal more as a process of turning on a dimmer switch rather than turning a light switch on and off.

As a part of the portal implementation, each part of the governance process should be reviewed to determine what can be streamlined with new software.

Let’s say the portal offers online meeting capabilities which can save the organization money on travel costs (and help the environment.) The organization has the opportunity to reconsider which meetings should remain face-to-face and which meetings can be held virtually. Remember that incorporating the right technology tools is also essential to the success of virtual meetings as well. Once a decision is made as to how the governance process will be altered, these changes can be prioritized and phased in the roll-out plan with phase specific training and plans to reinforce best practices. Going with our virtual meeting idea, if our packets are disseminated via iPad, then our first training session with the board should focus on how to launch the iPad app and download meeting materials to the device. This can be reinforced with reminder emails that encourage board members to use the app and acknowledge that they are doing well.

4. “We provided a training session for our board but they still won’t use the portal.”

Yes, providing a training for the board is critical. However, sometimes we find that a single training attempts to encompass too much information in too little time or focuses so heavily on how a particular feature operates that board members are never clearly grounded as to why they should use the feature in the first place.

Before going in-depth with training, we recommend providing an orientation to the board as a whole, not reviewing any particular function in-depth but rather generating discussion on how they can use the system’s feature and adapt their processes with the new system.

Keeping a training short and specific to the task yields the most successful training results.

In our next installment, we will share our favorite tips about successfully implementing eGovernance.