Survey co-sponsored by HKCSS indicates growing social networking trends and NGOs’ needs in strengthening communications with youth
Hong Kong – June 3, 2013 – Microsoft Hong Kong today showcased the latest cloud-based social networking and collaboration technologies at NGO Day 2013, showing its commitment to empowering NGOs to take the big leap into the next-generation social service model. This initiative is part of Microsoft’s continued efforts in offering innovative cloud-based support and platform for NGOs together with Hong Kong Council of Social Service (HKCSS), aiming to improve service quality among NGOs and for them to stay close with their service targets in a secure environment with innovation and information technology.
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| NGO Day 2013 (From left to right): Alan Chan, national technology officer, Microsoft Hong Kong Limited; Horace Chow, general manager, Microsoft Hong Kong Limited; Christine Fang, chief executive, Hong Kong Council of Social Service and Wong Sau Wa, chief executive, The Church of United Brethren in Christ Social Service Division |
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The NGO Day also unveiled the latest survey findings on the effectiveness of NGOs leveraging social networking tools to reach out to the youth in Hong Kong. The survey was commissioned by Microsoft and HKCSS and conducted by the Public Opinion Programme at the University of Hong Kong (HKUPOP) in May 2013. The findings indicated that social networking websites are the most common channel used by NGOs nowadays to communicate with the youth. With the proliferation of these social websites and various mediums of communication, NGOs are in need of a more advanced and unified social platform to further improve the quality of their youth services and increased support from the government in terms of subsidy for hardware and software and training. Taking data privacy into consideration, some NGOs are considering migration of its social networking platform from a public cloud to a private cloud. Key survey findings include:
- Current usage of social networks
- 70% of surveyed NGOs are using social networking websites as the primary channel for communicating with the youth, which represents a higher percentage compared with other traditional channels e.g. telephone (60%) and face-to-face interviews or home visits (58%).
- Fast or instant responses (62%) and easy to be accepted by the youth (38%) are perceived as the top two benefits of using Internet communication tools to communicate with the young generation.
- More than 50% of the Social workers in the surveyed NGOs will use multiple user accounts to reach out to the youth.
- Need for advanced social tools
- On a scale of 0-10, NGOs gave an average rating of 6.6 for the usefulness in having a a system that allows users to use a single login name to handle multiple Internet communication accounts
- On a scale of 0-10, NGOs gave an average rating of 6.0 for the usefulness in having a system that enables the setting up of different discussion groups for youths to share content while information access and content can be managed by social workers.
- On a scale of 0-10, the NGOs in the survey gave an average rating of 6.5 for the usefulness in having a cloud-based system that enables multimedia communications, such as via text, voice and video, with the youth, showing the increasing awareness and perceived value of such a cloud-based solution among NGOs.
- Resources and support needed
- 47% of surveyed NGOs said they will increase resources budget in the near future to develop Internet communication tools for youth services, whereas 43% said they will not.
- 91% of surveyed NGOs believe that the government should provide support to youth servicing organizations adopting social networking tools. The top three support that are most sought after are: 1. providing subsidies for purchasing hardware (40%); 2. providing training (38%) and 3. providing subsidies for purchasing software (28%).
- Data privacy
- Almost 65% of surveyed NGOs provided guidelines to staff for information security while using Internet communication tools, such as archiving, backing up and security protection, etc.
- 32% of surveyed NGOs said they will consider migrating its Internet communication tools from a public cloud to a private cloud for information security concerns. Those who do not have such plan commented that it is due to the lack of resources.
“The adoption of cloud computing among NGOs has been trending up since we launched the ‘Cloud Unlimited for a Better Hong Kong’ Program in 2012. When we first started, the NGOs using Office365 were only those of a smaller scale. However, nowadays large NGOs with hundreds and thousands of users are also adopting it. In the past 12 months alone, Microsoft has also donated over 3,150 software licenses amounted to HK$12,000,000 to local NGOs through the ‘TechDonation Program’ so as to empower NGOs to take advantage of information technology in service quality enhancement,” said Horace Chow, general manager of Microsoft Hong Kong. “Social technology, enabled by cloud, may be relatively new from an organizational perspective, but it’s already an inseparable part of the day-to-day lives for tens of millions of people. Social networks empower NGOs to be more productive through its strong connection between people, knowledge, information and with each other, thus enabling effective collaboration across teams, locations and time zones. This year’s NGO Day is an excellent platform for us to showcase where we are at today, and discuss what NGOs may need in order to take another big leap forward towards a new era of social networking and collaboration.”
New cloud-based social and collaboration platform enables faster and more secure communication and transforms the way NGOs work
One of the ways Microsoft is supporting NGOs in embracing these social trends is a newly-developed cloud-based social networking and collaboration platform built upon Microsoft SharePoint Online technology. Created with the major concerns and pain points among NGOs in mind, the pilot social networking and collaboration system is a tailor-made tool that empowers NGOs to monitor social networks to identify potential youth cases, and also enables faster, easier, more secure communication and collaboration among internal teams for case follow ups. The beauty of which is all these functionalities are available in an integrated platform to social workers by only logging in once, and all conversations and contents can be easily recorded and searched, meeting the NGO demands for improved knowledge management.
“The survey conducted by HKUPOP revealed that social workers have been consistently using social media as communication and service provision channel. HKCSS believes this trend will soon be replicated among other service targets. Government must speed up the revision of pilot studies, and establish policy for the development of Internet related services. For instant, NGO expects to eliminate the restriction of using government grants for cloud services acquisition that enhances the flexibility in tackling numerous social issues,” said Christine Fang, chief executive of the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, “HKCSS appreciates Microsoft’s pioneer efforts and timely support to bring in next-generation innovations to the NGOs, with its deep understanding of NGO’s pain points and constraints in IT development due to lack of resources and knowledge. Only with such partnership and longsighted government policy that NGOs can keep enhancing their services to the community without compromising agility, effectiveness, security and privacy.”
“Social networking tools are becoming one of our major channels in our daily outreach, which does not only enable us to connect but also to stay close with the younger generation,” said Ms. Wong Sau Wa, chief executive of The Church of United Brethren in Christ Social Service Division. “A cloud-based social and collaboration solution built upon Microsoft SharePoint Online will empower us to identify our target groups timely and get valuable intelligence from a user-friendly dashboard that we need for more effective and proactive outreach. Internally, the solution also provides an integrated platform where we can communicate and collaborate easily with internal teams and even external experts, allowing us to better manage a large volume of cases and projects in an easy, convenient and secure manner. All these together help NGOs like us in saving resources and to focus on improving our core services.”
NGO Day is an annual event held by Microsoft and HKCSS to help local NGOs enhance service delivery to the community by harnessing the power of IT. This year’s event was attended by close to 200 representatives from Hong Kong’s public, private and NGO sectors.
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About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. Microsoft Hong Kong was established in 1991.
About The Hong Kong Council of Social Service
The Hong Kong Council of Social Service (HKCSS) was established in 1947, representing, with clear vision and professional expertise, non-governmental welfare agencies committed to sustain and develop social welfare in Hong Kong. HKCSS has grown since then to become an umbrella organization of over 400 Agency Members, that provide over 90% of the social welfare services for those in need through their 3,000 service units all over Hong Kong.
