Because it is open source, Sigmah, a project management tool, is best suited for non-governmental organisations working on international aid projects. It allows the NGO's to jointly decide on features, while leaving them choice and flexibility in getting technical support and services. This explains why governments continue to fund part of Sigmah's development costs, says Olivier Sarrat, a IT engineer facilitating the Sigmah project.
"The solution strengthens the capacities of the NGOs that use it", says Sarrat. "Yet they also appreciate that enhancements to the software are contributing to the common good. This makes the NGOs more involved in the tool, its use and its development."
Development of the Sigmah software is decided the 11 members in the steering committee, including the Croix-Rouge Française, Médecins du Monde and Handicap International. Sarrat's employer, Groupe URD, act as the facilitator for the cooperative. Ideia, an IT service provider offers hosting of the software as a service, but Sigmah can just as easy be installed locally, or by other service providers, the IT engineer emphasises.
Autonomy
The project started in 2008 with the support of the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs and the French Development Agency. The past years Sigmah succeeded in getting funds from the European Commission Directorate for Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection (DG ECHO), and was sponsored by the Catalan Agency for Development Cooperation as well as two French regions, Ile-de-France and Rhône-Alpes.
A second important reason for the government support, says Sarrat, is that Sigmah is very easy to set-up and use. "Autonomy is crucial for NGOs. That is why we make sure that implementing Sigmah does not require specific IT expertise."
Simplicity
This is illustrated by the Africompost programme, in which GoodPlanet, Gevalor and Etc Terra, French NGOs, use the project management tool to develop 6 composting units in Africa. "The large number of actors involved in the programme means that a lot of documents are exchanged and that a lot of relatively similar activities are planned in the different project sites", Sigmah explains on its site. Sarrat: "The software was set-up by an intern in less than three months. For NGOs, this simplicity is key."
The majority of NGOs currently involved in Sigmah are French but the group is reaching out to other countries, Sarrat says. "We've started a major review, aiming to increase the adoption by other NGOs and extending the existing pilots to full-scale implementations. For this we will need to add several new features, including an 'offline mode'. The project has secured 65 per cent of the funding for this second phase.
"Our collective aims to have a tool and supporting resources developed by and for operational actors within the international aid sector", Sarrat syas. "We would like this tool to be used to exchange information with public donor agencies, interacting with solutions such as ECHO's eSingleForm system which used to be partially hosted on the EC's Open Source Observatory and Repository."