IT Projects Success Stories for 2003
9 December 2003 at 12:12 pm
During 2003, Pro Bono Australia assisted the Department of Information Systems at the University of Melbourne in calling for proposals from Not for Profit organisations for IT projects for final year student teams. Many of our readers reaped big rewards!
The industry project involved a team of students working on an IT related project for an organisation, at no charge, as part of their coursework within the final year of their degree.
Louisa Wilson who coordinated the project was delighted with the response from our e-Newsletter and some very happy team projects were carried out.
The successful Pro Bono Australia referrals were: WATCH Inc, Moreland Community Health, Arafemi, Marie Stopes International Australia, Oz Quest, Breast Cancer Network of Australia, BEST Inc, Heartkids, Guide Dogs Victoria, Ampersand and Next Step.
Here’s just a snapshot of some of the projects:
The Association of Relatives and Friends of the Emotionally and Mentally Ill (ARAFEMI) was formed in 1979 and operates within Victoria.
ARAFEMI wanted a revamped web site that outlined their organisational information and offered related services targeted at carers of mental health consumers.
The website change reflects ARAFEMI as a modern, accessible and professional organisation. At the same time, the website serves as a medium for information dissemination, with the potential to reduce administration costs of distributing ARAFEMI publications.
Marie Stopes International Australia¡¦s website worked well, but they felt that it was outdated.
By redeveloping the new website with innovative and eye-catching designs and graphics, MSIA hopes to attract more visitors to visit its website and make donation.
The project also included adding extra functionalities:
– Online donation facility; this feature will allow users to make donation online to MSIA from the website by user filling in a form.
– E-cards facility; this will be a free-of-charge service that will allow users to pick and send a selection of electronic cards that are available online from the website.
– Selling of resources; users would be able to buy MSIA’s products online by email or fax by filling in a form, or alternatively by calling MSIA.
Moreland Community Health Service operate out of seven locations and work with the people of Moreland to deliver easily accessible, pertinent and empowering community health and care services.
It needed a search engine function for its data base “Master Index”. The project allowed all existing documents to be categorised with searchable fields listed in the database. This database is linked to a web page, which would allow searching via multiple fields. Additionally the search engine will allow edit, add and delete functionality for password protected staff members.
Simply Style Designs undertook a project for W.A.T.C.H. (Waverley Adult Training Centre for Intellectually Handicapped Persons Inc) – a small, non-government organisation that provides a training and support service to people who have an intellectual disability.
W.A.T.C.H. stored information about their clients on Microsoft Word documents as well as on hard copies. Therefore, to better manage their clients¡¦ information, they requested that a simple, user-friendly database be created that can store all necessary information about the client eg personal details, funding and medical information and so forth, and which is also able to generate statistics about the enrolled clients.
To check out other IT projects go to http://webraft.its.unimelb.edu.au/615373/pub/prespics.shtml.
If you are interested in a submitting a project for next year, please send your expression of interest to project liaison co-ordinator Louisa Wilson: louisaw@unimelb.edu.au or phone 03 8344 1503.
The industry project website is http://www.dis.unimelb.edu.au/research/studentprojects.html.
