 This is the first of three of these that we're doing. We're doing a second run of the introduction, probably in March, and then an advanced version of this in July next year. So watch for those. Our presenters today are myself, Brian Rowe. I'm at Northwest Justice Project here in House in Seattle. I run the National Technology Assistance Project. We've got Jeff Hogue and it's Andrew Karsten. Jeff, could you go ahead and introduce yourself? Sure. Can you hear me okay? Yep. Great. My name is Jeff Hogue. I work on community relations and operations here at Legal Server, case management system. I worked in Legal Aid for, gosh, 14 years, and then gradually technology became more and more part of my mission. And so now I work with groups around the country who have Legal Server and help them, I think we try to add looking at systems and how they do things as part of that job. And then I also am the co-chair of the NLADA tech section. So we worked with, as LSE was revising them, we gave them information and along with Brian helped hold some forum so that people had feedback on what happened with the baselines. And Jeff's really career path here in being kind of an accidental techie lawyer that ended up taking over the tech for a program is very typical. It's one of the reasons that I really wanted him on this discussion. A lot of programs start out with that same situation. Xander. Yeah, hi, everybody. My name is Xander Karsten. I'm also a Legal Aid attorney turned a technology person. I was in direct service for about four years and then went to ProbonoNet where I was the law help program coordinator for almost three years before I came into Legal Server and spend a lot of time with folks who are coming on to Legal Server, taking a look at their various processes, how they do their work and talking through different ways of implementing that. And was interested in the baselines have been kind of tangentially watching it as sort of the baselines themselves sort of unfolded and came about and was excited when I was asked to join the panel today. And for a little, thank you so much for joining us, Xander. A little bit of history over the baselines. These baselines were updated last year based on the 2008 baselines. There were significant changes to them. David Bonebrake, Glenn Ron, Jane, Ribbononera all put in significant work on it along with Idealware and Brooklyn. These are significantly updated and very solid resource for us. The order that we're going to be going through these, if you have downloaded the handout, which is the full baselines in the handout section here, we're just going to be walking through them in order of the document. We've got some visuals to go with it. But one of the things that we would like is any questions as we go along, comments, any thing that you would like to add onto it. One of the first things that's in here is really a whole section on planning and having a technology plan that should be reviewed on a yearly basis. Jeff, what does one of those technology plans look like? What type of stuff do you typically see in it? Well, you know, LSE put out some guidance on tech plans and what a lot of people did is just take their outline and put in some answers. We shared some a little bit in New York and it'll have everything it should have, what your major initiatives are, resources, and nowadays my guess is that the tech plans are starting to track the baselines. It sure wouldn't be a bad taxonomy of them. I think, you know, they probably suffer. I think one of the reasons that there's a recommendation to review it each year is that they suffer from the, ooh, we got that done. It goes in a drawer problem. You can check that box. We have a technology plan. As we all know, it can be really difficult as you get busy to remember in September that in January you said this was the year that you were going to try to look at document management systems or something like that. But that's what we've seen the most is something like that as opposed to, I haven't seen any that are like two-page. Here's the broad strokes. One of the things that worked well for us and Northwest Justice Project is trying to put that into the same processes where we're reviewing our budget reporting for TIG or other reporting so that we can update it while we're also kind of reviewing what was done in the last year or two years or three years with regards to grants. One of the things that's in the same section here is also having some type of a technology staff and the recommendations in here are a little bit on the conservative side. They're very helpful though and they're two full-time staff per hundred FTE and that can be full-time or consultants. There was a lot of discussion as the baselines were put together on whether or not those needed to be in-house and we've seen different organizations do it differently and it's very typical of the way that the baselines are set up is that they're more general guidelines unless it's exactly specific how to implement something. Sandra, what are some of the reasons and what type of things would these full-time staff be doing? Why is it important to have this level of staffing? Yeah, I mean, I think that having a couple of people who are dedicated just to sort of your technology can assist when you both fork some continuity pieces but having some dedicated time for staff to both get trained up and to have a couple of people who have a major role in making sure that staff are trained, making sure that other staff have available resources and also that you have people who are kind of responsible for looking ahead and being up-to-date on some of the technology changes that are coming down the pike can be really helpful. And also just having one or two people I think really helps to have a unified tech plan where if it's part of a couple of different people's jobs or maybe it is responsibilities that rotate, it's harder for people to dig in and really get familiar with both the quirks of how an agency may use technology but also to be able to kind of distinguish what will work well and what won't within an agency and their own staffing. Excellent. Some of the things that they really talk about here is the maintaining equipment and networks, maintaining database software, support and training for staff and we're going to cover training in a lot more depth but just even the strategic planning stuff that we've already talked about is very difficult to do without someone who kind of sees that institutional history and can look forward in a long-term plan. If that rotates around a lot, it's a skill that can be a little bit difficult for someone to pick up in a short period of time and run with. Brian, I wanted to add that just keeping up with what's going on really has to be part of that person's job just like as a lawyer, part of their job is to keep up with what's coming out of the highest court in the land and what those developments are. Just keeping up with finding out that some popular solution people are adopting is not working out well or there's a huge security breach. What does the heart bleed virus mean and flaw mean for us is it really takes someone who's going to pay attention to those things and I should say that number, although I have my MLADA hat on and it's not a thou shalt, that number is very small compared to what we see in private practice. Even in other areas of nonprofits, it is a conservative number there. I think we're going to cover security a little bit later but that is essential to be ahead of those type of things and have someone who is dedicated to monitoring what are the possible security holes, flaws, updates in our system and being able to proactively patch and maintain those before there is a data breach when you're dealing with such sensitive client data. In the same area there's also a budgeting section that really covers three different things, maintenance and upgrades of hardware and software, personnel, consultants, so this is the FTEs that are supported in program and training for use of technology as part of training, not only for the person who is in charge of this, but also for the staff overall. I've got a question for Xander or Jeff. If you're in a smaller program at that kind of 10 to 30 or 40 person range, how do you deal with these technology staffing issues? How does that come to be in an organization? In the smaller organizations one of the things that I've definitely seen that has worked is a part-time individual who does technology and then outsources some of the security or help desk particular responsibilities and that they tend to focus on the budgeting planning long-term because it's very difficult with smaller organizations to have one full-time member, especially when you get to the 10, 20, 30 person range but having some type of a support staff or organization consultant outside can help fill in those gaps, those smaller sizes. Yeah, and I think generally especially when you're looking of those three that that training piece is one that tends to be really important to keep in house or to at least have folks who know your staff well to do that training. It's definitely one thing to have somebody who does the someone outside the organization who does that help desk but actually training and being able to identify what training your staff may need is something that tends to really be helpful coming from the staff themselves or from someone who's very familiar with them. At NJP we have somebody who kind of facilitates and then finds speakers that on different areas but is aware of and kind of keeps the calendar of that so bring in an expert in Word or an expert in security and ethics or something like that but they put together an entire calendar for the year. It's similar to the way that CLEs are offered through our organization but these are different tech topics that we try to schedule throughout the year. So the next topic that is covered here is one of the more in-depth ones and could easily be a topic of three or four webinars. This is on case management systems and in the baselines there's a very long list of some basic functionality to be aware of there. One thing that people should also be aware of is that LS NTAP has a series of pages for each of the major case management systems with links to their systems, their websites and for two of them we also have demo videos available on YouTube to see them but some of the basic things that are covered is be able to retain client eligibility, case type and appropriate data for intakes, secure backups, screen applicants, perform conflict checks, enter and edit information in real time, securely and ethically transfer client data, generate reports, the ability to assign funding codes and allow end users to configure various aspects of the case management system. Dandre, what are some of the things that are worth looking into when somebody is looking at a case management system and they're comparing what's out there? I think generally this is a really good checklist to just take to whatever software management systems you're going to use. The other thing that I think is really important is to talk about what ongoing support is available regardless of the system that you are looking at that the needs and capacities and functions are really important and they're laid out really well sort of throughout here but one thing that isn't necessarily addressed is that kind of ongoing, when there's a problem who do you contact and what does that look like and what are the ongoing sort of supports that those systems and those companies offer. The other thing I think that is, the other piece that sort of stands out for me in that needed capacities piece is the reporting capacities that most, everybody needs to run reports and I think it's generally a pretty good indicator of how flexible it is to put information into a system to see how flexible it is to get information out of that system. So I think that those are the two things that I would definitely sort of look for in a case management system and then the final thing is different ways that that system can check for data issues, data integrity, what are things that may be automated, what are things that you can customize within that system to make sure that the data that is going in is as accurate as it possibly can be. One thing I heard was essentially nobody, people, it would, but who's folks to find out what they should expect from case management systems because sometimes they've been in one world for a long time and so what I heard was some concern of folks just knowing how it can be a tool for them and what they should expect from the case management system. And one of the things that I recommend here is to reach out to programs that are already using particular case management systems and learn from your peers over what worked for them, what are their staffing, is that something that their in-house tech helps with, is their external support. That type of stuff is go to the community and use the community as a resource to learn about this particular area. And this case management systems are as mentioned again and again as we look at different areas and it heavily overlaps with a lot of the different type of technology that we're covering. As we move into the production and supervision area of the baselines, the first thing there definitely covers a lot of case management systems and even the second one there which is calendaring. Sometimes those things are integrated into case management systems as is occasionally document production. The next big thing that we're looking at is the technology that is used for supervision of legal work, production of legal work. And this is one of the more extensive areas in the baselines. It covers case management systems a little more with some more basic features that are added there including remote access to the system. It covers calendaring. So having reminders for deadlines, appointments, that type of thing. There are many different pieces of software out there that do that. And document production. Effective use of productive software. Development of a strategy to automate forms that you're going to be using again and again to cut down on the time used to create those forms. Technology to assist staff who are collaboratively working on large projects. Is this something in-house where people are sharing through SharePoint and working on something collaboratively? Is this a secure Google Docs document where individuals are collaboratively editing it? Is it something else entirely? The creation of PDF documents as well as converting them into OCR optical character recognition files that can be edited and the ability if allowed in your local court system to do electronic filing which can cut down on the time cost significantly of doing filing. If your courts allow it, it is a huge benefit time-wise to be able to take advantage of that. There's also timekeeping which we are all really aware of with regards to federal grants that we're on and that type of timekeeping, the easier and more integrated it can be into our workflow. The less time it takes to consolidate or work on later. Online legal research is also in that same category. In this supervision and production area, Jeff or Xander, what are some of the things that you really see as the most important of these basic features that we're looking at? What I heard is a theme is that now that things are largely electronic, all of those things that are electronic can be used to help avoid malpractice. I know a lot of offices still have a big paper calendar in somebody's office that has everybody's court dates which is fine as a backup, but any more smart systems can help you make sure deadlines aren't missed. It doesn't make sense for a supervising attorney to read, well, in detail, everyone's divorce pleadings to make sure they're all good, but if people are using standard, at least within that office set of pleadings, then you reduce the chance for significant mistakes. Timekeeping can be monitored and the use of data for supervision, including things like, I think it was Kristen Barrow who made a report that said, show me every week, every month who had more than a certain amount of time entered and who had less than a certain amount of time entered. Which I thought was subtle and smart to go to the people who are killing themselves and say, maybe we need to look at your caseload and go to the people who haven't put their time in and say, maybe we really need to look at compliance. And then, interesting, the online research on making sure that people are doing that, that didn't come from me, of course, but interesting that the idea of making sure that the folks who supervise are up to date on the things they need to know and know how to look up precedents and know how to, you know, what we used to call shepherdized cases. Yeah, especially as you're dealing with some of the mid-sized or larger organizations, there's a lot of opportunities to work there collaboratively. And then, you know, super brothers should know, right, at this point, if the data is electronic, you should have a way to see it. Anything to add there or suggestions, Andrew? No. So we've got a heavy emphasis in here on electronic records as a lot more of our client discussions are being done electronically. There's several things to consider. Confidentiality, document retention, and policies regarding access. Who has access to that file? Do they need access to that file? What the defaults are that are set up in a system and what you can do to change or limit that, especially if you're working with outside counsel or anyone else that is, or pro bono attorneys, other things like that. Those types of policies need to be in place proactively. It's gonna save a lot of time when you're collaborating on larger things. But the document retention is a very interesting one, especially since with physical files, we have it set up to where we often purge, but all of the electronic systems tend to keep these files for very long periods of time. So, and looking at the two areas of both confidentiality and privacy, although there's a lot of overlap between them, there's also some things that are unique to each of those areas. There may be other requirements that you need to look at with regards to local, state, data protection laws or notification or breach, those type of things if client data is lost in any way. This is an area where it's well worth trying to take a kind of scan of what's going on in your state to see if there's anything to pay attention to above and beyond the LSC guidelines also so that you put together a strategy for dealing with this electronic information. Is your instant messaging archived? Are your emails archived? How long are they archived for? How long does a sense email stick around? Is there a limit on data size when you get rid of that data? What are some of the best practices in this area or recommendations, Xander or Jeff? This really overlaps with security and that includes things like we love it that we can work remotely. How secure is where you're working remotely? Did you stick a bunch of stuff on a USB stick, which some organizations just ban them entirely? Partly because it's one thing, if somebody steals an entire file drawer full of papers, they might have 100 clients worth of information. The single USB stick can have all of your clients data. So there's our obligation to our clients to keep them safe and keep their information safe. There's also data breach notification laws in some states. I'm not as worried about the issue that gets brought up sometimes of like somebody trying to subpoena you or get it or that sort of thing. Much more worried about accidental loss of data by USB keys or by maybe even printing out reports. We remind people, if all you need to know is some data on a report, maybe you don't even need to include the client's name in that printout. Where does that printout go? Does somebody save it? Because they think it's going to refer to it later. So those are going to be growing issues, including understanding how we can protect them, that data and how it's stored. So long-term storage and encryption is growing in expectation. But if you look at the cases and what's happened, the combination of person-identifiable information stored needs to be treated like it's treasure. Now that is a great point I dealt with recently with a program that was being asked to give some information to a funder who funded several different programs. This was not LSE, this was a different local funder. And the funder was really interested in trying to figure out how many unique clients were served over several different programs that they funded. And they originally just asked for entire like case file information like who it is, social security members, those type of things. And we pushed back right away saying we're absolutely not sharing that data. But we would be willing to work with the other funders and try to come up with a way to generate a unique key that we could then share that is not reverse engineering, that cannot be reverse engineered to figure out client data. And even when you aggregate information it's very important to figure out how many details you're giving because once you merge that what you think is private data with publicly available databases or information that can be found on social networks, Netflix found out really quickly a few years ago that someone was able to reverse engineer their anonymous data set and identify individual users, rental histories and even things such as sexual preference from the data that was meant to be anonymous. And that is the last thing that you want to do when trying to do something helpful like do a grant reporting. So having those policies in place especially around personally identifiable information and how to anonymize it helps you deal with those data requests that come later. So the next one here is knowledge management systems and once again the baselines don't suggest a particular technology but it's more a set of different things to look at while you are trying to share knowledge in your organization that it must be able to store and retrieve pleadings, briefs, motions those things that are used again and again that electronic access is available for internal forms and procedures that it's available across the program that there are access to electronic practice guides and that you have some way to check the integrity ideally both in an automated way and some way that maybe users could rate or give feedback on those form samples those type of things. We've seen a lot of different TIG grants over the last few years that have implemented this in different ways. We have a group coming up at the upcoming TIG conference that is looking at a way to do knowledge sharing inside of Drupal. Some programs have used like a Google search appliance. Northwest Justice Project has a SharePoint installation that has a brief bank and some knowledge sharing things there. The technology to do search on these has increased drastically in the past 10 years so being able to find these things is much easier but there's also really a challenge in how do you create a community around providing these, sharing them individually what do you do on the change management side to help individuals kind of work this into their workflow so that it is seen as both helpful and beneficial to them but as part of their natural process of what they're doing. Any tips or suggestions for setting up this kind of knowledge sharing? Yeah, so one thing that if groups don't have a knowledge management system in place now one of the first things that I think is really important to kind of think through and look at is what are the tools that staff are using either professionally or in their personal lives to do this kind of sort of data management because everybody is, we all have electronic records or paper records that we are managing on an everyday basis and if you have a staff who is very, very comfortable with Google just as an example and who may use Google even if they don't use it if you have Outlook for example as your main work as your main work email but everybody on your staff knows and uses Google in their personal life it is worth thinking which one will the staff really use and implement them most easily so just sort of thinking through and talking to your staff about what they're using on a day to day basis both in their personal and their professional life and then also thinking through regardless of the knowledge management system that you decide to implement thinking long term about what training you're going to need to support that implementation over time because there will be, there's always that initial work converting, this is great and the training that goes along with that but as we know SharePoint changes over time Google changes over time, Drupal changes over time being able to support those changes and to kind of, you know, as hearkening back to the tech plan having that sort of documented somewhere about what supports and trainings you're going to use can be really helpful for just the long term implementation I'll add, I think no matter what you choose you'll notice that it's not very specific in the baseline no matter what you choose, these need gardeners no matter what platform it is there needs to be somebody who's keeping things organized and keeping track of things I love the idea of people being able to rate resources to help surface the things that really matter because the hardest part about all this is people forgetting that it's there Yeah, anything you can do to make it more a part of people's workflow definitely helps Another thing to definitely consider here is how this is done regarding things like confidentiality is if you're a smaller program I've seen people work with several different organizations and then they have to put in a process for retracting or anonymizing particular forms or pleadings, those type of things I've definitely seen this work a little more successfully internally to single programs where they don't have as many issues there around the confidentiality but once again this needs to also have an electronic records policy if there is confidential information in there it needs to be considered and sometimes removed or scrubbed depending on your other policies or practices The next area that we've got here is legal information websites state-wide collaboration, services offered intake those types of fundamental basic resources out there we see several different models in different states some organizations work on the model that Washington Law Health is on with support of Pro BonoNet there are other states that are using a Drupal website system either independently through using the D-Law template that was developed many years back and is supported mostly by Urban Insight or hosted through Urban Insight but having legal information available on websites is part of that basic foundation that is out there and new to this update on the baselines is also looking at social media as part of that outreach and availability one of the things that is most helpful to clients is going to where they are and we have found here at Northwest Justice Project that taking and putting videos over on YouTube where people are already searching for information about foreclosure, about record sealing about rental disputes has definitely increased the visibility of those resources and allowed them to reach the community where the community is already searching so we have this tradition of creating our own websites that have become pillars of the community but also there is this trend now in finding ways to take some of those resources and share them where people are living socially online so that as they look for legal help they find those resources that we create for individuals thoughts here either on the website side or on the social media side on social media I just wanted to add if the baseline say there should be a plan so the baseline is that the plan your plan could be we are not going to do any significant legal work in any of these but the plan probably should include we are going to make sure we own our name maybe you only tweet a couple of times a year there is our major fundraising drive is in March that sort of thing but I think the thought behind the baseline is that it shouldn't be ignored no matter what you think fits best with your client population and your technology resources and skills it's where people are as you said the baseline encourage you to have a plan for how you are going to handle that right that is very important to point out that it doesn't require a specific strategy or specific outreach but it should definitely be part of the plan and if you don't claim those names someone else often with less helpful intentions towards our clients will grab those names and will be redirecting resources and clients in other ways yeah the only thing that I would really add to that is you know regardless of what online assistance you are looking to provide whether that's through a state web website or through social media or through your own website that you know that looking at the ensuring that there is a variety of accessibility to that information whatever information you put up is incredibly important that you know we are kind of very quickly moving past the point where putting up handouts that you provide in you know a waiting room is going to engage your users or folks who are visiting your online spaces and so just thinking about as you are deciding what information if any that you want to put out there you know sort of taking a look at what are the ways to ensure that people who are looking at it online can get the most help out of your materials is really important and we are going to cover grant we are putting a little bit at the end and a little bit on the fundraising aspects but if social media ends up being a part of that fundraising plan for individuals it doesn't work if that is the only thing you are using it for more client helpful things that you are doing throughout the year that really draw people in and create an audience there the better chance that you will get any feedback I definitely see individuals try to use social media for fundraising and it is not actually that successful there it can be part of an overall strategy but it is more useful in getting legal information or sharing your successes a lot of people find the work that we do at Northwest Justice Project through us talking about successful cases client stories those types of things and then also sharing publicly available trainings or resources or community events that were involved in where they can come ask questions be part of a clinic something to that effect more successful uses there that's a great point and you know social media has so many good metrics for everybody who uses social media a lot there is a ton of tools to know how successful you are so you can see the return on investment with a host of tools a good point that if all you do is occasionally ask for money and there is nothing else useful in your channel nobody is going to pay attention I think Jeff gets on a very important point here that goes back even to our planning section that if you are doing yearly updated planning most of these systems that we are talking about your case management system, your social media your online publicly available website those all have wonderful analytics that are available and you can put information about where you are what your target goals are for the next year those things and then use that data driven approach for strategic planning over a multi-year period of time you can actually test and see was this successful, was this helpful were these campaigns being used that is really one of the things that having that at least one full-time FTE can help you do is monitor, collect that data and then help you make strategic decisions based on that data long-term the next section that we have got here covers pro bono support and the types of technology that we are using to support pro bono lawyers that you should have a website that includes features of allowing pro bono lawyers to review available cases and volunteer that post training and resources a case management system that allows you to track referred cases and spend on them a strategy to share a client and case data securely with pro bono attorneys so there is a lot of overlap with some of the topics that we have talked about earlier here but it has a pro bono focus and then a program to provide assistance and support in this representation which may include things like automated documents or access to a brief bank providing volunteer attorneys with training and resources such as web conferencing, video conferencing hosted online trainings archive trainings those type of things if you are creating a training on how to do a particular type of housing cases that you do in-house to all of your housing attorneys if there is a way to record that and then make it available to pro bono attorneys as they come on or as they do support for you that can help assist them significantly in learning these new areas of law any thoughts or ideas here interesting ways people should be considering to use technology to support their pro bono lawyers? by definition they are probably not sitting in your office and they are not inside your program in the other training and support ways and so it would seem that technology really lends itself to creating more of a team with pro bono there are so many platforms there are so many people trying to solve this problem and support better interaction and training with pro bono attorneys that range all the way from letting them volunteer for cases online giving them resources there is a real wide variety of tools out there and I think from reading the baselines perspective it gets into some details of things that to plan for in pro bono so there is certainly the idea that one of the ways we can increase volunteerism and support good results from pro bono is to make sure that the technology tools we have are made available to them and then hopefully you are lucky and have a panel that also is good at using technology because we need that from our partners too just considering a little bit of technology training as you onboard a pro bono attorney can go a long way in saving you time when they would be asking questions later it's even something to think about as you upgrade or add other systems and as you do that strategic planning for the year if you're looking at a unified communication system next year is there a requirement that you want to put into the RFP that allows a pro bono attorney to possibly take a hotline call remotely from their office is that being aware of what those technologies are allow you while you're doing technology upgrading and planning to find ways to bring volunteers in and use them most effectively long term so this is one of the two areas that we're going to cover training but there's a heavy emphasis in several different areas here on training on assessment standards policies geared towards effective use the training should be in the budget this should be a line item very similar to kind of your continuing legal education that there should be some type of continuing technology training that is out there and it should cover things like online research document production and as just mentioned pro bono support which is why we put into kind of this section here and then cover it a little bit later is that it's part of the overall plan and how you deal with technology any best practices or things that you would mention is helpful towards training and technology we've seen the growth of offerings here as well I know talking with I know it doesn't sound like training but talking with Anna Heinlein she was talking about a tool that's built into Google tools now that's basically like just in time help where it'll sort of do a screen video for you on using that tool so technology is getting so much smarter now that maybe some of these tools are going to make it easier than having your whole staff do a half-day or full-day webinar on using their software tools but getting it in the budget is the first battle we're going to do some training of people I know this is one of those things that people struggle to squeeze in it's interesting that in the baseline it's particularly mentioned where training and how to use the online research tools document production and how to use and supporting pro bono technology and I don't know how there is a great assessment things happening there's people who are partnering with actual pro bono technology technologists from pro bono firms from CIOs to help with their tech assessments people can copy standards and I know LSN TAP is a good resource for that too standards and policies increasingly I think people are going to be asking you to show them the policies you have and ask what you do to make sure people know about them training we've got a good comment here from William Guyton that mentions litigant portals or some way for litigants to access information online webRTC as a real time communication opportunities that are available there I've seen programs set up remote counseling pro bono work through webRTC a very useful tool there overall so security there's a whole section on security here and it is definitely essential to the baselines maintaining backups, updating software educating staff proactively and limiting permissions on documents files those individual things as needed only having these things in place ahead of time helps significantly we've definitely run into programs that have waited until there was a crisis and then ended up spending much more time or much more money dealing with that crisis because one of these four things was really missed the security section breezes over some of the really important stuff that is there and we've got full webinars on this but it includes things like firewalls antivirus spam anti spyware backup and data retention policies as part of that data destruction is one of those policies that a lot of organizations should really look at hopefully coming up with a data destruction policy here at LS Untap that people can customize in the first part of next year for electronic data specifically it is often housed long term and not necessarily removed where we have usually have a great process for getting rid of physical files it's part of that security I would definitely recommend looking into a bring your own device policy a lot a few organizations I know have just said you can't use your personal devices at all and that tends to push towards kind of a shadow IT where people just don't tell IT that they're doing it although the baselines don't require that you allow people to use their own device but at least proactively consider be aware of that type of use and if you can educate people to use it smartly and securely you may be able to work with them very collaboratively and there's opportunities also there to install security protocols things that if a device is lost it can be remotely wiped those type of things can be proactively planned into your policies there on the security side are there things that either of you would like to add here well if I you know I'm torn as NLADA as a co-chair of that we don't want to create a bunch of grant requirements and make it hard for people to get other work done and yet another checklist on the other hand if I will say just as a recommendation these aren't enough by themselves if you said it's really kind of a laundry list of things you should know about so if I were to write a recommendation it would be somebody responsible for technology in your program should attend at least one security webinar every year and it's rapidly changing when I first started with this kind of chicken little the sky is falling not that many real examples of people being held ransom or being targeted with attacks and that's all changed just today I was speaking with a program that's getting they're being targeted right now with fishing which seems to be literally targeted at them like everyone in there and their program is getting really convincing fishing emails so that's absolutely essential and BYOD I think the general recommendation is figure out a policy or just don't do it yeah, William makes a wonderful point here which is that multi-factor authentication should really be a standard there making it more difficult for people to gain access and strongly consider it as an option for both applications and for backups the baselines do not require that you use either the cloud or on-premises solutions but there is a lot to be said for letting experts externally host at least one of your backup copies and I strongly suggest that you have at least two different backup systems available but the cost of that cloud hosting and the options that are there for redundancy the cost has went way down and the features are incredible so it is it's well worth considering there and can be done very securely they are and this is I think this has changed in the last decade too from you might be ad secure with a computer locked under somebody's desk but nowadays the ways that people get at here it has gotten so much more sophisticated that it takes expert systems to do it and you can add redundancy pretty easily I think William's point is really good that these are experts and now that I see how complicated it is to keep track of all the potential issues and threats and do you know what the underlying software updates are and what are the errors that are being patched that you need to make sure of those are really great points. William points out Microsoft Foundation is giving $5,000 a year towards nonprofits there for using $365 or Azure the hosting costs through ASW through Amazon services is super cheap there also there are many options out there worth looking at in those areas but you got to have an expert if you throw your own stuff up in the cloud you're just expanding your tax vector. Yes, yes having someone on staff that is able to make sure that's done securely or an external consultant that specializes in that although a consultant hours and times will add up very quickly one of the next areas that is covered is trainings and I'm going to be unmuting hopefully William here so that if he's got additional comments please just chime in you should be unmuted William. Thanks, appreciate it. Yeah, I mean there's we've had a full webinar on security and we'll continue to do them every year as the technology updates anything else to add on the security side? Not unless we want to go all afternoon. Okay, that's going to be quite. Yeah, the next two that I've got here are on trainings one thing that's interesting here is the community legal education aspect of this talks about looking at effective use of technology such as online conferencing videos and other use of appropriate technology if you're dealing with a very large geographic area it is often difficult to reach out to clients across that geographic area if you can take a training that you're doing at a community center or an outreach event and find some way to either record or stream that you can turn into a training for Seattle into a statewide training and allow it to have much more impact over the next six or 12 months so that looking at video archival and streaming is definitely something that should be considered to help your impact. The other thing to think about on the training side is that there is that this mentions standards that are out there for lawyers. The ABA does a great job of talking about what lawyers must do to keep up with technology and that should be part of the training that is given to your in-house to your lawyers is that training on technology with regards to ethics if they're doing research on jurors how can they interact or not interact on social media if they're interacting with judges online what does your state say there about the use of social media it's divided in different states those type of things are important to keeping your lawyers well educated and ethically okay. I think some of this goes back you'll notice there's kind of a theme in the baselines that sort of has to do with efficiency technology should give you the opportunity to be a good steward of the resources you're given and maybe it makes sense to at least have the ability to broadcast or record that important information you're imparting to others as opposed to send the same person to go to drive five different places. Sometimes you need to drive sometimes you do it in person but there's some efficiency that can be gained here. Definitely. The next area that we're looking at has been one of the more popular ones that we've done trainings on is communications both email collaborative tools having tools for testing tech issues that are out there having internal communication mechanisms that allow staff to share web conference having a system for tracking technology systems also dealing with telephone system routing by language relay reports on busy or dropped calls after-hour messages and then also consider online intake it does not require but it should be part of your plan to at least consider online intake there which is a very popular option especially when you consider triaging and providing people with self-help resources as you're determining whether or not they might be eligible through that system. There was a program in California telling me that they were trying to improve their language access that they were only up to 14 different languages that they could route people to when they called in. Accessibility can be so much improved now with the way different phone systems, I wouldn't even call them phone systems anymore, communication systems are getting so sophisticated can be configured and I want to add on online intake there is consolidation and there are efforts to coordinate there are times when you need a specific online intake or a specific program, even a specific program within a specific program but I hope that anyone attending will figure out what efforts are underway in their area to see if they can be part of a larger effort. Definitely. And one thing to really also consider in this is the expansion of mobile devices both for your lawyers and for clients we are seeing that there is a significant number of clients that a smart phone may be the only internet access that they have and they may have very limited data or data that they're accessing through free wifi and designing your legal systems so that they are mobile accessible is essential at this point and considering ways to reach out to clients through mobile devices or allow them to get information to you via mobile devices we have had two or three instances in the last year where clients have to text information into a particular lawyer because they lost access to their other forms of communication so at least considering options there is essential as that's often a way that clients are interacting and communicating. So the next story that we've got here is software and technology around administration which really covers two different areas. One is on your accounting side, payroll timekeeping, those types of things general ledger, accounts receivable client trust accounts tracking, reporting, budgeting and expenditures. This is essential for all of your grant reporting and the better technology that you have in place here down on your need to try to collect data from several different sources as you're doing grant reporting later we've had several discussions on the LSTech email list about what accounting software and what practices people use this is one of those areas that I am least knowledgeable but there are other experts in our community that deal with this all the time and it's worth reaching out to the community to figure out what software meets your needs there and can work into your budget in this area. It's closely related to fundraising and grant reporting. It talks about in the same administration section looking at grant maintenance, tracking milestones keeping reimbursements cost calculations those types of things in a centralized system and also putting together general plans for fundraising marketing outreach and then electronically tracking information of your donors, contact history and then the ability to generate reports and do data driven improvements of those systems over time. I will say that this is an area where I see a lot of legal services just moving into the fundraising development outreach portion towards donors in a very new way that traditional non-profits or the MTC N10 community has many years of experience there and it's one of the reasons that we try to open up the email list to individuals outside of legal services because other non-profits have much more experience in this area and it is worth reaching out to them to figure out what works and then try to bring those best practices in house here to legal services. Brian, I just wanted to add back on the accounting stuff that I think the baselines were developed at LSE, they came from them they're a funder, they probably don't want to walk into a grantee and see that the books are in someone's unintelligible handwriting but also I've heard there's some bad things that happen and if that information is stored in an understandable well-organized electronic system it also should be the case that problems can be identified before they get really serious and detracting from the organization's mission because you're missing dollars or you're having too much trouble with budgeting which is super complicated and this is not in the baselines I did want to just say on the development software I really encourage people to talk to people who actually have that piece of software to learn about their experiences. You really haven't saved yourself any time or effort if it turns out that the solution that you are trying to use is too hard for anyone to really understand so definitely reach out to your friends. As we are starting to wrap up here I'm going to put links to these selected resources into the chat. They cover more in depth some of the topics that we've talked about today. I'll put those in as clickable links here in a second. I definitely recommend that people check out the LS Untap YouTube channel and tap videos. It has over 100 videos of our past webinars there and many of them go in depth on topics that we've talked about today and I would like to open it up to questions generally and encourage people if they're not already there to join the LS Untap Discuss Email group that is hosted through Google groups. If you have a Google account you can go there directly and join or if you do not just send me an email and I'm happy to add you. Are there any questions that individuals have as we get close to wrapping up here? Let me say real quick in case we weren't clear the baselines are recommendations that are designed to be helpful to programs they're not in the form of grantee requirements. I hope that with our help and Brian's help and the community's help that they stir conversations in each program about technology needs and I hope that they turn out to be some good guidance for future planning and if not I'm also available to respond to questions I also finally want to make a plug for the email group that Brian helps manage it's essential if there's anybody who isn't already on the LS Untap technology group it's something I consider essential to anybody who works in technology in the LA to stay up with what's going on and get instant feedback on problems and suggestions. Any final thoughts William? Anything that you would like to add? I'm kind of with Jeff we could go off on a bunch of tangents but I think you've hit the high points. I will reiterate what Jeff said I'm certainly available to anybody in any capacity having spent the last what 12, 13 years in my career in legal aid in a technology capacity unlike Jeff and Brian I'm the non-lawyer amongst the geeks but I'm certainly willing to help hopefully that means you have that well yeah it's always disheartening to the new attorneys when they show up and they're like why don't you become a lawyer and I'm like I just can't take the pay cut yeah it's it's rough I know well thank you both also a huge thank you to Zander who had to step off at the Trinity Hour but we are always available to help answer questions also to help people write RFPs to find solutions that are out there if there's any of these things that people want to help implement in their program and that's what Alice NTAP and that's what this community overall is there to do is to help you both with getting up to and implementing the baselines and then also doing innovative stuff in this field to help clients and join us in San Antonio oh yes the TIG conference is coming up here next month I will be out there coming Jeff I'll be there and I hope that anybody who's all the folks attending who are watching this if you think you've found a good solution to meet the needs of the baselines tell us about it on Alice NTAP definitely well thank you both and you enjoy your holidays and we'll see you in Texas thank you see you soon bye