Going digital in our work as social organisations, whether humanitarian or domestic abuse, means we have choices to make. For most of the aspects of our work – from data collection to storage, from diagnosis to analysis, from learning to writing – there is a digital option (an app) or many for us to choose.

This can be wonderful. It can help us achieve more impact or reduce certain costs. It also brings other choices to us. It helps us ask ‘what kind of organisation or team do we desire to be?’

Going digital often is a resource allocation question. And resource allocation usually communicates our values. We can ‘go digital’ to reduce costs in the name of a certain type of efficiency, but that is not the only choice. We can ‘go digital’ to reduce the time our staff spend on compliance reporting and increase their ‘face time’ with the people we seek to serve. We can ‘go digital’ and become more ‘robot-like’ in our services because on paper it appears more efficient. But we can also ‘go digital’ so we can ‘care’ more.

“There’s an app for that” gives us options and possibilities. What option we choose is up to us. The choice is ours to make.

Photo by bruce mars