Internet Help Desk
From New Orleans Wiki
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There is a wealth of information about rebuilding New Orleans on the Internet. Many bureaucratic procedures are completed faster when performed through the Internet.
For those citizens with a computer, Internet access, and the skills to use both, the Internet makes their difficult rebuilding tasks easier.
However, the many New Orleans that lack computers, Internet connectivity, or the skill to use either suffer a frustrating disadvantage.
Think New Orleans exists to provide the citizens of New Orleans with technical and organizational solutions for productivity. Think New Orleans has instituted programs to educate citizens in the use of the Internet. Think New Orleans has encouraged citizens to work collaboratively online and in person in workshops to share information.
At Think New Orleans, we do not believe that a person must make the Internet a priority in order to benefit from the knowledge and expediency that the Internet affords.
Therefore, Think New Orleans has instituted the Internet Help Desk initiative.
Through an Internet Help Desk, a person with no desire to learn to use a computer the Internet can ask for information and submit information, through a neighbor that does know how to use the Internet.
This Internet savvy neighbor may be a fellow citizen from a neighborhood further along in the recovery process, or a neighbor from the vicinity.
Upon the successful adoption of this program, Think New Orleans will begin Internet Help Desk Workshops, so that neighborhoods can maintain help desks with people from within the neighborhood.
However, it is also the hope that people will continue volunteer across neighborhood boundaries, so that we can work together as a city.
[edit] Feedback and Discussion
Ongoing discussion takes place at the Think New Orleans weblog, under those posts tagged Internet Workshop.
[edit] How to Volunteer
If you would like to help develop the Internet Help Desk or particpate in pilot programs, please contact volutneer@thinknola.com, or simply leave a comment in the discussions or on the discussion page of this Wiki article.
[edit] The Internet Help Desk
The crux of the Internet Help Desk, two volunteers, at a folding table, with two laptops and a printer.
The Internet Help Desk is placed in prominent, yet secure, locations in areas with little or no Internet connectivity.
Visitors to the Help Desk will be able to ask questions of volunteers.
Examples of questions may be.
- Is there an open laundromat in my neighborhood?
- How to I apply for "Road Home" assistance?
- How do I renew an expired drivers license?
As volunteers answer questions, they organize the answers into an easy to edit, easy to search, web site.
This web site acts as a knowledge base so that volunteers can learn from each other.
It is also made available to the general public so that people with Internet connections can use the web site to answer questions for themselves.
[edit] Elevator Pitch
The Internet Help Desk is a card table, with two laptops and a printer in a flooded neighborhood. Internet savvy citizens volunteer to answer questions and fill out forms for their unwired neighbors by serving as a citizen librarian at an Internet Help Desk.
[edit] Goals
- Provide people with information and expedite the recovery by assisting people with registration processes and on line forms.
- To test the usablity of on line forms and web sites and report usability issues to the originating web sites.
- To document shortcomings in New Orleans government web sites and on line forms providing solutions to problems both frequent and obscure.
[edit] Help Offered
Internet Help Desk volunteers will help people with the following tasks.
- Internet research.
- Reconstitution of community groups.
- Repopulation of neighborhoods.
- Maps and travel directions.
- Processing of on line forms.
Internet Help Desk volunteers will be able to write up ad hoc documents and print them out for visitors, as well as printing out ready documents from the knowledge base, or library of government and nonprofit supplied PDFs.
[edit] Participants
There are two main participants in the Internet Help Desk.
- Volunteers
- People who volunteer their time to staff an Internet Help Desk at a public location.
- Visitors
- People who ask questions or request help with procedures.
Volunteers are further divided into two categories.
- On Site Volunteers
- On site volunteers site behind the card table with their laptops and answer questions for visitors.
- On Line Volunteers
- On line volunteers help by monitoring a syndicated web site or mailing list for questions posed by on site volunteers and performing research.
[edit] Research and Response Methods
Initially the Internet Help Desk will be used for two basic functions.
- Answer Questions.
- Submit information to government agencies.
Additional services will require development.
- Knowledge base pages for frequently requested procedures.
- Knowledge base pages for frequently asked questions.
- A directory of available resources in the knowledge base.
[edit] Training
Volunteers will be supported with training in how to post information to the message board.
It is possible that the Internet Help Desk could be used to reconnect specific communities by associating a person's name with a place where they used to meet with their friends and neighbors.
In places where people have not returned to live in their homes, these daily connections, with the people at the coffee shop, for example, may have been missed.
It is an opportunity to create knowledge base entries for meeting places that would not other wise have them, a dog park, for example.
Research can be performed On Site Volunteers by searching the Internet or searching the web sites of government agencies.
In time, an experienced on site volunteer will become familiar with frequently asked questions. They will record the answers to these questions in the knowledge base. When a visitor asks a question with an answer in the knowledge base, the volunteer can print that page for them. (Put logo, contact information on printed page?)
Research
[edit] Open Questions
One can imagine that people will ask a question of the Internet Help Desk that cannot be answered during Help Desk hours. In this case, the person may have partially completed a procedure.
[edit] How To Use
In order to better service
[edit] Tools
[edit] New Orleans Wiki
The New Orleans Wiki can serve as a knowledge base for Internet Help Desk volunteers. The New Orleans Wiki is used to record a list of frequently asked questions and frequently performed procedures. An example might be, how do I get a building permit. The New Orleans Wiki would record the procedure to follow, the required information, and would link to the appropriate online forms.
[edit] Email
An Internet Help Desk volunteer will become familiar with the bureaucracy and will know who to email for help.
[edit] Syndicated Web Site
Internet Help Desk volunteers will be able to submit questions to a syndicated web site. During a Internet Help Desk session, a volunteer may wish to ask a question of volunteers who are online, or of anyone who might be listening in.
They will have a web site where they can post questions. This web site is a syndicated web site, or weblog. Volunteers are able to subscribe to this web site using a syndicated feed reader, add the headlines to their Google or Yahoo! homepage, or have the questions sent via email, as if it were a mailing list.
If someone were to ask a question that the Help Desk volunteer could not answer, or if their was a larger volume of requests, the help desk volunteer could post questions to the syndicated web site. Online volunteers could then research the questions, or perhaps a volunteer has a ready answer. If this is a task that needs to be performed, online volunteers could collaborate to perform this task.
[edit] Printing
Internet Help Desk volunteers will always endeavor to give the visitor something they can take with them as a reminder of the information they've requested or the forms they've processed. The knowledge base associated with the Internet Help Desk will have a wealth of articles available for printing, as well as a selection of PDF documents form gorvernment and nonprofit organizaitons.
[edit] Knowledge Base
In the course of assisting people through the Internet Help Desk, volunteers will learn.
- Frequently Asked Questions.
- Frequently Submitted Forms.
- Solutions to special cases in online procedures.
By asking questions through the syndicated web site, a record of the dialog necessary to resolve a procedure is created. The resolution is recorded in the New Orleans Wiki and correctly classified.
By correctly storing information in the New Orleans Wiki, the Internet Help Desk volutneers are, in fact, creating a searchable, browseable knowledge base.
The New Orleans Wiki is openly available on the Internet. This means that, over time, the answers collected on the synidcated web site and in the New Orleans Wiki will be indexed by search engines such as Google, Yahoo! Search, and MSN Search. When people enter questions into one of these
[edit] Uniformity of Documentation
So that people who use the knowledge base can quickly apply the knowledge they find, procedures will be documented with a uniform conventions. These may include tables with visual clues, or process diagrams. All pages will adhere to a style guideline that will be monitored by moderators.
[edit] Volunteer Issues
Volunteers must be made aware of the privacy and security concerns of visitors to the Internet Help Desk. Without the permission of the visitor, a volunteer should not publish the name of the visitor on the web. The volunteer must not publish vital information like Social Security numbers or driver's license numbers on the web.
Procedures are documented on the New Orleans Wiki. They are created and amended by volunteers as new information becomes available.
They are directed at three distinct audiences.
- On Site Help Desk Volunteers
- On Line Help Desk Volunteers
- Help Desk Visitors
