ICT tools to work and communicate from home
The world has been disrupted and traumatized by the Coronavirus crisis. Also known as COVID-19, this global pandemic has affected every industry which made them difficult to cop and conduct their work as normal. The COVID-19 pandemic in Cambodia is also a part of the ongoing worldwide pandemic. The first case in Cambodia was confirmed on 27 January 2020. According to Global Health Security Index's report in 2019, Cambodia ranked 89th out of 195 countries in preparedness for infectious disease outbreak. In this response, Open Development Cambodia have ramped up the remote work policies allowing employees to work from home in an effort to limit any disturbance to daily operations and more substantially, to stop the spread of the virus.
Emerged digitalization
Yet, remote work is not without its issues. Especially for IT and HR department in my organization who have to manage these new ways of working in order to ensure that all employees are productive even though they aren’t in the office. For HR, this means setting up policies and outlining the guidelines that staff should follow as they start working from different locations and setting up self-distancing guideline if they come to the office. For IT teams, the responsibility is to make sure that the right tools, technologies and systems are in place to track performance, monitor output and allow people to work without disruption. In this situation, we can say ICT is the unsung heroes of this new wave of “emerged digitalization” and raising awareness around the globe.
Pictured by Funkyfocus on Pixabay
Impression in ICT
Regarding to my work in Geographic Information System (GIS), I have used the open sources software called QGIS and another license software for my career. It can be no many effects to my GIS team since we used to work with offline applications, and online to research and upload the spatial data to the Open Development Cambodia’s platform. But the challenge is how we manage it and how we using ICT tools to communicate to each other. During the pandemic, we are not always meet each other in person so we are using online communication tools such as Skype, Google meet, Slack, Jitsi, Github, Zoom, Gitter, Telegram, Facebook...etc. Sometimes I feel like it's too much to respond to all those communication channels but this is we call technology is offering an abundance of options, we can choose, explore and determine when will we use it and which tools are well fit to us.
Collaboration tools for productive teams
Since the communication with my colleagues has changed, video conferencing tools are the best alternative to face-to-face meetings. There are many options for team collaboration tools to set up a video call. Previously, we like to use Skype and recently we have tried other tools like Zoom and Jitsi Meet. I find it is a better solution but it still depends on the internet connection and challenges in remote team will not disappear so we have other instant collaboration tools and note tools such as E-mail, Slack, Github, Wiki, and GoogleDocs for note down any challenges and issues. I cannot detail all the tools that we have used but I just listed some tools that I recently use it with my team. I still admire that technology offers an abundance of options and help me a lot in my working remotely from home. I also treasure my colleagues for the best commitment. We cannot collaborate if we don't communicate and commit.
Pictured by Alexandra_Koch on Pixabay
Security and privacy in digital era
In today’s digital era, technical teams and IT professionals are not the only ones who need to worry about cybersecurity. The reality is that security, safety, and privacy are issues that everyone needs to understand, especially those who work in communications. In my organization, we also have a sharing session for everyone to understand about cybersecurity to protect our data and personal information. I find that I need to secure my password, using personal WIFI, update antivirus program on my computer and avoid any fishing by emails or surfing the websites. I feel safe and keep in touch with my family, friends and co-workers, even though I was isolated and working from home during the period of COVID-19 pandemic.
Blog written by: Mr. LOCH Kalyan, ODC Data Research and GIS Coordinator.
