IT advisor at DACAAR
The last few months, I’ve spent in Kabul, Afghanistan, as an IT advisor for the Danish NGO DACAAR. DACAAR has been active in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the last 21 years and is a development non-governmental organisation which works towards sustainable livelihoods for rural Afghans including the lasting return of refugees and internally displaced people.
With over 1000 employees, about 200 of which work from the main offices, the organization faces all the IT problems any mid-sized organization has to cope with, but lacks the experience and the expertise, the 5 person IT department having an average age of around 21.
Much of my time is spent on guiding the organization through several IT-related decision making processes as well as training the IT manager on how to make balanced decisions and how to plan and assign IT tasks.
I also oversaw the introduction of a groupware environment, in this case the very decent and open source PHProjekt.