Earth Charter

The Challenge:  implementing an efficient and effective program to provide free support for many working groups with many projects.

Long-standing problems such as declining natural resources and deteriorating watersheds, prove how challenging it is to build effective collaboration across governments, civic groups, and business. To address this, new independent programs are being formed to focus collaboration by several agencies on a specific problem.
 
Suddenly, people in different agencies and different cities must develop a strategic plan and manage a new program to execute that plan. Business processes, IT, and staff are needed to manage funding, review projects, and report to stakeholders. But how? Resources are limited, people are dispersed. Communication, collaboration, and knowledge management are critical issues for meeting the outcome accountability required by funders.

Move from talk to action, effectively.

Design, implement, and deliver a web-based collaboration workspace to help a community of working groups to manage their strategic program and to measure their progress toward mandated goals.

The S4S workspace is not a free-form environment; it provides structured collaboration with accountability. This business-like approach supports: designing strategy and process, tracking internal and external projects, coordinating participants, reporting progress, and much more.

Apply your funding through an efficient program!

S4S will help you, with technology services, management consulting, and support services to build and support wide engagement in your strategic plan.

Two examples:  http://www.s4s.com/casestudies -

•   Fraser Salmon and Watersheds Program - British Columbia, Canada. 
  
  • The Fraser River watershed is the size of California.
•   Newport Bay Watershed Management Committee - Orange County, California, USA.
  
  • An urbanized watershed that is exploring new approaches to watershed management.

While this solution allows a 100% web-based program to provide free support to many working groups and share information across many projects, these limitations apply:

• requires broadband connection to Internet.
• only available in English.
• S4S will deliver a complete and customized solution but this many require integration with existing systems, e.g. financial management, information on existing websites, GIS map sources, etc.
• there are service costs for technology support and maintenance, for implementation consulting, for customization, and for training and user support services.