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  If Not Me, Then Who?

  Jan 8, 2024

  Happy New Year!  While we're making arrangements to start what amounts to be a final push to get the GTO to where I've wanted it all along, I can't believe I'm voluntarily trying to get another project started.  The twist is that this "next thing" isn't automotive related, but instead involves our local senior center.  The more I think about it, the more it sounds like an unintended follow-up to my previous "It Took 3 Guys..."  post. 

  Not too long ago, administration of the Hillside Senior Community Center and its activities passed from the group of five local municipalities who now only own the land to The Lackawanna County Area on Aging, who then partnered with the United Neighborhood Centers of Northeastern Pennsylvania for the actual operation of the center.  The transfer was drawn out and tumultuous, with the center being closed for some time while the process dragged on.  One of the five original municipalities was dragging their feet and only signed on to the transfer after some negative publicity in the local news from the senior population that the center was forced to stop serving.

  As with any organizational regime change, the staff was replaced.  You guessed it - the new staff is fewer in number and must consult the two entities before doing anything.  Many of us know what it's like to have to answer to two higher authorities, especially when both are non-profits.  Currently, there are only two employees.  One, paid by the County Area on Aging, provides most of the common maintenance functions.  The other, paid by United Neighborhood Centers, is the defacto administrator, coordinating all of the activities, answering the phones, etc.  The result of this arrangement is that the new staff struggles to do the right thing and apparently without adequate support.  To take up the slack, the center depends on volunteers to help answer the phones and perform data entry of statistical information required by the two governing organizations.  This is where Jan and I come in.

  Jan was going to volunteer to do some of the heavy lifting with data entry.  She types faster than the gatling gun on the Air Force A-10 Warthog spews out bullets.  She came home after the first day complaining that the laptop she was given to use stubbornly refused to connect to the internet and therefore couldn't reach the site necessary to get the work done.  Could I come and look at it?  Being a retired IT professional and program coordinator for a non-profit Continuing Education Vo-Tech (night school for adults), I thought to myself "How hard could it be?"  Well, I'm at the age where I'm retired and am also a member of the senior center - I should know better.  But nooooo.

  It seems that during the transfer, there was never a full inventory or accounting of IT assets made.  The new folks don't have a clear idea of what they have or where it's located.  Computers were piled (literally) on a cabinet shelf without any support documentation such as logins, passwords, etc.  The new staff have to bring in their own laptops to get anything done as they're effectively locked out of the equipment left behind.

  This is where the spirit of "It took 3 guys..." comes in.  This senior center is my center too, in the sense that the quality of my experience depends upon how well it operates.  So, given that no one else is stepping up and as a retired IT professional, I'm about to pitch the offer to: 1) Perform a technology inventory and audit.  2) Donate time and materials (as they seem to have no budget for it) to properly setup office workstations with connectivity to the Internet, and 3) Update and recommission the unused computers left behind by the previous administration for office use so people don't have to bring in their own personal computers.  Finally, 4) Document all of this information in a binder for the current administrator to use should she require any 3rd-party IT tech support beyond what I'm able to provide.  Wish me luck.

  UPDATE:  Jan18th.  They're not interested.  Instead, they managed to get a student level chromebook to work with office-wide shared login credentials (!!!).  So, all the other equipment left behind still sits on a shelf collecting dust while both the paid office staff as well as the volunteers use the same Guest logins and passwords.  Amazing.

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