Awa-iti OutReach

Connecting organisations to their members

OutReach is an interconnection layer between organisations and their members. Many organisations have a requirement to update and inform their member base, and also to seek agreement and consensus. These steps are used to validate the organisations’ decisions and activities, and demonstrate transparency and accountability. For those organisations whose members are geographically dispersed, this can be challenging. Physical addresses for regular mail are often out of date, SMS does not provide rich content, and email just does not have the prominence that they require. Social media has a much better reach, but is too full of distractions and noise to ensure that important messages get to the member base with the priority the organisation requires.

OutReach is designed to address these challenges. Users can download and activate the OutReach app, then register with one or more organisations hosted by the OutReach service. Organisation administrators can then use the OutReach web portal to compose messages that can then be pushed to the users.

Messages are relatively simple, consisting of a graphic, a text body, and other identifying attributes, such as an organisation icon, organisation name, and message title. Users see a summary of the message in a scrolling feed, and can then touch to expand. The organisation may also attach an action to the message, such as a link to a video conference meeting, a survey or voting page, or perhaps a live video stream. The user can respond to the message with a reply email, share it, or rate it.

User actions are recorded, along with the user’s current location. This allows the organisation to generate reports on how their messaging is being consumed. Location is important because many organisations will generate content with geographic significance, so it is necessary to understand where the content is being consumed.

Registration

To use the Awa-Iti OutReach app, users must register with their organisations; it is the organisations that control membership, not the users. When a user downloads and activates the app, they are prompted to enter an email address. If the email address exists in the user database of any of the organisations hosted by Awa-Iti OutReach, the user will get an email with a list of those organisations, and a link where they can activate their registration to any (or all) of those organisations. If their email does not exist in any of the organisations hosted by Awa-Iti OutReach, they will receive no email.

Privacy

Awa-Iti OutReach requests access to the users’ locations, and reports this information to the central service. This information is used for generating reports on how an organisation’s content is being consumed, including by location. Many organisations need to be able to measure the quality of their interaction with their membership base, and reporting on the consumption of content is a key part of this. Understanding location will significantly enrich the quality of reports, especially for organisations with geographically dispersed membership.

The system also requests access to the user’s camera. This will allow the user to respond to messages with images or video as appropriate, enhancing the quality of the feedback.

Another important aspect to Awa-Iti OutReach is the ability to authenticate users, which will allow for activities requiring additional levels of security, such as voting. For this reason, OutReach may request access permissions to the user’s phone biometric capabilities.