We are at the last stages of our GSA “blunt instrument” mode. Within a few weeks, at the outside, we should have a spiffier, notably more user-friendly shared search portal in place for all LSNC staffers. By January, we should (hopefully) have a few select Google Sites properly targeted and the basic beginnings of a nice set of user-friendly file-type and collections filters in place. With those in place, we then plan on rolling out a formal roadshow to all our local branch offices to train everyone on the new shared search portal, the new search enhancements, and assist directly with the offices to get targeted files in place and properly organized on our shared document repositories.

Before getting to that point, to be sure, we have had some modest hesitation about unleashing the GSA on our staffers in its current, incomplete state of implementation. But the staff experiences with our temporary shared portal have been very positive, as detailed in the earlier post, Talk about zero learning curve. (And see the next post for the data results of our “test-bed” evaluations in our Sacramento and Chico offices.)

My instinctive temperament is to remain skeptical, even when faced with some measure of success. The day after we did the “blunt instrument” training, one of the younger, hot-shot lawyers stopped by my office and raved about how effective the GSA was at finding stuff. (It is sooooo hackneyed for any of us to emote this way, but at least a couple of times in the conversation he exclaimed, “This is sooooo awesome.”) Okay… but this is also an advocate who is only two doors down from me and the two IT staff I supervise, so he’s always picking up the positive, can-do, tech vibe that radiates out from the paid IT staff. (Remember, we’re a 140+ employee but still seriously tech-understaffed legal aid program.) He saw some of the stuff we were doing with the GSA even before we showed it to anyone else, so he was already on board with the project, big time. It works for him. But what about everyone else?

This real-world example from today tells me it is:

On the other side of the building, one of our stalwart paralegals was working on a client’s case involving an alleged overpayment in the CalWORKs cash-aid program. [CalWORKs is California's name for the TANF program.] He needed to quickly find a good example of a request for administrative rehearing to review the alleged overpayment. The paralegal went to the temporary search portal and, quite sensibly, typed in the search box the following, without quotes: “request for rehearing overpayment”.

He got about 500 search results and found a good, usable example on the first page of results. He also made this observation to me in a subsequent email: “I used several of the documents in the search. I did not have to download them. I just used the text version. Which is very useful and quick.”

Tell me about it.