With the Pope now on his State visit to the UK, we at insiteability and 3^rd Sector Digital will be taking more of an interest than most technology-based businesses.

By arriving in Edinburgh (and being greeted by the Queen), travelling to London and then heading to Birmingham, the Pope is visiting three of Britain’s biggest Roman Catholic dioceses:  St Andrews, Westminster and Birmingham.

All are major customers of ours.

Innovation and modernisation

There aren’t many institutions as old as the Catholic Church. And there can be few that are dogged so much by arguments over the need to change and ‘modernise’.

But over the past 5 years, in working with staff and priests across a number of dioceses and parishes, we’ve had a rather different view of the church - one that itself has been about, well… modernisation!

Through website design, donor management and accounting support, we’ve been helping dioceses and parishes to adopt new technologies and ways of working that reflect some pretty impressive bouts of innovation.

From online Gift Aid and accounting…

Take Gift Aid, for example - the scheme by which charities can reclaim tax paid by their donors (providing accurate records are kept and managed). A large diocese might have upwards of 60,000 registered Gift Aiders, with annual tax reclaims in excess of £2.5 Million.

In the Catholic Church, it is the diocese that claims tax back. There is thus an ongoing exchange of data between the central diocese and (in some cases) 200+ parishes and other bodies that receive donations and help enrol donors into planned giving and Gift Aid arrangements.

3SD’s ‘Gift Aid Manager’, which has been designed and implemented with the support of several dioceses, supports this process – allowing for the two-tier approach typical in the Church. Based on a browser interface, with a hosted data solution, the system gives both parishes and the centre real-time access to records, as well as secure back-up and advanced analytical facilities.

For some dioceses, Gift Aid support has also been integrated with ‘Financial Manager’, 3SD’s accounting solution.  Unlike many similar organisations, where local branches (think ‘parishes’ in this case) manage funds using a potpourri of spreadsheets and accounting packages, a number of Catholic dioceses now manage their accounts via a common web-based system.

Again here, the data is hosted centrally, using a secure, advanced server farm, giving both parish and the central diocese access to the same information, and a more seamless link between local financial data and the central chart of accounts.

…To website design and Web 2.0 developments

Then there are all the things we’ve be doing on the website side, employing more modern design principles and using ‘web 2.0’ technologies and mobile platforms. One diocese now enjoys over 70,000 website visits a month.

As far as we know, we also built the first ‘virtual diocese’ in the UK – a mash-up of directory data and Google-Maps, which allows users to search for churches, schools and diocesan events (like the Pope’s visit) using a graphical, map-based interface (for example, see Westminster’s: http://www.rcdow.org.uk/virtual/).

We could say more

So innovation there has been – and some of it cutting edge. We could say more…much more. But then we’re not the real stars this week – those that have implemented these technologies and embraced change in their dioceses are.

The ‘web is dead’ and ‘the internet has lost its soul.’ So suggested recent headlines in The Independent ( 6 August) and Wired magazine ( September).

Also, it appears, the ‘party is over for Google’ (Fortune, August) and the internet’s openness is under threat (The Economist, 4 September).

Clearly we are at the end of an epoch, if you go along with this: a mighty corporate empire is set to stumble and (perhaps) fall, and the era of internet equality may be about to end.

As part of this age, the very device that helped turn the internet into a world-changer – the web browser – is purportedly set to be supplanted by newer technology (not least, mobile phone apps).

As the seasons turn and the school year starts, it’s easy to be drawn into a sense that change is afoot, even if it might not happen overnight. So what’s involved here – and what’s at stake?

This clutch of stories argues that:

1. The good old web browser - that near-universal interface to the internet (and the information, online stores and social networks connected by it) - is set to be displaced by a universe of apps – single-purpose software tools whose numbers have soared with the rising tide of smart phones (particularly the iPhone);
2. At the same time, net neutrality (that all sites and media are treated the same on the Internet) is being threatened by forces that seek to wall off parts of the internet – sovereign governments that want more control over it, and commercial organisations that aspire to offer differential rates of access to certain traffic and customers (creating so-called slow and fast lanes); and
3. The internet monolith that dominated the old era will cease to be the driving force behind the new one. This applies to Google, whose rate of growth is now slowing sharply and which has failed to secure an additional product to set the pace in the way its search engine has.

If there is indeed a new wave of technologies and ways of using the internet, it’s hardly surprising that Apple is well placed to be benefit from it. Indeed, with the iPhone and its assorted apps, it’s clearly helping to create this new world. Thus far Google haven’t made much commercial headway with their mobile platform Android (a system acquired by them in 2005, for which 160,000 phones a day are now being activated).

Although no universal standard has yet emerged, it’s clear that apps will be ‘a’ major part of the future internet. The convenience of a single app to get a job done has important attractions, particularly when linked to geographic data. The Network Rail app, for instance, always knows where you are (and what your nearest station is), and live feeds will often tell you which platform you need even before the station boards have announced your train (so no more rushing for a seat, until, at least, everyone else has a smart phone).

But if there’s one notion I haven’t yet heard in all these epochal discussions it’s that of ‘complementarity’. Familiarity with the browser-based version of a tool is likely to lead to the use of the apps version subsequently. And many apps will have more restrictive features than their web-based counterparts – no doubt focusing on what’s needed ‘out in the field’. If you’re a manager visiting your regional offices, you won’t want to be doing all your accounts via a hand-held, but you might wish to have the relevant performance data of each local office in your palm.

And what about the net neutrality issue? For individuals or smaller organisations, which have always enjoyed a reasonably level playing field in terms of getting messages out, there is real concern here. Anything that allows more powerful actors (large corporations and governments) to drown out smaller ones (say, local charities and niche causes) will make the internet a poorer place for most people (though it would certainly allow some to profit).

Certainly the internet’s future will be different to its old one. The culture and values it has embodied hitherto cannot be guaranteed to remain the same (although we should fight to retain many of them). New technologies will certainly come along, and with them new services, user possibilities and (geeky) rising stars.

It’s not the case that the centre cannot hold, not least because the internet has never had a centre. Much will remain the same, although the experience may fragment. With a sound understanding of the way the wind is blowing, and technical and organisational savvy to back this up, there should be much to gain.