Tribal Connections Project, Phase 1
Final Report:
May 1998 - April 2001

Lessons Learned Our five guiding principles were: 1) collaboration, 2) participatory planning, 3) interdisciplinary teamwork, 4) flexibility, and 5) acknowledgement. Our first step in every contact was to establish trust — belief by our participants that we would adhere to these principles. The entire process took much longer than expected. Timelines proposed by the sites or estimated by our staff rarely allowed for all of the untoward circumstances that arose. The work of building trust, collaborative and participative planning, interdisciplinary team- work, etc. takes a great deal of time. Not only was trust building needed between our staff and the site, but, possibly even more often, among tribal agencies, all at a single site. Several times we encountered directors of tribal health departments who did not know the Indian Health Service physicians on their own reservation. Unanticipated time lags resulted in varying levels of motivation and disappointment among the sites.

Index to TC Phase 1 Final Report Staff Overview Project Background Project Description Lessons Learned Accomplishments

Proposal Process and Site Selection

Proposals written by the target communities gave us excellent material with which to work. We had baseline data on hardware and connections within each community. Our Project Manager garnered a picture of each community before going out for the first site visit. We got a good sense of the leaders in each community and possible interested collaborators. The proposal process showed that the target communities had valid and realistic ideas of what technology could accomplish, had good grasp of the needs of their own peoples, had creative ways of addressing problems, were savvy in getting the most from their money, and were enthusiastic about working with a library agency in achieving goals.

Site Visits and Collaborations

Tribes were self-contained as communities in all the traditional senses of community--geographically, culturally, and with a common purpose. Therefore, they were ideal sites to work with in community capacity development. The site visits at each community gave the Project Manager an idea of the technical and physical landscape and potential for improving the technology infrastructure at the site. The project liaison at each site had a great impact on how each project progressed. While the computer systems offices had the greatest investment in maintaining the equipment and the connectivity, the librarians had the greatest investment in ensuring that use of the equipment and connectivity resulted in the acquisition of information.

We were most successful when we capitalized on activities already underway in the community or in the environment at large. The site visits provided us an opportunity to view the possibilities for collaborations and partnering. By dovetailing with agencies supporting similar projects the award was leveraged for a greater advantage. In every community, the Project Manager was able to forge relationships and collaborations. The project helped spark discussion on the value of technology and community development in the context of comprehensive tribal planning. Collaborations within any one community and collaborations with outside agencies were part of our planned approach. An unanticipated and very positive outcome was the collaboration among our Tribal Connections sites, between our sites and our Advisory Panel members, and among Advisory Panel members. The Tribal Connections project brought together a wide variety of talented people, all with similar objectives.

Connectivity

Collaboration with local, state and federal agencies such as the Department of Information Services and the state library system was an excellent way to leverage funds. Federal agencies--the Indian Health Service (IHS) and the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)--have the potential to provide Internet connectivity to approximately 80% to 90% of all tribal lands in the lower 48 states. This could be accomplished with minimal impact (e.g., the cost to increase bandwidth) to either agency’s infrastructure.

Technical Support

We found a need within the communities for more hands-on technical support than we were able to provide. The concept of computers and related technology is not new to tribal staff; however having dedicated staff on site specifically to support personal computers and LANs often is new. Communities need to budget for a computer support person or contract with an outside company. Lack of training in the use of computer resources in general is a challenge. Most tribal office staff knew computer basics, e.g., word processing and sometimes e-mail and Web surfing, but information gathering and evaluation skills were often missing. Key staff were trained as applications support resources.

Training in Using the Internet to Access Health Resources

The RML Outreach Training librarians were not able to carry out all the training that we had initially planned to accomplish during the project period. We experienced a number of difficulties. For instance, sites were not always ready for training for a number of reasons, or there was difficulty coordinating training schedules with staff. Not all community members came to training sessions, and sometimes many sites had no dedicated space for training or not enough computers. Several tribes saw the Tribal Connections projects as an opportunity to encourage youth to learn technical support skills that would benefit their future careers and strengthen the tribal work force and economic base.

Sustainability

It is impossible at this point to know whether the effects of our intervention will be sustained by the communities in the long-term. We found a need for a tribal health information advocate — a person who believed that health information could make a difference to the tribe and who was also an opinion leader so that the belief would be adopted by others. Where we collaborated with other agencies for connectivity we had greater confidence that the connectivity would be continued. Also, the more people in a community who are trained, the better the pool for a real or virtual users group and therefore the better chance the skills will be sustained. We found that people from different agencies within a community tended to help each other with problems or concerns.

Tribal Health Resources Web Pages

By the end of the project period, not all of the communities had linked from their communities' web pages to the health resources at our Web site. However, the communities that have are, by and large, the ones where we have provided the most training. Not surprisingly, once we showed the community the wealth of resources that could be reached through our AI/AN health resources pages, the impetus was there to make the link.