Enabling such agencies to contribute should be an essential part of an authority's information strategy. Part of the problem here has to do with the perceptions of community organisations and their appreciation of new opportunities. For most such agencies, the day to day skirmishes of financial survival, provision of critical services and other demands, leave little time to be invested in initiatives of uncertain promise, which cannot be applied directly to the organisation's short-term needs. In consequence, at the outset they may be reluctant to participate, and will require persuasion. Many community groups are only interested in ownership and consultation on issues which they feel comfortable with, issues which they know about.
Partnerships often founder on an appreciation of the differences in organisational cultures.
Time and understanding are necessary to make partnerships work. In some ways, community and voluntary agencies are more likely to be able to take advantage of the flexible, friendly systems and services which are becoming available, than are other kinds of organisation. Over the past 10 years or so, small unprofessionalised agencies have had to grapple with rigid, linear computer systems which require mandatory combinations of keystrokes and which force the user down paths with few or no options. Today's graphical interfaces are suited to a different kind of temperament - more creative, more flexible, less mechanistic. Associated with this is a more temporary phenomenon, to do with the legitimacy of experimentation.