Information & Language Technology Annual Report 2015

Information and Language Technology:
CABTAL IT service exist to ensure that Competent CABTAL and ICC staff are effectively using well-secured, properly functioning, and appropriate IT resources to achieve the ends of CABTAL and its partners.
Language Technology and Training:
In 2015 one of our IT staff completed his training and was named our first Language Technology Consultant. This was a very significant milestone for CABTAL. The job of a language technology worker is to advise language programs leadership as to available language technology, provide training and support for such technology so as to maximize the efficiency of field teams and guarantee high quality outcomes.
Several language projects were trained in 2015 to make maximum use of available IT resources especially ParaText software to produce good quality back-translations thereby facilitating their work with translation consultants. Projects nearing completion of their Scriptures or ready to print scripture portions where trained to use advanced features of ParaText software to run spelling checks and do various consistency checks to get their text nicely formatted and ready for typesetting.

Software licenses were ordered for several language projects and consultants who needed ParaText and Translators reference library for their work. We installed linguistic software, complex keyboards and fonts for several language projects, linguists and university students involved in language development work.
Information Technology:
IT is a service that never stops working. Currently CABTAL has 65 language projects in Cameroon and we service and maintain all their computers and other IT equipment plus several office computers. These keep our IT staff very busy on a daily basis to be up to speed with our daily IT needs.

In 2015 we upgraded our network. With the coming of 3G technology to Cameroon, our Internet connectivity has greatly improved hence improving our ICT operations as well. We are very pleased that some of our village teams can do their backups unto the Internet hence keeping their data safe. As a result of improved Internet connections, we have been able to access, troubleshoot and fix issues on project and office staff computers remotely saving time and travel costs.
In 2015 we worked with Global Alliance IT Administrators in the background cleaning up our email system and migrating everyone to use a new and improved system - Google Apps. This was very successful and CABTAL was the first Alliance organization in Africa to complete this process. We assisted other Alliance organizations in Africa in their migration process. This kind of teamwork is very useful for IT work is team work.


Challenges:
One challenge we have is viruses. Despite the fact that we deploy antirust programs, many people do not remember to scan every USB device before opening.
There is a significant increase in tablets and mobile devices and we are concerned about their security as some of these devices carry sensitive work related data and emails.
Prospects:
- We are working on putting Scripture on mobile devices so that many people will have easy access to the Holy Scriptures on devices that they carry around all the time.
- Our desire is to train each of our staff on appropriate ICT use at least once a year. This will build the capacities of everyone to use ICT to improve performance.
- Looking into the future, we think that open source software will help us all more.