Entre Amigos shares practical lessons from building a data platform around the daily work of a community-based organisation in Seville.
By Asociación Entre Amigos de Sevilla
For many non-governmental organisations, digitalisation begins with a familiar problem: valuable information exists everywhere, but it is difficult to bring together. Notes sit in personal notebooks, project data is stored in separate spreadsheets, documents are scattered across folders, and much of the organisation’s knowledge remains in the memories of experienced staff.
At Asociación Entre Amigos de Sevilla, we faced this reality while working with children, young people and families in the Polígono Sur neighbourhood. Over the last three years, we have developed a shared data platform designed around our daily social and educational work. The experience has taught us that digital transformation is not mainly about buying technology. It is a cultural and organisational process that changes how a team records information, coordinates its work, evaluates results and learns from experience.
Start with the work, not the software
Our first lesson was to define the problems before choosing a solution. Earlier attempts using Access databases, cloud folders and spreadsheets helped us store information, but they did not create a stable system that the whole organisation could use. Different versions, fragmented records and unclear benefits made adoption difficult.
The turning point came when social professionals from different areas described what they actually needed in their daily work. Together, we mapped the people, families, projects, sessions, interventions and evaluations that make up our work. These conversations allowed us to translate professional practice into a digital structure before asking a technology provider to build the platform.
This approach matters because an externally designed system can force an organisation to adapt its work to the software. A useful system does the opposite: it supports the organisation’s methods, language and responsibilities. The development process therefore requires a close relationship between practitioners and technical specialists, with regular testing, feedback and revision.
What changed at Entre Amigos
The platform now places each person at the centre of a connected record. Authorised professionals can see participation in projects, relevant interventions, evaluations and family links in one place. This shared view helps the team understand the person’s wider context and reduces repeated questions, duplicated work and gaps in coordination.
Several practical examples show the value of this change:
Digital records that preserve organisational memory
Small interventions can easily go unrecorded in formal reports, even though they are central to social work. A quick-entry panel now allows staff to record guidance, contact with families, referrals and other actions with a few clicks, adding notes when context is needed. The result is a shared history that remains available when staff roles change and makes collective work more visible.
Faster project management and safer information flows
For our summer schools, Entre Amigos coordinates more than 300 children across several educational centres. Coordinators need contact details and selected health information such as allergies or relevant support needs. Previously, several people recreated and exchanged these lists each year. The platform now produces customised lists in seconds from information that is recorded once and updated when necessary. Access permissions also help keep sensitive information away from informal messaging channels and personal email accounts.
Comparable evaluation and better learning
Professionals use a common set of indicators and a simple scale to evaluate participants whom they know directly. Because the same method is used across projects and over time, the organisation can identify trends and compare groups more consistently. In one analysis, accumulated evaluations supported the team’s long-held observation that children often showed slightly higher levels of participation and other positive outcomes during summer activities than during the school year. The data did not replace professional judgement; instead, it allowed the team to test and refine that judgement.
Less administration and less paper
Digital records simplify reporting because attendance, sessions, interventions and evaluations are captured as the work takes place. Internal quality monitoring also found that Entre Amigos reduced paper consumption by approximately 25 per cent in the year before the book on our digitalisation process was drafted. The most important gain, however, is the time that can be devoted to educational and social support.
Implementation is the real challenge
A technically sound platform does not automatically become part of an organisation’s practice. Some colleagues initially feared that the new system would add another administrative task to their already demanding roles. Adoption improved when people experienced concrete benefits and when the organisation allowed a gradual transition.
Our experience suggests five practical principles for other NGOs:
- Involve frontline professionals from the beginning. They understand the real workflow and can identify what information is useful.
- Keep registration quick and proportionate. A system that tries to capture everything can overwhelm the people expected to use it.
- Explain the benefit to the team. Staff are more likely to record information consistently when it helps them coordinate, find answers or prepare reports.
- Build privacy into the design. Define access roles, restrict sensitive records, use anonymised data for analysis and establish clear rules for documentation.
- Treat the platform as an evolving service. Daily use will reveal improvements that no initial specification can anticipate.
Data quality requires trust and reflection
We repeat two basic rules within our team: record honestly, and only evaluate people whom you genuinely know. Structured data can create an appearance of certainty, but its value depends on the quality and context of each entry. Common indicators have also prompted useful professional discussions about what we mean by inclusion, autonomy, participation or risk, and why we collect each piece of information.
This reflective effect is one of the less visible benefits of digitalisation. Designing a data system requires an organisation to make its assumptions explicit, agree on shared criteria and decide what evidence it needs to improve its work.
A practical starting point for digital transformation
The experience of Entre Amigos shows that an NGO does not need to become a technology company to benefit from digital transformation. It does need a clear purpose, time for collective design, suitable technical support and patient implementation.
For organisations beginning this journey, the best first question is not which platform to buy. It is what knowledge the organisation is currently losing, what repeated task could be simplified, and what decisions would improve if better information were available. Starting with one of these concrete needs can turn digitalisation from an abstract ambition into a practical tool for better social intervention.
This perspective is closely connected to DIGICARE’s work on the digital competences needed in social and care services. Professionals need more than basic technical skills: they need the confidence and judgement to use data responsibly, protect the people they support and keep human relationships at the centre of practice.