Klibur Domin ICT Project 2023

 

 

Andrew hit the ground running working in his usual style of total commitment. He worked through Friday and Saturday, with me alongside as general run about, until we met with the lovely Carmen, HR administrator of Klibur Domin (KD) at her home for afternoon tea and meeting her family.

 

It’s now Wednesday and it appears this evening that we now have wireless internet in KD. Andrew’s not quite confident enough to confirm that yet, however I can confirm from the sofa in the cottage where we are staying on site, that it’s working quite well. Previous evenings we had no internet access at all. The Telecommunications network in Timor Leste is by all reports unreliable and overwhelmed. Today’s connection of staff from the Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) program was a long story. It took all day to connect only two of their staff to the network and have them accessing their KD emails. Monday was much more eventful with eight people connected to the network with access to their KD emails, a much better result. 

 

It was great to engage with Joaquim Soares, Managing Director, Klibur Domin and share a working history in Disability Advocacy and learn about the Timor-Leste Disability Advocacy Association. 

 

Chatting with the children in the student accommodation, Garton House, and giving them some of the books that were set aside for the school where they’re studying has been fun. They enjoy engaging with us and practicing their English language skills. I’ve found that English is well spoken here, however people are often shy or lack the confidence in speaking it.  From my own experience when learning a language, this is probably quite commonplace. 

 

 

Andrew with Joaquim Soares Managing Director KD.

 

Andrew, Carlos, Carmen and Katrina at their home for afternoon tea. Both Carmen and Carlos work at KD. 

 

 

The project is winding up, Andrew is relieved that the design has proven itself, and he is satisfied that it is now 90% complete and Klibur Domin is in a significantly better place than it was for ICT support.  

There have been some issues along the way and throughout our time here.  One of those was with the server that was a gift from Lumify in Australia. It was to have the operating system installed however it arrived without, which meant a significant change to the implementation of the project to allow Andrew to complete his work.  

 

However, the real issue that staff face at Klibur Domin, is that all their computers are very old with many containing unlicensed software. Staff often run multiple versions of antivirus software, each computer has a different version of Windows, some running Windows 11 on laptops that are many years old, so they’re not really capable of supporting the operating system. There is no consistency throughout KD’s IT equipment.  As a result, it made a simple process of establishing email accounts and mapping the shared drives more complicated and difficult than it needed to be. 

 

A picture of a keyboard from a member of the KD Team.  

 

At KD it’s not only the pictures that tell the story, but the messages you receive on the computer screen. Messages that let you know there’ll be an issue when assisting staff with the transition.  It was not only difficult for us, but the staff lose valuable time away from their day-to-day work. Given reliable equipment across the various sites the work of KD staff would be so much more effective and far reaching.

 

During our two weeks at Tibar, Andrew was also required to provide many other solutions to IT issues that arose not because of this project, but alongside it. He was effective no doubt given his skillset; however, it took valuable but necessary time away from the project, just another demonstration that a patchwork of old computer equipment is not sustainable for KD. All this extra work was essential. Especially the potential loss of over two years of data, because the portable hard disk where the information was backed up, had been damaged.  Fortunately, due to our timely visit, Andrew was able to organise for the data to be recovered and backed up. Many thanks to Innovar4 and their technician Domingos for the assistance in the data recovery.

 

Photocopying is also an issue for staff. On most days staff will travel into Dili to print multiple pages. We are hopeful that given the new shared drives, paper files will become less necessary.

 

One of the last hurdles we faced was connecting the TB lab to the wireless network (WWAN). By switching the Enterprise Access Point antennas around we were finally able to connect the TB Laboratory to the WWAN, after trying unsuccessfully for many days. Phew! The smiles from Andrew and staff at the TB Lab were significant. 

 

 

 

 

Andrew also completed the installation of a video conferencing system in the Directors office over the last couple of days.  Andrew gifted a PTZ Camera to the Klibur Domin Director Joaquin Soares, including a small conference microphone and speaker. 

 

Joaquin Soares investigates the conferencing solution with Andrew’s assistance.

 

One of the buildings at Klibur Domin, Garton House, is a accessible home for students who have a disability that attend the Convent School across the road. Andrew took the opportunity to join them in a sing-along with a local song that he learnt on his last visit to Timor Leste. 

 

 Garton House students enjoy a sing-along

 

We also attended a Rotary Dili meeting in the Timor offices of Rotarians Helping Dili. 

We learnt about several of their projects, met the Charter President and shared information about the project we’ve been working on at KD.

 

 The Rotary Club of Dili and guests.

 

 

We enjoyed two Sundays of casual time on this trip. On both occasions we enjoyed the company of Francisco from Global Fund who Andrew struck up a friendship with him on his first visit here. Francisco was a lovely guide with his 12-year-old daughter Jessica in tow on our first Sunday and Jessifa on the second. We were driven through Dili, and via the President’s home where we watched as local children, who are invited to played in his gardens and pool enjoyed the moment. We drove along the picturesque beach road, and across a range and then back via a small agricultural village. We enjoyed lunch in a lovely cafe restaurant on the beach not far from Christo Rei. 

 

 

On our second Sunday we headed west out of Tibar to Liquica to a seaside resort for lunch returning to see Jessica’s school, St. Inacio de Loiola. 

 

 Flowers and fruit for sale on a roadside stall in Liqcuica

 

Prior to our travel to Dili, Ann Dalby assisted with a significant collection of books for boarding school girls at the Convent School across the road from Klibur Domin. We arranged an extra 20 kgs of baggage each through Ryder Cheshire, which meant we were able to deliver most of them on our visit.  The girls were thrilled and absolutely dived into them. 

 

 Reading books are delivered to the boarding house library.

 

 

On another separate visit to the school, we delivered two computers donated by students from Tennyson College in Mount Gambier. The school principal, Sister Albina, made a request for tables and chairs to accommodate the 450+ students in their 6 classrooms. However, during the Dili Rotary meeting we learnt that tables and chairs are high on the wish list of schools across Timor Leste, so much so that they’re not taking any further requests this year. 

 

 Sister Albina receives the donated computers from Tennyson College, Mt. Gambier.

 

 

 Joaquim Soares being presented with the Rotary Club of Casterton flag.

 

 

A number of needs have been identified for the next phase of the project.

The server needs to be configured and joined to the network. This in turn will allow the computers to be joined to a domain which will improve security. However the dependency for this is that the corporate PC/Laptop fleet be standardised to a single manufacturer, with a standard operating environment(SOE) build being installed. There will be a need for a minimum of twenty laptops for this phase to replace the older devices currently in use.

Whilst we have obtained Microsoft 365 licences for staff at Klibur Domin, they have only been rolled out to a couple of users. A full rollout is needed, however the dependency here is also new laptops as there is a need for an officially licenced copy of Windows to be on connected devices. This rollout will encompass the staff at the Tibar facility but also the remote staff at Baucau.

ICT Support is also an area of need. Klibur Domin has identified the need for a support role and is investigating how to establish one given current funding constraints. Once staffing is in place support for the project can be transitioned from Australia to Timor-Leste, and staff trained. The role will not only encompass network and desktop support, but also maintenance and update of the Klibur Domin website.

 

Katrina Newman – Team Member

Andrew Seabrook – Team Leader