So far in our series of articles looking at the main options for recording performance appraisal, we have looked at emerging minimalist approaches and the use of ESR. We would now like to turn our attention to Open Source technology and in particular the Totara Open Source solution, in which NHS organisations are taking an increasing interest.

Open Source software is simply software which is developed by a community of developers in collaboration. It can be, and often is, at least as secure, feature-rich and powerful as any other software, but it is distinguished by its license which guarantees certain freedoms. Open Source software guarantees the right to access and modify the source code, and to use the software, with no royalty costs. This all means that when you implement Open Source software, you are not paying to ‘rent’ intellectual property, so you can either spend less, or free up more of your budget to customise, implement and support the software.

The UK government strongly encourages the procurement of Open Source systems, and the cabinet office even goes as far as to say: ‘Where there is no significant overall cost difference between Open and non-Open Source products, Open Source will be selected on the basis of its additional inherent flexibility.’ Click here to read more information about the Cabinet office’s new Open Source procurement toolkit, published in November 2011. There are a range of really useful tools here, including a list of the main advantages of Open Source technology which are stated to include:

• Lower acquisition, development and implementation costs.
• Greater opportunities for data transferability.
• Increased opportunities for re-use, which improves economies of scale.
• Collaborative design, meaning that solutions tend to be more intuitive for end-users.
• Rapid deployment, bug fixing and development.
• Multiple suppliers mean that customers are not tied to any one supplier, reducing
  reliance and dependency, increasing competition and allowing greater control over projects.

The toolkit also includes a good summary of what Open Source is all about, an advice note on how to procure Open Source systems, and a really useful description of the
importance of Total Cost of Ownership when calculating system costs – which is valuable for any system procurement, Open Source or otherwise.

Totara is a custom distribution of Moodle, which adds ‘corporate functionality’ including department structures, positions/work structures, competency management, objective setting and powerful reporting. This makes it a viable enterprise wide solution for NHS
organisations. Totara is generally used to enhance learning processes, but also works well as a performance management system.

We have no commercial interest in any learning management software, but you will hear us evangelise about Totara. We like it because:

• It is an enterprise wide, integrated system that allows organisations to manage their performance appraisal and development review processes, (including defining multiple appraisal and competency frameworks such as the KSF and HPC Standards), e-Portfolio and (e-)learning processes within a single tool.
• It is highly customisable – so can be designed to reflect your organisation’s employer brand, language and local workflow processes. We have developed an ‘NHS ready’ instance of Totara to help NHS organisations get up and running with the tool quickly, or alternatively we can start from scratch to map out your needs based on your internal processes.
• It offers a great deal of flexibility in implementation – you can host and maintain it internally, or engage a Totara partner to do this for you.
• It can be enhanced with a sister product called Mahara, which provides e-portfolio and CPD functionality. Click here to read more about our healthcare-specific version of Mahara (meaning ‘think’ or ‘thought’ in Te Reo Māori) which we call Think…Portfolio.
• It is feature rich – the existing list of features / core functionality exceeds most other enterprise wide performance and learning management systems we have looked at.
• It has a very active development roadmap, and being based on Moodle you also have access to a very large developer community to create any bespoke features that you might need. In addition if you do require any bespoke developments these can be commissioned and developed within short timescales.
• We find the organisations behind Totara to be incredibly responsive, professional and great at listening to ideas from our clients and finding creative solutions.
• The Managing Director of Totara, Richard Wyles, has deep experience of learning
  systems in healthcare (in New Zealand) and is very focused on continuing to provide systems that improve healthcare effectiveness. Because of his personality, background and leadership, we’re confident that Totara will continue to be appropriate to the needs of the NHS.

Implementing Open Source tools does require a slightly different way of thinking. We
recommend you consider the following points:

• Licence-free doesn’t mean entirely free – you need to consider hosting, configuration and maintenance costs. Totara is Open Source, just like Moodle, but does require a low cost subscription which is intended to pay for ongoing development of the solution.
• Being clear about roles and responsibilities in support of the software, as your
  contract would generally not be with the team who develop the code.
• Open Source tools are generally very configurable, so it’s easy to get carried away with a wide range of features. We recommend keeping things relatively simple to start with, and adding complexity when your organisation and learners are ready. Spending time up front getting your learning processes, policies and
  reporting requirements clear, will save you time in implementation and support.

For more information on Totara please click here, or for a no-obligation demonstration of the key features please contact us.

Next in our series of articles will focus on Sharepoint as a simple, easy to use and flexible solution for recording performance appraisal based on Microsoft
software that all NHS organisations have licence-free access to.

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