[Novalug] computers for developing (read, poor and miserable) countries

Dennis Durham dwdurham@verizon.net
Fri Mar 27 10:15:19 EDT 2009


I am retired from the federal government but while I still worked, I  
(among many many other things) managed inventory for the network  
division of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (a numbers factory if ever  
there was one). We had a policy of rotating hardware every three years  
just because the maintenance costs started rising faster than the  
equipment cost at about that point. The last year I worked there, I  
helped donate about thirty Dell laptops to a charity working in the  
Congo. Ironically, I later learned from a grand-daughter that one of  
those laptops ended up in an orphanage where she volunteered to work a  
summer. Small world.

Back to topic. The government donates a lot of hardware that still has  
a few years of life in it. You can contact any agency and I expect  
they will have policies similar to the Bureau's. You want to find a  
AAPO (assistant accountable property officer (like I was)) as that is  
the grunt who actually does the work. An agency may have as many AAPOs  
as there are Divisions so do not give up at the first rejection.  
Having a registered charity helps a great deal with getting approval  
for the paperwork.

Dennis Durham

PS
here is the charity I worked with: http://AbleAndWilling.org
Perhaps they could give you tips on the logistics of the whole thing.
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