Risks Within the Contract for Emerging Technologies Directorate

Table of Contents

Introduction
Time, Cost and Quality Related Risks
Risk of Irrelevant Educational Content
Conclusion
References

Introduction

ETD (Emerging Technologies Directorate) is responsible for distribution of education technology resources around the world to deprived areas, to advance literacy and knowledge to local communities. In order to achieve these goals the ETD works closely with Remote Communities Assistance (RCA), that appoints several sub-contractors and suppliers to complete the project. In terms of this project, several risks regarding time, cost and quality may occur.

Since RCA is responsible for domestic supply contacts, educational consultants and cultural entertainment consultant, it could result in plausible risks. Cost related risks include that domestic supplier could be unreliable, which could result in wrong or broken equipment installed, which will lead to increased costs of the project that were calculated by the ETD. As well as that, equipment could be lost or stolen, which will result in more costs imposed. Time related risks could lead to prolonged duration of the project, thus making the project more time consuming. Since the area has little to none existent infrastructure, it all should be built from scratch, and wrong time and cost estimations by the ETD could be imposed. In terms of quality risks, local consultants might not identify the needed content correctly, which would lead to poor results. The educational courses introduced could be incorrectly developed and approved by the ETD, which would lead to poor quality of the project.

Risk of Irrelevant Educational Content

An irrelevant educational content might have one of the highest risk ratios in the current project. The main problem that leads to such quality risk is that the ETD is remotely located from the project area, and has limited knowledge of the local needs. The main idea of the project is the education distribution. Thus, if the curriculum is incorrectly selected for the audience, then the education will not be required at the end, which disrupts the idea of the project. On order to overcome this possible risk, the ETD has to conduct a thorough research of local needs and wants, as well as to make the RCA to test the experience and expertise of the local educational consultant involved in the project. Moreover, the contract should have a clause that would allow the adjustment of the educational content, that would not have cost and time implications on the project. In addition, it could be helpful to offer a broader variety of subjects that should allow the students to choose their subjects freely.

A similar example of incorrect correct content development could be linked to the problems when an organization fails to propose the correct changes that are required within it. For example, in Home Depot the changes developed by the new CEO, did not reflect the local offices needs. They were purely developed by the head office (much like the educational content is approved by the ETD) disregarding the requirements of local offices, which resulted in the company jeopardy (Vergassola, 2019). If there are needs that have to be met accurately, the company has to learn to recognize them, and that only can be done through the local expertise and thorough research. Hence, the contract for the ETD has to imply that such expertise and research have to be tested and approved.

Conclusion

Project risks can include cost related, time related and quality related risks. The risk of introducing irrelevant educational content is the quality related risk. It is not an explicit risk, however, it can override the whole idea of the introduced educational course. If the local audience finds the content of the curriculum irrelevant, then the whole project would fail. Therefore, in order to oversee this risk, the contract for the ETD has to have a clause that would test the expertise and experience of the local educational consultant, as well as allow the variety of subjects to be introduced. This way, the ETD would be able to validate that the project is performed correctly in the very beginning and would have an option to impose changes to the curriculum if necessary in the long run.