Nathan Langston knows what it takes for the almost 100-year old Boy Scouts of America to train five million youths in citizenship, character development, and self-reliance through participation in outdoor activities, educational programs, and career-oriented programs in partnership with community organizations. About 15 years ago, Langston, got into scouting as a volunteer leader and then served as a scoutmaster and a committee chairman. Today, Langston serves as the national director of the administration group at the Boy Scouts of America's Dallas headquarters. Langston wears many hats at the largest youth organization in the U.S. He not only serves as the CIO overseeing IT, but he manages the national service desk, portfolio management, properties and treasuries, and health and risk management. He says that his technology hat demands the most time and holds the most interest for him.

Like most organizations dealing with tight dollars, the Boy Scouts of America needs to make sure that its technology investments result in a business impact. Employees, however, don't drive business impact as much as the volunteers do.  In fact, the Boy Scouts operates locally through units sponsored and operated by churches, clubs, and civic associations. Volunteers lead each unit. Local councils consist of some paid professionals and volunteers.  Langston says, "Business impact for us is all about helping our volunteers to enjoy the programs and for our youth to progress on the path to eagle scout. We look at this benchmark in whatever decisions we make."

Langston says that these volunteers demand improvements in technology. "As their time gets squeezed and squeezed with our other things, they need to have the administrative side of scouting simplified so they provide the activities to our youths." One such technology investment includes the online reporting of all volunteers within each unit. This yearly task has always been a paper-based process. Within the first three months after the system went live, more than 100 councils adopted the process. Today, more than 80 percent of all scouting units, which represent three million youths, use this process.

A new social networking investment promises to have significant business impact for volunteers, scouts, and the paid staff. Langston says that you need to belong to a Boy Scout unit in order to participate in this social networking community. "The site assures everyone that you have a legitimate connection to the Boy Scouts of America. It's unique in that we're including paid staffers. For the first time, everyone will have the chance to gather around an electronic campfire to talk about how we can resolve issues. We can communicate best practices, not only to a unit, but across the U.S.

On the business side, Langston says the organization has made several IT investments to improve the staff's ability to get information from a system consolidation that occurred a decade ago. "Our people kept saying they couldn't get access to the information needed to help facilitate the volunteers.  At first the CEO had some skepticism about how many staffers would use the internal, Web-based portal. We had some people who were adverse to technology. Today, everyone uses this portal to keep track of fund raising, membership, and other important information. It's the most widely tool we have."

In this podcast, Langston talks about how he works with the chief financial officer to make investment decisions, the business impact the move to open source will have on the Boy Scouts, and the job benefits he has gotten from being an active member of the Society of Information Management.

Bio
Nathan Langston joined the Boy Scouts of America in 2000 as the director of information systems. In 2006, he became the national director of the administration group, where he reports to the chief financial officer. He joined the organization after working for 16 years in IT at Conoco Oil, both in the U.S. and abroad. He also worked as a senior project director for Oracle. He has a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Oklahoma Christian University and a master's in computer science from Oklahoma State University.

Resources
Sitecore, Me, and the Boy Scouts - Eric Brown
Boy Scouts Go Digital

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Doug Marcis - Audio Editing