Credit Unions Wiki Online

SPOKANE, Wash. – They have no office; are spread across the country; don’t travel;, but meet regularly; or use telephones: meet the Online Banking Development Cooperative, a group of credit union IT professionals who are collaborating on the online banking platform of the future. Instead, the group meets online at its own wiki, or private website designed for collaboration, taking the century-old cooperative spirit of the credit union movement onto the Internet. "It's proven to be a great way to find out if our homebanking ideas resonate with a wider credit union community," Dale Davaz, director of online services at Spokane Teachers CU, which spearheaded the collaboration at Jotspot, a wiki-provider. “The wiki platform is a perfect vehicle for free-form, peer collaboration. As new ideas are thought up week to week, the wiki lets us openly discuss and prioritize them in near real time. It organizes large amounts of information far better than trading e-mails ever could." The venture is typical of the new way credit unions are using the Internet: they brainstorm with other businesses-even competitors. And though credit unions aren't new to the idea of crossing the line to collaborate with one another, the new breed is doing it online. The philosophy is simple, as expressed by John Brozycki, information security officer at Hudson Valley FCU in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. and part of the same wiki. "Innovation can happen any time people get together," he told The Credit Union Journal. "But online conferencing makes it easier to get people together and allows them to do so more frequently."