The PANTOTO Communities software development project started with a mission to bring information architecture and information management tools to the level of an average user. Over time, while working to cost-effectively develop the software, a clear identification evolved of the difficulty faced by small organizations (like ourselves) especially in developing countries in getting software developed for their Intranet or Internet needs. The PANTOTO model has been iteratively developed while working with small and medium user groups.

Our mission is to develop a toolset for small organizations, particularly those in the social development sector, Non-Profit (NPOs) and Non-Government Organizations (NGO's), that enables them to manage their information and communication without software development dependency. Over the last few years, PANTOTO has been deployed in a various NPOs/NGO's and a government organization after training a small group on the concepts of information and community management. It is our belief that we can further enable a larger set of communities to make avail of it.

The vision of the PANTOTO team is to empower small organizations, particularly those in the social development/NGO sector with tools that facilitate information management in an affordable and evolutionary manner.

About four years and over three hundred man months have been spent on the development of the PANTOTO Communities software. Led by a team of computer scientists, the software has been through an iterative development and proof-of-concept testing phase and now a growing client base is in place. Unlike a typical IT enterprise, our style of working emulates an organization in the social development sector whereby we hope to understand the problems of our target group while making our solutions affordable to them.