state-of-the-art in good practice exchange and web 2...state-of-the-art in good practice exchange...

State-of-the-art in Good Practice Exchange and

Web 2.0

Report prepared by ePractice.eu - a project funded by the European Commission

© GoodShoot

European Commission

State-of-the-art in Good Practice Exchange and

Web 2.0

Roc Fages Ramón Sangüesa

September 2007

Abstract: The present document explores the relationships between good practice exchange through Communities of Practice (CoPs), 2.0 technologies and their consequences for eGovernment in general and, more specifically, ePractice.eu. In order to do so, we have placed the entire discussion within the larger setting of collaborative knowledge exchange and collaborative technologies, which constitute, at the same time, the core of new economic and social relationships, as well as their main facilitators.

Keyword List: egovernment, communities of practice, web 2.0, best practice

LEGAL NOTICE: The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official European Commission’s view on the subject.

State-of-the-art in Good Practice Exchange and Web 2.0

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Table of Contents 1 Executive Summary....................................................................................................................5 2 Introduction ...............................................................................................................................6 3 Good practice exchange in context .......................................................................................... 11

3.1 CoPs, CoIs, NoPs and COINs .......................................................................................... 11 3.2 Importance of professional communities ....................................................................... 14 3.3 What goes on in a professional community? .................................................................. 15 3.4 Dimensions of a community ........................................................................................... 17

4 The Model: what are we looking for?..................................................................................... 26 4.1 Is 2.0 just technology?.................................................................................................... 26 4.2 A model of 2.0 practice exchange .................................................................................. 30

5 A panoramic view .....................................................................................................................34 5.1 Typology of exchange sites ..............................................................................................34 5.2 General assessment .........................................................................................................35 5.3 The three most relevant experiences and ePractice.eu...................................................36 5.4 20 Additional Web 2.0 Communities .............................................................................54

6 Trends.......................................................................................................................................77 6.1 Is there a difference in evolution between the EU and USA?.........................................77 6.2 Technology: what one can easily see...............................................................................79 6.3 Trends in organisation ....................................................................................................81 6.4 Trends in social dynamics .............................................................................................. 82

7 Recommendations................................................................................................................... 84 7.1 Two lessons for all those who want to perform good practice exchange ...................... 84 7.2 Two lessons for government decision-makers who may wish to use web 2.0 strategies 85

8 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................... 86 9 References ................................................................................................................................87 10 ANNEX I: 50 complementary experiences .........................................................................95

10.1 Summary table.................................................................................................................95 10.2 Short Description ........................................................................................................... 99


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1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The present document explores the relationships between good practice exchange through Communities of Practice (CoPs), 2.0 technologies and their consequences for eGovernment in general and, more specifically, ePractice.eu. In order to do so, we have placed the entire discussion within the larger setting of collaborative knowledge exchange and collaborative technologies, which constitute, at the same time, the core of new economic and social relationships, as well as their main facilitators. On this basis, we have selected three relevant experiences to be analysed in depth and 20 others, which are more generally described, including at the end about 50 more experiences for consideration. To filter all the CoPs detected (more than 300), we basically took into account their success and the usefulness for ePractice.eu. As good practice exchange is based on knowledge exchange, CoPs are used to generate that kind of exchange. Because of the transition to a knowledge economy, CoPs not only have to be viewed from a knowledge goal dimension, but also from social and technological points of view. The social dimension has to do with all the basic behaviours and conventions of the collective dynamics of the community. The technological dimension refers not only to the actual technologies employed to support several collective and individual functions and activities, but also to a new standpoint from which to look at communities and the production and interchange of knowledge that takes place within them. Here is where 2.0 technologies come in. They affect CoPs by providing new possibilities for the learning process that goes on inside them. They also give potentially more dynamic and emerging ways of creating and organising CoPs that are at odds with current ways of creating and managing CoPs and practice exchange. In this context, and in view of the experiences analysed and described, a good project should plan instead of improvise. However, “planning” is a misleading word, since it does not refer to static design, but to the planting of the seeds of evolution, adaptive behaviours, that will yield maximum quality knowledge interchanges. Therefore, decision-makers who want to make use of 2.0 technologies to build exchange communities should, on one hand, create a good framework within the organisation and, on the other hand, consider users/citizens not as clients but as real collaborators. It is important to think technologically, but also culturally, to implement a good CoP experience. The key is for 2.0 technologies to allow for new cultural practices.


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2 INTRODUCTION

In this document, we explore the relationships between good practice exchange and 2.0 technologies and their consequences for eGovernment in general and, more specifically, epractice.eu. In order to do so, we place the entire discussion in the broader context of collaborative knowledge exchange and collaborative technologies, which constitute, at the same time, the core of new economic and social relationships, as well as their main facilitators. This affects the usual setting for good practice exchange, which has traditionally taken place in professional communities. We take Communities of Practice (CoPs) as a convenient starting point to characterise the environment in which practice exchange most frequently takes place. However, because of the same technological and social changes that we explore in this document, and which are inherently related to collaboration, knowledge and technology, the original CoP concept1 is undergoing some important evolutionary changes. We try to pinpoint these changes and how they are related to 2.0 technology. We also try to stress how these changes affect eGovernment concepts and practices. In doing so, we expect to provide a comprehensive framework, which will eventually be useful in terms of thinking about the present state of good practice exchange and epractice.eu, and will help adapt to the most probable path of change and plan new interventions in epractice.eu accordingly. The original concept of CoP has evolved with the arrival and development of new digital technologies. In a knowledge economy and a knowledge society, Web 2.0 has special relevance, since it affects the core activity of such an economy and society: knowledge exchange. What is currently happening at the economic, social, research and political levels has a lot to do with knowledge exchange and is closely related to the evolution of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). One affects the other in a complex relationship. This is especially true for 2.0 technologies, since they are based on the idea of collaboration based on knowledge interchange. In order to make sense of all the implications of current trends and developments, we have set out to answer the following questions. Why discuss good practice? Good practice exchange is knowledge exchange. It is very practical and focused knowledge, which is the process of exchange that defines CoPs2. As we will see, the motivation for knowledge exchange between individuals lies not only in increasing their personal stocks of knowledge for their own individual benefit, but also in increasing the knowledge of the whole community to which they belong. The transition to a knowledge economy and its insistence on empowering the learning abilities of organisations per se is justification of a mode of organisation and relationships between people that is heavily based on knowledge exchange. Good practice exchange is one important variation of knowledge interchange, and it is governed by norms, rules and conventions that are common to many other environments and activities.

1 Wenger, 1998, Hanley, 1999 2 Hanley, 1999, 199a


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Who thinks such things are important? Most multinational companies around the world are organised in terms of communities. Also, there are more and more professional communities spanning individuals within professional sectors in a single country or across different countries. Examples go from education, healthcare and eGovernment to industry. NGOs have identified a way of working through subjects of interest that amounts to the creation of interconnected CoPs. Global civil society is increasingly driven by communities and networks. Why does the EU think it is important? The EU is moving strategically towards to a knowledge economy. In this context, new organisational forms have to be tried and developed, based on the creation, distribution and use of knowledge as a strategic asset. Presently, in the EU area, CoPs and Communities of Interest3 (CoIs) can be identified in innovation, energy, environment, or eGovernment, for example. ePractice.eu is an implementation of this type of initiative. Also, under the IST initiative, there is a whole set of projects and initiatives that have to do with communities and particularly online communities and the subject of collaboration4. All of them are based on one form or another of knowledge exchange and most offer good practice exchange. What goes on in a professional community of practice? CoPs can be divided into different categories depending on their goals and type of membership. One can identify from general social communities (Flickr) to niche social communities (Socialight). Communities appear in hybrid environments involving citizens and government in specific sectors, such as health (NHS UK), general government issues (eCatalunya) and eParticipation (Meetup). All of them can be divided into two major dimensions: professional or non-professional communities. In a professional community, members act to attain benefits in their job activities (Apronet). In a non-professional community, members look for the creation and maintenance of social relations (Facebook) or the increase of knowledge by means of their individual contributions (Wikipedia). One can find hybrids in CoPs where exchange is made from a personal commitment but can eventually benefit professional areas. For example, most blogging behaviour lies in this grey area: visibility as a blogger – which is based on offering one’s knowledge – in some cases results in actual professional opportunities. All these communities will be analysed using three main dimensions: the social aspect of community dynamics, their relation to knowledge, and the technological aspect. The social dimension has to do with all the basic behaviours and conventions of the collective dynamics of the community. The knowledge dimension deals with which type of knowledge is exchanged and under which forms. Finally, the technological dimension refers not only to the actual technologies employed to support several collective and individual functions and activities, but also to the extent to which metaphors of technology actually create a new standpoint from which to look at communities and the production and interchange of knowledge that takes place within them. Here is where 2.0 comes in. How is Web 2.0 integrated in a CoP? 2.0 technologies have been equated to the Read/Write Web or a Web based on user-generated content and collaboration, as well as the social practices and economic possibilities opened by having these kinds of technological facilitators. What we find in Web 2.0 is collective creativity5,

3 Fischer, 2001 4 AMI@Work Online Communities 5 Greve, 2004


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oriented not only towards new forms of content creation and access, but also to the explicit building and fostering of new social forms of collaboration. Taken in the broadest sense, this creativity in social interaction spans from infrastructure (grid computing, for example) to actual people organised into communities6. These communities are based on personal contribution and, of course, collaborative creation of content and knowledge. So, by applying 2.0 metaphors to actual communities based on exchange, one can envisage an evolution of practices and organisation forms that will not only include current CoPs, but also supersede them. The very different technologies that make up the Web 2.0 toolbox can be organised in several levels. Those that are most visible and commented upon are the ones directly related to collaborative content creation, what has been called “social media” or “sociable media”: blogs, wikis or tagging, for example. However, the most radical proponents of Web 2.0 would also include the infrastructural counterparts to collaborative content and social relationships: peer-to-peer networks, grid computing and so on. In any case, 2.0 affects CoPs by providing new possibilities for the learning process that goes on inside them. However, by also providing a new type of emerging dynamics and different opportunities for unrelated people to come across similarly-minded people, it also potentially gives more dynamic and emerging ways of creating and organising CoPs that are at odds with current ways of creating and managing CoPs and practice exchange. So, good practice exchange structures have to realise the benefits and changes that 2.0 brings about in order to mutually co-evolve7. Which CoPs are working and why? As is discussed further on, “success” of CoPs is tricky to define or measure. Since CoPs are oriented towards communal learning, there are two aspects that seem to be critical: identity through common knowledge and a means of gauging how learning and knowledge evolve in the community. As far as the first criterion is concerned, there is a well-established notion that members in successful CoPs (those that help in learning and problem-solving) are strongly identified with their communities8.This, in part, stems from an initial attraction to the goals and ways of working of the community and an identification with personal attitudes, goals, interests and competences. Although it is very important for community “vision”, “values” and “goals” to be sufficiently clear, it is even more important that day-to-day practices support by example the declared lofty and ultimate goals of the community. A discrepancy between expected and actual practices is one of the main reasons for member disaffection. All these aspects have to be taken into account by the social mechanisms of the CoP. Rules, norms and conventions structure a community. This includes the possibility of members changing their own community rules in view of their influence on the general performance or success of the community. An important aspect of this window open to further evolution is how supporting technologies can be easily modified and extended to accommodate new practices. Communities that work well are also those that can pilot their own evolution along the several phases of life of a CoP9. In the process, they have to successfully overcome differences in language between concepts and actual practices by different members of the CoP. It is becoming more and more important, since CoPs are increasingly culturally and geographically diverse10. Which trends are dominating the scene?

6 Atkins, 2004 7 Steinfeld, 2007 8 Wenger, 1998 9 Wenger, 2000 10 Gloor, 2006


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The collaborative technologies brought in by 2.0 Web have facilitated the connection between people through variations of collaborative filtering11, which is based on the profiling of people and collaboratively cataloguing content and knowledge. This has also been done by finding similarities in behaviour and observing the evolution of patterns of interaction between people12. 2.0 technologies are probably, in fact, community building to a greater extent than previous Internet technologies. A platform giving support to a CoP can now integrate dozens of tools that, in principle, could help in the crucial activities (for a community) of locating knowledge (in content and in people), connecting to new knowledgeable people, interacting with them and forming groups13. CoPs that started in the pre-2.0 years are selectively picking the most promising tools for their goals. The use and automatic exploration of personal profiling for people matching in terms of competences and interests is probably one of the most integrated possibilities of 2.0 technologies, and has a strong impact on the success of the CoPs using them. It is possible to argue that these technologies are changing the way in which knowledge is contributed and distributed within CoPs. Initial CoP sites relied heavily on a pattern of contribution and recovery of knowledge technologies devised for centralised cataloguing, storage and recovery14. The introduction of folksonomies15, wikis16 and blogging17 has created a very decentralised and distributed form of contribution and discovery of knowledge. Increasingly, the notion of a centralised repository and a unique set of descriptors is giving way to a new method of knowledge contribution (posting in blogs, for example) and evolution (commenting on blog posts or actually editing Wiki entries and contributing new tag descriptions irrespective of established descriptors in the area of activity). The actual experience of users of these technologies is of one of greater personal freedom and extended contribution possibility. On top of these extended and multiple descriptions of a form of knowledge that evolves day after day, collaborative filtering technologies18 are complementing database searches as the main way of discovering content and people. Recommendations and RSS feeds19 related to changes in knowledge keep people updated as to new membership and new knowledge within the community. The increasing popularity of social networking sites20 either for business or other types of activities has created a large audience of people used to the ethos and ways of participation that 2.0 technologies entail. In this sense, one can see that the move by CoPs towards more collaborative technologies is also an adaptation to the skills and practices of a changing population21.

11 Ackerman, 1996 12 Saveri, 2005 13 Wenger, 2005 14 Hollingshead, 1998 15 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folksonomy 16 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki 17 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog 18 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_filtering 19 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format) 20 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking_service 21 Castells, 2007

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_filtering


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In the same vein, one can see the trend towards facilitating the use, search, discovery and connection with video and audio content, either for expressing knowledge or presenting oneself within the community22. All these practices are included in the underlying 2.0 technology design, but the most successful sites include a well thought out set of social practices that include face-to-face meetings, not only for identity empowerment, but also for practical activities related to community focus, goals and management23. What should ePractice.eu do in this context? In the final recommendations, we assess the situation of ePractice.eu against the CoP and 2.0 picture described above. In brief, ePractice.eu should think technologically, as well as culturally, to implement a good CoP experience.

22 http://blogs.alianzo.com/redessociales/2006/11/09/icomo-es-la-generacion-youtube 23 Smith, 2005


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3 GOOD PRACTICE EXCHANGE IN CONTEXT

Good practice exchange is basically defined as the interchange of knowledge about success cases in practical situations. More generally, it is understood as the interchange of any knowledge and information that is relevant to the context the members of a group are in. This context can be merely social or professional. The motivation for knowledge exchange between individuals lies not only in increasing their personal stocks of knowledge for their benefit as individuals, but also in increasing the knowledge of the whole community to which they belong. The logic for this can be traced back to the increasing importance of knowledge-intensive activities in economy and, in general, society. Thus, knowledge becomes an important asset, as is reflecting on its use, application and eventual practical success. All of this amounts to learning. Without entering into in-depth discussion about whether learning can proceed in isolation, or if it is a fundamentally social activity, there is widespread consensus on the power and synergistic effects of situated learning in groups; that is, learning in a practical, day-to-day context with other people24. Hence the interest in communities.

3.1 CoPs, CoIs, NoPs and COINs

Communities come in all shapes and sizes, but this document is mainly interested in professional communities. There is a growing body of evidence about the importance of communities as they fit better to the challenges of a knowledge economy. That is, they improve the ability to deal with knowledge, and help when it comes to competing and cooperating on the basis of the relative abilities of the involved participants, either at individual level or as groups. This can be seen increasingly in companies, NGOs, education and other environments. Professional communities in which good practice interchange takes place were originally identified with Communities of Practice25. CoPs grow around activities that take place in a given professional domain and context (healthcare, eLearning, government, claim processing, etc.) and involve people with similar knowledge backgrounds. The first conceptualisation of CoPs was the result of studying the actual behaviour of people in diverse companies and domains. There are other types of communities related to CoPs. Communities of Interest (CoIs), for example, are formed by people with different backgrounds who are not entirely involved in day-to-day operations. For example, a product launch may involve people from marketing, design, R+D, and other possible CoPs that have their own core memberships, knowledge and practices. As the knowledge economy becomes progressively widespread and problems more interdisciplinary, the relation between CoPs and CoIs is given increasing importance. One domain in which this is clearly seen is innovation, where diversity is a crucial asset and has an important influence on the ability to innovate and to do it faster. There are several reasons for the explosion of interest in communities in companies. On one hand, companies are increasingly seen as an array of related communities. This, for example, can be seen in the standard view of the firm as knowledge26, also in the concept of the company as a learning organisation27. On the other hand, there is another argument that again results in the need for interconnected diverse communities28. The boundaries of intensive knowledge and learning companies that need to

24 Wenger, 1998 25 Wenger 1998 26 Kogut and Zander, 1992 27 Senge, 2006, (Brown, 1991 28 Lesser, 2001


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anticipate new information and knowledge become increasingly permeable, and there is a tendency to include within the company communities that had previously been considered external, either customers who become more involved in product design, as in crowdsourcing29 or other companies or professionals30. Others would explain this as the arrival of the boundless organisation31. This need to include diverse communities and external individuals in companies is emphasised by the view on communities as networks. “Networked Communities of Practice” (NoPs) or “Networks of Practice” are terms sometimes used interchangeably32. For some, the term NoP simply tries to convey the use of ICT networking technologies by CoPs and CoIs33. The term “Virtual Community of Practice” is sometimes used for precisely this type of community34. Gloor, for example, created the term COINs for “Communities of Innovation Networks”, or highly distributed groups of people who work in innovation projects and make intensive use of ICT to support their communal activities. Others propose the use of the terms “Knowledge Networks”, “NoPs”, “Professional Networks” or, simply, “networks”. These “networks” have to be understood not as technical infrastructures, but as human networks, and persistent patterns of personal interaction between members of a community. Typically, relationships in these networks are established on the basis of mutual advice, problem-solving support and, in general, knowledge interchange within the domain or the scope of projects for which the community is first and foremost initially set up. The new discipline that is evolving out of Social Network Analysis35 and Physics36, and which is increasingly known as Network Science (NetSci’07), adds to this identification by offering an impressive array of techniques and insights. It is important to recognise that networks are being increasingly used as a structural metaphor for organisational designs that have been proposed and used within the area of open and learning organisations37. In these settings, new knowledge-based companies adopt a “networked company” organisation. This is a trend that some think has been transferred to the public sector38. In both cases, networks connect both “internal individuals” and “external ones”. The use of the network metaphor makes organisational boundaries fuzzier and builds on a widely observed fact39: any given individual belongs simultaneously to multiple networks, even in his or her professional environment, i.e., he or she may belong to more than one professional community. In spite of the increasing importance of the network concept, we will stick to the term ‘community’ for the sake of specificity, since networks can be identified with transient connections or interactions that are based on contexts other than professional ones, i.e., friendship or social networks40. “Community” conveys a more stable existence41.

29 Tapscott, 2006 30 Chesbrough, 2003, Hipple, 2007 31 Weick, 1979 32 Vaast, 2004 33 Gloor, 2006 34 Welman, 1999 35 Wasserman, 1994 36 Watts, 2006 37 Borgatti, 2003 38 Goldsmith, 2004 39 Monge and Contractor 2003 40 Constant, 1996 41 Hagel, 2007


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Communities have sometimes been equated to teams42 and groups43. Teams in companies tend to be created around projects and usually have a shorter life span than communities. Identity also seems to be less of an issue in temporary teams, while it has been shown to be an important aspect of communities in general and CoPs in particular. The term ‘groups’, however small and focused on professional activities, appears to be insufficiently specific44 . Here, we have adapted a table by Snyder45 with inputs from46.

42 Dyer, 2000 43 Cummings, 2002. 44 Wenger, 2000 45 Wenger, 2000 46 Deloitte, 2005


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Group Types Function Basis of Membership

Basis of Cohesion

Duration

Communities of Practice

Develop members' expertise and define their place or role in the community

Self-selected Commitment and identification with the expertise that forms the basis of the practice

As long as members have an interest in improving the practice and maintaining the community

Formal Work Teams

Perform the ongoing work that has been assigned to the team (e.g., produce and deliver a product or service)

Everyone who has been assigned to the team

Job/performance requirements and continuing, common goals

Until the work or the organisation is reorganised

Project Teams and Task Forces

Accomplish a specific task or assignment, usually during a particular time frame

As assigned by the management

Project milestones and goals

Until the project or task has been completed

Informal Networks

Collect and share information of common interest

Reciprocal value and acceptance; that is, members obtain and provide information of value

Perceived value in belonging and participating

As long as people have a reason to connect and share information

3.2 Importance of professional communities

As we already mentioned in the previous discussion, the transition to a knowledge economy and its insistence on empowering the learning abilities of organisations per se is justification of a mode of organisation and relationships between people that is based on knowledge exchange. Most multinational companies around the world are organised in terms of communities47 . More and more professional communities include individuals in the same professional sectors but from different countries. Examples can be found in education, healthcare, eGovernment and industry sectors. NGOs have identified a way of working on subjects of interest that amounts to the creation of CoPs. In fact, there are hints that the organisation of global civil society is increasingly driven by communities and networks48 .

47 O’Dell, 1998, Moore, 1998 48 Gonzalez-Bailon, 2007, Boyd, 2005


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In this context, since the EU has shown a commitment to the transition towards a knowledge economy, new organisational forms have to be developed to really give support to the basic processes of such economy. In the EU, a growing number of CoPs and CoIs can be identified in areas such as energy, environment and eGovernment (ePractice.eu). There is also a whole set of EU initiatives related to communities and particularly online communities, for example, under the IST programme49. For the moment, there are few statistical sources of data collection on the spread and use of communities. Deloitte Consulting provided some general data on the intensity of communities across several business and sectors50:

Number of Communities of Practice51 Daimler Chrysler 140

Siemens 345

World Bank 120

Chevron 100

3.3 What goes on in a professional community?

Although we are interested mainly in communities that are based on the exchange of good practice, there are several other activities that typically go on within a community and are necessary for the fulfilment of its goals. Learning is a crucial activity. A member of a community is entitled to enter a process of apprenticeship (in true CoPs), allowed to ask for and tutoring and, when a given level of proficiency is recognised by the rest of the CoP, he or she is expected to reciprocate and answers novices’ requests. This is probably the minimal level of action one can have in a community. Mentoring, giving advice, questioning and answering are activities that have been identified in most communities and that have been rendered increasingly easy and traceable by ICTs. In a way, these activities amount to learning. Other activities have to do with the transformation of tacit and practical knowledge into explicit and formalised knowledge. The creation of handbooks, the organisation of practices into best and worst cases, and the facilitation and diffusion of this knowledge throughout the community are also important tasks that can be done with or without the use of ICTs52. There is some division of labour within professional communities and some roles that are predefined or appear naturally during the evolution of a community. As we have said, in typical CoPs, the main roles are those of apprentice and experienced member. There is a process by which one evolves from the former to the latter. What is important is that the assignation of roles is not permanent. Although some of the communities do have clearly identified roles, they tend to have rules for change. Changes in role are the result of individual performance and contribution

49 AMI@Work Online Communities and KnowledgeBoard 50 Deloitte 2005 51 Deloitte, 2005 52 Seely, 1991


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to the community and, of course, of the recognition of this change by the community. That is to say, the evaluation of the contribution by a single individual is usually done by the whole community in terms of how much it helps to fulfil the goals of the group. These goals are usually related to learning via the solution of problems. It is knowledge that is compared practically through use. The “payment” of contributions in terms of recognition implies that most communities are “gift” economies53. That is, they are economies whereby the more you give without expecting an immediate return, the more you and the community will benefit in the long run. This apparently counter-intuitive behaviour needs trust if it is to start working54 . Trust among members of the community helps build up the real currency in most communities: reputation. Conversely, reputation builds trust 55. The evaluation of reputation can be done in very different ways. In some cases, such as ExpertExchange.com for example, it amounts to a continuous evaluation of “experts” (knowledgeable people who respond to questions) by novices (people who request answers) and other experts. In most communities, members can switch from expert to novice depending on the case and context. The dynamic evaluation of the commitment and contribution of individuals is one of the most interesting facets of communities and networks, since it departs most notably from the typical ways of relating responsibilities to competence in other types of organisational structure, most notably hierarchical structures. The “managing” structure of communities is much more fluid than that of typical organisations. The model that has been identified as the most replicated one in communities is quite similar to that used in Open Source development56 although with numerous minor variations. First, this does imply that, in communities, there are clear norms and conventions that deal with the attribution of reputation and the bestowing of trust (and their opposites). Second in importance are those norms by which decisions are made, for example, as to which collective project to take up next. Some have argued that other activities connected with coordination between members are also crucial to the sustainability of communities, as well as to their performance. These activities contribute to the construction of identity in the community: meetings, celebrations, etc. On a very abstract level, Contractor and Green have identified the following activities that an individual can perform within a community57:

• Exploring: finding resources in the community. This amounts to searching and finding the right person within the community with whom to interchange knowledge.

• Exploiting: using the resources of the community for learning. This may include non-human

knowledge such as that which is represented and stored in the communal database or base of cases.

• Mobilising: motivating the rest of the community to achieve a goal. This goal is collective but

sparked by the action of individuals.

• Bonding: extending the community by accepting new members or connecting with other communities. It also has to do with activities related to identity creation and reinforcement.

53 Kollock, 1999 54 Gallivan, 2001, Jarvenpaa, 1998 55 Sabater, 2005 56 Kogut, 2001, Stark, 2003, Raymond, 1999, Lee, 2000 57 Contractor and Green, 2007


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• Swarming: calling for fast action and response is similar to mobilising the entire community

at short notice.

3.4 Dimensions of a community

In order to analyse and compare different types of communities, it is important to find their common points. Much has been discussed about what is common to all communities and what sets them apart. After reviewing an extensive body of literature, it is possible to isolate three dimensions that help to characterise a community. These dimensions are:

− The social dimension − The knowledge dimension − The technological dimension

Social dimension The social dimension involves the collective dynamics of the community. It has to do with the aspects that influence the build-up of community social capital; in this case, the community’s ability to learn58:

• Rules: they are related to processes and coordination and specify at what time certain processes have to take place and under which conditions, for example, when to decide that leaders have to be changed or when face-to-face general meetings have to take place59. Also, they describe the way in which some actions have to be performed. For example, in Open Source communities, most decisions about whether to create new versions or a separate development of software are mandatory, voted upon and approved by the top people responsible for their development. Every rule has clear procedures for dealing with those who fail to respect it, sometimes resulting in expulsion from the community.

• Norms: conditions that, without further communication (specially centralised

communication), can trigger some action from one individual with respect to another/others. For some60, norms also entail their own enforcement on other members of the community. For example, a norm could be that you always have to give feedback on the use of a learned piece of knowledge to the person who transferred it to you. If one takes the stricter view regarding norms, if that feedback does not take place after you have given advice, you have to take action to ensure that others return it to you. In collaborative environments, such as Slashdot, a norm (embedded in the collaborative software) indicates that everyone can comment on posts made by everyone else, but that you will be shown the comments on your posts only from people with a similar or higher level of expertise. Enforcement here is automatically ensured by software. Another norm could be the recommendation to behave politely in forums. Every norm has clear procedures for dealing with those who fail to comply.

58 Lin, 2002, Fischer, 2004, Nahapiet, 1998, Putnam, 2000, Preece, 2002 59 Nhoria, 1992 60 Conte, 2004


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• Conventions: similar to norms but only on a single action and without entailing any active enforcement of the convention on others. It is a convention, for instance, that you are allowed to address questions to anyone in your CoP.

There are several areas in which it is crucial to have clear guidelines in the form of rules, norms and conventions: decision-making, conflict resolution, rejection of members, acceptance of members, etc. Apart from these guidelines, leadership is also an emerging social mechanism in communities. It results from the mutual evaluation of actions by members of the community. Additionally, there are several activities that have to do with the facilitation of other activities and trust and identity building. Face-to-face encounters and their format are crucial to all these aspects61. Although there has been a lot of discussion about whether or not trust is harder to build online, and the fact that face-to-face meetings act as a compensatory and trust-building mechanism, they also play an important role in the first steps of a community. One special type of group meeting is that which also includes some kind of ritual in the form of celebration or the marking of a transition phase. Identity building as a group is seen as one of the main factors for the success of a community. Other aspects should be discussed when setting up a community, especially communities based on the interchange of knowledge. They have to do with the property of the newly created knowledge within the community. Different regimes exist and coexist, such as contract agreements at the moment of joining a community or schemes organised on a person-to-person basis and that have to do with the possible use of knowledge. In general, it seems that more open agreements (Creative Commons, for example) create a more dynamic environment that generates more results for a community. This also touches on the market dimension of communities. In fact, communities can be modelled as markets where transactions are made on the basis of knowledge interchange. As long as the community acts on a free interchange basis among members, it can be considered “market free” or a “gift-based” economy. Nevertheless, there are some aspects that should be considered from an economic and market standpoint. In effect, it can be argued that what is interchanged is information on the value of the interchanged knowledge and, indirectly, on the value of the person contributing the knowledge. The coin is “reputation”62. Some communities do explicitly measure this dimension. For example, ExpertExchange members are given points with which responses given by experts are evaluated and, consequently, used to rank the value (or reputation) of experts in a community. The same goes for other communities, such as Slashdot or Ebay, where ranking indicates how trustworthy a member of the community is and, indirectly, how high the member’s reputation within the community is. The more explicit these measures and the clearer the mechanisms for this kind of rating, the more knowledge interchange in the community operates as a market mechanism. Finally, it is important to establish which kinds of mechanism are responsible for the integration of a person into a community. Typically, CoPs have rules for accepting prospective members. 2.0 technologies are more open in the sense that approximation is done by discovering what has been called a “social object of interest”63: people do connect with one other by means of “social objects of interest”. From this moment on, a community can coalesce around that object (see the example of Fickr further on). In the case of communities, social objects are based on knowledge, especially practical knowledge.

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Knowledge dimension Knowledge is exchanged in communities for different reasons and under different forms. One important component of CoPs is that knowledge that exists in an unstructured form is transferred from expert to novice simply by “showing” how it is applied in a given context. On one hand, there also appears to be a process of knowledge circulation and translation that has been observed in several communities. Tacit knowledge is further elaborated into more formalised expressions that are increasingly structured and amenable to automatic treatment (Ye 07). On the other hand, there is increasing technological support for searching for and recovering unstructured, less formalised knowledge (expressed as free format text pieces, such as those contained in forums and e-mail messages). Text mining, semantic web and other knowledge-related technologies are being used to offer another level of access to knowledge and as a complement to the communal process of interpreting, using and translating knowledge for the benefit of the rest of the community64 which, in the traditional CoP literature, was identified as almost the only way in which knowledge became formalised, structured and, as such, useful to the rest of the community. Moreover, the format and place in which knowledge is stored and accessed are also important. Communities are environments in which knowledge is stored in transaction memories65. Some argue that knowledge is not only represented by the knowledge “in the head” of human members of communities, but also in the databases, case bases, tags and other technological knowledge infrastructures. In the most extreme view, the technological objects are also members of a community; however, they may vary according to the level of agency of humans66. It is also important to consider the function and purpose of this knowledge67. Interchanged knowledge can be classified as: advice, solution to a problem, referral to a source of information (human or artificial), recommendation of information or a person, introduction (networking), etc. The way in which knowledge is searched for, interchanged and used is also important. There seems to be a crucial implication for overall community performance in this respect. In effect68, a critical aspect is the possibility for members of the community to access the knowledge of individuals outside the initial community. This may have to do with the proven superiority of diverse teams to solve problems (Page 2006) as compared to uniform teams. Technological dimension The technological dimension refers not only to the actual technologies employed to support several functions and activities, but also to the extent to which metaphors of technology generate a new way of looking at communities and the production and interchange of knowledge that takes place within them, and how these metaphors influence the actual practices taking place within the community. If one adopts a socio-technical view of communities, one can accept that the way technologies are interconnected has a strong influence on the dynamics that people using them will be able to develop. If we relate this to the fact69 that there is strong evidence about different communication and exchange patterns across different communities and that this, in turn, affects the overall performance of the community, there is reason to believe that the important aspect of technologies of communication, information and knowledge is how well they fit the actual

64 Zack 2000 65 Hollingshead, 1998 66 Latour, 2005 67 Jimes 2003 68 Teigland 2004 69 Teigland, 2003


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practice of the community and how much latitude they allow for evolution of the new practices that they allow for. Wenger listed a substantive number of “technologies for communities”70 and tried to relate them to the following modes of communication: - Synchronous communication - Asynchronous communication Also, he produced a taxonomy of which activities were being supported, in his view, by these technologies:

- Individual participation - Community cultivation - Publishing

It is interesting to see that the only technology related to 2.0 that Wenger mentioned (as late as 2005) was RSS. Therefore, it seems that his account is still under the frame of mind of 1.0 technologies and their predominant connection between portals and intranets as the main technological support for communities. 2.0 technologies pose another level of complexity. Firstly, they connect activities that are critical for the initial creation of the community to the activities based on knowledge sharing and learning. Instead of being a complement to an already existing community, 2.0 technologies are used mainly as a means for the creation of objects of social interest71. The remarkable aspect of 2.0 is that, by contributing knowledge and creating social cues associated to their creator, they allow for the emergence of new social relationships, and therefore allow new communities to be built from the bottom up. Groups and communities are formed based on the mutual recognition of people who were previously unrelated, through the use of 2.0 technologies to contribute and locate content and knowledge. For example, Flickr.com, with very simple technology for uploading photographs and letting people tag them, has helped to create actual communities of practice in relation to photography techniques. In effect, people who had never previously met started to connect on Flickr.com by detecting other individuals who contributed with their own photographs and expressed interest not only in sharing them, but also in meeting people to increase their photography skills. Some groups do, in fact, form with groups of people interested in photography techniques who periodically go on photography tours and assess the work of their members. In fact, one might well argue that situated learning is taking place offline in these communities and complementing the online discussions and contributions72. This is the type of learning associated with CoPs and knowledge exchange in which “experts” and “novices” start to relate to each other and learning takes place in the typical fashion (“legitimate peripheral learning”) of CoPs. So here we have an emerging process facilitated by the social connectivity that characterises 2.0 technologies. Although the typical phases in community creation (coalescing, creating, etc.) can be identified in this case, the role of technology is very different to that which is usually given in classic accounts of the role of technology in CoPs. Instead of the community first being built with a technological platform to give support to its activities, the community meets through the use of technology and later gives itself a clear goal. In this process, the community uses the same platform that brought all the members together in the first place, and may go about integrating other technologies later. This is probably the most

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striking difference between 1.0 and 2.0 technologies as far as community dynamics are concerned. Since 2.0 technologies are based on the collaborative interaction of the members of a community, one important related aspect is how the members of the community can create new technology to adapt to their new patterns of interaction and, eventually, new goals. Wenger, in a report about technologies for communities in 2005, acknowledged the fact that there is a need to eventually readapt the initial technologies of a community to new demands, or to couple it with the successive phases that communities go through. His solution was to designate some people as “technological stewards”, who promoted knowledge about technologies and also played an important role in their development. With the arrival of 2.0, this separation between users and “stewards” or creators of technology appears somewhat dated. Although most of the participatory possibilities of 2.0 that have been publicised seem to be focused on content creation and sharing, in fact, as other accounts stress, they are also “technologies for creating new technologies”. These “new community created technologies” in turn have an impact on knowledge creation and sharing73. In a way, 2.0 technologies blur the distinction between technology as a “pull” or a “push” factor in the creation of communities (Hagel 2003). This has important implications for the design and creation of virtual environments for communities. The “Seed, Evolve, Re-seed” model of design proposed by Fischer (Fischer 2003) seems to offer the right mix of participatory design in technology for these types of platform and technology. Other types of design methodology seem much better adapted to 1.0 virtual environment. However, most of the CoP literature dealing with the role of technology in community building and evolution seems to be stuck on a dated view of the design process of technology. Peculiarities, success of communities and critical factors Several studies (Wegner, 1998), (McDermott, 1999), (Moran, 2004), (Teigland, 2004), (Wasko, 2004) observe that activities taking place within communities can be reduced to some sort of social exchange which, in turn, gives rise to a group learning process based on several processes of search, recovery, negotiation, storage and diffusion of knowledge. In fact, there is some variability with respect to the intensity and importance of these operations across communities and in the same community through time. Simply by reducing the discussion to a single community, it is possible to see different style terms of what knowledge to share, how to share it, and in which format. It has been observed that these aspects evolve differently in the initial stages of a community and its mature phase74. Also, there are changes in time as to who is requesting or contributing knowledge and for which purposes. It is generally admitted that a community should allow for diversity of actions and styles and be open to further evolution. This kind of recommendation has important consequences for the design of collaborative environments serving online communities, or the virtual part of real communities. In a way, it seems advisable to let communities evolve their own set of tools for knowledge interchanges, as well as for supporting other aspects of communal activities (trust, reputation, etc.), including the temporary or selective opening of the community to other communities, i.e. “bridging”75. So, openness and possibility of evolution are two very important factors when it comes to the success of a community.

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General, transversal measures of community success are difficult to come up. Business oriented approaches76 try to relate the activity of the community within a company to measures that reflect some increase in value creation, mostly in terms of cost reduction on one hand but also, on the other, to the improvement of relational measures that portray the interaction the company and its environment. Additional advantages frequently quoted (Deloitte, IBM, ECCoP) are related to the solution of organisational problems (communication flows within the company, breaking silos77, access to new sources for innovation, improved company identity, etc.). Measuring all of these aspects is no easy task – no measure related to knowledge and learning is. Some measures try to relate the performance of communities78 to some type of productivity indicators: number of projects completed by the community, number of best practices solved, number of questions solved, etc. The issue of which of these indicators really portrays general community goals has been widely discussed79. Hagel80 recently proposed several indicators that relate the level of investment needed to set up a community with the returns that are obtained from its operation: Return on Attention and Return on Talent. These measures are linked to the business value of a community, an aspect currently much debated given the proliferation of commercial networking sites. Another line of discussion sees communities as a long-term company investment that improves company visibility, brand value and, in general, a commitment to customers, providers and society. In communities that operate outside the logic of business but still serve professionals, “success” is even more difficult to define and evaluate. In general, there is a tendency to try to capture how the activity of the community relates to increased social capital81. Measuring social capital, however, is a much-debated question82. Some try to equate social capital to the increase in the density of connections between members of a community83, but it is by no means a generally accepted measurement. Regarding measures of success for professional online communities in which knowledge exchange is the basic activity, there is a widespread consensus affirming that typical website success measures make no sense84. For example, the number of hits or number of registered users of a practice exchange site are only pale approximations to anything resembling a measure of the performance of the community or its success. Higher numbers of participants do not automatically imply greater participation or better quality of contributions and returns, i.e. an improvement in the learning ability and knowledge assets of the individuals and the community as a whole. Measures monitoring the communication activity and content among individuals have also been proposed and discussed85. In spite of the lack of a single parameter to measure the “success” of a community, several factors have traditionally been isolated as necessary in the path towards a successful community. On the one hand, one can find general insights from CoPs in business settings86. In this view, the most important goal of a community is sharing tacit knowledge and getting people to think together. This, in most cases, amounts to an organisational change and therefore managerial, community

76 Hagel, 2007 77 Szulanski, 1994, Szulanski, 1996 78 Teigland 2003 79 Hagel 80 Hagel 2007 81 Lin 2001, Flap, 2003 82 Li, 2003, Lin, 2001, Snijders, 1999, Nahapiet, 1998 83 Cross 2000, Markus, 2004, Mobius 2004 84 Markus, 2006 85 Trier 2007, Gloor2006a 86 McDermott, 1999


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and personal changes have to be made. A measure of success has to be devised on a case-by-case basis. From the technological side, the most important factor for the success of a community seems to be the ease of use of the associated technologies, a view shared by people who have studied Virtual Online Communities87. Finally, success seems to be the result of overcoming hurdles that are common to any change process. Here are some recommendations from well renowned authors in CoPs88:

• Focus: focusing on a topic that makes sense for the company, business, sector, or professional group helps attract people to the community. Focusing does not mean restricting too much. The goals of the community also have to be stated in a somewhat ambiguous manner so that each individual can relate it to his or her own goals.

• Elders: the involvement of a well-respected community or business leader helps to create the

first step when coordinating the initial phase of the community.

• Personal resources: it is important that community members have enough time to be devoted to the project, as well as enough rewards to encourage them to join. These are factors that can be more easily devised in company settings89. It is trickier to find incentives in a more open, less business-oriented setting. There is some evidence, however, that there is a growing awareness of the importance of setting aside personal time and resources to contribute to the benefit of the community, as the Open Source movement has shown90.The younger the members are, the more this seems to be the case91.

• Values: most actors recommend using the values of the organisation as an structural core for

any new CoP. For wider settings, not reduced to a single company, this is again a more difficult aspect. In fact, the creation of the community is sometimes the first public communication of a set of values that are worth pursuing.

• Leadership: as in any changing project, the involvement of natural leaders is key and has a

pull effect on the rest of the community. This is true for the initial steps of a community. However, most authors note that successful communities are those that are able to spot new leaders and give them responsibility and recognition92, the Open Source example again being a case in point. This also entails reflection on how to detect leadership within communities, and especially in virtual CoPs. Social network analysis has been put to work for this special task. Analysing the evolution of the structure of the networks of relationships between community members has helped identify people with the skills and personal drive to help in the growth of the community. See, for example Gloor (2003) or Trier (2007) for suggestions regarding automated support tools for such a task.

• Detection of other key roles: as is well known from social network research, communities

that perform well are based on the existence of several important, if abstract, roles. The most important ones are experts (or mavens) and connectors (or bridges). The former ensure the level of in-depth knowledge and the increase of this in the community and are the hubs to which most of the community goes for advice. Connectors are those who may be not so knowledgeable, but their contribution mainly consists of making referrals to other people. Moreover, they are the gates towards connection with members of other communities and, as

87 Fischer, 2001: Gloor, 2005: Borghoff 1997 88 McDermott, 1999 89 McDermott, 1999, Gloor, 2005 90 Benkler, 2006, Tapscott, 2006 91 Castells, 2007, BusinessWeek, 2007 92 Fleming, 2003


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such, bring in greater diversity of knowledge, which is especially critical in innovation communities. All these roles have to be detected, promoted and rewarded accordingly.

• Behaviours: Gloor93 notes the importance of reciprocity and the role that some norms and

rules have in the performance of communities. Some of the most general ones deal with reciprocity and recognition. These very general rules of conduct, together with personal common sense in applying them, work surprisingly well and have been shown to be similar to others discovered by agent-base model simulation of societies94.

• Personal relationships: almost all studies on communities emphasise the need to build

relationships between members in the community that go beyond the professional, i.e. not only involving face-to-face meetings for the discussion of topics strictly related to the goals of the communities95, but also having rituals or other meetings in social settings (sports, dinners, etc.) with no goal other than that of socialising and sharing experiences above and beyond those of professional practice. In virtual communities, face-to-face meetings seem to have a critical role in the very first stages in order to build trust among members96.

• Personal attitudes: most studies stress the need to engage people in real, frank dialogue with

no restrictions. This is usually an initial problem in company settings, especially in those organisations with a long history of hierarchical organising. The most effective way to spread new attitudes is first to create a selected team of people with the right personality, and then to convince by example. Incentives based on rewards or promotions are far less effective in changing attitudes.

Finally, we can mention another set of problems resulting from extending communities by connecting to other, already existing, communities. Fischer97, discussing the specific problems of setting up Communities of Interest (which he equates with the connection of multiple CoPs) lists the following:

• Language: different professional communities use different languages to refer to similar objects of interest. Acknowledging from the beginning that this is so is a first step to overcoming the communication barrier. The solution is rarely to create a unified language, but rather to be able to translate from one practice to the other. In time, a new language may evolve that integrates several practices. A special language barrier issue arises in international teams, in which language can be a problem not only in terms of communication, but also because of its bearing on mental models, and in the sharing or understanding of concepts, even if their corresponding translation is known98.

• Concepts: the repertoire of concepts used to describe goals and projects, as well as problems,

differs from practice to practice. Although shared ontologies and folksonomies help make concepts more evident to different communities and find equivalent and new concepts, much work has to be done in order to facilitate the integration of the concepts of one community in the concepts of others, which, in addition, are at coming with radically new creative solutions. This process is an exceptional tool for learning.

• Boundary objects: these99 are objects that could function as an interface between two

communities. They act at community level as other objects do at personal level to start a

93 Gloor 2001 94 Pujol, 2005 95 Smith, 2005 96 Gloor 2006 97 Fischer, 2003 98 Gloor 2006 99 Star, 1989


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connection100. In fact, it is through Boundary Objects that most Communities of Interest start to coalesce, since they represent transversal problems that cannot be solved with the practices of any single community. They can be understood by both communities, but neither has enough knowledge or context to deal successfully with them. They need not be physical objects and are usually knowledge-based (problems, information, rules, plans, reports).

• Organisational barriers: joining a community of practice within an organisation sometimes

amounts to breaking internal barriers in the same organisation, mainly, as mentioned previously, in those with a long hierarchical tradition.

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4 THE MODEL: WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

Having set good practice exchange in the larger context of CoPs, in this section we will delve deeper into the 2.0 framework. We will go beyond technology and set the use of 2.0 within a CoP context. Our goal here is to find a model to analyse examples of knowledge exchange and the use of 2.0 technologies.

4.1 Is 2.0 just technology?

In this document, we take a strong view of 2.0101 not simply as a technology, but as the technological aspect of certain wider movements in economics and social dynamics towards a more collaborative mode of knowledge production, organisation102 and, in general, economic activity103. In general terms, 2.0 technologies have been equated to the Read/Write Web or a web that is based on user-generated content and collaboration, as well as the social practices and economic possibilities opened up by having these kinds of technology facilitator. This means a co-evolutive coupling of web technologies and people. It defines a web that is more active and involves more interaction among people than ever before. At the same time, these same technologies bring with them the metaphor of software as a service. Isolated services have little value: they are meant to be combined by their own users, who, in the process, become designers and creators of new possibilities. Although this possibility was already present in Web 1.0 technologies, the creativity in 1.0 was in the creation of content and the provision of access to content through the web. However, in Web 2.0, what we find is creativity oriented not only towards new forms of content creation and access, but also to the explicit creation and fostering of new social forms of collaboration. Taken in the broadest sense, this creativity in social interaction goes from the very Internet infrastructure (grid computing, for example) to the creation and cultivation of communities based on personal contribution (social networks) and, of course, collaborative creation of content and knowledge. The canonical view: usual technological suspects The very different technologies that make up the Web 2.0 toolbox can be organised on several levels. Probably one of the most well-known sets of technologies identified as 2.0 is that related to the collaborative creation of content, which includes:

• blogs: online notebooks open to comments from other users and that have been used for knowledge interchange and learning in communities, companies, or other organisations.

• wikis: ongoing collaborative edition of content. The most well-known example might be

Wikipedia, but wikis can be used in many different forms and settings, from education (e-learning) to in-company knowledge management104. One dimension that helps differentiate one type of wiki from another is the extent to which the ability to become an editor is decentralised and open. In this sense, the evolution of the policies for editing in Wikipedia

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has been often used as a benchmark of openness and decentralisation of the final authority on content.

• tagging: here, we mean tagging related to content in a derivative fashion. That is to say, there

is no proper co-creation of content, but co-sharing of references to content (i.e. bookmarks, URLs, etc.). The Del.icio.us site is a typical tagging service, oriented towards the collaborative indexation and classification of content, and this is what is searched for and shared.

• Variations on the type of content: the combination of references, editing and sharing on

different types of media support has spawned several specialised types of social media site and service, with varying levels of “editability” and sharing between members and general users, not necessarily associated in any special way with the sites that host the service. Video, music and photography have become media focal points for enormous networks of users who wish to expand their own networks (Flickr.com, YouTube, Last.fm).

According to traditional views of the Internet and the Web, the latest examples of collaborative content and knowledge creations would lie “on top” of other “lower level” infrastructures (servers, connections, etc.). Interestingly enough, the social metaphor is also trickling down to these infrastructures, the social dimensions of which have to be taken in a very broad sense, by ascribing a certain degree of autonomy and agency to the technical elements forming part of the infrastructure. In this sense, it has been said that infrastructures are artificial societies made up of several artificial communities. Autonomic computing (IBMAuto), grid computing105 and peer-to-peer computing (P2P) incorporate a lot of social and social dynamics concepts, although applied to non-human agents. However, the most recent conceptualisations, such as the US concept of cyber infrastructures106, do recognise this social continuity among all Internet users, be they basic or advanced. In this conceptualisation, the social metaphor is dominant, and is an initial step towards subsequent developments in what has been called Web 3.0 and Internet 3.0. Web 2.0 is not only simple collaborative creation, but is also, mainly, sharing of knowledge. The most radical proponents of Web 2.0 assert that collaboration is the main driving force behind the knowledge economy. In any case, collaboration implies an activity that usually evolves around common goals. Collaboration implies a common goal, similar values, and a set of practices geared towards the fulfilment of those goals. It is usually structured in terms of projects, and temporal subjects. Most of the time, collaboration takes the form of a periodical, one-to-one exchange of knowledge according to a set of mutually recognised social and economic practices. Some authors prefer to distinguish between collaboration (sporadic) and cooperation (a sustained relationship between the cooperators). In any case, there are relationships with a varying degree of duration, commitment, obligation and response. From the Web 2.0 viewpoint, most of the relationships are built upon some trusted contribution by each member of a community. This trust has been equated to the free content (or knowledge) contribution of the members of a community. This takes the form of sharing one’s knowledge with the rest of the community and using the community knowledge to apply it to one’s sphere of activity. Alternatively, these dynamics of contribution, which form the basis of each relationship within a community, have been conceptualised as a social exchange, but could also be seen as an economic exchange. The set of conventions that regulate social or economic exchanges can be modelled in

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similar ways, although symbolically (and economically), they have very different consequences. In both cases, and from the Web 2.0 point of view, there is a principle that organises exchanges to contribute to individual and community progress or wellbeing. It can be cast in terms of knowledge creation, knowledge diffusion, project completion, or other types of measures related to the goals of the community. The tension between individual and group goals is usually addressed, as previously mentioned, by a set of rules, norms and conventions that regulate exchanges and try to anticipate and resolve conflicts. An important aspect is the ownership of knowledge and the control of its use within and outside a community by its creator or the rest of the members of the community and third parties. The possibilities that Web 2.0 has opened up for the copy, replication, modification and distribution of content and, more generally, knowledge, have spawned not only a great deal of controversy and legal conflict, but also a continuous experimentation of new regimes for conflict resolution within and outside communities, decentralised decision-making and, ultimately, power distribution within a community. Finally, 2.0 technologies introduce several ideas that have an impact on organisations in general and communities in particular. The main idea is that they reinforce “emerging” patterns of interaction as the main means to coordinate collective action. This is mainly done through intermediate objects, for example, through documents of interest or knowledge, in the aggregate behaviour of people tagging documents or web references. This hints at the fact that the successful coordination of a community is done more through the wise design of local patterns of interaction than by strict and permanent divisions of roles and responsibilities. The burden of collaboration At the same time, the openness assumed by 2.0 technologies introduces several levels of complication in the management of the corresponding emerging organisations. It is well known that collaborative interactions in open organisations are prone to several specific problems. The voluntary contribution of knowledge that can be used more or less freely within and across communities can give rise to the phenomenon of “free riders”, who exploit knowledge volunteered by others without giving anything in return. A certain degree of free riding within a community is considered inevitable and even healthy for its overall performance. However, beyond a certain level, it ruins the community as it spreads suspicion and consequently leads to a reduction in mutual trust. The need for transparency and identity preservation inherent in 2.0 technologies is also under threat from collusive practices, which can be based on identity theft and purposeful group action aimed at the destruction of individual reputations. Finally, even assuming the overall benevolence of members of a community, some 2.0 technologies (especially those closer to social recommendation) do require a critical mass of users offering quality contributions and reciprocal behaviour. The “Cold Start” effect is another of the problems of communities in general but particularly those online communities relying on 2.0 technologies107. If there are not enough people making quality contributions, the community does not prosper and dies. The economic and social practices behind 2.0:

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Although 2.0 technologies were born with a collaborative focus in mind, they attain collaboration not through top-down design, but mostly through the self-organisation of individuals. The results are communities structured as networks. Yochai Benkler has analysed the economics of networks. In his view, what we are seeing is an increasing volume of knowledge work done outside the market. He goes on to consider that the “network economy” is complementary to that which is based on markets as we usually understand them, i.e. those based on the monetisation of goods, however immaterial they may be. So, in part, collaboration and knowledge exchange result in a “non-market” economy that needs and boosts a knowledge, market economy. In a way, this non market economy functions by means of the absence of monetary compensation to the contribution of knowledge, similar to the way in which “gift economies” operate. This seems to be a very important aspect of the types of interchange facilitated by 2.0 technologies, but not all “free” contributions can be identified with collaborative endeavours. Some refer to these practices as crowdsourcing. It is a term being used to characterise massive collaboration108. It is based on 2.0 technologies and amounts to tapping the collective knowledge of the masses connected through 2.0 to solve problems and seek solutions on the grounds that more people thinking and acting together can come up with better solutions, an insight for which there is some evidence both in popular literature109, and academic work110. Success stories from diverse sectors such as telecommunications111, chemical industries such as Connect and Develop112, or the pharmaceutical industry (Innocentive) show different types of crowdsourcing going on, a phenomenon that was anticipated in the Innovation literature by Tuomi113. Now is recognised as spanning more sectors and activities than mere innovation, and is connecting with a wider phenomenon known as Open Business114. Some people have questioned whether crowdsourcing initiatives set up by private business in cooperation with their users are really gift economies, since there is an imbalance in the benefit of the contributions, with companies reaping a disproportionate (and monetised) benefit from the whole community of members acting for free. Some voices have been heard on different fronts, simply discussing the extent to which the integration of the practice of crowdsourcing by the market economy is not simply the unrewarded exploitation of people by companies115. This trend is closely linked to other changes in the management of the property of knowledge. Collaborative and multiple authorship116, as well as imaginative new forms of property, such as Creative Commons licences117, is a phenomenon that is on the rise and seen by most people using or promoting 2.0 technologies as natural, although some people see it as a revolutionary, transformative force. Either way, it is a contribution that sticks with people and sets expectations and attitudes, not only when approaching 2.0 sets, but also, in general, when dealing with most sites built on knowledge interchange. Beyond the realm of economics, the 2.0 phenomenon cast under a social and political point of view shows some possible strong implications for eGovernment. In particular, it raises high expectations about participation, accountability and actual participatory management of cities or even countries. In the view of the 2.0 community, participation is not just a matter of citizens being invited to give their opinions on policy aspects once they are devised by politicians. There is

108 Leadbetter 2006 109 Levitt, 2006, Surowiecki, 2005 110 Scott 2006 111 Nokia 2004 112 Huston, 2006 113 Tuomi 2003 114 Open Business, 2007 115 Lanier 2006, Torkington, 2006, Scholz 2007 116 Code 2003 117 Lessig, 2002


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a real possibility of more direct involvement in the day-to-day decision-making and planning at several levels of governance118. Without going to that extreme, it is clear that, without altering the current political framework, a lot of change has been brought by 2.0 to, for example, current political campaigning practices. The recent use of Internet, and specifically 2.0 sites, has been shown not only to attract voters, but also to create campaign events and decide on or “tune in” to candidate programmes. See, for example, accounts of the Edwards/Kerry campaign or the present development of the 2008 US presidential elections with Barak Obama as a full “2.0 candidate”. In summary, 2.0 technologies entail attitudes and expectations regarding Open Business, non-market economies, active and mass participation in innovation and governance, as well as a more acute perception of the value of personal contribution in all of these areas, accompanied by a reinforced sense of distrust for other frameworks in which the collaboration potential of 2.0 is one-sidedly used by those people, businesses or governing bodies that pretend to set up “open” 2.0 sites.

4.2 A model of 2.0 practice exchange

Before we get a picture of the current initiatives in CoPs that have to do with practice exchange and incorporate some levels of the 2.0 framework, and in order to better assess all the characteristics of 2.0, we will consider the dimensions previously mentioned (see point 1.4). In the present point, we have expanded them to analyse CoPs more precisely. Reviewing all the illustrative initiatives analysed in this report, we have made some interpretations for each dimension and tried to steer ourselves by using some kind of numerical guide for measuring each facet. Although these numerical transpositions are not shown in the initiatives described, they have been quite useful for our work. For the sake of completeness and to give a better overview of the process we have followed to gather data and analyse it, we make brief mention of the different aspects of each dimension, as well as reference to the measuring scales used.

• Social dimension: the extent to which the initiative is close to the “open society” tenets implicit in 2.0.

• Knowledge dimension: the preferred form of knowledge that is interchanged and its current

format (content), as well as the type of knowledge that is interchanged (factual, procedural, tacit, explicit, etc.).

• Technology dimension: the extent to which the initiative embodies the main technologies in

2.0 and their possibility for combination, as well as other technological possibilities related to mobility, ubiquity and infrastructure.

• Coupling: the extent to which the technological 2.0 tools are suited to the goals and social

practices that the initiatives try to attain and maintain, and how much potential for evolution the current technological choice provides.

• Market dimension: the extent to which interchanges are built on an expectation for return in

terms of economic value, either monetised or in another type of identifiable value convertible unit.

• Management: here, we assess the degree, if any, of separation of roles between managers and

members in a community. “Managing” here refers not just to the administration of the site or

118 Engestrom 2005, Dunleavy, 2000, eUser, 2005, Pratchett, 2007


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platform, but also to all the activities concerning conflict resolution, attribution and recognition of roles, norm enforcement, goal setting, discussion of goals, etc.

• Innovativeness: an evaluation of how innovative an initiative is in terms of social practices

and innovative technology use (extensions of 2.0 or innovative combinations thereof). Social dimension We have used a simple model for a community in terms of the types of goal it pursues, the types of member it means to attract, their practices of management, decision-making and conflict resolution (including goal-setting). We have also measured the degree of “openness” or self-organisation the community shows:

• Community goals: what are the goals of the community? - Sharing: based on archiving, searching for and accessing knowledge and people. - Learning: based on questioning and answering, solutions, the whys and

wherefores, and analysis of cases. - Problem solving: practical solutions and cases requiring active interaction and

not just searching and archiving. - Advice exchange: interchange of advice and references. - Networking: extension of references and management of relationships. - Project development: creation and evolution of communities based on concrete

projects and the proposal of new projects. - Participation: the extent to which the initiative is based on the participation of all

members of the community. - Mobilisation: the degree to which the initiative tries to create a movement among

citizens or employees or both.

• Community membership: - Here, we have distinguished the most representative characteristics of the

members of the community. On one end of the scale, we find those sites exclusively addressed to professionals, as government officials and employees in the case of eGovernment CoPs. At the other extreme, there are open participatory sites that seek the active involvement of general users in cooperation with professionals – citizens in cooperation with government in the case of eGovernment CoPs – and make no differences or distinctions among members.

Knowledge dimension

• Kind of knowledge: - Factual or procedural: data are most frequently exchanged (values, lists,

statistics). - Procedural: practical procedures are exchanged. - In both cases, there is a continuum concerning the explicitness of this knowledge

in terms of how much it reflects objectively tacit knowledge. For example, data can be expressed in a very precise objective form (values and numbers) or in a highly elaborate natural language account, which is an implicit form of giving factual information.

• Form and purpose:

- Problem solving - Learning - Form: cases, advice, solutions, content, relation, document and project - Support text, audio, video, photo and hypermedia

Technology dimension

• 1.0 Technologies:


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- Technologies that favour a “user” perspective rather than a “contributor” perspective. In general, all technologies that favour content over relationship and access over interaction: passive website, archival platforms, document repository with no editing facilities, etc.

• 2.0. Technologies:

- Blogging - Wiki - Tagging - Social networking - Combo: technological platforms that combine all of the aforementioned tools - Construction: initiatives geared towards creation - Mobility - Infrastructure - 2.0 platform creation

Coupling

In this scale, we have assessed how well 2.0 technologies fit the goals of the initiative represented on the site. On one hand, some of the initiatives are explicitly aimed at open collaboration or exchange, so it would not be fair to score them in terms of adequate use of 2.0 technologies. On the other hand, we have also tried to see if there are potential gaps to be filled by using 2.0 technologies. For example, forums are usually not really considered as 2.0 technologies, but they are useful for certain Q &A practices related to advice giving and problem solving. Of course, a wiki would be an excellent tool for addressing the same goal, and it would be “fully” 2.0. Therefore, in such a case, there would be a great de-coupling and a great opportunity for 2.0 use. We refrain from saying “a great opportunity for improvement” since, if the associated community feels that it is well served with the current 1.0 solution, it is hard to argue that a huge improvement, using 2.0 technologies, is necessary, however evident it may seem.

Market dimension

• Here, we have explored the institutional exchange design and its proximity to a market setting:

- What is exchanged: knowledge (advice, Q&A, solutions to problems, content

references, best cases, worst cases, lessons learned, factual information) and relationships (personal references, introductions, etc.).

- How is it exchanged: one to one (person to person), broadcast to the group, directly

(both previous cases), indirectly (through content either in the document or in other forms, including social media).

- Exploitation: by contributor, by recipient, by the community, by third parties.

- Rights management: from free to closed proprietary regimes.

- Market organisation: expert market, ideagora.

Management:

• Here, we have assessed the degree of separation of roles between managers and members. Managing refers not only to the administration of the site or platform, but also to conflict resolution, attribution and recognition of roles, norm enforcement, goal setting and discussion.


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- Completely separated: the management team is formed by a set of people who do not have the same type of role as the users and have complete control over all those aspects regarding goal-setting, decision-making, conflict resolution and housekeeping.

- Participatory: the management team, i.e. eGovernment personnel, retains the

main aspects of goal-setting and decision-making, but after hearing other members.

- Joint management: there are mechanisms to give responsibility to community

leaders in cooperation with the management team.

- Transparency: no special distinction is made for responsibilities between the promoters of the initiative, i.e. government officials, and other types of member, especially citizens: responsibilities according to merit measured by the rules created by the promoters of the initiative.

- Open source: explicit rules for rotation, and election of leaders for projects and

general management of the initiative.

- Meta (general open source model): this would be an extreme in which management is completely transferred to very simple aspects of interaction, such as “digging” websites or “tagging” websites.

Finally, the selection of the experiences included in the present document has been made from more than 300 experiences detected from different sources (CoP literature, 2.0 references, professional sources from authors, etc.). For such filtering, a typology of exchange sites has been taken into account in accordance with the goal of this document (Generic Communities, Business and Professional Oriented Sites, National Initiatives, International Initiatives, eParticipation and Services Initiatives [Social Movements], Inclusion, Health, Sharing Q&A and Platform Generators and General Software), the success of the experiences, and the usefulness for epractice.eu. These last two aspects have been the most important in relation to the three most relevant experiences (Development Gateway Communities, eCatalunya and Meetup). In fact, there are thousands of practice exchange examples related to the Internet and Web 2.0. Although we cannot consider those included in this document as the only examples or even the best, from a general point of view they give a good idea of successful experiences that can be useful in the development of epractice.eu.


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5 A PANORAMIC VIEW

Once we have the framework of CoPs and the model to analyse them in a 2.0 context, it is time to explore and describe selected experiences. Of the 300 CoPs detected, we will describe three in detail, 20 more in a comprehensive manner and finally, in Annex A, we list 50 more. All of them are included in one of the several typologies for exchange sites created for the present work. We have chosen the most representative experiences according to their relation with the ePractice.eu framework, but also because they are considered successful initiatives. The rest of them are significant examples of each exchange type.

5.1 Typology of exchange sites

In the following, we list the different classes of exchange types that can be found:

• Generic Communities: sites that are built as platforms for general knowledge interchange, i.e., they are not focused on a specific sector or targeted to a specifically professional audience.

• Business and Professional Oriented Sites: sites in which knowledge interchange, whether it is

based on 2.0 technologies or not, is the main activity for professionals, be it getting advice, obtaining personal referrals, seeking business building activities or other. We include sites that support knowledge interchange activities for any business and those that are designed for a specific business sector.

• National Initiatives: sites built around structured programmes to foster knowledge

interchange among officials in governmental departments as well as other stakeholders. We have mainly focused on those initiatives that used 2.0 technologies and collaborative practices.

• International Initiatives: similar to the above, but on an international scale.

• eParticipation and Services Initiatives (Social Movements): knowledge interchange sites

that address typical aspects of eParticipation, specifically in the relationship between citizens and government decision-makers, as well as initiatives created by citizens that work towards some kind of effect on government. We also include social movements not only related to government decisions, that is, platforms that use knowledge interchange to build groups, communities and momentum for social action.

• Inclusion: initiatives related to the social inclusion of alternative or marginal and

disadvantaged groups.

• Health: sites to either exchange knowledge on health issues or generate communities for different health goals (helping members gain information about specific illnesses, information about health institutions, etc.).

• Sharing Q&A: sites that exchange answers to general or specific questions.

• Platform Generators and General Software: these are sites that either provide software tools

(commercial or not) for creating collaborative platforms or provide a comprehensive set of software applications which, once combined, result in a fully operational platform for collaborative knowledge interchange.


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5.2 General assessment

List of selected experiences

The three most relevant experiences

Name URL Typology

Development Gateway Communities

http://topics.developmentgateway.org

International initiatives

eCatalunya http://ecatalunya.gencat.net National initiatives

Meetup http://www.meetup.com eParticipation and Services Initiatives (Social Movements)

The ePractice site has been included in the selection of the most relevant cases in order to facilitate benchmarking with the three selected experiences. ePractice http://www.epractice.eu eGovernment information and best

practices exchange



http://ecatalunya.gencat.net

http://www.meetup.com

http://www.epractice.eu/


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20 additional Web 2.0 Communities

Name URL Typology

Ami Communities http://www.ami-communities.eu International Initiatives

Answers.com http://answers.com Sharing Q&A

Apronet http://bc.apronet.asso.fr National Initiatives

Brainkeeper http://www.brainkeeper.com Platform Generators and General Software

Ciudadanos 2010 http://www.ciudadanos2010.net eParticipation and Services Initiatives (Social Movements)

COLAB http://www.gsa.gov/collaborate National Initiatives

Del.icio.us http://del.icio.us.com Generic Communities

European Entrepreneurs Networking site

http://www.join2grow.biz/default.aspx

Business and Professional Oriented Sites

Experts Exchange www.experts-exchange.com/ Business and Professional Oriented Sites

Facebook http://facebook.com Generic Communities

Govx http://www.govx.org.uk/ National Initiatives

IETF http://www.ietf.org Business and Professional Oriented Sites

Linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/ Business and Professional Oriented Sites

Moveon http://www.moveon.org eParticipation and Services Initiatives (Social Movements)

National Health Service Advice (UK)

http://www.informatics.nhs.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=526

Health

Ning http://www.ning.com Platform Generators and General Software

Open Source Government

http://www.opensourcegovernment.com/

eParticipation and Services Initiatives (Social Movements)

Regulations.gov http://www.regulations.gov eParticipation and Services Initiatives (Social Movements)

Slashdot.org http://slashdot.org Generic Communities

WikiHow http://wikihow.com Generic Communities

Zexe.net http://www.zexe.net Inclusion

5.3 The three most relevant experiences and ePractice.eu

From the examples reviewed, the three most relevant sites selected are:

http://www.ami-communities.eu

http://answers.com

http://bc.apronet.asso.fr

http://www.brainkeeper.com

http://www.ciudadanos2010.net

http://www.gsa.gov/collaborate

http://del.icio.us.com



http://www.experts-exchange.com/

http://facebook.com

http://www.govx.org.uk/

http://www.ietf.org

http://www.linkedin.com/

http://www.moveon.org



http://www.ning.com



http://www.regulations.gov

http://slashdot.org

http://wikihow.com

http://www.zexe.net


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• Development Gateway Communities119 • eCatalunya120 • Meetup121

We consider dgCommunities interesting as a worldwide initiative held by public/private partnerships to create knowledge exchange communities using an online platform. In the case of eCatalunya, we consider it a good CoP managed by a public body due to the adequate coupling with the Web 2.0 concept, the good combination between online/offline dynamics and its success generated basically by leadership and benefits for the members. . It is a finalist at the European eGovernment Awards 2007122. Finally, Meetup could be a similar experience to eCatalunya, managed by a private institution, with less coupling with Web 2.0 concepts, but with a very good combination of online/offline dynamics. All of them are, in different ways, relevant to the ePractice.eu exchange context and goals. As we have previously said, the three of them are in different ways relevant to the ePractice.eu exchange context and goals. For these purpose, we presented ePractice, using the same datasheet as other three.

119 http://topics.developmentgateway.org 120 http://ecatalunya.gencat.net 121 http://www.meetup.com 122 http://www.epractice.eu/awards




http://www.epractice.eu/awards

http://www.epractice.eu/awards


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dgCommunities URL: http://topics.developmentgateway.org Typology: International initiative

Description: dgCommunities is part of the Development Gateway Foundation (DGF) programs. DGF provides Web-based tools to make aid and development efforts more effective. It offers innovative solutions that increase access to critical information, building local capacity and bringing partners together for positive change. The Development Gateway Foundation is a nonprofit organization, founded by the World Bank in 2001. Governments, nongovernmental organizations, and private sector entities work with the foundation to extend its global reach, enhance the tools it creates, and share in the transfer of best practices. The development of the Aid Management Platform is guided by a steering committee with representation from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Nations Development Program, and the World Bank. Country Gateways are run by locally owned entities in 45 countries. Other partners, for example, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, sponsor specific dgCommunities, or manage a community themselves, such as the United Nations Population Fund. dgCommunities is an online network of 29 communities with 36,000 members from around 200 countriesfor knowledge sharing and collaboration among development professionals worldwide. Its communities cover major topic areas with more than 200 partnering organisations to help guide content. Thousands of information resource links are included, plus valuable member services –personalization of the webpage, comments to included knowledge, comments in community forums, access to members Directory.



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Existing communities:

Conflict and Development

• Afghanistan Reconstruction

• Iraq: Relief and Recovery

Development Effectiveness

• Aid Effectiveness

• Capacity Development for MDGs

• Civic Engagement

• Globalisation

• Governance

Economic Development • Business Environment

• Foreign Direct Investment

• Knowledge Economy

• Microfinance

• Poverty

• Trade and Development

Education • E-learning

• Open Educational Resources

Environment

• Environment and Development

• Urban Development

• Water Resources Management

Health and Nutrition • Food Security

• HIV/AIDS

• Population and Reproductive Health

Human Development • Culture and Development

• Gender and Development

• Indigenous Issues

• Youth for Development

Technology and Development

• E-government

• Information and Communications Technologies for Development

• Nanotechnology for Development (affiliated page)

Regional Interest • Arab Reform

Alexa statistics (07/31/2007): Percentage of global Internet users who visit this site : 0.0012% Traffic Rank: 121,317 Page views per user: 2.1 Investment (in thousands)


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Revenue: 10,901$123 Expenses for the dgCommunities programme: 1,914$ Employees: About Development Gateway Foundation (DGF): More than 500 individuals and organisations working as volunteer guides and advisors, or cooperating with the communities. About dgCommunities: Open to all and provided by the Development Gateway Foundation. Each Community is organised by the following type of team: - Guides: individuals and organisations with domain expertise and a desire to serve the community with high-value knowledge and information. - Advisors: individuals who provide expert advice on a community’s subject area. - Associates: very active community members who have established strong records of content contribution. - Cooperating organisations: help promote dgCommunities and the vast knowledge resources to their own networks and online audiences. Financed by Private/public donors (sponsors) Time in operation: Since 2001 Management concept: DGF gives the platform and services for each dgCommunity. Each community is managed by coordinators and guides. A dgCommunity can be created by an individual or private/public group, individually or in partnership with others. DGF analyses and approves the creation of a dgCommunity. Online/offline dynamics: dgCommunities work basically online. The online dynamics of each community are led by the guides. The knowledge is distributed by: -Documents archive: introduced basically by guides, advisors and associates. Members of the community can introduce knowledge, and they usually fill in the group to receive information. Any member can subscribe to an e-mail alert about any new published content. -Forums: Some communities create active forums to discuss specific subjects. -Newsletters -RSS feeds Author’s assessment: Coupling with Web 2.0: This initiative does not couple greatly with the Web 2.0 concept. Although it uses online services as a webpage, a document repository, an e-mail alert system, newsletters and forums, it is not easy to create collaborative work and interactive knowledge sharing. Pure web 2.0 tools have no potential capacity to be used. Market dimension: The exchange of knowledge is basically done indirectly, through content in documents or other forms, such as the newsletter. Some communities use forums as a direct way of exchange. It is

123 For the whole DGF, go to 2006 DGF Fact Sheets: http://www.dgfoundation.org/about/fact-sheets.html

http://www.dgfoundation.org/about/fact-sheets.html


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organised as an expert market organisation, but the free membership means that there is a possibility to work as an ideagora. Knowledge dimension: The knowledge exchanged is either factual (data, statistics, etc.) or procedural (practical procedures). Final remarks: The success of each community depends on the capacity of the team to periodically renew the contents. When this happens, the rest of the members also feel comfortable about introducing their own content to share with others. This fact has been reinforced by a recent dgCommunities survey124 launched on September 26, 2006 to obtain up-to-date member feedback -1500 answers from 36.000 questionnaires sent by- demonstrates that the largest application of the services was in the area of experiential knowledge exchange. As the survey says, non-governmental, independent, governmental, academic, and international financial organizations, as well as students and unaffiliated individuals alike all found this application of dgCommunities to be the most helpful. Another trend detected among the dgCommunities members was "toward the use of ICT for both clear-cut development initiatives, as well as for E-Learning, and to some extent, E- Government". It seems that the reason for such a high level of interest in ICT4D-related fields "is likely closely related to the fact that dgCommunities itself serves as a useful ICT4D platform both directly and indirectly, so its members are very likely to have an interest in this field". Geographic interests reflect the demographics of dgCommunities members, many of whom are in India, followed by Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, Central/Eastern Europe, and the Middle East/North Africa regions. After describing dgCommunities in general, we will focus hereafter on the eGovernment Community. dg Communities/ The eGovernment Community http://topics.developmentgateway.org/eGovernment The e-Government topic page gathers, packages and distributes information on the use of ICT for eGovernment projects in developed and developing countries. The site provides the user with information on specific eGovernment initiatives around the world that could be adapted to his/her organisation. Case studies, project descriptions, and links to specialised eGovernment sites are some of the tools available to develop an initial eGovernment strategy for a project. The eGovernment Community Team The team is composed of two guides and twenty advisors. The community is lead by Mr Hmayak Arazyan. Mr Hmayak (Mike) Arazyan joined Development Gateway in 2001. As a member of the Country Gateway Coordination Team, he was responsible for assisting Country Gateways with business and strategic planning. As of 2002, he also focused on assisting Country Gateways with developing eGovernment projects. In addition to his work with Country Gateways, he also managed the DG eGovernment and Microfinance topic pages, focusing on delivering timely online resources. Hmayak has experience in public and private sector development. Currently, he works in commercial banking for Knowledge Based Industries in Canada. World Bank e-Development Thematic Group The World Bank e-Development Thematic Group’s mission is to promote the efficient use of ICT in development and World Bank operations by facilitating knowledge sharing on good practices in

124 Development Gateway Foundation, 2007

http://topics.developmentgateway.org/egovernment


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e-development and more frequent dialogues among interested parties, thus catalysing specific programme and project proposals. Coordinators: Mahmud Hasan Mahmud Hasan works as Programme Director for D.Net. Presently, he is in charge of the programmes D.Net operates for poverty alleviation. He has been involved in different ICT4D action research supported by IDRC, GKP and Telecentre.org. Gahamanyi Jacob Gahamanyi Jacob is the Business and Strategy Coordinator of the Rwanda Development Gateway and ICT for Development Centre of the National University of Rwanda, where he is responsible for developing and implementing the centre’s business strategy to achieve financial and strategic sustainability. Cooperating organisations: Alfa Redi: Digital Community for a Digital Society. http://www.alfa-redi.org Digital Partners: Digital Partners is a non-profit organisation based in Seattle, Washington, with chapters currently located in New York, Silicon Valley, and New Delhi, India. Its mission is to tap the power of the digital economy to develop market-based solutions that benefit the world’s poor. http://www.digitalpartners.org/ National Computerization Agency (NCA-Korea): http://www.nca.or.kr Piazze telematiche (Associazione tecnico-scientifica e culturale): high-level, technological innovative services offered by PIAZZE TELEMATICHE, together with social contact, will have a strong force of attraction capable of triggering the development of a new polycentric urban structure. http://www.piazzetelematiche.it Council for Excellence in Government: founded in 1983, the US-based non-partisan, non-profit Council for Excellence in Government works to improve the performance of government at all levels and government’s place in the lives and esteem of US citizens. http://www.excelgov.org UNPAN http://www.unpan.org/


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eCatalunya URL: http://ecatalunya.gencat.net Typology: National initiatives

Description: eCatalunya is an online environment created and promoted by the Catalan Autonomous Government in Catalonia, Spain. Its goal is to provide an inclusive platform for knowledge interchange and community growth for all professional communities that, at one moment or another, deal with the Catalan Autonomous Government. Right from the start, it had a clear orientation towards the creation of hybrid communities of practice. It was designed to incorporate civil servants in the government, professionals and ordinary citizens. Its development started in 2004 and it opened in June 2005. It is currently being used by an audience of approximately 5,000 registered users, and is organised into several interconnected portals, which are thematically oriented and host a variable number of CoPs, which can also decide whether to be open and share all information with other communities. Both portals and groups can be private or public; that is, their membership can decide whether to be just for their own use or to open up to whoever may be interested in the focus and goals of each area and its groups. Current public portals include the following areas:

• Catalunya exterior: this brings together Catalan people (professionals or government officials) working or living abroad. It is a portal for the interchange of all types of knowledge regarding international activities, from business to education. There are several groups that are organised either by topic or by geographical area.

• Document management and archives: a portal that includes people involved in eGovernment projects in Catalonia. It currently hosts nine communities from librarian science to security and identity eGovernment documentation issues.

• Knowledge society: six groups dealing with several aspects of knowledge and information society, from teleworking to a panel of institutes and lobbies working on the promotion of the Knowledge Society in Catalonia.



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• Justice: a portal hosting 17 groups of professionals in the justice administration system, from officials in the department to lawyers and people working as conflict resolution mediators.

• Health: a single group of physicians and health administration officials dealing with emergency trauma procedures.

• Sexist violence: a network of groups in the education department, involving schools, teachers, parents and students. They deal with the prevention and management of abusive relations among youths.

The initial design of eCatalunya had 2.0 technologies in mind. So, any single group can use the platform to draw 2.0 tools from it and adapt it accordingly to their perceived needs of community building. The platform allows each community to integrate several types of tools:

• Wikis • Blogs • Forums • Newsletters • RSS creation and management • Alerts for new content creation, new topics, new membership, etc. • E-mail • Audiovisual document sharing and tagging • Textual document tagging and sharing • Visualisation of the social network of the group and connected communities • Recommendation of content and referral of people (recommendation systems based on

collaborative filtering) • Tools for measuring the activity in each community, including the growth and structure of

social networks The project started as a joint research and development venture between the Catalan Autonomous Government and the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC). By means of a contract, most of the development was given to the Computing Laboratory of the Barcelona School of Informatics. In due course, all technical development will be transferred to an international community of Open Source development. In fact, all of the codes have been prepared for release under GPL license (scheduled for September 2007). From that moment on, the university role will be more focused on learning about knowledge network dynamics and exploring new technologies for mobility, ubiquity and knowledge recommendation. Alexa statistics (08/11/2007): Percentage of global Internet users who visit this site: 0.0082% Traffic Rank: 16,000 Page views per user: 0.1 Investment: 600,000 euros (initial, including the development of the technical platform). Employees: There are no permanent employees as such. Technical staff members from the UPC are in charge of new developments and several members of each community volunteer as technical administrators of the resources of each community. Initially, some staff members from the administration and other small companies with expertise in motivating communities were hired to set the membership in motion. Each community has evolved differently and some (especially in the justice portal) have effectively created their own leaders, who are among the most dynamic and effective across the groups. All in all, the technical workforce (UPC and the Generalitat) comprises around 12 people. The motivation area involves five more people.


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Financed by: Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan Autonomous Government). Time in operation: Since June 2005. Management concept: Publicly funded. Online/offline dynamics: Much of the activity of eCatalunya takes place online. Different communities, however, use different balances between online and offline activities. Most started as a result of the trust created by the leaders of the project, who explained the participation concept behind eCatalunya to stakeholders. Crucial to this was the identification of potential leaders in several communities that already existed. Medical professionals and justice officials were among the most enthusiastic about the concept and started a successful promotion within their respective social networks and professional communities. The most active community – justice – has developed a set of practices for offline and online settings. Frequent seminars are organised to discuss topics raised in online discussions. There is also a policy of knowledge sharing of all documents and presentations, not only among the group membership, but also to the rest of the online community in general. For example, presentations are posted on the SlideShare site (slideshare.com) and are subject to a Creative Commons licence. In fact, discussion on these topics has created an initiative to put all of the justice department documents online under Creative Commons or similar licences. Other communities do hold regular face-to-face meetings. All of them take part in frequent meetings to exchange opinions about where the project is heading and how it is evolving. These meetings involve the initial project promoters and UPC technical personnel. Author’s assessment: Coupling with Web 2.0: eCatalunya was created as an environment to learn more about Web 2.0 and its application to eGovernment. So, from the very beginning, it included in its technical platform some form of 2.0 tools (from blogs to tagging). On the other hand, it left ample room for the evolution of communities from the interaction of the 2.0 technologies. For example, it was envisaged that, through automated referrals and recommendations, new members could be found and invited to join a community. This, of course, hinged on the analysis of contributed knowledge. Some technicalities have implications for the openness that characterises 2.0 technologies. Currently, it is difficult for a community to set up its portal in its own hosting services. The community has to actually issue a petition to the project leaders and then resources are allotted in the Generalitat hosts. This gets in the way of true self-organising technical infrastructures and some other, more open, ways of creating and connecting communities are under discussion since issues of privacy and transparency have already arisen. The near future liberation of the entire eCatalunya code is also a token of the project’s commitment to openness. Market dimension: there are no provisions for monetisation of the created knowledge and no mechanisms for ranking reputation or any other incentive that can be said to add to the market dimension of the communities.


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Knowledge dimension: most knowledge interchanged in eCatalunya is technical and formalised. At least, that is what is going on in most communities through knowledge repositories. However, there is a lot of advice seeking and giving that goes on through blogs, wikis and forums. The elaboration of practical, tacit knowledge is reinforced in some cases through face-to-face discussion. One important part of the knowledge that flows in and out of the eCatalunya groups is made up of personal referrals extracted from the exploration of social network visualisations or through the used of recommended people associated with the creation of documents existing in the repositories. Final remark: eCatalunya has to be seen as a project that aims to change the current work practices within the Catalan authorities by bringing them closer to a more collaborative setting based on shared knowledge and, at the same time, trying to create a more open form of administration by acknowledging that officials and professionals and, in general, citizens should relate to each other regardless of existing organisational divisions. This is a very ambitious goal and it is currently using 2.0 technology as a Trojan horse to bring in further changes in organisational behaviour. As technology per se is not the only lever of change, the government has also mobilised other resources to ensure that the corresponding cultural changes are genuinely enacted. Support from the most senior level officials has been ensured by placing all leadership and management decisions on the level of the presidency of the Catalan Government. An important aspect of eCatalunya is the recognition that communities evolve and, therefore, not even the most comprehensive array of technological tools may be enough to accommodate new practices and needs. For this reason, once the initial framework is up and running, further functionalities and technological solutions remain to be identified by the users themselves and the international Open Source eCatalunya developer community. Steps are being taken to create a portal for this community, as well as to ensure that it is as broad as possible in geographical terms. Finally, eCatalunya is seen as a first step towards building a programme for R+D in eGovernment in Catalonia, and an R+D department belonging to the authorities themselves.


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Meetup URL: http://www.meetup.com Typology: eParticipation (social movements) and service initiatives

Description: Online tool for organising face-to-face meetings for local interest groups, from “Stay at home Moms”, to “League of American Investors” or “Victory Motorcycles”. Meetup acts as a virtual meeting coordinator, providing a routine monthly date and time for the meeting, giving members a limited choice of locations to vote on, and asking them to RSVP online to indicate if they plan to attend. There are currently: In November 2006, Meetup reported 18,368 groups and 3,540 topics. . Groups are distributed throughout about 1,000 cities, primarily in the USA, but also from around 200 other countries. With 143,403 members, “Democracy for America” directly replaced the Howard Dean Meetup topic upon the termination of Dean’s presidential campaign.

Categories Topics Meetup groups

Automotive 84 363

Books 157 970

Cultures & Community 417 7,105

Education 57 238



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Film/TV 258 535

Financial 29 1,109

Games 199 1,296

Health 279 2,457

Hobbies 253 2,915

In The Market For… 12 122

Internet&Technology 223 913

Languages 84 1,268

Music 416 759

Pets 168 1,350

Politics&Activism 334 2,610

Religion 129 1,315

Science 56 235

Sports 197 1,649

Work&Career 193 2,997

Alexa statistics (07/31/2007): Percentage of global Internet users who visit this site: 0,062% Traffic Rank: 1,289 Page views per user: 7.1 Investment: Founded by Scott Heiferman, in March 2006 announced an investment from eBay, Omidyar Network (eBay founding group), Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Esther Dyson, Allen & Company, and Senator Bill Bradley. Employees: Board of directors: Scott Heiferman (Founder) Senator William Bradley (Allen & Company LLC) Esther Dyson (EDventure) Pierre Omidyar (Omidyar Network) Andreas Stavropoulos (Draper Fisher Jurvetson) Team: 35 people covering the areas of Customer Support, Meetup’s Groups Support, Engineering, Software, Design, HR, Development, Financing and New Projects. Financed by: Revenues for MeetUp: Group fees: - $12 a month for six months (a single $72 charge) - $15 a month for three months (a single $45 charge) - $19 a month Revenues for Meetup Groups (no percentage is charged by Meetup.com): - Member fee - Event fee


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- Sponsorship - Advertising Time in operation: Since 2002. Management concept: Meetup provides a platform to create face-to-face meetings and supports the leader of each Meetup Group, the Group Organiser, directly or through a section in MeetUp.com (the Organiser Centre). The functions of the Group Organiser are: - E-mail Meetup members through the Meetup.com website. - Poll members about anything, from what to name the Meetup group to where to have Meetup events. - Tell people what Meetup is about by managing the name, description, photos and agenda. - Spread the word using customised Meetup signs, flyers, business cards and e-mails. - Select Assistant Organisers to help in the running of Meetup. - Control Meetup group membership by approving and removing members. - Pay the Meetup group fee. - Collect member dues and event fees. The group organiser can name at least 20 assistant organisers, who have the following functions: Assistant Organisers can: - Schedule new events. - Edit existing events. - Create and edit polls. - Edit the Meetup description. - E-mail the Meetup members. - Moderate the message board. - Remove unwanted members. However, they cannot: - Change the Meetup group name or location. - Pick the main Meetup photo. - Change payment settings. - Designate or remove other Assistant Organisers. Online/offline dynamics: MeetUp.com uses online dynamics to facilitate offline meetings. General online dynamics: Through the Meetup.com platform, anyone can: - Create a group. - Receive support as an organiser of a group. MeetUp group online dynamics: The organiser can: - Manage the group through the functions described previously (management concept) The members can: - Share ideas, thoughts, stories, photos, messages and more on the Meetup group site and at their real-world events. MeetUp group offline dynamics:


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Meetings are the core element for MeetUp. Knowledge, relationships and project development are focused on during the meetings. Afterwards, the online platform can be used to maintain and reinforce the meeting achievements. Author’s assessment: Coupling with Web 2.0: The Meetup concept couples in a almost perfectly with the Web 2.0 one. Apart from primary digital tools such as forums and message boards, the 2.0 tools used to manage a group facilitate social interaction and collaborative work (photos, videos, TVchannels, RSS feeds and e-mail alerts, and Mac users, for example, can synchronise the Meetup group calendar with the Apple iCal application). Market dimension: What is exchanged in Meetup is, on one hand, knowledge, in a general manner (solutions to problems, factual information, social benefits,.. etc.), and, on the other hand, relationships, in a direct (one-to-one or group broadcasting) and indirect way (photos, videos, etc.). Although in some cases members of Meetup groups pay a fee, we cannot say that there is a monetisation of the knowledge exchanged. The purpose of those fees is usually to cover the meeting expenses. About ranking, groups are rated by own members and, in a generic manner, they are arranged by number of members (i.e., Largest groups). Knowledge dimension: Due to the exchange of knowledge and relationships, it works directly and indirectly, in a tacit or implicit manner. We can confirm that it is an expert knowledge exchange market, but in some cases it can be an ideagora knowledge exchange site (i.e. contributions by members, ideas, etc.). Final remark: The interesting paradigm of Meetup is that the online interaction exists to facilitate the face-to-face interaction125. When Meetup appeared, other initiatives existed (eg. Ecademy and Ryze) but limited themselves to facilitate offline meetings. Different authors have doubts about the real success of Meetup, although the majority of communities registered. When Meetup started to charge a fee per group, they thought that communities would reduce. The truth is that they did, but communities reduced only from 194,472 before the fee announcement to 18,368 in November 2006. So, there has been success, basically thanks to the easy-to-use online group management and information system to generate what has always existed: offline meetings to share knowledge and relationships.

125 The Virtual Handshake, 2006 http://thevirtualhandshake.com/wiki.html?page=Meetup

http://thevirtualhandshake.com/wiki.html?page=Meetup

http://thevirtualhandshake.com/wiki.html?page=Meetup


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ePractice URL: http://www.epractice.eu Typology: International activities

Description: ePractice is an online environment created and promoted by the European Commission. The ePractice site is the result of the merger in June 2007, of the eGovernment Observatory –site dedicated to provide news services to the eGovernment community, and the Good Practice Exchange –dedicated to foster exchanges throughout the organisation of workshops and best practice exchange. As such, it was build around a good practice database that was to contain good practice cases from all over Europe, especially in the area of eGovernment. It aimed to create a community among the detected stakeholders, namely European authorities at national, regional and local levels, EU policy-makers, national policy-makers for the EU states, academics, IT businesses and multipliers, i.e. associations (professional, business, citizen, etc.) able to amplify the distribution and access to the database and expertise of members. The current ePractice.eu portal has a different look and feel. Its motto is “meet > share > learn”. One can create a personal profile and locate other people with similar interests. However, the main functionality seems to be contribution to the case database. That is, you can upload cases onto the database. Submission is simple and clearly based on a typical database approach. Cases can be rated in terms of quality by the community, as long as all the other published content. Tagging does appear, currently for TV contents, cases and member’s profiles. ePractice promotes the use of external tagging mechanism (Digg, Technorati, Yahoo Search or Del.icio.us). This is an interesting strategy for making the portal known to prospective external members. The material can also be rated in terms of quality. Knowledge interchange was to proceed through the integration of cases in the database, at forum discussions in the Q&A interchange. There was also provision for the announcement and


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management of events related to the topics and goals of the community. It also had special tools for the self-assessment of good exchange practices, as well as for receiving quality recognition of good practice exchange from the community. The ePractice has a news services that publishes daily news. Member’s can register to a weekly newsletter that selects the top newsclips from the last 7 days. On top of that, the ePractice site also maintains a report about the status of eGovernment for most of the European Countries (eGovernment Country Factsheets). In addition to tagging and rating cases, the portal has introduced a kudos strategy in order to help assess the reputation, popularity or personal competence of each member within the community. Kudos are points given to each member so that if he/she participates in the community, submits cases –which are latter rated positively, has a completed profile, contributes to the blog, among other. On the same way, kudos can be deleted if, for example, the member seldom logs in ePractice. ePractice has currently an audience of approximately 10,000 registered users (September 2007). Alexa statistics (09/10/2007): Percentage of global Internet users who visit this site: 0,0005% Traffic Rank: 173.860 Page views per user: 15,5 Investment: 900,000 euros for 2 years period (ie. May 2007 – April 2009). The budget includes the development of the technical platform, dinamisation of the site and the workshop activities. The information services, consisting in monitoring the news in the eGovernment domain, is not included. Employees: An external contractor operates the portal on behalf of the Commission. The ePractice core team, in charge of the day to day activities of the portal, is composed of the following roles: a webmaster –platform maintenance and mailboxes; editor –review content submissions and generation of portal own content; technician –technical maintenance of the platform. The core team is supported by a technical development team, 3 people, in charge of the design and software development. A marketing manager, in charge of the promotion of the portal. An a team of 4 people in charge of the organisation of the workshop activities. Finally, the overall group is coordinated by the ePractice project manager. Financed by: European Commission. Time in operation: Since June 2007. Management concept: Publicly funded. Online/offline dynamics: The on-line best practice exchange is complemented with the organisation of at least 18 workshops, to be organised along the next two years. Each workshop is devoted to a specific eGovernment theme and is organised using the following pattern: an introductory presentation of the theme by an expert followed by the presentation and discussion of one or two best practices. The best practices are real cases from public administrations which are also available on the ePractice exchange database. Maybe it’s most distinctive feature is that the workshops are facilitated in such a way that they become truly interactive, promoting the participation of the audience in the discussions and case analysis. The overall discussion is used to enhance the on-


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line workshop interaction in ePractice. All the materials produced (reports, ppts, video clips) are posted in the portal. Author’s assessment: Coupling with Web 2.0:. ePractice has started with the combination of the assets from two existing portals, both of them Web 1.0 portals, and has evolved its concept in order to become a true Web 2.0 portal. In this way a number of features has been added (tagging, rating, member’s profiles, kudos, blogs, wikis, etc). In our view, the way ahead should be to continue enhancing the possibilities of people contributing the contents of the portal, in addition to the best practices, such as events, videos, Q&A, comments, etc. Market dimension:. ePractice.eu is a knowledge exchange site in eGovernment issues. Ther is no monetarization of this. There are no provisions for monetisation of the created knowledge. The kudos strategy will be a mechanism to create a ranking of reputation, popularity or personal competence of each member within the community. Knowledge dimension:. ePractice is the main reference site for any eGovernment professional if he/she wants to be kept-up-to-date with what happens at European level, irrespective of coming from public administrations, industry, media or academia. The range of information services (library, news, country factsheets, events listing, cases) are complete and regularly updated by a dedicated staff. However, the ambition of the portal is not to stop with the provision of this factual, explicit knowledge but also contribute to the exchange of the other type of knowledge, ie implicit and tacit, linked to the day-to-day experience of eGovernment professionals. And the aim of ePractice is to capture it using web 2.0 technologies. Final remark: ePractice.eu is a site with potential important impact on government practice all over Europe. The diversity of stakeholders and members constitutes its main asset and its main danger. In addition its current platform is making a transition from the CoP concept basic on mainstream knowledge management to a hybrid platform using 2.0 concepts, tools and organizing principles Its current platform it’s making a transition to the view of 2.0 CoPs and knowledge exchange based on Knowledge Management perspective. Our suggestion is that ePractice should continue incorporating web 2.0 features to its actual design, mostly geared at fostering the collaborative dimension. On one hand, the 2.0 tools used in the TV section, should be used in all the other sections as well, and particularly, potentiate the submission of content by the users –ePractice TV is nowadays closer to a unidirectional broadcast than a YouTube or other 2.0 collective contribution sites. If the goal of ePractice is to promote good practice interchange, improved mechanisms for content and people discovery and connection would be of great help. Rating and ranking would add visibility to European experts. Not only this, it could help unearth knowledge pockets, whether in terms of knowledge or groups of people (experts). This can be done progressively by introducing simple mechanisms for better communication, group interconnection and discovery (such as those in the EU-sponsored Knowledgeboard) and moving increasingly towards the use of tagging, voting, rating, ranking and collaborative filtering. Finally we suggest devoting attention to design well-planned collective community norms, i.e. the culture aspect of ePractice. As we have stressed throughout this document, 2.0 technologies are very value-charged technologies. Their insistence on transparency, openness, individual recognition, little centralised control and emerging organisation based on the alignment of group and individual values, attitudes and behaviours is perhaps at odds with the traditional ways of complex organisations. Governments are still some of the most hierarchical, traditionally run organisations. This imprints a mindset on the people working in governmental settings, even if they are all in favour of a change towards a more open organisation view, which could slow the peace of change for turning ePractice into a reference site for Web 2.0 knowledge exchange in government practice.


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5.4 20 Additional Web 2.0 Communities

Generic Communities Del.ici.ous

URL: http:// http://del.icio.us.com

Focus:

Social bookmarking, collective knowledge aggregation

Description:

This is a community that comes together around shared references to online content and depends critically on the sustained contribution activity of its registered members.

Members in del.icio.us use a simple software application to associate a URL reference with descriptive tags that give their personal collection of keywords for any piece of information online (urls, documents, etc.).

Each individual member can show his or her list of documents online to other members in del.icio.us, or even to non-members.

Tags are searched for by using either a simple search interface or other tools, such as tagclouds, which are visual representations of each person’s list of tags, with type size and volume indicating the relative importance of a single tag within the whole list of tags of that individual. Tags can be accessed and ordered either by frequency or how recent they are. In this way, it is easy to see which are the most important topics in the community at any given moment. Through tags, other users can be discovered and added to each member’s own personal network which, in turn, can be made public or private. In this way, each member can decide how to expand his or her network.

In this community, the interchanged knowledge consists mainly of references to content available online. The type of knowledge is mainly referential and factual. However, as the user is free to point to any type of URL, other types of knowledge can be interchanged (factual, procedural, etc.).

The social practices within the community include freedom to create personal networks, and some degree of reciprocity is expected from all users, although not clearly endorsed by any rule or process.

The measure of quality of each user’s contribution is made indirectly through popularity and frequency of tags, and also a fan space, which indicates how many people in the community consider a single user to be a reliable source of knowledge.

Network extension and reaching out to other communities can also be done by integrating tags into content and applications. There are plenty of utilities to integrate del.icio.us tags with blogs, for example.

Knowledge:


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Documents, references.

2.0 Technologies: tagging, folksonomies, social networking.

In operation since: 2003.

Funding: private company (acquired by Yahoo).

Detected similar sites:

Bluedot (http://www.bluedot.us/), Diigo (http://www.diigo.com/), Furl (furl.net), GiveAlink (research project: http://givealink.org/), Connotea (social bookmarking of scientific references http://www.connotea.org/), Netvouz (http://www.netvouz.com/), Simpy (http://simpy.sourceforge.net/), SiteBar (http://sitebar.org/), StumbleUpon (a recommendation system based on social bookmarking, tagging and voting of websites, photos, videos and music. Acquired by eBay in May 2007: http://www.stumbleupon.com/), Social Searching (http://www.searchles.com), News Tagging (http://trailfire.com/).

Facebook

URL: http://facebook.com

Focus: social networking

Description:

Facebook started as an online social networking directory that connected students in Harvard and then proceeded to allow the inclusion of friends of the original students currently enrolled in other colleges in an increasingly less restrictive manner.

The connection mechanism includes the invitation procedure, as well as the publication of each member’s contacts. One can post photos and rate them, as well as upload or connect to other content supports, such as music and video. However, the main characteristic of Facebook is its reliance on activity monitoring and its broadcasting tools. Facebook users can allow several levels of publicity for all the activities. These include invitations to other friends, video watching, listening to music, etc. Its main asset could be the large proportion of university students (and future professionals) who have a lot of personal information in Facebook. This is not only restricted to the USA, for example, all of the students at the ITESM (Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Monterrey, Mexico) have their profiles in Facebook. This is of incredible value to marketers, and is in line with the latest developments of Facebook as a business.

Knowledge:

Content, contact and activity sharing.

2.0 Technologies:

Social networking, blogging, RSS, content sharing, recommendation, group formation.

In operation since: July 2003.

http://www.bluedot.us/

http://www.diigo.com/

http://givealink.org/

http://www.connotea.org/

http://www.netvouz.com/

http://simpy.sourceforge.net/

http://sitebar.org/

http://www.stumbleupon.com/

http://www.searchles.com

http://trailfire.com/

http://facebook.com/


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Funding: private company.

Focus: social networking.

Number of users: 25 million.


MySpace (http://www.myspace.com), Spaces (http://spaces.live.com), Connectu (http://www.connectu.com).

Slashdot.org

URL: http://slashdot.org

Focus: discussion community

Description:

Slashdot is one of the veterans online as far as communities go. Its focus was originally everything related to the cyber culture.

After all these years, Slashdot continues to be a reference, mainly because of its well-proven system of moderation. It can be seen as the basis of a fully operational, genuine reputation system. This moderation system has been the inspiration for many other systems used to assess online reputation in other communities or to promote trust, most notably eBay. It is interesting to see how this system, in a very distributed, non-centralised and emerging manner, gives rise to a de-facto hierarchy of editors based on their quality and common sense, as perceived by the rest of the community. This hierarchy, however, is not static at all, but varies dynamically with the level of contribution and the perceived quality of contribution and activity.

Every comment posted has a score (initially 0). Moderators, chosen randomly, can increase or decrease this score. Each moderator uses a descriptor from a set of descriptors (i.e., “funny”, “insightful”, “troll”). Users can rate each descriptor so that a single comment can be characterised across all descriptors (“20% insightful, 20% funny, 60% interesting”). Each user has a “karma” score. A high karma gives a user one bonus point for the comments he or she makes. Karma is in part derived from the points given to each comment made by the user. Moreover, if the user is registered, he or she receives an additional bonus point. Users with low karma are penalised. Moderators are selected among those users with high karma.

Editors of Slashdot can moderate endlessly. Non-editors can moderate for a limited time span (days) and they have to use the five moderating points that they receive judiciously. One comment can have an evaluation between minus one to five points. Each user can set his or her own personal threshold so that comments with less than this threshold will not be shown to him or her. In this way, one of the worst problems common to communities is alleviated: dealing with an overabundance of low quality information, i.e., comments.

Meta-moderation is a mechanism that was integrated so that a reader (not necessarily a moderator) can review the quality of the moderation process carried out by moderators. These mechanisms of reciprocal filters, checks and balances have proven to be quite resistant to the typical problems of collaborative filtering and ranking systems, namely: collusion, free riding on quality, identity stealing, etc.

The Slashdot software can be easily integrated in many other systems.

http://www.myspace.com

http://spaces.live.com

http://www.connectu.com

http://slashdot.org


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Knowledge: references.

2.0 Technologies: collaborative filtering.


Funding: SourceForge Inc.

Detected similar sites: barrapunto.com.


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WikiHow

URL: http://wikihow.com

Focus: knowledge sharing

Description:

WikiHow is a wiki-based community with a database of how-to guides. Although its original version was in English only, it is expanding in several language versions (Spanish, German, French, Turkish and Portuguese at the moment of writing).

The focus of the site is simply to create a “manual of manuals”; that is, step-by-step descriptions of what is needed to solve a problem, whether it is how to cut a mango or how to set up a financial portfolio, look for publishers for a manuscript or break up a relationship.

The site works in the typical fashion of any wiki. After registering, users are allowed to create new pages on a new topic explaining the precise steps for arriving at the desired solution.

The current number of items amounts to just over 22,000. There are around 50,000 registered users, some 500 active contributors and 50 very active contributors.

One can see that this follows the typical “long tail” of involvement in communities. Connection and expansion of the community is done through involvement in authorship. Any registered user can create or edit a page. Other visitors can edit, or change the page. There is, however, some criticism regarding the censorship of several subjects and articles and the policy of ensuring family values across the whole wiki.

Knowledge:

Explicit and procedural expressed by means of text and photographs.

2.0 Technologies: wiki, RSS.

In operation since: April 2006 (previously as eHow, January 2005).


Detected similar Sites:

Wikipedia.org (http://en.wikipedia.org), Conservapedia (http://www.conservapedia.com).

Business and Professional Oriented Sites

http://wikihow.com

http://en.wikipedia.org

http://www.conservapedia.com


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European Entrepreneurs Networking Site

URL: http://www.join2grow.biz/default.aspx

Focus: networking for entrepreneurs

Description:

This is a platform for entrepreneurs who want to connect with each other, as well as with prospective venture capitalists. The whole site is oriented towards facilitating the discovery of other people and the sharing of interests and competences.

There is a wide range of opportunities for doing so. As in many other networking sites, personal profiles are the building block of personal information for each member. This includes an extensive but optional set of possibilities for describing oneself in tags and short texts. There is ample flexibility for description, as opposed to other sites, in which the list of keywords and categories for describing background and interests is somehow limited.

Information about oneself and one’s interests can be given also in video format. Members can post a short video explaining their entrepreneurship project, insights, interests, etc. These videos are summarised on a sideline, so that is easy to access the relevant part of the presentation and skip the rest. There are plenty of other means for interaction: forums, content repositories, etc. The most important thing, however, is the ability to comment on and tag almost anything.

This is used to facilitate searching for other entrepreneurs, as well as linking with them. Interaction can be achieved quickly by using the site’s internal messaging service. Easy discovery of the most interesting topics is facilitated by using tags. The pervasive commenting, ranking and tagging approach is to exploit all the possible ways of discovering people who share the same interests and to facilitate connection. Moreover, there is content related to lifestyle and tastes, so as to find a further basis for discovery and connection.Knowledge interchanged seems to be mainly advice and referrals (including personal references). There is no clear ranking on the quality of individual members. A proxy to this could be locating who is issuing content and comments that have the most popular tags.

Extension to communities outside the site does not seem clear.

Knowledge:

Explicit, text.

2.0 Technologies:

Social networking, collaborative filtering.


Funding: private company (Fortis Bank).

Experts Exchange

URL: www.experts-exchange.com/


http://www.experts-exchange.com/


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Focus:

Q & A and knowledge market

Description:

This is a site based on collaborative filtering techniques.

It is basically a market for questions and answers. The focus of the site is on answering questions related to IT technologies. Anyone can post a question and experts see it and decide to answer. A question can be seen by all experts or by experts in several “zones”; this is determined by the person asking the question.

There are several levels of service according to the type of membership (from free to premium).

The given answer is rated and this, in turn, has an effect on the overall reputation of the expert who has given it. There is an incentive for experts to give good, accurate and fast responses.

Site norms make it obligatory to give maximum ratings (500 points) to excellent answers to questions with a high level of difficulty, responses to urgent requests that involve major cost savings or benefits in obtaining the answer.

Conflict resolution is carried out by voluntary members, closing questions left open by those asking them and giving general support.

Extension to other communities is carried out through agreements for cross-referencing. For example, a mention of the site or a personal expert in the site can be made from other sites.

Knowledge:

Explicit, text.

2.0 Technologies:





ITtoolbox (http://www.ittoolbox.com/), answers.yahoo.com, Iq (http://iq.lycos.co.uk/) KIN (http://kin.naver.com/ ).

LinkedIn

URL: http://www.linkedin.com/

Focus:

Q & A and knowledge market

Description:

A traditional business networking site based on user profiles and the publication of each member’s contact lists.

Connection with other members is achieved by requesting permission to include them in one’s own contact list. Profiles and lists (called “personal networks”) can

http://www.ittoolbox.com/

http://iq.lycos.co.uk/

http://kin.naver.com/

http://www.linkedin.com/


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have different levels of publicity according to each user’s wishes.

Exploration of personal networks can be carried out through each user’s contact lists to a given depth in the network, basically because, when one explores a chain more than three contacts away, one might retrieve a very high number of people who could be feebly connected in terms of interests or competences. Information in the profile (mostly former education and employment history) is used to locate former colleagues and recommend them for connection if they are not already in a contact list.

Social norms include some kind of reciprocity on each member’s visibility on the list of other members connecting to him or her.

The goal of the whole site is the promotion of business contacts, and introduction to third parties is carried out by means of the trust that an already existing connection has in you as a prospective contact to the third, until then, unknown person. There are no proper etiquette recommendations, but each member is left to decide on his or her own under which conditions requests and invitations to connect are accepted or declined.

There is some indirect measure of reputation based on popularity, i.e., the number of contacts a person has. The introduction of LinkedIn Answers (i.e. a question and answering system for business questions very similar to other expert interchange frameworks) may lead to a parallel ranking system based on an assessment of quality, in turn based on the responses given to questions. Endorsements, i.e. statements about the personal and professional qualities of a member by other people in his or her contact lists, were introduced as a complementary assessment mechanism.

Knowledge:

Explicit, text.

2.0 Technologies:


Funding:

Private company.


Ittoolbox (http://www.ittoolbox.com).

IETF

URL: http://www.ietf.org

Focus: knowledge interchange, project development, standards development

Description:

This is an early and ongoing example of a community of knowledge interchange that has set the example code of conduct for most professional interchange communities. It is an open community that is not based on any type of membership.

It focuses on the standards structured around Internet Protocol networks. Its main

http://www.ittoolbox.com

http://www.ietf.org


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activity is finding problems, detecting opportunities and collaboratively agreeing on solutions for the Internet community.

IETF is structured around groups that work on specific tasks. Each group is organised into an area. Each area has two directors. Both directors, in cooperation with the IETF chair, make up what is called an Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). The IESG creates working groups and evaluates the proposals they develop.

The proposals to be considered by the IETF can be sent by individuals as temporary documents called Internet Drafts. If the proposals developed by the groups are accepted by the IESG, they are made public as RFCs (Requests for Comments) and open to general discussion.

What is interesting in the case of the IETF is the set of norms that have evolved along the years and provided the template and code of conduct for a huge number of open projects, which can be summarised as follows (Gloor, 2003):

Respect your elders

Be courteous with your fellow members

Say something only if you have something to say

Be ready to help your fellow members

Communication is carried out by means of very simple technologies, mostly mailing lists and forums.

Periodically, there are face-to-face IETF plenary sessions. All information written, recorded or videotaped during these sessions is to be made public.

Knowledge: explicit, technical, factual and procedural.

2.0 Technologies: none.


Funding: non-profit organisation.


W3c (www.w3c.com).

http://www.w3c.com


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National Initiatives Apronet, Bourses d’exchanges

URL: http://bc.apronet.asso.fr

Focus: Knowledge interchange, public sector

Description:

The Bourses d’exchanges of the Association des Professionels Internet des Collectivités Publiques Locales (APRONET) is a knowledge exchange site for ICT professionals at French local governments, focused on best practices and problem solutions for the implementation of ICT policies.

It is a 1.0 CoP, with a very simple way of exchanging documents: uploading documents or questions to be answered at the knowledge base. To facilitate the search system, the member uploading has to include information regarding the author, subject, keywords and an abstract.

As for the documents uploaded, these can be best practices, case studies or reports about ICT aspects. In the Q&A section, a member puts a question to be answered by the rest of the community.

The score per member idea is an interesting way of creating a dynamic community. There is an official scale of points relate to the form of uploading knowledge and the consultations made. So, if you upload a report, you get 30 points. If you consult a report, you get three points. At the end of the year, each member’s fee is reduced depending on the points accumulated.

Knowledge: explicit, factual, procedural.


In operation since: 1999

Funding: public/private.


Maresme 31 (http://www.maresme31.net).

COLAB

URL http://www.gsa.gov/collaborate

Secondary URLs:

Community Portal: http://www.gsa.gov/collaborate

Community Wiki: http://colab.cim3.net/wiki/

Community Forum:

http://bc.apronet.asso.fr

http://www.maresme31.net

http://www.gsa.gov/collaborate


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Message Archives: http://colab.cim3.net/forum/

Focus: Intergovernmental communities of practice for collaborative work

Description:

This is a site or network of sites oriented towards increased collaboration among different governmental agencies and divisions.

It started as an initiative of the Intergovernmental Solutions Division, which is a body of the Office of Citizen Services and Communications.

COLAB is basically a network of CoPs for government officials to discuss and solve problems about the interoperability of information technology services among all levels of government.

It is built around three main platforms:

CoPs: a collaborative platform including a wiki, discussion forums and document repository.

Collaborative wiki: general wiki on collaborative technologies.

Collaborative expedition workshop: a monthly meeting for enhancing collaboration and promoting networking. Workshops are organised around a single topic that has to involve as many governmental institutions as possible.

Knowledge interchanged includes many types and formats. Social dynamics are tailored to the different environments. It is not clear whether there is a common ranking mechanism.

Knowledge: explicit, factual, procedural.

2.0 Technologies: wiki.

Govx

URL: http://www.govx.org.uk/

Focus: knowledge sharing, networking and community building in the area of public service delivery in UK

Description:

GovXchange stemmed from the joint effort of eGov Monitor and the SIAG (SOCITM Information Age Group)

Its main goal is to bring together a comprehensive set of CoPs from the entire public sector into a collaborative mode of work. Crucial to this is the creation of communities and the discovery of possible cooperation and interests.

GovXchange builds on the information given by its members in their profiles in terms of competence and interests, and offers some support for the location of similar people and communities. Together with general knowledge sharing, these

http://www.govx.org.uk/


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are the main activities that occur within the site.

The site is geared towards the interconnection of communities. There is support for scanning online member activity. All members can set their own notification mechanisms so that, when new members with shared competences or interests join the network, they will be informed. Also, new items of knowledge dealing with a member’s areas of interest or competence are added to the repository.

Sharing occurs mainly by searching the joint knowledge repository that is built explicitly by community members and implicitly by technological means that work on member activity either when supplying information (cases, for example) or discussing information in forums and discussion groups. Group creation is relatively easy.

The whole site also has links to suppliers (in principle related to government activities) that can be easily located according to user interests. It also provides some form of market to promote the testing of products and services before real procurement takes place.

It is easy for all members to create groups by sharing a space, which amounts to an environment with a wiki, forum and tools, to share documents and maintain newsletters and mailing lists, as well as manage RSS alerts.

Knowledge: explicit, case studies, success stories, discussion.

2.0 Technologies:

Wiki, RSS.


Funding:

Public.


Colab, eCatalunya.

International Initiatives Ami Communities

URL: http://www.ami-communities.eu

Focus: knowledge exchange on collaborative communities for innovation

Description:

The main focus of this site consists of people who have been involved or expressed interest in and potentially contributed to the Living Labs European Network through the Living Labs Expression of Interest. Membership is free and no rules seem to exist for people who could simply be lurking and making little actual contribution to the whole Living Labs project.

One of the most interesting aspects of the site is the way in which it interconnects all pieces of knowledge with people simply by using wiki functionalities.

From an original personal description contained in the profiles, a whole set of

http://www.ami-communities.eu


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alerts on new members and content is created dynamically.

Contribution to content is open or semi-open, with a separation between the more integrated members and general members, much like the other wiki-based communities.

Knowledge: explicit, textual and graphical.

2.0 Technologies: wiki, blogging, social networking.


Funding: public (EU).

Detected Similar sites:

Cpsquare.com (http://www.cpsquare.com).

eParticipation and Services Initiatives (Social Movements) Ciudadanos 2010

URL: http://www.ciudadanos2010.net

Focus: eDemocracy, participation

Description:

Ciudadanos 2010 is an initiative from the Internet leg of the Spanish news agency EuropaPress, in coordination with those municipalities that want to join it. It is used to promote citizen participation at the local level, by means of an open forum, in which citizens and political parties enter petitions to be voted on by the citizens.

The general idea is to reproduce the Greek agora as a space in which to debate and decide upon common proposals in a virtual environment.

Political representatives, civil associations and citizens make, support, discuss and refuse or approve proposals. Those that receive the most support can be discussed in the local council. Ciudadanos2010 is a platform that each municipality can use in its own way in terms of subjects proposed, period of discussion, etc.

Each user can add comments to a proposal and express his or her support or rejection. Each comment has to be well argued, but no other aggregate ranking mechanisms (as in Slashdot) exist, other than a counter for the most supported or rejected proposals.

Connection between users is awkward, since there is no way of getting their contact details from their reaction to proposals and there is no profile creation process.

Knowledge: procedural.

2.0 Technologies:

Blog, eForums.


Funding:

Public-private funding.

http://www.cpsquare.com

http://www.ciudadanos2010.net


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Webcitoyen (http://www.webcitoyen.com).

Moveon

URL: http://www.moveon.org

Focus: participatory political interest groups

Description:

Moveon is a site that describes itself as a service to citizens for political action. Citizens use Moveon to contribute to an electoral campaign or put pressure on decision-makers so as to change their decisions by means of the petitions channelled through the site. It started as a bipartisan mailing list to address subjects other than the intended Bill Clinton impeachment. There were other topics to deal with and it was time to “move on”.

Moveon workings are still very simple. Its main mode of communication consists of periodical action alerts through e-mail lists.

It also uses multimedia (video, audio, photo) to create messages urging for action. On top of that, from 2006 onwards, it has provided easy IP messaging and phone to its users so that they can easily generate local phone campaigns in their neighbourhoods.

Members can use a variety of tools to promote new action. The Action Forum is, in effect, a blog in which users write about their interests. Voting on proposals in the Action Forum is the principal means of decision-making and conflict resolution in Moveon. There is no ranking or differentiation of users: any member can propose actions, campaigns and strategies, as well as comment on other members’ proposals.

One of the distinguishing qualities of the site is its success in providing and promoting trust among users and with respect to initiatives. All e-mails cite the sources and references that motivated the action so that receivers can judge for themselves the evidence in favour and the opportunity of the proposed action.

A second characteristic trait of this site is the way in which the Internet is used for campaigning in conjunction with other media. Stickers and posters can be downloaded from the site and used to support campaigns. Distribution of leaflets is typically a campaign action that is collaboratively designed and coordinated online. More than 400 face-to-face meetings between members of Moveon and members of the US Congress and Senate have taken place since the site started to operate.

Besides this, Moveon.org uses traditional advertising media to further promote its members’ actions and campaigns (billboards, TV advertisements, etc.).

It also cooperates with other platforms devised for citizen meeting and action, such as Meetup.com.

There is widespread consensus that Moveon’s ability to connect online activities with offline face-to-face meetings is the key to this site’s increasing impact and success.

The fact that Moveon focuses on for real citizen problems and censors no proposals

http://www.webcitoyen.com

http://www.moveon.org


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has also been pinpointed as a success factor in gaining member trust, together with the aforementioned mechanisms and norms to promote and enhance such trust.

Knowledge: factual, procedural and practical, aimed at giving and distributing campaigning skills.

2.0 Technologies: social networking, collaborative ranking and voting, blogging.


Funding: private.

Detected similar sites: Meetup (http://www.meetup.com/), getUp (http://www.getup.org.au/community), GrassFire (http://grassfire.org/), Attac (http://www.attac.org/?lang=en).

Open Source Government

URL: http://www.opensourcegovernment.com/

Focus: direct e-democracy, participation

Description:

A blog devoted to gathering news and comments on the implementation of Open Standards in all levels of government.

Knowledge interchange takes place in the typical blogs manner, i.e. by commenting on posted information.

There seems to be no provision for collaborative blogging.

Knowledge: factual.

2.0 Technologies: collaborative filtering, social rating and marking.


Funding: private.

Detected similar sites: Metagovernment (http://www.metagovernment.org/) Demosphere (http://www.ddsi.info/wiki/index.php/Manifesto).

Regulations.gov

URL: http://www.regulations.gov

Focus: direct e-democracy

Description:

A website for public comment and discussion on government regulations and initiatives.

It is based on the Harvard e-rulemaking initiative, which stemmed from the “Internet changes everything” document by law professor Stephen Johnson in 1998.

The site focuses on making public all documents related to proposals and

http://www.meetup.com/

http://www.getup.org.au/community

http://grassfire.org/

http://www.attac.org/?lang=en


http://www.metagovernment.org/

http://www.ddsi.info/wiki/index.php/Manifesto

http://www.regulations.gov


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discussions of federal agencies and departments (approximately 160 federal entities).

Users simply have to register, search, browse and comment.

It offers a comprehensive set of search tools and categorisations of documents in different formats.

The building block of the site consists of “dockets”, a system for document management that allows for version and revision control and management.

There are no further mechanisms for community connection or any social mechanism for rating and ranking comments. Therefore, reputation and trust issues appear to be pending.

Knowledge:

2.0 Technologies: control version management.


Funding: Public (US Federal Government).

Detected similar sites: Metagovernment (http://www.metagovernment.org/), Metagovernment (http://www.metagovernment.org/) Demosphere (http://www.ddsi.info/wiki/index.php/Manifesto).

Inclusion Zexe.net

URL: http://www.zexe.net

Focus: Knowledge Sharing

Description:

Site to exchange and expose the social issues of groups experiencing difficulties in their societies by means of mobile phone photos (the groups include disabled people in Barcelona, gypsies in Lleida and León [Spain], taxi drivers in Mexico DF, and immigrants from Nicaragua).

Disabled people in Barcelona upload image messages about the difficulties they experience when negotiating Barcelona in their wheelchairs. They take a picture



http://www.ddsi.info/wiki/index.php/Manifesto

http://www.zexe.net


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with their mobile phone, upload it and pinpoint it on the map using the city map offered by the official Barcelona website. This channel is regularly uploaded, and it aims to make citizens and decision-makers aware of the architectural barriers in and around the city.

Although it can be considered a social movement, there are no tools exploited to facilitate group action.

Knowledge: factual, explicit, mobile photos.

2.0 Technologies: wiki, social networking.


Funding: private initiative.

Detected similar sites: Netherlands for Moroccans (http://www.maghreb.nl/).

Health National Health Service Advice (UK)

URL:http://www.informatics.nhs.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=526

Focus: Knowledge Sharing

Description:

British National Health System space to share knowledge, skills and tools; it allows for information to be collected, managed, used and shared to support the delivery of healthcare and promote health. Users can be anyone interested in health informatics (e.g. nurses, midwives, GPs, consultants, suppliers, academics, librarians, students, health informatics professionals, etc.)

The site aims to facilitate the exchange of knowledge in support of health informatics. This is done through peer-to-peer exchange, collective intelligence, networking, debate, sharing, learning and discussion in support of the individual and the organisation.

It provides news, documents, discussion forums, links and customisable content to each user inbox, and hosts:

1. Special interest group areas

2. The web pages of the Informatics Learning Network, a series of real networks across England supporting clinicians and other healthcare staff through workshops and focused learning activities aimed at furthering individual and organisational informatics agendas.

3. An Online Meeting Centre, where web technology merges with telephone conferencing. Meetings or seminars can be arranged for groups, providing access to online presentations, software, web browsing and text chat, coupled with a

http://www.maghreb.nl/



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synchronised group telephone call, providing a truly interactive, multimedia event.

Knowledge: factual, procedural.



Funding: public initiative.

Sharing Q&A Answers.com

URL: http://answers.com

Focus: practical problem solving, how-to advice

Description:

This is not exactly a 2.0 technology site, but it uses technology to aggregate content created by third parties, including wikis and blogs. In fact, most of its content is derived from Wikipedia.

Answers is basically a search engine that uses sophisticated techniques to parse each user question (which can be expressed in plain natural language) in order to find relevant sites and order them in view of their relevance to the question.

Information from other sources (Wikipedia) is also searched automatically and displayed. In this way, users get hold of definitional information, build up context and get a more complete answer than from typical search mechanisms. RSS feeds are generated for each search so that new content can be update in relation to the question.

In a way, Answers.com piggybacks on the collaborative knowledge creation from other sites, especially Wikipedia. Giving the content licensing policies of Wikipedia, this is arguably a correct use of the knowledge, since Answers.com does not “sell” the contact but simply displays it and obtains revenue by intelligently integrating advertisements related to the questions.

Knowledge: explicit, expressed in text responses.

2.0 Technologies: search, semantic parsing of questions.



Focus: knowledge sharing and exchange.

Detected similar sites: ask.com (http://www.ask.com).

http://answers.com

http://www.ask.com


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Platform Generators and General Software Brainkeeper

URL: http://www.brainkeeper.com

Focus: Collective knowledge sharing, discovery and exchange

Description:

A software application dedicated to the creation of collaborative enterprise spaces for knowledge sharing. It basically creates a set of tools that rely on Wiki technology to help contribute, capture, relate, search for, discover and recommend knowledge.

This technology can be integrated into existing websites so that searching for any possible content or reference (for example, a description of a product within an online catalogue) uses all the related terms discovered by exploring the relationship between the content created in the wiki in the first place.

Knowledge: general, explicit.

2.0 Technologies: search, social networking, collaborative filtering, semantic web.

http://www.brainkeeper.com


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Ning

URL: http://www.ning.com

Focus: Development of social networking site

Description: Software for creating social networking sites

The most outstanding feature and that which sets Ning apart is its ability to personalise different types of social networking site.

In other words, whether from a template or an existing site, Ning creates a fully operational social networking site that may include:

Multimedia support

Contact list management

Document sharing

Most active members

Other types of ranking and rating mechanisms

Typical specific social networking sites that Ning has characterised include group websites, photo-based websites and video-based websites.

From these templates, a new, general one was evolved, and was specifically tailored to make it very easy for non-technical users to customise it for their own interests.

For more technically-minded users, it is also possible to reach source code and new utilities and functionalities.

Knowledge: explicit, expressed in text responses.

2.0 Technologies: blogging, tagging, social networks, wiki.



Focus: knowledge sharing and exchange.

Detected similar sites: Elgg (http://www.elgg.com).

General Comments

Good practice interchange and, in general, knowledge exchange, do take place in different proportions in almost all of the sites we have described that use 2.0 technologies.

http://www.ning.com

http://www.elgg.com


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It is interesting to see how the most used technology is collaborative filtering on top of either personal descriptions or other types of knowledge that form the trigger for subsequent personal connections. Examples of the first type are more easily found in sites that evolved around the concept of social networks for personal (Facebook) or professional (LinkedIn, Ryze) networking. The second type of site recognises that knowledge objects per se could be the basis for subsequent personal networking. The critical technology here is tagging, i.e., a technology that creates descriptions of objects. In this sense, a “profile” is created for each knowledge object, but in a collaborative fashion. Then, by searching for people to interchange knowledge, members may finally develop a personal connection or create a group or community. An earlier example of this dynamic is Flickr, whose objects of social interest are photographs, but which has evolved other types of knowledge interchange beyond the mere sharing of photographs, i.e. the creation of groups that also meet offline and develop learning about photography or other topics. Facebook, for example, tries to develop this kind of connection either through photos or films, videos and music. So, social networking sites also incorporate some level of connection through knowledge objects. Analogously, the connection through the knowledge expressed in blogs and their comments has spawned another wave of social sites that also let their users create or integrate blogs in their personal areas, in the hope that this will simultaneously increase their visibility and connectivity. Other similar connection formats based on blogs contents evolve as true networks of bloggers, such as those facilitated by Xanga. In general, however, this minimal and indirect knowledge interchange facilitated by content or knowledge is used in most commercial sites as a means for increasing connectivity and bringing in new users, but not exactly as a means for increasing the knowledge interchange per se or to create communal knowledge. As in the case of Flickr, this is a collateral result and not necessarily an initial goal of the sites. From the point of view of most commercial sites, what is important is volume, profiling and clustering of members. This is logical, since most of them have a business model based on sponsorship or advertising that needs precise profiling and segmentation information to see value in the site and to pay for publicity or demographic information accordingly. Some other sites, even generic ones, are genuinely geared towards communal knowledge creation and interchange, including good practice. For example, wikis (Wikihow, Wikipedia, Conservapedia) create an enormous amount of knowledge. Social bookmarking sites (such as del.licio.us) are in fact creating, through tagging, a knowledge search and interchange dynamic that is sometimes used for personal contact and group creation, and at other times leaves the community to form issues on the side. However, these formats can effectively be used to help make communities coalesce and evolve, as is the case with Flickr. The question of good behaviour of community members and the implications for the quality of communal knowledge created (of which Wikipedia gave examples of best and worst possibilities) has also been addressed by several variations of collaborative filtering, i.e. by means of voting and rating systems. Digg has drawn some of the mechanisms of Slashdot, and this is still the most preferred mechanism for ensuring a correct balance between quality, active contribution and good behaviour. Although most of these generic sites do, in fact, create a strong sense of identity among their members, as well as an important level of commitment to contribute and abide by their norms and rules, one might wonder whether, on their own, they are actually CoPs or even CoIs. Some would argue that these latter types of community tend to evolve around a more precise focus. One area in which focus is sometimes very clear is business. It is interesting to see how big companies are using 2.0 technologies to set up internal and external communities. Corporate


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blogging, corporate tagging, internal social networking and collaborative filtering are being used as a means to evolve other communication practices built on the concept of intranet and shared databases, and which are continuously championed in CoP literature even when addressing dispersed and virtual CoPs. There may be a lesson in the way in which CoPs are currently being developed in organisations through the explicit use of 2.0 technology and not through the typical, traditional, methodologies for CoP construction. In fact, within organisations, the evolution of communities created from a classical CoP perspective and those that arose from the use of 2.0 technologies seems to follow a symmetrical development and, arguably, can be seen as two different types of creating and interchanging knowledge (including good practice) within and across the company. Typically, a practice would be detected, initial members found and face-to-face discussion held in order to put all the necessary factors for the implementation of a CoP in place: goals, values, scope, etc. Then, in time, a virtual platform would be built to support certain communication practices, knowledge storage and search, etc. In a 2.0 setting, it seems as if the tools are made available openly for a given membership (for example, employees in a company) and the dynamics of contribution, discovery and relationship creation are left to be the main mechanisms for bringing together a community, creating identity and then establishing the CoP as such. This is a bit different to creating virtual CoPs, as is explained in the CoP literature (Wenger, McDermott, Gloor) and seen in actual existing virtual CoPs. It seems as if the ongoing complaint about minimal involvement in virtual CoPs is counterbalanced by deriving CoPs from currently very active and involved contributors. The creation of extended CoPs that span outside companies by connecting to providers, customers and other competing companies has been most frequently associated with innovation and anticipation activities based on some type of crowdsourcing (as in Connect and Develop or Innocentive). This is natural, since these are areas in which uncertainty is high and speed of development pays off. Networked and highly diverse communities are then able to come up with better solutions faster. NGOs and social movements are very effectively using tools that are based on 2.0 technologies. Probably the most well known are those aimed at citizen empowerment and the support of interest groups (such as Meetup and Moveon). The general picture points to the increasing importance of network organisations as the organisational form that prevails in environments that need fast adaptation and action, whether this means business or political action. Although these factors have traditionally been identified with innovation activities, they are moving more and more to the core of operations, both in business and non-business activities. Comments for eGovernment sector One can see that 2.0 technologies and the knowledge interchange practices associated with these point to a type of organisation and a type of relationship between organisations and their environment that is more dynamic, open and transparent than previously. As is the case with private business, the impact is seen simultaneously at two levels: internal and external. Internal knowledge exchange can become quite different in governmental offices with 2.0 technologies. The relationship with citizens can benefit particularly in those areas that are closer to innovation and anticipation. This probably points to aspects of participation and co-design with citizens.


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Another probability is that showcased by one of the most ambitious projects trying to adopt a “2.0 mindset”, which is the global British Government initiative (Govxchange). By detecting networks of people and giving them a platform support to enable them to connect and evolve the corresponding teams, groups and communities of practice – all of them based on knowledge exchange – it would appear that the British Government is moving towards a very different way of organising. Taking the 2.0 perspective to the most radical meaning by extending to the level of infrastructure, the contributions of the US Cyberinfrastructure for eGovernment are also very important, although currently still at a research level. The insight of the project is that relations between knowledgeable people can be derived from their patterns of use of data, software, documents and infrastructures. This is a very powerful idea and is aimed at dynamically spotting groups that can interchange relevant knowledge, including good practice. Of course, all these changes can be made simply by considering the internal benefits that the introduction of 2.0 technologies can have in the reorganisation of the operations of government bodies, irrespective of their environments. However, given that significant amounts of people are increasingly using 2.0 technologies (an estimated 60% of the EU Internet population), it is also clear that citizens are being exposed to the values, attitudes and expectations of interaction that 2.0 technologies were born with. This may very well point to future increased pressure from citizens on governments to go for a different type of relationship and way of organisation. If one considers network effects, the fact that the Internet population is not the entire population does not preclude its ability to make its voice heard.


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6 TRENDS

After a short description of the evolution in the EU and USA, here we will analyse different paths of development and changes currently observed at the technological and community dynamics levels. Also, an approximation of the foreseeable interplay between technology, focus, and social dynamics will be taken into account, along with some exploratory scenarios.

6.1 Is there a difference in evolution between the EU and USA?

The background is the main differences between Europe and the USA in the evolution of exchange CoPs and the inclusion of Web 2.0. The development of private and public ICT policies, the inclusion of team-working and Enterprise 2.0, and the political culture in terms of participation in the USA create such differences, and also better facilitate the success of CoPs. ICT policy and development – creation of ICT, investigation in ICT, use of ICT – provide the clue to better productivity and competitiveness in the USA compared to Europe126. On the one hand, North Americans use much more IT per worker, and exploit it more effectively: productivity is higher, even for a given amount of IT127. On the other hand, this aspect creates an ICT mind frame that is expressed in the way of working. ICT is not only a tool, but also a commodity in the working process and day-to-day life. Therefore, this has a lot to do with 2.0 practices and their influence on a company production process, quality of services and products, innovation and even employment. Teamwork and its relation to Enterprise 2.0 is the second difference, directly related to the previous one. Teamwork in Europe is a relatively new concept. While the bureaucratic and hierarchical working model was still dominant on the Continent, in the USA, the collaborative way formed part of the Business Faculties programme of being tough. The global economy has generated changes in European companies but, in general, they are still far behind US practices. This is why Enterprise 2.0 is being introduced easily in the USA. Before we talk about eParticipation, we should place the eGovernment framework in context in the EU and the USA. Both are eGovernment champions. The main difference is the centrality in the USA versus an aggregated strategy to match national developments in the EU128. In the US case, the centrality has to coexist with a pluralistic nature of governmental system, reflected in eGovernment through the large number of central agency websites. Currently, the EU has a global progressing average in eGovernment, with an overall score of 75% for online sophistication of public service delivery, and full availability online has reached almost 50%129. The entrance of new Member States in benchmarking eServices has an interesting impact on EU eGovernment development. One example of this is that Malta and Estonia are now in second and third place behind Austria, while in the previous benchmark, they were in 16th and 8th place. Globally, as the CapGemini document says, one of the main elements detected is the wide gap in performance in public services for businesses against those for citizens, with better online sophistication for the first sector. Another aspect to be considered is the gap between huge eServices offered against little use by citizens.

126 Van Ark, 2007 127 Economist, 2007 128 Blakemore, 2006 129 CapGemini, 2006


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If we look at the EU intern, we can see complex and assorted strategies in eGovernment. First, there seems to be tension between national eGovernment strategies and the EU’s attention to transnational eGovernment services130. On one hand, organisational change within individual Member States serves to contribute to internal strategy, i.e. central strategies in France or the UK versus tougher local and regional strategies in Spain or Germany. On the other hand, the transnational agenda of the EU promotes organisational change to serve pan-EU needs. As a result there is a complex ballet of national policy working with proto-policy, i.e. an agenda that it promotes via other areas of competence, such as the internal market, and through projects such as eEurope 2005, i2010, IDABC and, to a lesser extent, research/development projects such as IST and eTEN. Second, as Blakemore points out, EU enlargement introduces new turbulence to the existing eGovernment strategy. Third, there is a combination of linear and non-linear outcomes. While nations such as Denmark continue to refine their strategy, others, such as Estonia, can leap-frog over other states through the rapidity of strategy implementation. Moreover, the current recommendation is that eGovernment strategies have to be oriented to citizen needs and online capabilities (eUser). Curiously, one of the gaps detected in Europe is that between huge eServices offered against little use by citizens131. In the US case, from a federal approach, although it always reaches the top international rankings in eGovernment, there are coordination problems across the decentralised federal system and a “history of struggling with complex and tattered legacy systems over prolonged periods of time weakens the overall applicability of these judgments”132. The pluralistic nature of the US governmental system its reflected in eGovernment, with a large number of central agency websites. Even so, the strength of eGovernment is based on two aspects related to useful “one-door” portals (UNPAN, 2005). The US Government provides the enormously useful web portal known as Firstgov.gov, with enormous amounts of information in one place. The second strength is the reliance on integrated portals, which collect and consolidate information in one place, thereby increasing the effectiveness of finding topic-specific information for citizens in an efficient manner. Noteworthy examples include the portal for federal government forms, payments to the government and commenting on federal regulations. Added to all this is the incredible amount of information available, all of which lends itself to making the USA the undisputed world leader in eGovernment. As a complement to that reality, and related to the collage strategies in the EU, the USA also has, in the local governments, important driving forces for the promotion of eGovernment, sometimes tougher than the federal government ones. So, what about eDemocracy/eParticipation in both regions, having understood their eGovernment framework? First of all, the following initiatives are usually applied to generate online participation133: • e-Petitioning systems that allow citizens to lobby decision-makers (i.e. the Prime Minister’s Office in the UK or Meetup in the USA). • e-Consultation, which allows public bodies to consult widely on issues concerning them and sometimes allows for e-mail or SMS alerts to citizens on topics that interest them. (i.e. COLAB for public workers in the USA). • Political blogs (weblogs) and online discussion forums that allow for ongoing discussion between citizens and politicians, or even citizen to citizen (i.e. Ciudadanos 2010 in Spain).

130 Blakemore, 2006 131 Capgemini, 2006 132 Dunleavy et al., 2003 133 Pratchett 2007


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• e-Voting and campaigning (i.e. Democrat candidate for the US presidential elections Barak Obama’s MySpace site). The main difference between the EU and the USA is the origin of these initiatives. In the USA, it is easier to find a grassroots development, while in Europe the up-down strategy is more common. The political culture is the main reason for justifying this situation. In the USA, citizens are more client-oriented regarding their representative bodies than in Europe. Even though electoral participation is sometimes lower in the USA than in some European countries, this does not mean that North American citizens forget their rights to influence policy-decision makers, individually or through lobby groups. Therefore, it has been easier to translate this characteristic from society to the digital world. But we cannot underestimate similar behaviour from European countries such as the UK, France and Spain, where civilians have great autonomy to create digital participatory movements by themselves. These tools have a huge potential to influence politics and policy decisions, and also to reach politicians and political parties during electoral campaigns. They can be tools of mass-mobilisation, such as the 25,000 hits received on the most visited day of the blog of French college teacher Etienne Chouard, in which he explained why he would vote against the proposed European Constitution in 2005, or the massive online presidential campaign in the USA through dealings between Meetup and Howard Dean. We can confirm that more ICT and more participation concepts facilitate more CoPs and the inclusion of the 2.0 concept in exchange practices.

6.2 Technology: what one can easily see

2.0 technologies are presently in full development. New tools appear day in, day out, some of them of not so clear in terms of utility, but all geared towards the collaborative creation, discovery and aggregation of knowledge and services, as well as the interconnection of people. A visit to sites such as Everything 2.0 can provide a panoramic view of more than 1,000 software applications in the 2.0 area. This explosion is seen by some experts as a technology bubble that includes a lot of applications of no clear value alongside others that are truly disruptive. Other experts see it as a typical inflationary phase in the diffusion of an innovative set of technologies. There are some trends regarding several technologies that have a bearing on collaborative activities and communal functionalities in groups and CoPs. New sources of connection As the example of Twitter.com has forcefully shown, personal activity can be a source of information that can lead to discovery and, eventually, generate personal connection. Activities tend to group in contexts and spaces, so it is not strange to see applications and technologies that extend the online interaction to offline settings increasingly appearing. One of these includes all those technologies that relate geographical information of personal activity to geo-referenced content. The tagging of photos and their connection to precise geographical maps, such as those by Google, is a trend currently in full development. The fact that many sites can make use of APIs from Google and develop new collaborative applications on knowledge has to do with geographical information. This has already been spotted as an area of collaborative knowledge creation, for example, in local eGovernment initiatives. Context varies according to the workday, so it is only natural that most of those solutions make or will make extensive use of mobility technologies. The expected increase in web navigation on mobile devices is bound to have an impact on collaborative sites and it may co-evolve coherently with geographical and geographically-based activity technologies.


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You Media, Me Media, We Media, Everymedia As noted in the previous discussion and description of sites, it is clear that audiovisual as a preferred means of knowledge expression and personal presentation is on the rise. The more recent a collaborative interchange is, the more it integrates audiovisual interaction from the beginning. Nowadays, everyone can be a media. This, in conjunction with the enhanced possibility of using mobile devices (that include support for photo and video capture) for Internet access, hints at an increased ability and possibility to contribute knowledge on the go from anywhere. If the current trend in audiovisual content creation, which is based on collaborative creation, editing and editorial decision-making (as can be seen, for example, in Zero Assignment), continues to grow, CoPs may easily integrate this knowledge. They will probably also include real-time broadcasting of media upstreamed from mobile devices. Currently developed technologies for recommendation and context awareness may very well create a set of tools that can be integrated in CoPs to give advice, find relevant content and connect with relevant people in response to a detected difficulty and need. Is 3.0 2.0+1.0? Some of the benefits of collaborative technologies hinge on the correct summary of content and personal profiles to extract the most important keywords for identifying relevant knowledge and people. Some argue that this might be overcome with semantic technologies, such as in the area of trust connections between people, the FOAF standard protocol for profile description and sharing. This is related to the wider enterprise of Semantic Web, for some the Web 3.0. This initiative on the entire web, and even if it is only partial, has potential for all technologies that are focused on community articulation. Not only could it enable the discovery of more precise profiles and result in sounder conclusions about interests, competences and other personal qualities with respect to knowledge, it could also facilitate knowledge translation between different domains (i.e. taxonomy transformation) and so lower the barriers to the integration of different CoPs posed by the differences in language and concepts used by different communities. 3.0 has also been used as a way to describe a web heavily based on artificial intelligence technologies. Intelligent agents using semantic descriptions and technologies for knowledge mining and discovery can drive assumptions about the relevance of knowledge to people or the matching potential for people. Several recommender systems have been developed whereby each user is represented by an artificial agent that can do this exploratory work on behalf of the users. Identity and privacy concerns Knowledge interchange in communities that are based on collaborative technologies is subject to several problems to do with the relationship between identity and behaviour. Since what is of interest is avoiding undesired effects on the whole community, the balance between personal and communal interest is frequently prey to collusive behaviour and free riding. These undesired behaviours are shown to be directly related to the ease with which identities can be stolen or forged. There is a growing concern about the way in which identity is not only managed, but also ensured and preserved. This will be an area of increased research and development. Complexity surfing: dealing with social fatigue Activity, profiling, 24 hours connection, everywhere connection, creating and maintaining a reputation in several communities at the same time. All these boil down to an increased effort on the part of the users both in creating content and contributing to the well being of the community


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and in managing several identities coherently across very different professional domains. There is growing evidence that users in generic community sites and blogging sites become wearisome when the level of dedication and effort in terms of publication, question and answering and other activities is compared against the return in terms of learning or just personal and professional reputation. Personal filtering systems and privacy settings more or less help in reducing the volume of unsolicited information and requests. Remember for example the simple yet effective system used by Slashdot to get rid of worthless comments.

6.3 Trends in organisation

2.0 technologies are mainly technologies for groups and communities. This is in accordance with the community-based and knowledge-based views of the enterprise and, in general, of human organisations. The main asset of such an organisation is not only the knowledge it possesses, but also its capacity to learn. Learning should be seen as an increasing desire to adapt and anticipate. The organisational form best suited to this is the network134, and networks are built on the same grounds for contribution and recognition that have characterised successful CoPs. In the view of most experts, CoPs are networks and, as such, are characterised by their structure and dynamics. Successful networks in the area of anticipation and learning are those that most quickly spot new knowledge and distribute it among their members. This, in terms of organisation, calls for a more networked inner organisation, as well as a more permeable interface with larger personal, professional and company networks. This is what has been called an “Open Organisation” company view135. The evidence that this type of organisation does indeed give a competitive advantage136, and the well-publicised success of initiatives such as Procter and Gamble’s Connect and Develop and Eli Lilly’s Innocentive has spawned a growing movement towards implementing the open business models that give sustainability to these initiatives. The open model is not only limited to R+D or innovation activities, but it is also being increasingly adapted in production and marketing. The most extreme form of this boundaryless form of network and community organisation can be seen in initiatives based on the contribution of product ideas from the part of users (Threadless.com, for example). Crowdsourcing appears increasingly to be a way of integrating users in the company and increasing the overall learning and anticipation ability, i.e., the competitive edge of the company. This has to be managed by very dynamic means. Not surprisingly, the number of 2.0 technologies in companies that have taken the crowdsourcing path is also very high. Another extreme consequence of the knowledge and network-based view of the company is the proliferation of “one-man companies” or free agents, who increasingly organise themselves in terms of networks in order to keep each other informed of possible business opportunities and cooperate. Governments are being relatively slow in integrating the 2.0 open approach, unlike businesses. Possibly due to legal limitations and an organisational model that is far from the open perspective, governments will face pressure from tech-savvy citizens who become familiar with

134 Fartlough, Cartley 135 Chesbrough 136 Chesbrough, 2006


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collaborative technologies and the collective coordinated modes of action they support. Although by now most of the impact of IT has been expressed as a complementary, if strong, lever in political campaigning (for example, the role that SMS had in the latest Spanish general elections or the way in which Moveon is creating a new awareness of political action) or in the support of citizen services (eCatalunya, Colab, etc.) it seems that eGovernment organisation and use of technology will be pressed to coevolve, first with the spread of collaborative technologies and, second, with an increased awareness on the part of the citizens of the values associated by these same technologies. Pioneering initiatives in participation are giving way to more direct involvement in government activities (for example, through collaborative rule-making systems). A look at social dynamics may hint at what is yet to come.

6.4 Trends in social dynamics

Recent surveys on use and attitudes of Internet technologies137, show interesting patterns within the technological segment of the population:

• They are more critical in their reasoning • They exhibit more solidarity, expressed in their involvement in social movements (both

online and offline) • They tend to cooperate with more people (both online and offline) • They have a critical view of authority • They expect to be well regarded in terms of their contribution and expertise, whether online

or offline • They have greater awareness of Creative Commons and other alternative formats for dealing

with intellectual property • They have a tendency to express themselves in audiovisual terms

These traits are stronger the lower the age of the surveyed population is. This may hint138 at a more cooperative, critical and socially aware future. It may very well turn out differently under the pressure of other factors, but the trend is there. These traits, combined with the increasing existence of cyber activism and technological platforms, form political action (ePetitions, Moveon, Meetup, Webcitoyen) and may develop a more demanding public with respect to government. Moreover, it is a public that has easy access to the technological platforms for the creation of communities, movements, pressure groups and other means of lobbying. 2.0 technologies are but a booster of these possibilities. Instant mobilisations have been reported in several countries in response to perceived wrongdoing on the part of the government, with various levels of impact. The relation with eGovernment, of course, does not have to be expressed in adversarial terms by means of pressure. There is also room for cooperation at all levels of government, from legislation to urban planning and citizen services. However, it is argued139 that this also creates a sense of urgency and expectation of fast response on the part of government offices and services, and is not always perceived as matched. This may hint at the need for a different way of internal organisation and operation of governmental offices, services and departments. Openness, permeability and transparency are the usual recommendations.

137 Castells 2007 138 Castells, 2007 139 Castells, 2007


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In a way, there seems to be a similar move towards these goals as in the business sectors. Perhaps one can see a different view regarding government organisation, one that could be called “community” or “networked” ways of the government (Government by Network). One fundamental activity going on in such a setting is knowledge interchange, among citizens, government officials and communities.


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7 RECOMMENDATIONS

The interaction of 2.0 technologies, good practice exchange and eGovernment gives a wide range of opportunities and, consequently, individual people and organisations have to have a clear picture of their own goals and focus to choose and adapt to the possibilities that best fit their situations.

7.1 Two lessons for all those who want to perform good practice exchange

2.0 technologies are basically collaboration technologies. In this sense, they are natural allies for good practice exchange communities. However, they induce dynamics and create expectations that have to be well understood and managed. Moreover, for existing communities that already have a technological online platform to support their activities, the integration of 2.0 technologies has to be approached in a very similar vein to previous technological changes, whilst paying close attention to the potential disruption of current practices and community dynamics. 2.0 technologies are basically levers for bottom-up, emerging dynamics and transient organisations. They bring with them the possibility of more need for personal recognition, and more disruption of present control structures (decision-making, conflict resolution and goal-setting). - Recommendation 1: Plan instead of improvise 2.0 technologies and their associated group practices cannot be adopted in a haphazard, improvised way. Plan ahead. Decide whether there is a real need to disrupt the current dynamics. Ask simple questions:

• Is there room for improvement in knowledge quality? If the knowledge gathered in the community is shallow or is not seen as very reliable or comprehensive, increasing diversity of sources and giving incentives for contribution may be a path worth trying.

• Is there a need to increase participation and contributions from community members? CoPs

die as a result of low involvement. 2.0 technologies are not a panacea, but can be used in a transitory fashion to get people into action again, at least for the novelty effect. This, of course, has to be done in conjunction with a thorough revision of social norms and practices, starting with recognition.

• Is there evidence of the existence of knowledgeable people who have not been discovered,

even if they have been contributing good practices?

• Would the community benefit from easier interconnection with people? In the typical CoP knowledge repository sites, sometimes people complain about the difficulty in finding knowledgeable people. Yellow pages are too restrictive and slow to be updated, as opposed to more dynamic 2.0 technologies.

• Are there problems with personal profiling? If they prove insurmountable, some 2.0

technologies will yield few results in improving connectivity and knowledge, and people will discover that they amount to less community integration and performance compared to what could be possible with 2.0 technologies.

If most of the answers to these types of question hint at change, it is time to plan for the simultaneous deployment of 2.0 solutions and the introduction of new rules, norms and conventions.


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- Recommendation 2: think in terms of behaviour, not just regulations The creation of a healthy social dynamic is crucial if one is to adopt 2.0. Otherwise, it generates frustration and resentment, since a new technology has to be learned and mastered and little change is brought about. It is important to isolate the atomic behaviours that, with the help of 2.0 technologies, will yield improved good practice exchange. As in any networked collaborative endeavours, this boils down to a set of practices that ensure the right balance between personal effort and communal success. It is important to think of a coherent, well thought out and widely agreed set of specific behaviours for specific situations in the different contexts that make up a community: decision-making, conflict resolution, goal-setting and, most importantly, rewards and penalties.

7.2 Two lessons for government decision-makers who may wish to use web 2.0 strategies

2.0 technologies bring the promise of change in the way that government knowledge exchange proceeds, both internally and in relation to citizens. If government is to follow the same path that businesses are currently following and if it has to move towards a more knowledge-based administration, 2.0 technologies can be a powerful lever of change, as long as they are coupled with internal change and adaptation to the environment. - Recommendation 1: it is not technology, it is organisation 2.0 government means a different way of looking at problems and activities. Collaboration and diversity improve and benefit knowledge-based organisations. So, a knowledge-based view of administration implies that culture and the way in which people are organised are geared towards the bridging of knowledge areas within domains and the recognition of individual contributions to communal learning. Make sure that the corresponding mechanisms are in place. Try to locate the people with personal attitudes closest to 2.0 values and community building. It is a change process based on technology but not dealing only with technology; it also deals with organisation. Approach it as you would approach any other organisational change. Anticipate roadblocks in current regulation and turf wars. - Recommendation 2: it is not only you, it is also the citizen Going 2.0 means opening up to individual contributions from the entire internal organisation and external environment. The natural environment of authorities is citizenship. Rather than seeing citizens as clients or the recipients of government activity or, alternatively, as constant and stark critics of governmental actions, they can be seen in true 2.0 fashion as collaborators, not only in the results of actions, but also in the actual process of designing strategies, regulations and actions that will eventually have the greatest impact on their daily lives. This goes beyond citizen relationship management and raises expectations and wariness on the part of citizens. Some participatory formats can be seen as the most negative variant of crowdsourcing on the part of the authorities. Starting not with the whole, undifferentiated mass of citizens, but with communities that are currently interacting with government is a good initial move, as the eCatalunya experience shows.


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8 CONCLUSION

Good practice exchange involves the creation of healthy CoPs based on collective learning, adaptation and anticipation. It involves embracing the tenets of Open Organisation: transparency, openness, boundaryless organisation, interconnection of networks, balance of individual and group benefit, to name but a few of the most salient characteristics. On top of that, identity scores the highest to ensure commitment to the CoP’s culture and goals. The current need to include diverse communities and external individuals in communities is emphasised by the view of communities as networks. 2.0 technologies are well suited to collaborative endeavours. They may act as a complement to technologies and practices used in existing good practice exchange communities, but they also embody other possibilities that go beyond the ways of traditional CoPs. Decentralised control, collective decision-making, personal profiling and matching, and collective attribution of merit are but some of the practices that 2.0 technologies can amplify or radically change. Applied to eGovernment, the insight that relations with knowledgeable people can be derived from their patterns of use of data, software, documents and infrastructures is very powerful, and it is aimed at dynamically spotting groups that can interchange relevant knowledge, including good practice. Of course, all these changes can be made by simply considering the internal benefits that the introduction of 2.0 technologies can have on the reorganisation of the operations of government bodies. So, embracing the highly volatile dynamics of 2.0 technologies requires planning ahead in terms of their uptake and deciding whether intervention in the cultural practice of the community is also needed. Successful exchange communities are based on a good coupling of practices and technologies. But the first step is to determine whether the overall performance of an exchange community is dropping below expected standards and then to spot which practice and which dynamic is performing badly in the community, collectively devise new practices and match them with the corresponding tools. From that moment on, the whole community has to accept that new redesigns could be necessary. It is a continuous process of design, evolution and redesign. The possible difference, when 2.0 technologies are used, is that the cycle is much faster than it used to be, and unfolds in a more bottom-up fashion. In conclusion, we think that, in order to do things well in a 2.0 CoP, one must: plan instead of improvise, think in terms of behaviour and not just regulations, and think technologically, as well as in terms of the organisation and community culture.


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http://mashable.com/2006/09/25/facebox-insane-growth

http://www.nber.org/~rosenbla/harvardexp/socialpref.pdf

http://www.nd.edu/~netsci/index.html

http://openbusiness.cc/

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html


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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P2p

http://www.collectivate.net/journalisms/2007/4/3/what-the-myspace-generation-should-know-about-working-for-free.html

http://www.collectivate.net/journalisms/2007/4/3/what-the-myspace-generation-should-know-about-working-for-free.html


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http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/03/66813

http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9185732

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1638344_1638341_1638339,00.html

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/01/digging_the_madness_of_crowds.html

http://www.hhs.se/NR/rdonlyres/4165BDC8-C42C-43CF-8EEF-57DCEB0939BC/0/TeiglandthesisKnowledgeNetworking.pdf

http://www.hhs.se/NR/rdonlyres/4165BDC8-C42C-43CF-8EEF-57DCEB0939BC/0/TeiglandthesisKnowledgeNetworking.pdf


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http://jais.isworld.org/articles/default.asp?vol=5&art=15

http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/lss.shtml

http://www.km.gov

http://technologyforcommunities.com


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10 ANNEX I: 50 COMPLEMENTARY EXPERIENCES

10.1 Summary table

Name URL Typology

Administraciones en red

http://eadminblog.net National Initiatives

Agregate Knowledge http://www.aggregateknowledge.com/ Platform Generators and General

Software

Atina Chile http://www.atinachile.cl/ eParticipation and Services Initiatives

(Social Movements)

Babycenter http://www.babycenter.com Health

Beep Knowledge System http://www.beepknowledgesystem.org/Search/default.asp

International Initiatives

Cambrianhouse

http://www.cambrianhouse.com Business and Professional

Oriented Sites

CEMR http://www.ccre.org/ International Initiatives

Connect and Development

http://pg.t2h.yet2.com/t2h/page/homepage Business and Professional

Oriented Sites

Cooperation Commons http://www.cooperationcommons.com/ Sharing Q&A

Decision street http://www.decisionstreet.com/about.php Health

Deutscherstaedtetag http://www.deutscherstaedtetag.de/ National Initiatives

Deutschland Online http://www.deutschland-online.de/DOL_Internet/broker

National Initiatives

Digg http://digg.com Generic Communities

DigiTV http://www.digitv.gov.uk National Initiatives

Dodgeball http://www.dodgeball.com Sharing Q&A

EgovNews Blog http://www.egovnews.org International Initiatives

eGov Resource Center http://www.egov.vic.gov.au/ National Initiatives

Elgg http://elgg.org/ Platform Generators and General

Software

ePetitions http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ eParticipation and Services Initiatives

(Social Movements)

http://eadminblog.net

http://www.aggregateknowledge.com/

http://www.atinachile.cl/

http://www.babycenter.com

http://www.beepknowledgesystem.org/Search/default.asp

http://www.beepknowledgesystem.org/Search/default.asp

http://www.5min.com/

http://www.ccre.org/

http://pg.t2h.yet2.com/t2h/page/homepage

http://www.decisionstreet.com/about.php

http://www.deutscherstaedtetag.de/

http://www.deutschland-online.de/DOL_Internet/broker


http://digg.com

http://www.digitv.gov.uk

http://socialight.com/

http://www.egovnews.org

http://www.egov.vic.gov.au/

http://elgg.org/

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/


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ESD-Toolkit http://www.esd.org.uk/esdtoolkit/ National Initiatives

eThepeople http://www.e-thepeople.org/ National Initiatives

European Teens http://www.netlog.com Generic Communities

Eurocities http://www.eurocities.org/main.php International Initiatives

Flickr http://www.flickr.com Generic Communities

Fruehstueckstreff http://www.fruehstueckstreff.net/ Generic Communities

Getup http://www.getup.org.au/community/ eParticipation and Services Initiatives

(Social Movements)

Global Voices http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/ International Initiatives

Gotzapp http://www.gotzapp.com/ Platform Generators and General

Software

Government Customer Support CoP

www.fcg.gov/communitiesofpractice.shtml National Initiatives

Grassfire http://grassfire.org/ eParticipation and Services Initiatives

(Social Movements)

Healthboards http://www.healthboards.com Health

Hi5Networks http://www.hi5networks.com/ Generic Communities

IBM Innovation JAM https://www.collaborationjam.com/ Business and Professional

Oriented Sites

Infocity http://www.infocity.org/ International Initiatives

Innocentive http://www.innocentive.com/ Business and Professional

Oriented Sites

Ke Good Practice http://www.kegoodpractice.org/ Business and Professional

Oriented Sites

KoopA ADV http://www.koopa.de National Initiatives

Last FM http://www.last.fm/ Generic Communities

Life Videopedia http://www.5min.com Generic Communities

LOLA http://www.lola-online.org/content/main/home.php


Metagovernment http://www.metagovernment.org/ eParticipation and

http://www.esd.org.uk/esdtoolkit/

http://www.e-thepeople.org/

http://www.netlog.com

http://www.eurocities.org/main.php

http://www.flickr.com

http://www.gotzapp.com/

http://www.fcg.gov/communitiesofpractice.shtml

http://www.healthboards.com

http://www.hi5networks.com/

https://www.collaborationjam.com/

http://www.kegoodpractice.org/


http://www.last.fm/

http://www.5min.com



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Services Initiatives (Social Movements)

MySpace http://www.myspace.com Generic Communities

Netherlands for Moroccans

http://www.maghreb.nl/ Inclusion

Open Business CC http://openbusiness.cc Business and Professional

Oriented Sites

Organized wisdom http://www.organizedwisdom.com/ Health

Panoramio http://panoramio.com Platform Generators and General

Software

Plaxo http://www.plaxo.com Business and Professional

Oriented Sites

Playtxt http://www.playtxt.net Sharing Q&A

Political Marketplace in Almere

http://www.almere.nl/live/index.jsp?nav=411&loc=406&det=193655

eParticipation and Services Initiatives

(Social Movements)

PPP Exchange http://www.eu-ppp.org/ eParticipation and Services Initiatives

(Social Movements)

PsNetwork http://www.psnetwork.org.nz/ National Initiatives

Renewal.net http://www.renewal.net National Initiatives

Sconex http://www.sconex.com/ Generic Communities

Searchles http://www.searchles.com/ Sharing Q&A

Socialight http://socialight.com/ Platform Generators and General

Software

SOCITM http://www.socitm.gov.uk National Initiatives

Swedish House in Second Life

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Swedish%20Institute/70.2011/212.322


Talk http://www.talknet.org.uk/ National Initiatives

They Work for You http://www.theyworkforyou.com National Initiatives

Toronto Transit Camp http://toronto.transitcamp.org/ttc/ eParticipation and Services Initiatives

(Social Movements)

Twitter http://www.twitter.com Generic Communities

Vator TV http://www.vator.tv Business and Professional

Oriented Sites

http://www.nyspace.com


http://www.organizedwisdom.com/

http://panoramio.com

http://www.plaxo.com

http://www.playtxt.net



http://www.eu-ppp.org/

http://www.renewal.net




http://www.talknet.org.uk/

http://www.theyworkforyou.com

http://toronto.transitcamp.org/ttc/

http://www.twitter.com

http://www.vator.tv


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Webcitoyen http://www.webcitoyen.com National Initiatives



out of 115

10.2 Short Description

Digg

URL: http://digg.com

Description:

Community-based popularity website with an emphasis on technology and science articles, recently expanding to a broader range of categories such as politics and entertainment. It combines social bookmarking, blogging and syndication with a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control. News stories and websites are submitted by users, and then promoted to the front page through a user-based ranking system. This differs from the hierarchical editorial system that many other news sites employ.

European Teens

URL: http://www.netlog.com

Description:

Netlog (formerly known as Facebox) is a social networking website specifically targeted at European youth. Since September 2006, over 23 million people have registered on Netlog.com, of which 4.5 million on the English version of the site. On Netlog, members can create their own web pages, extend their social networks, publish their music playlists, share videos, post blogs and join groups known as clans.

Flickr

URL: http://www.flickr.com

Description:

Online community platform where people connect through photos contributed by themselves or others. The main mechanism that helps when connecting is the description of a photo’s content by means of free text descriptions or tags. The combination of tagging and searching makes it possible not only to locate photographs, but also the person who has uploaded them, usually the author of the photographs. Locating photos brings people into contact. Photos are objects of social interest and the social network grows upon them (or through them). There are also mechanisms for administering personal contacts. Dynamics outside Flickr include the creation of actual communities of practice around people interested in photographic techniques, environment, culture, etc., and knowledge is interchange intensively in the offline activities.

http://digg.com

http://www.netlog.com

http://www.flickr.com


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Fruehstueckstreff

URL: http://www.fruehstueckstreff.net/

Description:

International, multilingual breakfast club initiative located in over 50 cities in Europe and Australia. Founded in July 2001, the social networking site allows people to meet for breakfast, share their hobbies and special interests with other members of the community. In March 2007, there were 11,600 registered members. Frühstückstreff offers free basic membership, and there is no admission fee to attend Frühstückstreff breakfast meetings. Participating members and their friends pay only for what they eat and drink at the selected restaurant or coffee shop. Registration on the site is free, and anyone can create an online profile. Users must have a verifiable e-mail address before they can begin to interact with other members. Member profiles typically contain an overview of hobbies and other interests, links to friends, a photo, and a personal homepage. The Forum covers regional Frühstückstreff groups in Germany and internationally, as well as general topics of interest, such as sports, business, food and drink, flora and fauna, women’s topics, culture and lifestyle, love and relationship, men’s topics, jobs and careers, and travel. The calendar of events includes over 900 dedicated Frühstückstreff events per year.

Hi5Networks

URL: http://www.hi5networks.com/

Description:

Social networking Internet service, basically from Central America and Asia, where users create an online profile in order to show information such as interests, age and hometown, and upload user pictures on which users can post comments. hi5 also allows users to create personal photo albums and set up a music player in their profiles. Users can also send friend requests via e-mail to other users. When a person receives a friend request, he or she may accept or decline it, or block the user altogether. If the user accepts another user as a friend, the two will be connected directly, or in the 1st degree. The user will then appear on the person’s friend list and vice-versa. Some users opt to make their profiles available for everyone on hi5 to view. Other users exercise the option to make their profiles visible only to those people who are in their networks. The network of friends consists of a user’s direct friends (1st degree), the friends of those direct friends (2nd degree) and the friends of the friends of direct friends (3rd degree).

Last FM

URL: http://www.last.fm/

Description:

Using a unique music recommendation system known as Audioscrobbler, Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user’s musical taste by recording details of all the

http://www.hi5networks.com/

http://www.last.fm/


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songs the user listens to, either on the streamed radio stations or on the user’s own computer or iPod. This information is transferred to Last.fm’s database (Scrobbled) via a plug-in installed in the user’s music player. The profile data is displayed on a personal web page. The site offers numerous social networking features and can recommend and play artists similar to the user’s favourites. The most-used community feature within Last.fm is the formation of user groups between users with something in common. Groups may be linked to artists and countries. Any user may start a group and add members. Most groups are open to all, but membership may be subject to approval by the Group Leader. Last.fm will generate a group profile similar to the users’ profiles, showing an amalgamated set of data and charting the group’s overall tastes. Individual groups have their own discussion forums and journal space, and a group radio station based on members’ music profiles is automatically generated once a sufficient number of members have joined. Group members are also able to submit recommendations of artists or tracks to all the other members of their group.

Life Videopedia

URL: http://www.5min.com

Description:

A place to find short video solutions for practical questions and a place for people to share their knowledge. The idea behind 5min is that any solution can be visually explained in no more than 5 minutes. Its goal is to create the first communal Life Videopedia, allowing users from all over the globe to contribute their knowledge by sharing visual guides in areas such as the arts, business, fashion, sports, health, technology, food, and much more. Like Flickr, each video enables users to locate the author and create a group of interest.

MySpace

URL: http://www.myspace.com

Description:

MySpace is an online social networking service. It is based on the creation of a personal page, which basically includes a profile and a list of contacts, and gives room for several activities based on content publishing. MySpace pages allow for the creation of personal blogs and posting of audiovisual content, in other words, photographs, music and videos. The social network grows through the invitation of other friends who then have to create their own MySpace pages. It also grows by means of the discovery of people through authorship of content and response to content through comments, as well as exploration of other networks. Knowledge exchanged is basically related to content and includes personal referrals. However, MySpace has become also a platform for personal marketing based on the proficient creation and diffusion of content.

Sconex

URL: http://www.sconex.com/

Description:

Online directory and social networking service for high school students, started on 25 April 2004. Sconex accounts can be created through invitation from existing members or by using any valid e-mail address. Users are able to post their class schedules, make photo albums, keep an online journal in the Notebook, leave

http://www.5min.com

http://www.nyspace.com


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messages on their friends’ blackboards (which are like little pigeonholes), join Sconex-based groups, and enter lists of their favourite celebrities, films, books, songs, TV shows and videogames. Users can search for friends and classmates by name, year, gender, school, and matches in class registration. Like other social networking sites, users may add friends with little or no current connection to themselves. Unlike some other networking sites, Sconex does not strictly limit the number of friends a user may have, allowing for friends lists which, albeit rarely, reach the thousands.

Twitter

URL: http://www.twitter.com

Description:

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send updates (text-based posts, up to 140 characters long). It is an activity-based site. That is, the main information exchanged is the current activity of members. The description of that activity (for example, “I Have found a good example of good practice exchange site at http://…”) contains pointers to the relevant knowledge to interchange. Updates of other members’ activities can be filtered by proximity or topic and can be received on a mobile phone via SMS or RSS (also on RSS readers, of course), as well as through instant messaging. Updates are displayed on the user profile pages. Several applications exist to embed this information on web pages. The connection with blogs has expanded the community enormously to its current membership of four million users.

Business and Professional Oriented Sites Cambrianhouse

URL: http://www.cambrianhouse.com

Description:

Web-based community-owned business that combines the principles of wisdom of crowds and peer production to identify and develop sticky software ideas. The company’s stated mission is to discover and commercialise software ideas through the wisdom and participation of crowds.

Connect and Development

URL: http://pg.t2h.yet2.com/t2h/page/homepage

Description:

Platform to request products or technologies to be developed by P&G.

IBM Innovation JAM

URL: https://www.collaborationjam.com/

http://www.twitter.com

http://www.5min.com/

http://pg.t2h.yet2.com/t2h/page/homepage

https://www.collaborationjam.com/


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Description:

Exploration and problem-solving for IBM and IBM clients (i.e. Habitat Jam with the Canadian Government).

Innocentive

URL: http://www.innocentive.com/

Description:

Sharing scientific innovation (scientists, companies, universities) to receive financial awards for solving R&D challenges.

Ke Good Practice Exchange

URL: http://www.kegoodpractice.org/

Description:

Website to provide a dynamic resource for all those involved in HE knowledge transfer and exchange to share and advance good practice, thereby enhancing the effectiveness and impact of Higher Education Knowledge Transfer and Exchange activity. Users can submit case studies, good practices and participate in discussion forums.

Open Business CC

URL: http://openbusiness.cc

Description:

Open Business is a collective blog that promotes and discusses initiatives around new business models based on the ideas of openness, sharing, and peer-to-peer economy. The group behind it is based in London, and has strong connections with Latin America. It organises regular offline meetings in several cities to facilitate meetings between open business entrepreneurs and investors.

Plaxo

URL: http://www.plaxo.com

Description:

Plaxo (co-founded by Napster co-founder Sean Parker) provides automatic updating of contact information. Users and their contacts store their information on Plaxo’s servers. When this information is edited by the user, the changes appear in the address books of all those who listed the account changer in their own books. Once contacts are stored in the central location, it is possible to list connections between contacts and access the address book from anywhere.

Vator TV

URL: http://www.vator.tv

Description:

Professional network and marketplace for ideas and businesses. Anyone, across all industries, at any stage, can share ideas, products, services and businesses with the rest of the world, mainly through video.

http://www.kegoodpractice.org/

http://www.plaxo.com

http://www.vator.tv


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National Initiatives Administraciones en red

URL: http://eadminblog.net

Description:

Blog by two public workers of the eGovernment Office of the Basque Autonomous Government to explain news and practices of innovation in the eGovernment and eDemocracy sector.

Deutscherstaedtetag

URL: http://www.deutscherstaedtetag.de/

Description:

Deutscher Städtetag is one of the three major local government interest groups, primarily representing larger cities. The other two are Deutscher Städte und Gemeindebund, representing smaller cities, and Deutscher Landkreistag, representing counties. All three are members of the KoopA, together with KGST (Kommunale Gemeinschaftsstelle für Verwaltungsmanagement), which is a think-tank also financed by local governments. While Deutsche Städtetag represents over 200 cities, it does not maintain a wiki or a blog. There is an (informal) working group called Digitales Rathaus (Digital Townhall), in which about 30 active members discuss eGovernment issues twice a year.

Deutschland Online

URL: http://www.deutschland-online.de/DOL_Internet/broker

Description:

Deutschland Online is a strategy for integrated eGovernment; it is a resolution adopted on 26/6/2003 by German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and the heads of government of the German federated states (länder). It is a common eGovernment strategy to provide the framework for cooperation between all layers of government, including local authorities. With Deutschland Online, the federation, länder and municipalities adopt a common objective to work together in order to bring faster, more consistent and more efficient e-services to citizens and businesses. The strategy identifies five priorities for cooperation: development of e-services for citizens and businesses, interconnection of Internet portals, development of common infrastructures, development of common standards, improvement of experience and knowledge exchange. The objective is to foster a full eGovernment partnership between all layers of government, avoid duplication of efforts and reduce development and implementation costs. eGovernment applications developed by one of the parties will be made available to all partners, and model solutions will be created by coordinating procedures and bundling resources, from which all partners will be able to benefit.

DigiTV

http://eadminblog.net

http://www.deutscherstaedtetag.de/



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URL: http://www.digitv.gov.uk

Description:

Website on which users can find out about digital TV and mobile services for local government in the UK. DigiTV is a not-for-profit service run by local government for local government. DigiTV can help further understand, pilot, launch and successfully run citizen-focused services on these new channels.

eGov Resource Center

URL: http://www.egov.vic.gov.au/

Description:

Repository of eGovernment initiatives and international research.

eThepeople

URL: http://www.e-thepeople.org/

Public forum for a new democracy conversation. The site technology promotes intelligent, diverse and deliberative discussions, both on the site and through a network of sites on the Internet.

ESD-Toolkit

URL: http://www.esd.org.uk/esdtoolkit/

Electronic Service Delivery Toolkit (ESD-Toolkit) is an online resource that enables all UK local authorities to record their public services against a comprehensive list of services, processes and interactions. Using ESD-Toolkit, local authorities can monitor, manage and report on their progress towards implementing electronic government and modernisation targets, making a real difference, improving services for the citizen. ESD includes ESD-Standards, controlled lists suitable for populating metadata associated with local government resources, ESD Suppliers, suppliers from the private sector can participate in the ESD community, and ESD-Forums, to discuss the toolkit, standards, interoperability or working groups.

Government Customer Support CoP

URL: www.fcg.gov/communitiesofpractice.shtml

Description:

CoP from the frontline personnel, supervisors, managers, directors and others in the US Government who staff and administer internal help desks, public call centres, multi-channel customer contact portals, and other customer touch points at all levels of government. The CoP’s mission is to learn from private sector leaders in the global customer support industry, promote excellence in supporting internal and external government customers, foster the exchange of effective practices at the frontline of government and facilitate awareness of evolving trends in quality customer support. Contact is made through an eLetter, an annual gathering and an annual award to recognise organisations that excel at teamwork, technical excellence and customer focus. It is a CoP that does not have a lot of 2.0 coupling, but it can be taken as an initial model with huge potential elements to evolve through further digital collaboration work.


http://www.egov.vic.gov.au/

http://www.e-thepeople.org/

http://www.fcg.gov/communitiesofpractice.shtml


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KoopA ADV

URL: http://www.koopa.de

Description:

The KoopA (Kooperationsausschuss Automatische Datenverarbeitung Bund - Länder Kommunaler Bereich) is an IT cooperation committee that consists of the federal government, the 16 state governments and four representatives of local governments and was established to coordinate IT activities in the early 1970s. Today, it serves as a major coordination body for the governments, which, by constitutional law, are all independent in IT matters. It has commissioned important joint projects, such as the OSCI standardisation effort, the German Administration Service Directory (DVDV) and TESTA, a joint network. However, it does not operate as a community of sharing and does not maintain any wikis, blogs or discussion lists.

LOLA

URL: http://www.lola-online.org/content/main/home.php

Description:

LOLA (Linked Organisation of Local Authority ICT Societies) is a loose grouping of associations that share common values, which include: delivering public services, public accountability, IS/IT management, sharing experiences, good and bad, sharing best practice, avoiding re-inventing the wheel and voluntary contributions. There is a Discussion Board and a Knowledge Base. A Calendar with events organised by the members of LOLA is also included. Members of LOLA include: V-ICT-OR (Belgium), MISA/ASIM (Canada), VIAG (Netherlands), Association of Local Government Information Management (New Zealand), KommITS (Sweden), SOCITM (UK) and Government Management Information Sciences (USA).

PsNetwork

URL: http://www.psnetwork.org.nz/

Description:

CoP of the Public Sector Communicators in New Zealand. It is defined by them as an online space to “provide, by the participation and contribution of members and the organisation of meetings and activities, a professional network for friendship and encouragement, and sharing of resources, information, contacts and experience, with the aim of improving the quality of public sector communications”. Those eligible to be members include information communication professionals from public sector and local body organisations, state-owned enterprises and related organisations, and other professionals with a background in public sector communications, within or outside the workforce, who support the aims of the network.

Renewal.net

URL: http://www.renewal.net

Renewal.net is part of the British Government’s National Strategy Action Plan for


http://www.renewal.net


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neighbourhood renewal. It aims to help all those involved in neighbourhood renewal to design, develop and implement projects, based on evidence of what works. It is built around the needs of practitioners, providing short, readable and punchy documents, not long and inaccessible reports. It was developed in consultation with potential users, who influenced the look and feel of the site and the type of information it contains. It basically includes toolkits, discussion forums, e-mail updates and an events calendar. The website helps communities and local government to spread ideas and evidence across Whitehall, to encourage reform and the improvement of services at every level. The development of renewal.net will be a continuing process.

SOCITM

URL: http://www.socitm.gov.uk

Description:

The Society of Information Technology Management, founded in 198, is the professional association for ICT managers working in and for the public sector in the UK. With over 1,900 members from 550 different organisations including 98% of all UK local authorities, Socitm provides a widely respected forum for the promotion, use and development of ICT best practice. It also plays a leading role in the implementation of local eGovernment in the UK. re drawn primarily from local authorities but also from the police and fire services, housing authorities and other locally delivered public services. Managers or consultants from organisations supplying ICT products and services to the public sector, or that support public services in other ways, may also join the society.

Swedish House in Second Life

URL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Swedish%20Institute/70.2011/212.322

Description:

Virtual Swedish house in Second Life, to “generate goodwill and confidence in Sweden”.

Talk

URL: http://www.talknet.org.uk/

Talk is a website based on knowledge sharing and the dissemination of information. It offers an instant way of accessing information for those at the frontline of transformation within the UK public sector, using the tacit knowledge of those who have the experience. It works to generate communication between and across authorities (personal or group blogs), collaboration within projects and communities of interest (wikis), and explicit and tacit knowledge transfer.

They Work for You

URL: http://www.theyworkforyou.com

Description:

TheyWorkForYou is a website run by mySociety, which is itself a project implemented by UK Citizens Online Democracy, a registered charity. It was


http://www.talknet.org.uk/

http://www.theyworkforyou.com


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originally built almost entirely by volunteers, with the goal of keeping tabs on citizen-elected MPs and their unelected peers, and comment on what goes on in Parliament and all other assemblies in the UK. So, citizens can access the transcriptions of all parliamentary debates, known as hansards, and comment on and discuss them. They also can find hansards by specific MPs, or receive hansards through an RSS subscription. This is a proto-CoP from the moment that groups for or against a position within a hansard can be created to generate actions or movements to defend or disapprove the final result of the vote.

Webcitoyen

URL: http://www.webcitoyen.com

Description:

Blog by different authors to control and reject public authority decisions in France if necessary.

International Initiatives Beep Knowledge System

URL: http://www.beepknowledgesystem.org/Search/default.asp

Description:

Funded by the European Commission’s IST Programme, this site provides free access to a ‘good practice’ knowledge system of cases and learning resources describing the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to support a large number of social, economic, environmental and cultural goals. Each Beep case uses a standardised report structure for ease of comparison and to facilitate research, and has been coded on the basis of detailed characteristics in order to enable sophisticated searching.

European funding support ceased in the summer of 2003, after which the Beep Knowledge System has continued to be updated, expanded and improved using its partners’ own resources, through partnerships with a number of organisations, by sponsorship, and other funding sources.

CEMR

URL: http://www.ccre.org/

Description:

The Council of European Municipalities, founded in 1951, works in many fields of activity such as regional policy, transport, the environment, equal opportunities and governance. Its fifteen committees and working groups seek to influence draft EU legislation to make sure the interests and concerns of local and regional authorities are taken into account from the earliest stages of the EU legislative process.

Eurocities

URL: http://www.eurocities.org/main.php

Description:

EUROCITIES is the network of major European cities. Founded in 1986, the network brings together the local governments of more than 130 large cities in over


http://www.ccre.org/


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30 European countries. EUROCITIES provides a platform for its member cities to share knowledge and ideas, exchange experiences, analyse common problems and develop innovative solutions, through a wide range of forums, working groups, projects, activities and events. Cities can learn from each other by sharing knowledge, exchanging experiences, comparing different approaches, testing innovative solutions and analysing best practices. EUROCITIES also works as a lobby group in the European Union for the development and implementation of European policies, legislation and programmes that are relevant to cities.

EgovNews Blog

URL: http://www.egovnews.org

Description:

International news articles about e-citizenship, e-democracy, e-governance and e-government.

Global Voices

URL: http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/

Description:

International network of bloggers that summarises what is going on in the blogosphere in every corner of the world. It is a non-profit website hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School. Its objectives are, first of all, to enable and empower a community of “bridgebloggers”. It has a team of regional editors that aggregates and selects what it thinks are the interesting conversations going on in a range of blogospheres, ranging from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, with particular focus on non-Western and underrepresented voices. One might find on its homepage, for example, Congolese bloggers discussing the 2006 elections, or Jordanian and Arab bloggers responding to the 2005 Danish cartoons controversy. Its second objective is to develop tools and resources that make achieving the first objective more effective.

Infocity

URL: http://www.infocity.org/

Description:

Part of the World Bank Development Gateway project, Infocity is a space to facilitate the exchange of experiences, ideas, and knowledge, as well as provide a repository of this type of information among CDS cities in East Asia. The plan for the revival of InfoCity is to let it become a channel for sharing experiences among CDS cities in East Asia, representing at least 50 cities in the region. It introduces a range of tools that help foster partnerships, enabling civic leaders, municipal officials and the development community to exchange their latest hands-on practices and innovations on city management.

eParticipation and Services Initiatives (Social Movements) Atina Chile

URL: http://www.atinachile.cl/

Description:

Internet-based movement for Chilean citizens to “create a better Chile” according

http://www.egovnews.org

http://www.atinachile.cl/


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to a Web 2.0 philosophy. Each member has the right to create a blog on Atina’s platform, while the editors choose the best posts for the daily homepage. Atina Chile also has a TV channel and a podcast area, always using open source technologies (YouTube, Blip.tv, Chinswing, etc.).

ePetitions

URL: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/

Description:

Allows citizens, charities and campaign groups to set up petitions that are hosted on the Downing Street website, enabling anyone to address and deliver a petition directly to the UK prime minister.

Getup

URL: http://www.getup.org.au/community/

Description:

Independent, grass-roots community advocacy organisation giving Australians opportunities to get involved and hold politicians accountable on important issues. Whether it involves sending an e-mail to a member of parliament, engaging with the media, attending an event or helping to get a television advertisement on air, GetUp members take targeted, coordinated and strategic action. It was founded on 1 August 2005 in response to the Coalition victory in the 2004 federal election. GetUp campaigns are based largely on e-mail and the website; however, the organisation also uses broadcast and print media to get its message across. In the vein of Moveon.org, much of the organisation’s funding comes in the form of small contributions made through its website. GetUp has a small team of staff and volunteers, including Executive Director Brett Solomon.

Grassfire

URL: http://grassfire.org/

Description:

US web-based project to ensure an impact on key issues in the country by equipping citizens with tools that give their partners a real impact on issues. In fact, it is an online petitions site that includes mail and video action, using the YouTube Platform.

Metagovernment

URL: http://www.metagovernment.org/

Description:

Open source governance project. Invites all people to participate in governance as much or as little as they wish. This is the system that will be run by a series of governments using a scored, versioned website as the medium for legislation and bureaucracy under the principle of open source governance. This implementation is similar to the concept of wiki government, but with a sophisticated scoring system to avoid the potential downfalls of a completely open editable system. Initially, metagovernment and its derivative governments have no power and no authority. They gain these only as people and existing governments voluntarily decide to grant them power and authority. See further below for particulars on the transition to this form of government. It should start running in late 2008.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/



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Political Marketplace in Almere

URL: http://www.almere.nl/live/index.jsp?nav=411&loc=406&det=193655

Description:

Offline CoP in Almere, the Netherlands, where citizens can discuss local issues with the town council in groups. Weekly meetings of the council, the executive committee, the residents of Almere and the municipal officials concerned are held every Thursday evening, 37 times a year. These evening meetings consist of four elements: an exhibition, the carrousel, the debate and the decision process. One use of the exhibition could be to show something at a strategic moment during the evening. Although this subject is not yet ready for action by the council, it is important that councillors know something about it. Then there is the carrousel between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.. Prior to this, the presidency of the council adopts the weekly agenda, between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m.. Following a half-hour break, the plenary part of the meeting starts at 9.30 p.m.

PPP Exchange

URL: http://www.eu-ppp.org/

Description:

The PPP project is part of a bigger set of initiatives that are currently run by the European Commission and its working groups, designed to move the eGovernment knowledge agenda forward by facilitating practical exchange of good practice. The working groups (Electronic Identity, Secure Infrastructure, Cross-border Portals and Citizen Portals) are being established by the new PPP (Provide eGovernment Good Practice Portability) project. The groups enable the people behind good practices to meet face-to-face with parties from other administrations and explore practical ways of transferring good practice. The working groups are platforms for administrations to conclude memoranda of understanding, joint ventures or other concrete agreements that will lead to the good practice, or elements of it, being transferred. The consortium behind PPP consists of Steria Benelux (coordinator), the Belgium-based eGovernment association e-Forum, Sheffield City Council (UK) and Generalitat Valenciana (Spain).

Toronto Transit Camp

URL: http://toronto.transitcamp.org/ttc/

Description:

BarCamp style event aimed at finding creative solutions for Toronto’s transport authority website and the user experience of transport in the city. It was an ad-hoc gathering at the Gladstone Hotel of designers, transport geeks, bloggers, visual artists, computer geeks and cultural creators passionate about transport in Toronto and the TTC. The event was a platform for Toronto’s talented design community and enthusiastic transport users and fans to demonstrate their creativity and contribute to improving Toronto’s transport system. The content and ideas generated in this open conference were delivered to the TTC for consideration.


http://www.eu-ppp.org/

http://toronto.transitcamp.org/ttc/


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Members currently work through a Google Group (http://groups.google.com/group/torontotransitcamp).

Inclusion Netherlands for Moroccans

URL: http://www.maghreb.nl/

Description:

Information, message boards, videos, pictures and agenda for Moroccans living in Netherlands. This private site aims to work towards the inclusion of Moroccans in Dutch society.

Health Babycenter

URL: http://www.babycenter.com

Description:

Parenting website providing information on conception, pregnancy, birth, and early childhood for parents and parents-to-be. It has sites from different countries around the world. BabyCenter L.L.C. is owned by Johnson & Johnson, the main sponsor on the site.

Decision street

URL: http://www.decisionstreet.com/about.php

Description:

Deciding on family healthcare. US-based site that uses industrial strength decision science and easy-to-use Internet technologies to help families decide on the best solutions for providing care and support to their members. The mission is to help people make better decisions about the big issues they face. It uses primary web tools such as searches, bookmarks, forums, messages, calculators, folders, and also proto-2.0 tools for voting on inside information.

Healthboards

URL: http://www.healthboards.com

Description:

Support group website consisting of over 150 Internet message boards for peer-to-peer health support (also referred to as a virtual community or online health community). The site is unique in that it is purely a health community site, unlike other established health communities on the Web that have generally been part of large web portals (WebMD, Yahoo, iVillage, etc.). As of June 2006, the site received over 2.3 million messages posted by over 250,000 registered members. In 2004, HealthBoards established a partnership with WebMD to provide additional health content and advertising support for HealthBoards. On HealthBoards, all health topics are given individual message boards. Each message board typically contains thousands of discussion threads, each relating to a specific question or comment

http://groups.google.com/group/torontotransitcamp


http://www.babycenter.com

http://www.decisionstreet.com/about.php

http://www.healthboards.com


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initiated by a HealthBoards user. Participation on HealthBoards requires free registration. Users who register must supply an e-mail address and login name. Users who are not registered may still view all the contents of the message boards, but cannot post messages. Anonymous posting is not allowed. The boards are moderated by a large staff primarily consisting of volunteers.

Organised wisdom

URL: http://www.organisedwisdom.com/

Description:

Support group video website about user-generated health content from across the Web. Users can find videos about health information from supposedly credible sources, the members of the community. The team defines it as a “TV Guide of Health Wisdom”, where users can quickly find what they are looking for.

Sharing Q&A Cooperation Commons

URL: http://www.cooperationcommons.com/

Description:

Cooperation Commons aims to create an interdisciplinary study of cooperation and collective action by compiling and summarising current knowledge, mapping the outlines of the emerging field, convening meetings of the best minds in relevant disciplines, and encouraging ongoing discourse, research, and practice. Blogs, RSS, and tools such as Del.icio.us or Digg are used to exchange and spread the information submitted.

Dodgeball

URL: http://www.dodgeball.com

Description:

Social networking software provider for mobile devices. It was acquired by Google in May 2005. Users text their location to the service, which then notifies them of friends and interesting venues nearby.

Searchles

URL: http://www.searchles.com/

Description: Community-based searching. Searchles users contribute links. They tag them, add comments and then associate them with possible interest groups. Searchles makes extensive use of the similarity and connections between people in the social networks within Searchles (known as “circles”) in order to better assess the relevance of contents and keywords.

Playtxt

URL: http://www.playtxt.net

Description:

http://www.organizedwisdom.com/


http://www.playtxt.net


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Mobile community with a social networking functionality that can be used worldwide. Users can log in their location anywhere on the globe from their mobile phones simply by entering a nearby town or city. Initially, this was done using a text message (SMS). The network then uses a six degrees of separation algorithm to provide contact with friends of friends who may be physically nearby. The network is free to join and use. The service acted as a live test bed for the company’s Angelia software platform.

Platform Generators and General Software Aggregate Knowledge

URL: http://www.aggregateknowledge.com/

Description:

Aggregate Knowledge is a collective knowledge aggregation site. It offers the industry’s first online Collective Discovery Service, which emulates the way people naturally discover and shop for products and information offline. Built atop a sophisticated, super computing architecture, Aggregate Knowledge harnesses the behaviour of users to fundamentally change the way people navigate and engage online. Aggregate Knowledge delivers significant revenue enhancement to site owners by providing real-time, collective merchandising and navigation capabilities. Funded by premier venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the company’s management team includes veterans from IBM, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, Sun and Tribe.net.

Elgg

URL: http://elgg.org/

Description:

Development of social collaborative sites. Elgg is an open source social platform based on choice, flexibility and openness: a system that firmly places individuals at the centre of their activities. Users have the freedom to incorporate all their favourite tools within one environment and showcase their content with as many or as few people as they choose, all within a social networking site that they control.

Gotzapp

URL: http://www.gotzapp.com/

Description:

A mobile social networking service that allows users to create and send multimedia content to mobile phones in a single data transmission called a Zapp. Zapps can include text, photos, graphics, animations, navigation buttons and music. The GotZapp website offers users freeware, known as the Zirada Mobile Content Creator, to enable the creation of multimedia mobile content that can be sent to Web-enabled mobile phones worldwide. GotZapp subscribers can also transfer profile page information from a variety of social networking sites into Zapps. Its philosophy is similar to Flickr, MySpace or Facebook, with the possibility to create groups through authors or affinities.

Panoramio

URL: http://panoramio.com

http://www.aggregateknowledge.com/

http://elgg.org/

http://www.gotzapp.com/

http://panoramio.com


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Description:

Panoramio is a location aware photo sharing website. Currently, some of the location-tagged photos uploaded onto the site can be accessed as a layer in Google Earth, with new photos added at the end of every month. Panoramio gives Google Earth users the option of viewing readily available photographs of the locations being visited, thus greatly facilitating a more comprehensive appreciation of geographical, architectural, and tourist values of myriad points of interest.

Socialight

URL: http://socialight.com/

Description:

Location-based social media platform that allows people and editorial publishers to connect rich media content to real-world physical locations. Its users can create, browse and share virtual Sticky Notes tied to any location worldwide. Socialight is used on mobile phones or web browsers.
