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Category: Communities of Practice

Communities of Practice: Conversations to Collaboration

Communities of Practice: Conversations to Collaboration

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I’ve was pleased to be invited to do a keynote presentation at the NHS eSpace Coordinators conference earlier this month.  I wanted to emphasise the importance of the Coordinator’s role in building trust within a Community of Practice (CoP), and as a catalyst for turning conversations into active collaboration.  I should note that I’m more familiar the term ‘Community Facilitator’, for this role, and have used the term ‘facilitator’ and ‘coordinator’ to mean the same thing, i.e. the person or…

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Communities of Practice wins e-Gov National Award

Communities of Practice wins e-Gov National Award

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The IDeA Communities of Practice platform (CoPs) won first prize in its category at the National e-Government Awards in the prestigious setting of  at the Guildhall, London on Tuesday 20th January. The e-Government awards are supported by the Cabinet Office, SOCITM and SOLACE, and recognise excellence in public sector IT and transformational e-Govt projects. See also John’s IDeA Blog for photos of John Hayes, Michael Norton, Lawrence Hall and me picking up the award. CoPs was short-listed as finalist in…

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Communities of Practice in the Public Sector

Communities of Practice in the Public Sector

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The slides from my presentation at the Online Information Conference have been posted to the conference website. The presentation covered the following key points: How social media tools (wikis, blogs etc.) and Web 2.0 technologies can facilitate more effective networking and collaboration across the public sector. How virtual CoPs are delivering innovation and improvement to local government services. What does a successful CoP look like and how is success measured? Lesson learnt from the project. I’m happy to answer any…

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Communities of Practice in Local Government

Communities of Practice in Local Government

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I was interviewed recently by the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) about the work I’ve been doing for them in developing Communities of Practice (CoPs) to support efficiency improvements and knowledge sharing in the local government sector in the UK. The original article was published on the IDeA’s Knowledge website, and is reproduced here.  The technology platform for suppoting these virtual communities was launched in December 2007, and currently supports over 20,000 registered users and over 580 CoPs, dealing with…

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Local government communities of practice shorlisted for awards

Local government communities of practice shorlisted for awards

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The Improvement and Development Agency’s (IDeA) Communities of Practice for Local Government (CoPs) has been shortlisted for two awards at the e-Government National Awards 2008, this years ‘best of the best’ in public sector ICT and  e-government. The winners will be announced at the National Awards dinner on 20th January 2009. The two categories that the IDeA CoP’s have been shortlisted for are: e-Government excellence: Leadership & Profession e-Government excellence: Innovation in Strategy on a National Level The local government…

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Communities of Practice initiatives in the public sector

Communities of Practice initiatives in the public sector

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I thought I would post a couple of examples of how communities of practice (CoPs) are becoming increasingly mainstream in developing policy and seeding innovation in the public sector – an area of work I continue to support through my involvement with the Improvement and Develpment Agency. News from the Cabinet Office on how the Social Exclusion Task Force has set up a Socially Excluded Adults Community of Practice as a spin off from work that the IDeA have been…

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New look and new features for Communities of Practice website

New look and new features for Communities of Practice website

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As of today, new features and a new look for the IDeA Communities of Practice (CoP) platform. This is the first major new release for over 12 months, and brings a number of usability enhancements to the platform, which is provided as a free resource to staff working on local government throughout the UK. New features include: a more compact and cleaner design for the Welcome page which now includes: (i) service and general information announcements, (ii)details of  most active…

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Communities of Practice will be integral part of Local Government Association Group Development Strategy

Communities of Practice will be integral part of Local Government Association Group Development Strategy

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I’m enouraged by the recent blog from John Hayes (Director of Services at the IDeA) regarding the LGA Group Development Strategy. John recognises the increasingly important role of local government Communities of Practice (CoPs) in sharing knowledge and identifying good/best practice based on evidence-based outcomes.  As John says: The Local Government Association Group Development Strategy is forcing everyone in the LGA Group to think hard about how we help Councils.  One Strategy concept which is central to our thinking at…

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Generation V and four levels of virtual engagement

Generation V and four levels of virtual engagement

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I’m not really into this relentless trend to categorise people and their behaviours into socio-economic-demographic groups since very rarely does anyone neatly fit within one of these categories. However, I follow the trend if for no other reason I can speak the same language as my peers. So, having got to grips with the various attributes and behaviours symbolised as ‘Generation X‘ and ‘Generation Y‘ , it seems we need to recognise another category – ‘Generation V’. (Since we seem…

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Value benchmarking of networks and communities of practice

Value benchmarking of networks and communities of practice

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As part of my work at IDeA in developing their comminities of practice (CoP) strategy, we’re engaging with Warwick Business School and their Knowledge and Innovation Network affiliate in research project for ‘value’ benchmarking CoPs in public and private sectors. A launch event for this project took place on 18th September, with speakers including Larry Prusak and Dr Richard McDermott.  The output from this event, including presentations and audio/MP3 files can be found on the WBS website. Anyone interested in…

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