Browsed by
Tag: CoP

Discovering the value of Social Networks and Communities of Practice

Discovering the value of Social Networks and Communities of Practice

There has been much written about measuring the value of online communities such as Social Networks or Communities of Practice.   However, most pundits tend to think of measuring value from a purely financial perspective, i.e. the Return on Investment (ROI). Clearly this is an important factor, but it’s not the only factor that should be considered. Surprisingly few organisations consider the value that is being created by having better informed and more knowledgeable staff, or the potential value of getting…

Read More Read More

PHIN 2009 Conference – CoP Presentation

PHIN 2009 Conference – CoP Presentation

I am very pleased to have been invited to speak at the Public Health Information Network (PHIN) conference in Atlanta, Georgia, taking place between 30th August and 3rd September. This will be my second visit to Atlanta, having been there in May this year to meet with staff at the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) to share knowledge about the UK local government Communities of Practice, a strategy I developed for the Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA) in 2005 and…

Read More Read More

Local Government Communities of Practice strategy wins award

Local Government Communities of Practice strategy wins award

I’m pleased to announce that the IDeA CoP Platform won an award at the GC Awards yesterday evening. The award was for the best public sector project for collaborative working, and can be placed alongside the award we won at the National e-Government awards ceremony that took place in December 2008. I’m particularly pleased for the IDeA Knowledge Management team who have been instrumental in getting Communities of Practice firmly established across the local government sector as means to encouraging…

Read More Read More

Communities of Practice: Conversations to Collaboration

Communities of Practice: Conversations to Collaboration

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…

Read More Read More

Communities of Practice wins e-Gov National Award

Communities of Practice wins e-Gov National Award

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…

Read More Read More

Communities of Practice in the Public Sector

Communities of Practice in the Public Sector

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…

Read More Read More

Communities of Practice initiatives in the public sector

Communities of Practice initiatives in the public sector

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…

Read More Read More

New look and new features for Communities of Practice website

New look and new features for Communities of Practice website

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…

Read More Read More

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

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…

Read More Read More

Generation V and four levels of virtual engagement

Generation V and four levels of virtual engagement

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…

Read More Read More