Communities of Practice for Local Government

Based on the well established principles of Communities of Practice, this UK local government site enables groups with common goals and issues to share information and collaborate in on-line spaces that include a discussion forum, wikis, blogs, event calendars and a document libraries.

With support for networks, panels, boards and group discussions, all of which are established mechanisms for collaboration within Local Government, the tool is already showing evidence of improved exchange of information between peers, and is positively helping to spread best practices between local authorities.

The solution runs on the Local Government Association's existing Conseq-managed web publishing infrastructure, using IBM WebSphere Application Server and DB2 Universal Database, and conforms to high levels of accessibility for all users.

See the site at www.communities.idea.gov.uk