Communities of Practice for Local Government
The Communities of Practice site is at the forefront of the one of the largest web 2.0 initiatives in UK local government today. Sponsored by the IDeA, the site enables groups with common goals and issues to share information and collaborate in on-line spaces that include a collection of easy to use tools including discussion forums, wikis, blogs, event calendars and document libraries.
Within a few weeks of launch the site generated significant interest, resulting in rapid creation of hundreds of communities and attracting thousands of registered users.
With support for networks, panels, boards and group discussions, all of which are established mechanisms for collaboration within Local Government, the tool is helping drive improved exchange of information between peers and spread of best practices between local authorities.
The solution runs on the Local Government Association's existing web publishing infrastructure, managed by Conseq, 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