e-catalunya: experience report

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Experience report

Generalitat de Catalunya

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Legal noticeThis work is subject to a licence Attribution 3.0 of Creative Commons. Reproduction, distribution, public communication and transformation to generate a derived work is permitted, with no restrictions provided that the author of the rights (Generalitat de Catalunya) is cited. The full license can be consulted at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode.

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Contents

Introduction

e-Catalunya platform overview

Architecture & software evolution

Experiences with CoP

Other considerations

Conclusions

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Introduction

e-Catalunya is an initiative of the Regional Government of the Generalitat de Catalunya– in collaboration with UPC- Barcelona

Tech

2004 Strategic approach to innovate eGovernment services

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Global objectives

boost a severe internal change management

New citizen-care-centric model of eGovernment

mobilize all relevant stakeholders(internal & external)

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Opportunities

KM & Communities of Practice (CoP)“Groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and do it better as they interact regularly”

Work and share together the process of innovating eGovernment services

+ Web 2.0 + social networks

Enable connections among people across formal structures

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E-Catalunya=operationalplatform+methodological process

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e-Catalunya operational platform

It’s an open source platform to support different kind of communities.

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E-Catalunya methodology

Communities of Practice (CoP)Community Managers, responsible for catalyzing each CoPSustained training and competence growth support to all community managers and members of each CoPCoP evolution model, each CoP evolves through a sequence of maturity processOnline interaction, supported by reliable technologyOpen dissemination policyMetrics methodologyReactive accompanying measures: organizational support, best practices conferences, leader's visibilityProactive accompanying measures: advice on strategic alignment, incentives to participants, involvement of external experts

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Contents

Introduction

e-Catalunya platform overview

Architecture & software evolution

Experiences with CoP

Other considerations

Conclusions

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Platform structure

Each portal may contain a hierarchy of groups/subgroups, with an unlimited number of levels inside.Users register to portals and groups within themUsers interact using collaboration tools at portal & group scope

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Portal

group

Portal Portal

group group group group group group group group

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User roles

Registered users play different roles at different scopes:

– At portal scope: member / moderator / administrator

– At group scope: member / moderator / administrator

Unregistered users– guest

Global platform administrator

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Privacy

Privacy settings–portal scope

• public or private (guests allowed or only portal members)

–group scope• public (for people with access to the portal)• private (only for group members)

– collaboration tool scope (different privacy settings to determine who can read or contribute).

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web 2.0 collaboration tools

blog calendar file repository photoalbum forum

mailroom wiki mailing list

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Collaboration tools & user roles

web 2.0 collaboration tools are associated to groups, portals or members

Tool behavior can be configured based on roles with a wide range of options.

Middleware– Enables collaboration tools to behave according to user

roles. – Full look & feel integration of collaboration tools– Allows ampliation to new tools

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Collaboration tools(I)

Blog– “diary” alike tool– typically configured to allow members to post new

articles and comments.

Mailing list– email based group messaging tool (with archive) that

uses sympa open source package as list manager. – lists are created and configured to be restricted to group

members.

Calendar– activity scheduling and announcing. – Map integration– They can be configured to allow members to publish new

activities (without moderation), introduce comments to activities, etc.

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Collaboration tools(II)

File repository– file sharing , uploading and downloading files.– possibility to add descriptions, keywords and comments to

existing files. – Supports a very granular permission system for operations on

files and folders.

Photo Album: Image sharing tool– image sharing , album management, uploading and

downloading images– possibility to add descriptions, keywords and comments to

existing images.

Forum:– Popular discussion web tool based on PHPBB. It may be

moderated.

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Collaboration tools(III)

Wiki– Popular collaborative web-content publishing tool. – It is normally used for collaborative editing – It supports file attachments, user comments and a record/log

of the different document releases.

Mailroom– It is a survey engine that allows administrators to set up

different kind of surveys in order to gather information in brief from portal users or the general public using made-to-measure questionnaires.

– It may be used for carrying out opinion surveys or reaching a broadly agreed decision through votes cast by users.

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Web 2.0 experience

User driven content classification, evaluation and recommendation

–Tagging– “I like it”–Mail based content recomendation–Comments

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Indexation

Collaboration tools and their contents are indexedusing «Lucene».

Searching:– simple or advanced– search results are filtered depending on users' permissions.

The list of new contents or posts is also obtained from the index. – special news sections (at home page, initial group page, etc.)– news alerts via email – news feed (RSS).

Most common words

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Social networking

Profile & contacts management– Users can create and manage their own

profiles.– Users can manage their contacts, that is

people they know and with whom they have a special trust relation

Members directorySocial network functionalities

e-Catalunya is a place to keep in contact and meet new people

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Members Directory

It’s easy to find people, see who is online or examine their profile

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Social network: based on user’s contacts

I can establish direct contacts with other members and explore my social network…

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Knowledge network: Based on the analysis of users activities.

I can find people similar to me and get recommendations of documents

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Administrative tools

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Contents

Introduction

e-Catalunya platform overview

Architecture & software evolution

Experiences with CoP

Other considerations

Conclusions

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Architecture

Ad-hoc specificdevelopment underGPL licenseOpen source– PhpBB (forums)– Mantis (bug tracker)– Lucene (search engine)– Sympa (email lists)– JOSSO (SSO)– eXo platform (portlet

container)

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Technological platforme-Catalunya is a shared service platform

Scalability (to accommodate CoPgrowth)

Security, reliability (24x7)

It’s running on the corporate data centre

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Software evolution

Continuous improvement– Yearly roadmap– Releases every 4 months to add new functionalities

identified by members of all the CoPs or eCatalunyamanagement board.

Next steps: – Usage and integration with other popular social

network platforms – using SaaS (Software as a Service), cloud computing

and federated authentication.– Widget technology to export contents.– …

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Contents

Introduction

e-Catalunya platform overview

Architecture & software evolution

Experiences with CoP

Other considerations

Conclusions

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e-Catalunya communities

Professionals from– the Catalan health system– supporting start-ups– assisting the work of collectives dedicated to

prevention of gender-based violence– supporting innovation projects– social family workers – … and other collectives in the Catalan public

administration

Also used by citizens interested in debates opened by these collectives.

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Family mediators

Family mediators: Members are mainly independent professionals that collaborate with the Justice administration in family mediation processes (a form of alternative dispute resolution).

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Family mediators

Members use blogs to analyze and discuss news related to their profession. They also announce activities related to their work. They use mailing list to distribute weekly newsletters.

Impact– knowledge sharing and access improvement– reduced isolation between professionals.– It has reduced the need for personal meetings, thus

reducing mobility needs– Also, less knowledge is lost while professionals retire, as

their knowledge is introduced and thus kept in the platform.

– Allow all stakeholders to participate in each mediation process, no matter how far they are.

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Using the wiki tool we are building in collaborative way a resource directory related with our work

Prevention of gender-based violence between the youth

An open portal to everybody interested in this issue.

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Barris amb projectes: a community (800 members) of professionals that share best practices in the Catalan Integral improvement program for neighborhoods (urbanism, housing, immigration,

etc).

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61 portals, 1.387 groups or CoP, 17.906 members (4 Nov 2009)

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Contents

Introduction

e-Catalunya platform overview

Architecture & software evolution

Experiences with CoP

Other considerations

Conclusions

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Law compliance

The platform has to comply with the personal data protection Spanish law.– Nowadays the e-Catalunya platform is prepared to protect

basic personal information. Security measures:• firewalls, intrusion detection systems, system update

policies, SSL, application security review, HTML filtering

Users also have to comply with laws governing industrial and intellectual property. – whenever a new content is uploaded to the platform they have

to explicitly indicate they hold the rights to do that.

The legal notice must be explicitly accepted by every new user before becoming member of the platform

Accessibility compliance with WAI AA

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Training & users support

Contextual online helpSpecific training support for beginners

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Contents

Introduction

e-Catalunya platform overview

Architecture & software evolution

Experiences with CoP

Other considerations

Conclusions

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Benefits for CoP

Efficiency: ubiquitous & asynchronousinteractionCommunity building: less isolationBest practices: standarized, documented praxisOvercome organizational hierarchiesCollaborative learningImproved civil servant satisfaction andcommitment

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e-Catalunya: lessons learned

Leadership and specific methodologies are needed to be successful:

Role of administrators and moderators is essential

Choose CoP with real participation needs

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Conclusions

It is an innovative e-governance service that has been successfully used to encourage CoP of the Generalitat de Catalunya in order to achieve an Open Government – with more effectiveness, efficiency, transparency,

collaboration, participation and co-responsibility.

The platform combines different web 2.0 tools to satisfy the different needs of every single community.

Technology is not a barrier but it’s not enough.

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Questions ?

http://ecatalunya.gencat.cat/quecat

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Legal noticeThis work is subject to a licence Attribution 3.0 of Creative Commons. Reproduction, distribution, public communication and transformation to generate a derived work is permitted, with no restrictions provided that the author of the rights is cited (Generalitat de Catalunya). The full license can be consulted at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode.