F R I D A Y , J U L Y 2 8 , 2 0 0 6 A g e n d a
use for hard copy
posting & distribution
BRAND NIEMANN
US EPA, Enterprise Architecture Team, and
Chair, Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice (SICoP)
Best Practices Committee (BPC), Federal CIO Council
Traditionally governments at various levels were essentially autonomous. Now, for many reasons, all levels of government are compeled to open more and more powerful communications channels, also with a private sector, non-profits and academia. While communications remains a human activity, new technologies such as the Wiki web are providing new communications channels that require relatively small capital expenditures but offer significant communications improvements.
Let's get ready to Collaborate with Wikis!
Do You Wiki Wiki?
Wiki comes from the Hawaiian word for fast and is “a web site where community members create/edit a web page” that supports quick, collaborative writing and easy hypertext linking. The structure is not pre-determined, but invented and evolved by community in neither a top down or bottom up manner.
What's a CoP?
The concept of a community of practice (often abbreviated as CoP) refers to the process of social learning that occurs when people who have a common interest in some subject or problem collaborate over an extended period to share ideas, find solutions, and build innovations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_practice
Note: Essentially a group of people like yourselves that want to be effective at getting something useful done now and sustained over time.
The Federal Government Supports CoPs and Uses Wikis
The President Urges Agencies to Work Together:
“Our success depends on agencies working as a team across traditional boundaries to better serve the American people, focusing on citizens rather than individual agency needs … I thank agencies who have actively engaged in cross-agency teamwork, using E-Government to create more cost-effective and efficient ways to serve citizens, and I urge others to follow their lead.”
See http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/egov/g-1-background.html
You May Even Need a CoP of CoPs Before You Are Done
Building a CoP in a Wiki