Web-based Learning Solutions for Communities of Practice

towards the back-office functions, represents a
significant detour, it is undertaken because the path
taken does mark a significant step forward. Not
only in terms of the additional learning services
that existing city portals are now able to offer, but
in ‘squaring of the circle’ and providing a platform
with the intelligence - KMS and digital library - to
integrate the front, middle and back-office sections
of their organization as a virtual CoP. As a virtual
CoP that in this instance is based on standards
which are interoperable across a growing pool of
extensible eGov services and have the capacity
to support socially-inclusive and participatory
urban regeneration programs.
THE ‘ETOPIA’ DEMONSTRATOR
At present this integration is mainly technical,
concerning the software developments needed to
host such services and meet with the semantics
of the platform’s e-learning needs, knowledge
transfer requirements and capacity building
commitments. This currently takes the form of
an ‘eTopia’ demonstrator, showing in sessionmanaged
logic how the eCity platform accesses
the extensive pool of eGov services located in the
back-office and uses the intelligence embedded
in the middleware to deliver Level 3 (advanced
e-Citizenship) courses on the consultative needs
and deliberative requirements of such developments.
This provides a ‘real time’ demonstration’
of the platform’s capacity to be ‘SMART’ in
developing both the technical and semanticallyrich
content required for the middleware to begin
supporting the socially-inclusive consultations
and participatory deliberations of urban regeneration
programmes. These enhanced processes
of consultation and deliberation also have the
advantage of offering citizens multi-channel
access to such eGov services, presented to them
as socially-inclusive and participatory urban regeneration
programmes designed to bring about
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The IntelCities Community of Practice
improvements in the quality of life (Deakin and
Allwinkle, 2007). This goes a long way to:
• Uncover the business logic needed to base the
intelligence-driven (re)organization of cities
on and standards required to benchmark the
performance of the platform against.
• Provide the performance-based measures
needed to assess whether any plans cities
posses to develop eGov services (over the
platform) have the embedded intelligence
(the learning, knowledge-based competencies
and skills) required to support such
actions.
• Also provide the means to evaluate if such
planned developments build the (intellectual)
capacity – learning, knowledge-based
competencies and skills – needed to support
such actions.
TESTING THE ETOPIA
DEMONSTRATOR
In addition to developing the semantically-interoperable
eGov services, the IntelCities’ CoP
has also sought to evaluate how well they perform
as components of the eCity platform. This has
meant developing three ‘eTopia demonstrator’
storylines, where the typical learners referred to
previously, use the eCity platform to query the
development of urban regeneration programmes
by either searching for information on a given
initiative, gaining accessing to possible online
transactions supporting any such actions, or
about getting involved in the consultations and
deliberations underlying the governance of such
proposals.
The three storylines developed scenarios
for:
• Accessing local services in neighbourhoods
subject to regeneration.
• Carrying out online transactions related to
the use of land.