Web-based Learning Solutions for Communities of Practice

The Argentine IT Professionals Forum
3. How to locate files
4. How to agree on shared software developed
by specific IT public areas (in case
the proprietary software is not available, is
unsuitable, or is too expensive)
In its final report (Danish Technological Institute,
2004), the European Commission takes
these tasks for granted in defining the back office.
According to them:
the “back office” is a term relative to the front
office which in this context is a user interface to an
online service. The back office receives and processes
the information which the user of a service
enters in order to produce and deliver the desired
service. This may be done completely manually,
fully automatically or by any combination of both.
In some cases such a service is produced by one
unit or back-office, in other cases several backoffices
of the same service supplier agency or of
different agencies, at the same government level
or at different levels may be involved. (p. 16)
In developing countries, such as Argentina, the
above-mentioned previous tasks do not take place
due to the institutional weakness of the governments
as well as their lack of technical rationality
(Weber, 1992). Therefore, lines of action should
be set up for the development of the back office.
For that reason, I would like to describe a successful
experience that would be useful as far as
showing the lines of action to be taken.
New Management Models
Underlying the ITPF Experience:
Networks and CoPs
In order to understand the management model
developed by the ITPF, it is essential to define
and differentiate networks and CoPs, considering
that this forum is a mixture of both forms. A
community of practice is a group of peers with
a common sense of purpose who agree to work
together to share information, share a common
repertoire of resources, build knowledge, develop
expertise, and solve problems. CoPs are characterized
by the willing participation of members and
their ongoing interaction in developing a chosen
area of practice and competencies. Identity and
autonomy are essential to enhance CoPs.
On the other hand, networks allow a mutually
negotiated specialization: They are made of
heterogeneous agents whose cognitive activity is
to exchange knowledge. They interact together
through informal and formal meetings, and the
recruitment rule is mutual trust” (Cohendet,
Creplet, & Dupouët, 2001, p. 6).
The CoPs describe groups of people who share
a concern or a passion for something they do and
who interact regularly to learn how to do it better 4
(Lave & Wenger, 1991). On entering these types
of communities, every new member learns from
the veteran members participating in certain activities
related to the practice performed by the
community. Thus, their participation progresses
from the periphery until it reaches a full integration
(Falivene, Silva, & Gurmendi, 2003).
The fact that the ITPF has functioned alongside
traditional structures is also an enriching experience.
It gives strength to new institutional models
empowering e-government plans through the ICT
networks tissue, which constitutes an essential
feature of the information society.
Contexts and Models in the Last
Decade: New Outlooks
Globalization has meant for many countries the
inability to function in an autonomous way. This
effect has been even more startling in developing
countries such as Argentina. In the last decade,
the government model responsible for this lack of
autonomy was a limited version of NPM. 5
NPM in Argentina was applied only to privatizations
and downsizing in public agencies. Less
attention was given to the training and recruitment
of professionals by public agencies. Instead,
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