Web-based Learning Solutions for Communities of Practice

The global structure of the activities depends
on a core group open to all members of the ITPF
led by the ITPF coordinator. Their purpose is to
develop a strategic viewpoint of ITPF, and plan the
meetings according to the topics already agreed
upon by the whole group in previous meetings.
Participants of the plenary meetings are
professionals in the IT areas within the national
government, although over time professionals
from other local governments as well as from
the academic sector have joined in. The average
turnout was 100 people with monthly meetings
throughout 2002 and 2003. Lately, the meetings
have been less frequent due to the widespread
growth of the virtual forum.
The plenary meetings are divided into three
stages:
1. Presentation and consensus of the tasks
accomplished by the core group and by the
work groups and new lines of action
2. Work performed in workshops, where new
ideas and proposals are discussed openly
3. Conclusion with a shared presentation of
the subjects addressed in the workshops
and action plans. At this point, new work
groups are set up, and the existing ones may
be modified. Should a relevant topic require
discussing in depth, external specialists are
called in to present experiences and existing
papers at a special plenary meeting.
Goals are established in each meeting in order
to connect one meeting with the next. These goals
are written up in a record of proceedings. Taken
together, these documents allow the members to
trace the steady quality of the interchange, the
building of a balance of information among the
different actors, a prospective analysis, as well
as the history of the process. Likewise, the collective
conceptualizations enable the upgrading
of the level of understanding and the monitoring
of tasks, advances, or setbacks.
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The Argentine IT Professionals Forum
The work groups are fully dedicated to the
development of leading issues for the back office
of an electronic government, including, for
example, the following:
1. Free Software Group: It performs discussion
and legislative support activities on
draft laws dealing with that subject. It relays
the existing developments in the state as an
input for its own work on software development.
2. Cross-Agencies Applications Group:
It focuses on the need to incorporate IT
processes into the ordinary administrative
ones in different areas within the state, such
as human resources, files, hospital administration,
and financial administration. Its
line of action is to identify best practices,
coordinating their transfer, and to generate
upgraded applications.
3. Interoperability Group: The aim of this
group is to create a framework of technological
standards and data structure that
enable the users to interchange information.
Interoperability is the ability of a system
or a product to work with other systems or
products without special effort on the part
of the user.
ITPF Strengths and Challenges
These strengths are to be found in the following:
1. In the steady attendance of its members,
considering that the initiatives are generated
by the permanent or quasi-permanent
staff
2. In the certainty that the work that has been
produced will be implemented given that
the practitioners who present the innovations
coincide with the ones who implement
them