Web-based Learning Solutions for Communities of Practice

The Argentine IT Professionals Forum
3. In the legitimacy of its productions due to
the general consensus regarding their suitability
4. In its transparency and responsibility as
a result of periodic and steady collective
control of the initiatives, processes, and
products
The challenges the ITPF has to confront are
as follows:
1. Its continuity beyond changes in government
2. The need for greater resources considering
the extraordinary growth of its activities,
especially for the development of free software
3. The channeling of foreign funding destined
to information technologies for their use and
control via the forum
4. The use of the virtual ITPF as its own efficient
means
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ITPF
The ITPF has become a key actor in the development
of the first stages of e-government initiatives
by putting into operation the basic platform that
could solve such problems as interoperability,
cross-agency applications, and the development
of suitable software, among others. 7
The work performed by the ITPF suggests
solutions to problems regarding the basic conditions
that would ensure the enforcement of an
elementary e-government and that would enable
upgrading in order to make up networks of different
levels (local, state, national, international)
and origins (public or private), that is to say, the
8, 9
creation of “back networks.”
By elementary e-government, I mean one that
starts the creation of the missing basic platform
of the back office in order to interconnect several
government agencies. These agencies offer a front
office where services will be integrated cohesively
according to the customers’ needs. This process
will eventually lead to a “one-stop shop” enabling
access to services that will be grouped together and
classified by subject. The development of the back
office must lead up to reorganization as well as a
redefinition of processes and structures. Further,
it must also contemplate changing organizational
cultures. This basic platform of the back office
should also be the basis for a progressive technological
development that could establish sensible
criteria for purchasing hardware and software.
Likewise, this technological development could
pave the way for the creation of suitable software
to ensure better services and to protect confidential
government data.
For the time being, this concept of the basic
platform of the back office is carried out only by the
ITPF. The forum has provided prompt responses
in contrast to the lack of action on the part of the
authorities responsible for e-government politics.
After President Menem’s second term in office,
the relationship between ICT and the government
went on a discouraging downward path. The
miracle recipes of the ’90s never materialized,
unjustly discrediting the potential of ICT and
hence putting at risk the placement of our country
with respect to the new economy. E-government
policies suffered likewise.
This loss of credibility mirrored the descent
of the IT National Office 10 (ITNO) in government
hierarchies. Having been an undersecretariat
(during Menem’s administration), it became a
lower ranking office (Dirección Nacional) deprived
of power to regulate ICT activities within
the state.
This is the context in which the ITPF developed.
DEVELOPMENT OF THE ITPF
I deal with the ITPF experience separating it in
two steps. The first started with the creation of the
291