Web-based Learning Solutions for Communities of Practice

and so forth. They confront the challenge of
bridging the gaps with non-IT areas, taking into
account that the latter are constantly producing
data. This data needs to be standardized in order
to be included in IT systems and to feed new
developments. This compatibility should be the
priority of the back office. Yet, it proves difficult
to achieve given that IT and non-IT experts are
used to working based on different disciplinary
logics. Therefore, the job of IT experts is to match
these differences. 24
It is also interesting to know the processes that
have led to interdisciplinary relationships with
non-IT expert customers. These interchanges
took place due to the following:
1. The gradual awareness by IT experts of the
customers’ needs
2. The gradual incorporation of basic IT logics
by non-IT experts
The massive use of ICT together with its
inadvertently growing daily use led customers
to become more participative. Moreover, users
have started to demand solutions tailored to their
needs as they rely increasingly on ICT tools. These
practices are being developed through daily routines
that are giving way to a certain familiarity.
Needless to say, the ITPF is involved in these
processes. Although at first the forum rejected
any kind of interchange with other actors, little
by little it abandoned such reluctance. 25
As regards the incoporation of basic IT logic
by non IT experts, and viceversa, we should remember
that interaction among CoPs may take
the shape of border meetings where some of the
members of two or more CoPs get together in
order to foster an interchange of practices and to
trigger thinking processes into the community
itself or in the border practices. For example, the
ITPF needed to acquire competencies developed
by librarians in order to be able to classify the
developments spotted by the Free Software Group.
The Forum of Documents Center, in turn, needed
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The Argentine IT Professionals Forum
to incorporate competencies from the former in
order to work with digital documents and to be
able to deal with them. It was necessary to learn,
among other issues, how to keep these documents
from disappearing from the Internet.
This phenomenon also takes place with
non-IT actors in general as they try to become
familiar with the use of ICT (Falivene & Kaufman,
2005).
Finally, a last question remains: Why are IT
public officials more likely to work in networks,
incorporating IT, therefore becoming the main
support of the e-government back office?
The ITPF experience, as well as other empirical
cases, shows a trend of many IT experts to
develop systems that enable a horizontal flow
of information. This behaviour is a strong core
identity mechanism in their CoPs. 26 Needless to
say, it forms part of the development of an IT
professional. It is as obvious as mentioning the
physician’s predisposition to heal. The fact is
that such behaviour concerning the horizontal
flow of information is not neutral as regards
public-administration practices. That is to say, it
generates a conflict when confronted with political
and bureaucratic points of view. Usually, the
hierarchies in these CoPs are synonymous with
professional pride and know-how. So, these different
perspectives constitute dissociated worlds
sharing common environments.
On the other hand, many IT experts do not
conceive institutional or personal power as isolated
compartments. This fragmented view of
power has always existed within the Argentine
government, preventing the consolidation of a
strong and efficient state.
Nevertheless, ICTs are in a way becoming a
dangerous-enough weapon to injure the Achilles
heel of fragmentation. Many IT experts understand
the crucial importance of these tools and are
willing to generate positive changes. To make this
happen, they are building other institutional architectures
(usually informal ones) that enable the
inflow of information to legitimate addressees.