Web-based Learning Solutions for Communities of Practice

The Argentine IT Professionals Forum
IT experts may not be the champions of transparent
processes or of participation through ICT.
They may just be good professionals.
OTHER EXPERIENCES
Some current government policies encourage
CoPs as strategic lines of action, such as in
Canada, 27 the United States, Australia, 28 and other
countries. These lines of action are oriented toward
reinforcing federal policies as well as supporting
government
structures in complex processes. This is the
case of e-government plans when a government
wants to change and integrate the institutional,
cultural, and technological systems.
The developments implemented by the abovementioned
administrations have key government
authorities as their sponsors. Such was the case
with Al Gore in the United States when he was
the vice president of that country (“Reinventing
Government,” 1998). Conversely in Argentina,
as far as IT areas, this initiative stems from the
public-management undersecretariat and the
ITNO (which depends on the former). In view
of this categorization, it is difficult to undertake
a political strategy as strong as those from the
previously mentioned countries.
This emerging complementary relationship
between CoPs and the bureaucratic structures is
an interesting strategy given that CoPs constitute
an effective way of solving unusual problems,
sharing knowledge beyond traditional structural
borders through the coexistence of informal integration
models and bureaucratic models. Within
these interrelationships, formal structures can
be fed by the production generated in turn by
CoP members. The different CoPs intertwine in
a blurred way and cut across the organizational
arena (Tuomi, 1999). These CoPs also contribute
the improvement of teams that are set up for specific
government projects (such as e-government),
recognizing that formally managed projects work
best when the following are true:
1. Problems can be clearly defined.
2. Reliable, quantifiable measurements are
established.
3. An authority structure is in place to ensure
that project results get implemented.
Additionally, communities are most effective
when they follow certain criteria, as follows:
1. Problems are complex and dynamic or very
situation specific.
2. Measures require stories to link cause and
effect.
3. Authority is decentralized and depends more
on professionals’ intrinsic commitment to
getting results (vs. extrinsic appraisals and
incentives).
In the United States, the IBM Center for the
Business of Government has performed case studies,
led by Snyder and Souza Briggs (2003), that
reveal the strategic relevance the U.S. federal government
has placed on the development of CoPs
to support a variety of state-related issues, such
as children’s health, highway controls, antiterrorism,
e-government, and so forth. Specifically, the
federal e-government encourage the development
of CoPs to generate a cross-agency pilot community
because it addressed a strategic concern that
aligned with a new government-wide legislative
mandate, the Government Paperwork Elimination
Act, which required agencies to streamline
processes and reduce paperwork by October 2003
(Snyder & Wenger, 2003).
The Australian government has also included
CoPs in its experience of e-government. The
Australian Government Information Management
Office (AGIMO) states:
CoPs are practical vehicles for sharing and building
knowledge and promoting better practice…
In this spirit, AGIMO’s role is that of a catalyst
and facilitator, providing initial structure, while
encouraging ownership and engagement by
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