Steve Dale
Director
Semantix (UK) Ltd
4th December 2008
Communities of Practice in the Public
Sector
www.semantix.co.uk

What I will cover
• How social media tools (wikis, blogs etc.) and
Web 2.0 technologies can facilitate more
effective networking and collaboration across
the public sector
• How virtual CoPs are delivering innovation and
improvement to local government services
• What does a successful CoP look like and how
is success measured?
• Lessons learnt from the IDeA CoP Project
www.semantix.co.uk

About Local Government
• Local government in England and
Wales employs a workforce of 2.1
million people across 410 local
authorities.
• Each authority is working to deliver the
same 700 services to their residents.
• Has an annual operating budget of over
£106 billion for delivering services.
www.semantix.co.uk

Local
government
services
www.semantix.co.uk

About the Improvement and
Development Agency (IDeA)
• Receives funding from the Revenue Support
Grant
• Sister organisation of (owned by the Local
Government Association)
• Works in partnership with councils and regional
organisations to provide
– Leadership (helping councillors become better
leaders)
– Enables and supports councils in sharing good
practice
– Incubator for new ideas for improving service and
value across the local government sector.
www.semantix.co.uk

Project Timeline
Sept 05 Apr 06 Sept 06 Dec 07 Nov 08
Business Planning Pilot Launch People
Case
Various iterations Management team First pilot built on Official launch Over 20,000 people
business case to get approval Drupal failed December 2007 registered
management backing
for KM strategy, Developed and run Assisted in running Ongoing support to 570 Communities
including CoPs training for facilitators focus groups with selected communities
potential members of at the IDeA through a 109 have IDeA
Intensive work with Developed the Pilot communities coaching and involvement
stakeholders technology spec for mentoring scheme
online platform Introduces a
Produced spec for the technology platform to Completion of
KM team structure support collaboration application form to set
up a community
www.semantix.co.uk

Step 1 – Know your audience
www.semantix.co.uk

This is our audience
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Step 2: The path to enlightenment
Join our list Join our forum Join our community
Increasing collaboration and transparency of process
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Step 3: A different way of working
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A community
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A domain of interest
Gosport Allotment
Holders & Gardeners
Association
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A place to meet
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Someone to facilitate
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The key ingredient - effective
facilitation
Facilitating
a
community
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A community of practice
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Why does a person engage with a
Community of Practice?
• Attractive purpose grabs and retains attention
• Perceived benefits:
– Socialisation
– Co-learning, knowledge sharing and co-production
• Each person chooses to be a member
– Volition
– Joining in – and leaving!
www.semantix.co.uk

Communities of Practice
A Community of Practice is a network of individuals with
common problems or interests who get together to explore
ways of working, identify common solutions, and share
good practice and ideas.
• puts you in touch with like-minded colleagues and peers
• allows you to share your experiences and learn from others
• allows you to collaborate and achieve common outcomes
• accelerates your learning
• validates and builds on existing knowledge and good
practice
• provides the opportunity to innovate and create new ideas
www.semantix.co.uk

Community Type
• Helping Communities provide a forum for community
members to help each other with everyday work needs.
• Best Practice Communities develop and disseminate
best practices, guidelines, and procedures for their
members use.
• Knowledge Stewarding Communities organise,
manage, and steward a body of knowledge from which
community members can draw.
• Innovation Communities create breakthrough ideas,
new knowledge, and new practices.
www.semantix.co.uk

Critical Success factors for a CoP
Critical Success Seekers Contributors
factors I need someone I am someone
Social Networking
Awareness How do I know who is out How can I become more
there? known?
Competence Is this person competent? How do I advertise my skills?
Benevolence Will this person help me? How do I develop my
reputation as a trusted
member?
Motivation Do I want to work with Why will I cooperate with this
Culture
this person? person?
Access How do I approach this Do I want to be approached?
Collaboration
person?
Tools
Skills Does the CoP have the tools to collaborate effectively?
Mechanism Do we have a method to collaborate?
Based on a slide by IBM www.semantix.co.uk

CoPs and Social Networks
IDeA CoP Platform: www.communities.idea.gov.uk
IDeA Managed and Self-organising networks
Facilitated networks
Facilitator’s CoP
www.semantix.co.uk

Step 4: Building an environment to
support collaborative working
Find and connect with experts
Find and connect with your peers
Threaded discussion forums, wikis, blogs, document repository
Event calendar
News feeds
News and Newsletters
www.semantix.co.uk

www.semantix.co.uk

Step 5: Metrics
www.semantix.co.uk

Membership and communities
• Over 20,000 registered members
• Over 570 communities
• Average membership of a community is 50
• Highest membership of a community is
over 1400
• Over 2700 members are contributing.
• Average visits per months over 16,000
• Average contributions per month over
1000
www.semantix.co.uk

Metrics – CoP Activity
Total registered CoP members
20000 Forums
18000
Responses per
16000 thread
14000 Participants
12000
Threads with
10000 responses
Percentage of CoP members who are contributors
8000 Total Topics
6000 17.00% Blogs 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000
4000 Wikis
2000 16.00%
Total comments
0 Articles per
15.00%
Jan- Feb- Mar- Apr- May- Jun- community
Jul- Aug- Sep- Oct- Nov- Dec- Jan- Feb- Mar- Apr- May- Jun- Jul- Aug- Sep- Oct-
07 07
Total posts 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 08 08 08 08 08 08 08 08 08 08
14.00%
Total edits
Total blogs 13.00%
12.00% 500
0 1000 1500 2000Total 2500
articles 3000
11.00%
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000
Jan-08 Feb-08 Mar-08 Apr-08 May-08 Jun-08 Jul-08 Aug-08 Sep-08 Oct-08
www.semantix.co.uk

Patterns of contribution
Ref: Jacob Nielson http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html
Number of contributions
1% active contributors
9% occasional contributors
The 1-9-90 rule
90% readers (aka ‘lurkers’)
Number of participants
www.semantix.co.uk

Metrics
• Don’t rely on metrics to claim your
community is successful.
• Use metrics to understand your
community better.
www.semantix.co.uk

Successful CoPs – Measuring
Outcomes
• Mapping Services Agreement (535 members) –
joint procurement strategy on target for achieving
savings of over £100m over 4 years.
• NI14 Avoidable Contact (631 members) – highly
active online conferences
• Policy and Performance (1785 members) –
Producing joint policy briefings
• Projects and Programme Management (356
members)– Consistent contract templates developed
for all local authorities.
www.semantix.co.uk

Lessons Learnt: What went well and
not so well
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Lessons Learnt
WENT WELL NOT GONE WELL
• Evidence of greater •Disconnected CoPs - many
collaboration across CoPs being created that do
councils similar things
• Evidence of more joined- •Poor/little use of tagging
up thinking and new ways •Most self-organising
of working networks do not attend
Facilitator training
• Greater knowledge (and
•Management can hamper
use) of social media tools
or kill a community…..it
• Continued and growing cannot make it thrive!
enthusiasm for community
collaboration
www.semantix.co.uk

Summary - Developing a successful
collaboration strategy with CoPs
• Step 1 – know your audience
• Step 2 – develop the business case
• Step 3 – plan for culture change - it’s a
different way of working
• Step 4 – procure or develop the
technology
• Step 5 – Monitor and measure
everything!
www.semantix.co.uk

The future
• Platform expanding to include central
government and third sector
• Breaking down silos through the use of
a shared community space
• Better metrics available for the
communities
• Blended off-line/on-line training for
facilitators
• Support for mobile working
www.semantix.co.uk

A Quote
I'm now convinced that sharing knowledge,
information and experience through CoPs is the
future of success in local government, and that social
media tools such as those employed within the IDeA
CoP platform are the glue that can stick cross-sector
collaboration projects together
Local Authority CoP facilitator
www.semantix.co.uk

More Quotes
As a chief executive I tend to think of it (Communities of Practice) as a way of expanding
my organisation, because now I can ask somebody a question about leadership and
development in the region and they can go off and talk to other people on the Communities
of Practice and come back with an answer. So we are expanding our own organisation’s
boundaries to actually help each other across the region\". Andrea Hill, Chief Executive,
Suffolk County Council
“It’s possible to post something and get responses back from other members over a couple
of weeks. Previously, you would talk to a few confidantes, then share things at conferences
and it might be six months before you have the same level of strength in terms of that idea.
James Winterbottom, Performance Improvement Officer at Wigan Metropolitan
Borough Council ,:
“We’re all serving the same cause and trying to serve the public. If a document, policy or
strategy on CoPs works in one area, chances are it will work in yours.” Paul Dodds,
Performance Officer at South Tyneside Metropolitan Borough Council
“It cuts down on meetings, so in an age when local government is all about value for money
and efficiency, it fits in well.” Kanza Ahmed, National Management Trainee at
Warrington Borough Council
www.semantix.co.uk

Recommended Reading
• Cluetrain Manifesto – David Weinberger
• Cultivating Communities of Practice –
Etienne Wenger, Richard McDermot,
William Snyder.
• Community, Ecomic Creativity and
Organization – Ash Amin, Joanne
Roberts
• Here Comes Everybody – Clay Shirky
www.semantix.co.uk

www.communities.idea.gov.uk
Steve Dale
www.semantix.co.uk
Email: steve.dale@gmail.com
Blog: www.steve-dale.net
Twitter: www.twitter.com/stephendale
www.semantix.co.uk