Connect the people and the knowledge will flow

“If only Local Government knew

what Local Government

knows”

2.1 million people

700 services

Local Authorities

367

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.

Connecting people to people

Efficiency and value for money

Sustainable self-improvement

Membership and communities

• Over 55,000 registered members• Over 1,300 communities• Average membership of a community

is 50• Highest membership of a community

is over 3000• Visits per months of over 75,000 • Contributions per month over 22,000

Value through saving time

“Using the website saves time. 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, Wigan Metropolitan

Borough Council

http://blog.longnow.org/2007/07/19/the-watch-of-the-long-now/

Innovations “Many of the online groups that we set up on

the site either reflected new projects or were new groups working on a new priority that wasn’t covered under the business unit or structure. So for our change groups for example, it was a place for those new projects and communities to have a home.”

Noel Hatch, Projects and Research Lead, Innovation Unit, Kent County

Council.

Sharing Good Practice / avoiding duplication of work

“I was scanning the website and I happened to come across work by colleagues in Barnet on diversity monitoring, which means you can profile your users to make sure you’re not providing services that aren’t needed.”

Dennis Bartholomew, Senior Policy Manager (equalities),

London Borough of Sutton.

Carbon footprint reduction

“The advantage over physically meeting up with colleagues is that you’re always effectively in a meeting group on the website, so you post in a forum and over the next day or so someone with an interest in that area will respond with advice or point you in the right direction. And this covers the whole of the country, which is a bonus.”

Neil Gage, Change Consultant, London borough of Haringey

Keeping up to date with current thinking

. “It has been very useful in seeing the broad questions out there and to see how people are tackling big issues. Quite often we’re all doing the same bit of work, so it’s valuable to have a place where you can come together and discuss it.”

Stewart Martin, community leadership policy officer, Hertfordshire County Council

Developing Ideas

“There are a lot of projects in Cornwall to do with integrating software and hardware and it’s a great place to put up documents and gather opinion on them. Before this we’d email out attachments, everyone would comment individually and send back their thoughts separately, so someone would have to collate all those comments. Now there is a single place to do that.”

Jason Higgs, systems integrator, ICT department, Caradon District Council

Induction to new roles / staff development

“There was some information from a conference about the whole procurement side that was really useful when chatting to our contract managers. It’s an issue I don’t have much expertise in and it helped build my experience.”

Jessica Linacre, Project Support Officer, equalities, Stevenage Borough Council

Relationship Building

“Using CoPs has definitely increased my contact with other authorities. There has never been an easier resource for finding people who are doing like things in other authorities – it’s simple to do that in your own area or region, but otherwise it was going to Google.”

Steve Maskell, Strategic Information and Records

Officer, Bournemouth

What makes a successful CoP?

clear purpose – what will it be used to do?creating a safe and trusted environmentcommitted core group of active participants being motivatedknowing the needs of participantshaving a clear action plan with activities to

meet needsblending face-to-face and online activities

This can all be achieved by good, active facilitation

www.communities.idea.gov.uk