Public sector blogging
Web 2.0 has been with us for a while now and is pretty much in the mainstream. Even my father has his own blog and flickr site . Not all areas of the public sector are fully up to speed it and it has been one of my frustrations that most social networking and collaborative tools out there fall foul of my organisations IT security thus thwarting my ambition to be a web 2.0 guru. However I think we are reaching a tipping point. There are a number of initiatives running that aim to give public sector workers some experience of web 2.0 and collaborative technology. These include:

The Communities of Practice platform
The Improvement Service and I&DeA have developed a Communities of Practice site to encourage local authority and government staff to explore the potential of collaborative technology. Staff can register and join existing communities of practice in which they can collaborate on document via wiki’s, upload documents, participate and forums and arrange meetings. There are a few hundred Communities of Practice set up ranging from open communities which have hundreds of members and anyone can participate in, to small select groups where membership is restricted.

There are a number of specialists who are setting up virtual communities. Such as

Government Knowledge and Information Management Network (GKIMN) have set up a virtual community for knowledge and information management practitioners in central government and public bodies.

The Government Communication Network (GCN) is a virtual community of professional communicators working in government.

I could go, and probably will later, but I am finally getting the sense that things are moving.