Redes sociales

Communities of Practice in Public Administration:
the Case of Catalonia’s Government

Dr. Mario Pérez-Montoro
Professor
Department of Information Science
University of Barcelona
Spain
Mailto: perez-montoro@ub.edu

Jesús Martínez
Chief of News Training Program
Center for Legal Studies and Specialist Training
Generalitat de Catalunya
Spain
Mailto: jmm@gencat.cat

Currently,Knowledge Management (KM) is being received very positively by organisations. Nevertheless, there is a particular type of organisation in which there has been less of a general demand for KM: the public organisations. However, in the last three years, a Knowledge Management project, based in communities of practice (CoPs), has been put into practice in the area of the Justice Department in theCatalan government, the Generalitat of Catalunya. The aim of this work is to present a detailed analysis of this project. To achieve this aim, first of all, we are going to introduce the implementation methodology and the results obtained, as well as the success variables involved in this project. This will allow us to offer a guide for implementing CoPs in public administration. Lastly, by way ofconclusion, we will provide a series of conclusions and lessons that can easily be applied to the majority of community of practice projects that are implemented in the Public Administration context.

Key words: Communities of Practice, Knowledge Management, Public Administration, Knowledge Creation and Sharing, Judicial Environments, Collaborative Environments, Knowledge Technologies, InformationManagement.

1. Introduction

A clear evolution has been occurring over the past years in the discipline of knowledge management. There is a growing tendency to make more intensive use of methodology tools that place the emphasis on people and on maximising and increasing their knowledge base (collaborative work and training, and networking), collective intelligence and collaborativeinnovation. All of this with the back-up and support of new technology tools that have come about with what is called the New Internet or Web 2.0 (Genís and Fumero, 2007; Cobo y Pardo, 2007). The end result of the conjunction of these variables is what some authors (Roulleaux, 2007) have already come to define as information management for the new generation.
And within this new organisationalcontext communities of practice (CoPs) have reassumed an active role. CoPs were one of the methodological tools that generated the highest expectations. The organisational benefits they can offer have already been amply defined (Wenger, 1998 y 2002; Parcell and Collison, 2001) – among others those that concerning efficiency with knowledge based in the organisation with greater transparency.Now while we know about the potential benefits they can provide (Juan, 2004), the lack of applied case studies over time within organisations is a matter for concern. Both in the specialised literature as in practice, it is difficult to find this applied experience. And these difficulties become greater again when we switch to the public sector (Juan, 2004). Apart from the few exceptions likeIADE (2002, 2005), who launched several projects – the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IEF) and the Spanish Inland Revenue Service (Agencia Tributaria or Hacienda) –no other applied case study experience has been described within the public sector.
Against this backdrop, in 2005 the Centre of Legal Studies and Specialised Training (CEJFE) launched an initiative to structure various CoPs withinthe Catalan Justice Department. Following the Wenger (1998) early CoP development model consisting in identifying emerging groups among the organisations and subsequent support, over the 2005-2008 period up to 15 CoPs have been set up bringing together more than 2000 professionals. Within these CoPs, evolution has been diverse, as some – two, in fact – have not survived while the remaining...