e-Catalunya presentation in INCoS (International Conference on Intelligent Networking and Collaborative Systems, organized by Open Catalan University (UOC) Barcelona, november 4-6, 2009

1. -Catalunya
Experience report
Generalitat de Catalunya
Legal notice
This work is subject to a licence Attribution 3.0 of Creative Commons. Reproduction, distribution,
public communication and transformation to generate a derived work is permitted, with no restrictions provided that
the author of the rights (Generalitat de Catalunya) is cited. The full license can be consulted at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode.
-Catalunya

2. Contents
Introduction
e-Catalunya platform overview
Architecture & software
evolution
Experiences with CoP
Other considerations
Conclusions
-Catalunya

3. Introduction
e-Catalunya is an initiative of the Regional
Government of the Generalitat de
Catalunya
– in collaboration with UPC- Barcelona
Tech
2004 Strategic approach to innovate
eGovernment services
-Catalunya

4. Global objectives
boost a severe internal change
management
New citizen-care-centric model of
eGovernment
mobilize all relevant stakeholders
(internal & external)
-Catalunya

5. Opportunities
KM & Communities of Practice (CoP)
“Groups of people who share a concern or a passion for
something they do and do it better as they interact
regularly”
Work and share together the process of
innovating eGovernment services
+ Web 2.0 + social networks
Enable connections among people across
formal structures
-Catalunya

6. E-Catalunya=operational
platform+methodological process
-Catalunya

7. e-Catalunya operational platform
It’s an open source platform
to support different kind of
communities.
-Catalunya

8. E-Catalunya methodology
Communities of Practice (CoP)
Community Managers, responsible for catalyzing each
CoP
Sustained training and competence growth support to
all community managers and members of each CoP
CoP evolution model, each CoP evolves through a sequence
of maturity process
Online interaction, supported by reliable technology
Open dissemination policy
Metrics methodology
Reactive accompanying measures: organizational support,
best practices conferences, leader's visibility
Proactive accompanying measures: advice on strategic
alignment, incentives to participants, involvement of
external experts
-Catalunya

9. Contents
Introduction
e-Catalunya platform overview
Architecture & software
evolution
Experiences with CoP
Other considerations
Conclusions
-Catalunya

10. Platform structure
Each portal may contain a hierarchy of groups/subgroups,
with an unlimited number of levels inside.
Users register to portals and groups within them
Users interact using collaboration tools at portal &
group scope
-Catalunya
Portal Portal Portal
group group group group group group group group group
-Catalunya

11. User roles
Registered users play different roles at different
scopes:
– At portal scope: member / moderator / administrator
– At group scope: member / moderator / administrator
Unregistered users
– guest
Global platform administrator
-Catalunya

12. Privacy
Privacy settings
– portal scope
• public or private (guests allowed or only
portal members)
– group scope
• public (for people with access to the portal)
• private (only for group members)
– collaboration tool scope (different privacy
settings to determine who can read or
contribute).
-Catalunya

13. web 2.0 collaboration tools
blog calendar file repository photoalbum forum
mailroom wiki mailing list
-Catalunya

14. Collaboration tools & user roles
web 2.0 collaboration tools are associated
to groups, portals or members
Tool behavior can be configured based on
roles with a wide range of options.
Middleware
– Enables collaboration tools to behave according to user
roles.
– Full look & feel integration of collaboration tools
– Allows ampliation to new tools
-Catalunya

15. Collaboration tools(I)
Blog
– “diary” alike tool
– typically configured to allow members to post new
articles and comments.
Mailing list
– email based group messaging tool (with archive) that
uses sympa open source package as list manager.
– lists are created and configured to be restricted to group
members.
Calendar
– activity scheduling and announcing.
– Map integration
– They can be configured to allow members to publish new
activities (without moderation), introduce comments to
activities, etc.
-Catalunya

16. Collaboration tools(II)
File repository
– file sharing , uploading and downloading files.
– possibility to add descriptions, keywords and comments to
existing files.
– Supports a very granular permission system for operations on
files and folders.
Photo Album: Image sharing tool
– image sharing , album management, uploading and
downloading images
– possibility to add descriptions, keywords and comments to
existing images.
Forum:
– Popular discussion web tool based on PHPBB. It may be
moderated.
-Catalunya

17. Collaboration tools(III)
Wiki
– Popular collaborative web-content publishing tool.
– It is normally used for collaborative editing
– It supports file attachments, user comments and a record/log
of the different document releases.
Mailroom
– It is a survey engine that allows administrators to set up
different kind of surveys in order to gather information in brief
from portal users or the general public using made-to-measure
questionnaires.
– It may be used for carrying out opinion surveys or reaching a
broadly agreed decision through votes cast by users.
-Catalunya

18. Web 2.0 experience
User driven content classification,
evaluation and recommendation
– Tagging
– “I like it”
– Mail based content recomendation
– Comments
-Catalunya

19. Indexation
Collaboration tools and their contents are indexed
using «Lucene».
Searching:
– simple or advanced
– search results are filtered depending on users' permissions.
The list of new contents or posts is also obtained from the
index.
– special news sections (at home page, initial group page, etc.)
– news alerts via email
– news feed (RSS).
Most common words
-Catalunya

20. Social networking
e-Catalunya is a place to keep
in contact and meet new people
Profile & contacts management
– Users can create and manage their own
profiles.
– Users can manage their contacts, that is
people they know and with whom they have a
special trust relation
Members directory
Social network functionalities
-Catalunya

21. Members Directory
It’s easy to find
people, see who
is online or
examine their
profile
-Catalunya

22. Social network: based on user’s
contacts
I can establish
direct contacts
with other
members and
explore my
social network…
-Catalunya

23. Knowledge network: Based on the
analysis of users activities.
I can find people
similar to me and
get
recommendations of
documents
-Catalunya

24. Administrative tools
-Catalunya

25. Contents
Introduction
e-Catalunya platform overview
Architecture & software
evolution
Experiences with CoP
Other considerations
Conclusions
-Catalunya

26. Architecture
Ad-hoc specific
development under
GPL license
Open source
– PhpBB (forums)
– Mantis (bug tracker)
– Lucene (search engine)
– Sympa (email lists)
– JOSSO (SSO)
– eXo platform (portlet
container)
-Catalunya

27. Technological platform
e-Catalunya is a
shared service
platform
Scalability (to
accommodate CoP
growth)
Security, reliability
(24x7)
It’s running on the
corporate data
centre
-Catalunya

28. Software evolution
Continuous improvement
– Yearly roadmap
– Releases every 4 months to add new functionalities
identified by members of all the CoPs or eCatalunya
management board.
Next steps:
– Usage and integration with other popular social
network platforms
– using SaaS (Software as a Service), cloud computing
and federated authentication.
– Widget technology to export contents.
– …
-Catalunya

29. Contents
Introduction
e-Catalunya platform overview
Architecture & software
evolution
Experiences with CoP
Other considerations
Conclusions
-Catalunya

30. e-Catalunya communities
Professionals from
– the Catalan health system
– supporting start-ups
– assisting the work of collectives dedicated to
prevention of gender-based violence
– supporting innovation projects
– social family workers
– … and other collectives in the Catalan public
administration
Also used by citizens interested in
debates opened by these collectives.
-Catalunya

31. Family mediators
Family mediators: Members are mainly independent
professionals that collaborate with the Justice
administration in family mediation processes (a form of
alternative dispute resolution).
-Catalunya

32. Family mediators
Members use blogs to analyze and discuss news related to
their profession. They also announce activities related to
their work. They use mailing list to distribute weekly
newsletters.
Impact
– knowledge sharing and access improvement
– reduced isolation between professionals.
– It has reduced the need for personal meetings, thus
reducing mobility needs
– Also, less knowledge is lost while professionals retire, as
their knowledge is introduced and thus kept in the
platform.
– Allow all stakeholders to participate in each
mediation process, no matter how far they are.
-Catalunya

33. Prevention of gender-based violence between
the youth
An open portal to everybody interested in this issue.
Using the wiki
tool we are
building in
collaborative way
a resource
directory related
with our work
-Catalunya

34. Barris amb projectes: a community (800 members)
of professionals that share best practices in
the Catalan Integral improvement program for
neighborhoods (urbanism, housing, immigration,
etc).
-Catalunya

35. 61 portals, 1.387 groups or
CoP, 17.906 members (4 Nov
2009)
-Catalunya

36. Contents
Introduction
e-Catalunya platform overview
Architecture & software
evolution
Experiences with CoP
Other considerations
Conclusions
-Catalunya

37. Law compliance
The platform has to comply with the personal data
protection Spanish law.
– Nowadays the e-Catalunya platform is prepared to protect
basic personal information. Security measures:
• firewalls, intrusion detection systems, system update
policies, SSL, application security review, HTML filtering
Users also have to comply with laws governing industrial
and intellectual property.
– whenever a new content is uploaded to the platform they have
to explicitly indicate they hold the rights to do that.
The legal notice must be explicitly accepted by every
new user before becoming member of the platform
Accessibility compliance with WAI AA
-Catalunya

38. Training & users support
Contextual online help
Specific training support for beginners
-Catalunya

39. Contents
Introduction
e-Catalunya platform overview
Architecture & software
evolution
Experiences with CoP
Other considerations
Conclusions
-Catalunya

40. Benefits for CoP
Efficiency: ubiquitous & asynchronous
interaction
Community building: less isolation
Best practices: standarized, documented praxis
Overcome organizational hierarchies
Collaborative learning
Improved civil servant satisfaction and
commitment
-Catalunya

41. e-Catalunya: lessons learned
Leadership and
specific
methodologies
are needed to
be successful:
Role of
administrators and
moderators is
essential
Choose CoP with
real participation
needs
-Catalunya

42. Conclusions
It is an innovative e-governance service that
has been successfully used to encourage CoP of
the Generalitat de Catalunya in order to achieve
an Open Government
– with more effectiveness, efficiency, transparency,
collaboration, participation and co-responsibility.
The platform combines different web 2.0 tools
to satisfy the different needs of every single
community.
Technology is not a barrier but it’s not enough.
-Catalunya

43. -Catalunya
Questions ?
http://ecatalunya.gencat.cat/quecat
Legal notice
This work is subject to a licence Attribution 3.0 of Creative Commons. Reproduction, distribution,
public communication and transformation to generate a derived work is permitted, with no restrictions provided that
the author of the rights is cited (Generalitat de Catalunya). The full license can be consulted at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode.
-Catalunya