1 Collaboration: Communities of Practice Using Wiki Technology OGETA Forum Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta-Augusta Room, 3rd Floor, Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center Brand Niemann, US EPA, Enterprise Architecture Team, and Chair, Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice (SICoP) Best Practices Committee (BPC), Federal CIO Council July 28, 2006

2 Hello to the OGETA Forum The learning network of public and private sector thought leaders focusing on sharing knowledge critical to quality-of-life improving location- enabled business models. –Empowering the Metro Atlanta and Southeastern region since Let’s get ready to Collaborate with Wikis! –Like “Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!”

3 Do You Wiki Wiki? Wiki comes from the Hawaiian word for fast and is “a web site where community members create/edit a web page” that supports quick, collaborative writing and easy hypertext linking. The structure is not pre-determined, but invented and evolved by community in neither a top down or bottom up manner. –No matter, you are going to Wiki today in a CoP way!

4 What’s a CoP? Community of Practice: –The concept of a community of practice (often abbreviated as CoP) refers to the process of social learning that occurs when people who have a common interest in some subject or problem collaborate over an extended period to share ideas, find solutions, and build innovations. –Note: Essentially a group of people like yourselves that want to be effective at getting something useful done now and sustained over time.

5 The Federal Government Supports CoPs and Uses Wikis The President Urges Agencies to Work Together: –“Our success depends on agencies working as a team across traditional boundaries to better serve the American people, focusing on citizens rather than individual agency needs … I thank agencies who have actively engaged in cross-agency teamwork, using E-Government to create more cost-effective and efficient ways to serve citizens, and I urge others to follow their lead.” See background.html

6 The Federal Government Supports CoPs and Uses Wikis “You should be proud of the way that DRM 2.0 turned out and how it has been accepted by the data community. The open, collaborative development process sets it apart, and gives us a high standard for our other efforts across government.” –Richard Burk, Chief Architect, OMB, 12/22/2005.

7 The Federal Government Supports CoPs and Uses Wikis The COLAB CWE is supported by the GSA Office of Intergovernmental Solutions for the purpose of Networking Among Communities of Practice, and is hosted by the CIM3.NET infrastructure. COLAB has been used principally to support the Interagency Collaborative Expedition Workshops. Another member-only CWE called COSINE was used to support development of the Federal Enterprise Architecture's Data Reference Model 2.0. The open COLAB CWE and the member-only, SINE CWE provide limited "incubator" space for open and member-only communities seeking to better understand web-based community collaboration approaches.

8 The Federal Government Supports CoPs and Uses Wikis COLAB Collaborative Work Environment (CWE): –Supported by the GSA Office of Intergovernmental Solutions (Susan Turnbull) for the purpose of Networking Among Communities of Practice, and is hosted by the CIM3.NET infrastructure. See and –Collaboration Expedition Workshop #52, July 18, 2006, Open Collaboration: Networking Wiki Information Technology for Information Sharing and Knowledge Management See bin/wiki.pl?ExpeditionWorkshop/OpenCollaboration_Networki ngWikiInformationTechnology_2006_07_18

9 The Federal Government Supports CoPs and Uses Wikis Metamodel: Precise definitions of constructs and rules needed for abstraction, generalization, and semantic models. Model: Relationships between the data and its metadata. Metadata: Data about the data. Data: Facts or figures from which conclusions can be inferred. Relationships and associations The purpose of this schematic is to show that we need to describe information model relationships and associations in a way that can be accessed and searched. Source: Professor Andreas Tolk, August 16, 2005 Data Reference Model 2.0

10 You May Even Need a CoP of CoPs Before You Are Done Seven Steps to a CoP of CoPs: –1. Learn about CoPs. –2. Get senior management support for a CoP of CoPs. –3. Select CoP leaders. –4. CoP leaders promote, recruit, organize, etc. –5. CoP develops trust through open communication and listening. –6. CoP understands four phases (forming, storming, norming, and performing) –7. Network the CoPs (probably really need a Semantic Wiki).

11 Building a CoP in a Wiki Who is here? Who is missing? –Enter your names in the Wiki as “Wiki Words” Now some of you have your own Wiki Page! –See what we mean by fast! Note: Follow Good Practices for Safeguarding Personally Identifiable Information (PII): –E.g. SSN, home phone number, driver’s license number, home address, IP address associated with a specific computer, etc. –Could use a Secure / Private Wiki (e.g. CIA, etc.) –Now lets start connecting the people and their work and interests using “Wiki Words” and “Purple Numbers” Now the Wiki pages begin to form a network.

12 Building a CoP in a Wiki What do we want to do & who is going to do it? –Mine the “Wiki people – their work and interest database” to plan CoP Activities and produce CoP Results: Example of CoP Activities (conference calls, meetings, workshops, etc): –Conference Call to Discuss Proposed Geospatial Ontology Community of Practice (GSOCoP), July 14, 2006: »See bin/wiki.pl?SICoP/GSOCoPConferenceCall_2006_07_14 Example of CoP Results (white papers, pilots, conferences, etc.): –SOA for E-Government Conference, May 23-24, 2006: »See bin/wiki.pl?SOAforEGovernment_2006_05_2324

13 Hands-on Experience and Discussion of Next Steps Historical Perspective: –The Leading Applications Start with a Blank Slate: WordPerfect (now Word), Lotus (no Excel), Freelance (now PowerPoint),.. –You still have to provide the content and its structure. The Wiki is the same: –A “web site where community members create/edit a web page” that supports quick, collaborative writing and easy hypertext linking. –The structure is not pre-determined, but invented and evolved by community in neither a top down or bottom up manner.

14 Hands-on Experience and Discussion of Next Steps Process: –Just get it into the Wiki page quickly to support (not interfere with) the flow of ideas. –Then add some structure or use (reuse) a template. –Refine the structure and associative links over time. –Work on a taxonomy or ontology to improve content organization and searching. –Extract community-level ontologies from Wiki and Web pages. See Peter Mika, Ontologies are us: A unified model of social networks and semantics. –

15 Hands-on Experience and Discussion of Next Steps Basic FeaturesSemantic Templates Semantic Agents Edit and PrintFormsRead TablesOntologiesWrite TemplatesModelingSelect (Q&A) VisualizationsReport WebDAVApplicationsExecute VNC/ChatOther? Administrative Setup Operational System Categories of Wiki Functionality

16 Contact Information Brand Niemann, U.S. EPA – , Personal Wiki Page: – Web Site / Blog: – Semantic Interoperability CoP Wiki Page: – Collaboration for the Government Sector - Specific Examples: –