EN 25 web sessions

Web Sessions (2005 – 2010) Centre for Legal Studies and Specialist Training (Ministry of Justice) and Directorate General of Citizen Attention (Ministry in charge of Presidency)

1st Web Session. ‘Internet in the Ministry of Justice: why’. Alfons Cornella

Organisations with a differential value are the ones that act as a system capable of receiving information, transforming it and offering it in the form of services, and with a management model that gives more with less.

2nd Web Session. ‘Discover the Government of Catalonia's new website’. Marta Continente

In the transition towards the knowledge society, the Administration has to make data communications infrastructures accessible, ensure that information is transparent and act as a catalyst of collective knowledge.

3rd Web Session. ‘Learning in the digital age’. Sergio Vasquez

Communities of practice open up the possibility of participating in a network of people with a common practice, in a relationship of trust and based on the functions offered by ICT (knowledge sharing and interaction between people).

4th Web Session. ‘From the analogue to the digital society: Where are we? What needs to be done?’. Antoni Farrés

Analysis of the situation in Catalonia and how we have to position ourselves in the context of the knowledge economy, which makes up the economic and social environment of the twenty-first century.

5th Web Session. ‘How do CC licences help the Administration make knowledge accessible to society?’. Ignasi Labastida

Creative Commons (CC) licences are a useful tool for providing citizens with the knowledge created by the Administration by offering a flexible system for managing the copyright on all kind of works.

6th Web Session. ‘Internet tools that make people interact in the Administration’. Roc Fages

Technology helps us manage conversations between people to exchange knowledge and good practices using interaction tools on the Internet such as blogs, wikis and other resources.

7th Web Session. ‘In what direction is training in organisations going?’. Javier Martínez Aldanondo

Understanding how we really learn and how technology can help reconsider the journey from onsite learning to virtual learning.

8th Web Session. ‘Can the Administration seduce over the Internet?’. David Boronat

There are public administrations that, by following the strategies of the private sector for gaining customer loyalty, use the Internet intensively to raise awareness, communicate and involve citizens.

9th Web Session. ‘What can the Administration do with the knowledge it produces?’. Mario Pérez-Montoro

Recipes for setting up knowledge management projects through communities of practice and other resources, as in the case of the Ministry of Justice.

10th Web Session. ‘Social networks on the Internet: the added value of our contacts’. Albert Armengol

Networking is the technique that teaches one to construct and maintain professional relationships that entail a benefit for both parties, strategically managing the network of contacts.

11th Web Session. ‘Why do we have to innovate in the Administration?’. Joan Majó

The Administration has to adopt the strategy of innovation to be up to the challenge of modern times, possessing the internal and external knowledge to be competitive and to generate value in its services.

12th Web Session. ‘Can we achieve an Administration 2.0? Collaborative tools and attitudes’. Carlos Guadián

There are already examples and case studies that show how web 2.0 tools and resources offer us possibilities for working collaboratively in the Administration.

13th Web Session. ‘The transformation of online learning through social networking and video’. Gregor Gimmy

The Sclipo case study explains that social networking and video can change the way of learning online and asks what could be done in the Administration.

14th Web Session. ‘Collective intelligence and the web 2.0’. Ricardo Baeza-Yates

The current impact of social networks on the Internet, known as web 2.0, where content is generated by people and intelligence is collective.

15th Web Session. ‘Do people have to have a digital identity? How to construct it’. Juan Freire

It is essential to have a digital identity to make ourselves visible to the rest of society and it needs to be constructed strategically.

16th Web Session. ‘Darwin in the information society: adaptation (and benefits) or extinction’. Ismael Peña-López

Technological and multimedia literacy are elements that aid integration in the new knowledge society model, but to avoid social exclusion we need digital awareness and to create value in society.

17th Web Session. ‘Networking in the Administration: where do we start?’. Genís Roca

Social network projects in the Administration must have clear aims and methodology and have to combine hierarchy and meritocracy in a dual leadership.

18th Web Session. ‘New forms of institutional communication’. Jordi Segarra

The communication of organisations must be based on the generation of information, debate and participation. Messages are no longer addressed to a group but to a person, as technology allows our users to be individually segmented.

19th Web Session. ‘Institutional leadership on the Net’. Antoni Gutiérrez Rubí

In the digital society, traditional communication is not sufficient to have a conversation with the citizen. Change is not technological, it is cultural and entails a new culture of communication and a different organisational model that fosters creative talent.

20th Web Session. ‘Digital skills and learning’. Boris Mir

The mass introduction of technology into classrooms does not ensure the learning of digital skill but creates the conditions to make it possible. Digital skill is the strategic use of skills in five areas: learning, information, communication, digital culture and technology.

Web session 21. Competitive Intelligence in Government Bodies Ramon Maspons Obtaining, analysing, interpreting and disseminating information of strategic value concerning society and our competitors. Competitive intelligence only makes sense in the public sector if the value of the agents taking part in the process is maximised.

Web session 22. Community managers in government. What they should be like. José Antonio Gallego

The community manager has to carry out 5 tasks: listen; ensure that information circulates internally; explain the position of the company or government body; identify leaders inside and outside the organisation and motivate them; find new forms of communication between the business and the community.

Web session 23. From Pau to Pau. Internet for learning and entrepreneurship. Pau Argelaguet, Aleix Pujades, Jordi Collell and Genís Roca

Argelaguet and Pujadas have used the internet to learn and share knowledge. EyeOS is a business model born on the internet. How the internet gives scope for forming relationships, creating and participating.

Web session 24. Open data in Catalonia. José Manuel Alonso

The public sector generates vast amounts of information. Freeing this data means returning it to its rightful owners: the people. We need a strategy for governance, appropriate methodology and the ability to promote open data projects.

Web session 25. Entrepreneurship in government? Dídac Lee

Five lessons to become a successful entrepreneur: “normal” and “habitual” should not be confused with “right”; don’t make excuses!; people aren’t unproductive, they haven’t found the right motivation; whenever we leave the comfort zone, we make a qualitative leap; the only limit is your mind!

1st web session at the CEJFE (Centre for Legal Studies and Specialist Training)

Internet in the Ministry of Justice: why?

Alfons Cornella i Solans, director of Zero Factory SL www.infonomia.com, knowledge economy specialist and consultant for a large number of organisations. CEJFE assembly room, 14 April 2005. 190 participants

The infostructure (contents + services) complements the infrastructure (machinery + tools)

Although we have technological applications to manage information, technology is not in itself the element that determines whether an organisation is competent and stands out in comparison with others. Differential value occurs when we understand the organisation as a system capable of receiving information, transforming it and offering it in the form of services. Well-managed information enables us to give more with less (efficiency and productivity) Alfons Cornella illustrated this with the slides from the Ministry of Justice website and the slide of the ‘With one click’ applications available on the home page of the Ministry's intranet.

Googlization + relevance

Googlization (access to information by means of a search engine) leads us to the danger of infoxication. This is why it is advisable to balance thoroughness in the search for information by compensating it with the criterion of relevance. Attaining this information, however, is not an automatic act: we need to apply method, resources and effort. This criterion inspires the structuring of the intranet.

Always innovate

A new professional culture needs to be rooted within organisations: that of innovation. Even though there will be people and units with greater ability to innovate, we need to ensure that every member of the organisation does their work imbued with this innovative spirit The question is to propose how to improve what one does with the resource of technology and the added value of information.

Managing what the people in the organisation know and experience

The experience of everyone is a source of efficiency that should, in addition, be disseminated to the rest of the organisation. The knowledge management model proposed by Alfons Cornella is:

- Work. Reduce the distance between the employee and the information that they need. He gave the example of the form search engine on the intranet.

- Learn. Connect the person who has the questions with the person who has the answers. He proposed adding information to the directory of people and identifying details on the intranet information about the knowledge in which they are experts.

- Teach. Convey the best practices. He illustrated this with the future community of family mediators in the e-Catalunya project (fostered by the Directorate General of Citizen Attention).

Conclusions

1. Technology x information = information to innovate (an informational organisation is needed). 2. A common and specific objective is needed. 3. There needs to be animators who promote the use of information technologies to improve services. 4. It needs to become part of the day-to-day (innovation and knowledge management). 5. It needs to become part of the process (the organisation has to work this way; it should never be a

voluntary act).

Diffusion Service. Barcelona, April 2005

2nd web session at the CEJFE

The new Gencat and other citizen attention systems

Marta Continente i Gonzalo, director general of Citizen Attention of the Ministry in charge of Presidency.

Assembly room of the Centre for Legal Studies and Specialist Training, 24 November 2005, 4 pm

Introduction

In the transition towards the knowledge society, the Administration has to make data communications infrastructures accessible, ensure that information is transparent and act as a catalyst of collective knowledge.

New scenario in the Internet channel

1. Going from “all services on all channels” to “every service has its ideal channel”.

2. Taking into account the effect of search engines.

3. Relevance of push tools (search engines, newsletters, alerts, RSS news syndication, podcasting, blogs, etc.) to make the web surfer more interested in visiting a website.

Gencat.net 2005

Transformation process:

1. Diagnosis: website analysis, usability, surveys and consultancy.

2. To move towards a new model: interactivity, transparency, web databases, cross-disciplinary structure by topic and service, multimedia, personalisation of information, relational website.

3. Which has been channelled in a number of projects: statistics portal, integration of databases, taxonomies (classification from citizen point of view), search engine (Google limited to Gencat), content manager (Vignette), SAC–Informer Portal and new Gencat.

SAC – Informer Portal

In 2005 there was a migration to a new application and we are working on the integration of the SAC information with the online procedures of the AOC.

Informer Portal: internal consultation for 012 operators and the citizen attention offices (additional information that is not made public).

We need a cultural change so that the Internet channel becomes part of the Ministry's processes (and even the core of citizen attention policies).

e-Catalunya

Social dimension website of the Government of Catalonia complementary to the Gencat.net portal. Citizens will access the public information of the groups that have a portal, but the groups will also have a private area, where they will have a lot of space to store content, as well as open-source software communication tools (messaging, forum, virtual congresses, wiki, social network, etc.). Justice is taking part as a pilot ministry – together with Health – with the family mediation group.

Diffusion Service. Barcelona, December 2005

3rd web session at the CEJFE

Learning in the digital age

Sergio Vasquez, expert in e-learning and knowledge management, lecturer at the European School of Management in Paris, and advisor to the communities of practice of the Ministry of Justice.

CEJFE assembly room, 16 February. 170 participants

E-learning as a new form of learning

E-learning should not be adding a computer to traditional onsite classes. The aim is for education and training to be more effective.

Successes and failures in e-learning

The lecturer commented on different success stories (communities by zone of the la Caixa savings bank, etc.) and on failures (Cisco UNIX courses, la Caixa's Virtaula, courses by a multinational audit firm). E-learning has to avoid technocentrism (referring everything to the technology) and infocentrism (memorisation of content). This is why he prefers to speak of work with help, i.e. when designing a course, the user has to be taken into consideration: talk to them and observe them to find out what they need.

Situated learning and communities of practice

Learning has to be a social phenomenon, situated in time and space, and its source has to be everyday work situations. It should be foreseen that people will scarcely want to share their best ideas or practices, and neither will they want to use other people's ideas in order not to be seen as being incompetent. So that knowledge management is shared, there has to be an environment, the communities of practice, where people are connected by a common and recurrent practice and which develop around what is important to their members The model of the master and the apprentice is the most suitable learning.

Communities of practice in the Ministry of Justice

With this aim, a number of communities of practice have been created in the Ministry of Justice in the field of prison services (teachers, educators, experts, social workers) and youth justice.

Conclusions

1. Sharing positive things and problems, feeling part of the same organisation and being able to communicate with other people are aspects that help motivate the members of a community.

2. This is why we need to be clear on what we want to share, we need to set out the ground rules and we need to work on the areas that the members of the community feel are most important.

3. The benefits of communities of practice affect both their members (learning and problem solving, knowledge sharing, etc.) and the organisation (cost reductions, time savings, incremental innovation, etc.).

4. Communities of practice open up the possibility of networking with a common practice while allowing trust to be built up and links established with experts outside the community in such a way that the social capital of its members increases.

5. Information technologies aid knowledge sharing and participation and interaction in the communities of practice.

6. Innovation occurs when the ideas of the community of practice are implemented. Diffusion Service. Barcelona, February 2006

4th web session at the CEJFE

From the analogue to the digital society: Where are we? What needs to be done?

Antoni Farrés Sabater, Mayor of Sabadell from 1979 to 1999, member of the Circle of Knowledge, speaker on the “Els matins de Catalunya Ràdio” programme, specialist in the use and application of ICT in business initiatives and in society in general.

CEJFE assembly room, 13 June 2006. 90 participants

The industrial society

- Twentieth-century Catalonia was the consequence of its speedy integration into the Industrial Revolution, alongside such important countries as the United Kingdom.

- The industrial society saw the convergence of the steam engine, mechanical engineering and materials science.

- The industrial economy shaped the economic and social setting of a large part of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The knowledge society

- Currently, another convergence is shaping a new economy: that of computer technologies, telecommunications technologies and contents technologies.

- The knowledge economy is shaping the economic and social setting of the twenty-first century. - To this effect, the European Council in Lisbon (23 and 24 March 2000) highlighted the need for the

radical transformation of the European economy.

Current situation

Farrés accompanied the explanation with data and graphs for Spanish and European programmes.

- According to the World Economic Forum report, Spain is in 31st place (it has been dropping places). At the same time, neither is Catalonia well positioned compared with the rest of Spain.

- This is the starting point of his proposal: how to drive Catalonia forwards.

The challenges facing Catalonia in the setting of the knowledge society

1. The education of its citizens, especially the very young. 2. The adaptation of the production elements to the new network organisation models. 3. The integration of Catalonia into world knowledge and innovation networks as a qualified value

generation node. 4. The establishment of policies aimed at preserving quality of life and wellbeing.

Electronic administration

- In this area, Spain and Catalonia are better positioned in Europe. - Priority has been given, however, to procedures that entail money being paid to the Administration (tax

authorities, etc.). - Citizens, workers and companies would compulsorily have to deal with the Administration telematically

(with citizen help points).

Conclusions

1. The philosophy of change towards the knowledge society needs to be explained to the public. 2. A major strategic agreement is needed to promote Catalonia's full incorporation into the knowledge

society, which involves both the political parties and the public and private sectors.

Paraphrasing Torres i Bages, he concluded that "Catalonia will be digital or it will not be". Diffusion Service. Barcelona, June 2006

5th web session at the CEJFE

How do Creative Commons licences help the Administration make knowledge accessible to society?

Ignasi Labastida i Juan, doctor in physics from the University of Barcelona. He is responsible for the impetus and implementation of Creative Commons licences in Catalonia and Spain. The event was presented by Joan Turró, secretary general of the Ministry of Justice, and the introduction was by Marta Continente, secretary for Telecommunications and the Information Society of the Ministry in charge of Presidency.

CEJFE assembly room, 19 October 2006. 120 participants

Introduction

One of the challenges of the new economic era is having knowledge that allows innovation in products and services. Creative Commons (CC) licences become a useful tool in achieving this aim by offering a flexible system for managing the copyright of all kind of works. The question is to authorise some uses of the work instead of prohibiting and restricting them from the start. This changes the classic concept of "all rights reserved" to "some rights reserved".

What are Creative Commons licences?

Creative Commons is a non profit-making American organisation founded in 2001 which began the licence project in late 2002 offering them to anyone not wanting to reserve all the rights to the works but to assign some of them on certain conditions.

The licences are free and the work does not have to be registered in any repository or registry. They are legal texts that allow the author to assign some rights in their work for the uses that they consider appropriate. Copy or reproduction, distribution and public communication are always authorised when the author is recognised in the credits, but there may be limitations on commercial use or the possibility of producing derived works or they may be conditioned by the maintenance of the terms of the original work licence. By combining these conditions, 6 current standard licences are generated.

The iCommons project began in 2003 to adapt the North American licences to the jurisdictions of each country. In that same year, Barcelona University became the Creative Commons affiliated institution in Spain. At present, the licences are adapted to Spanish intellectual property legislation and are available in the various official languages.

Different applications of Creative Commons licences in the Public Administration

The conclusions of the study by British consortium Common Information Environment on the application of CC licences in the public sector show that the diffusion of public resources with these licences is feasible. In fact, there are examples such as the governments of Mexico and Brazil, institutions such as the British Council and the BBC in the United Kingdom, research policies of the US National Institutes of Health, etc.

In Catalonia, we also find projects such as Recercat (Catalan Research Repository), RACO (Open-Access Catalan Journals), Zona Clic (Ministry of Education). We should highlight the proposed application of CC licences to all Government of Catalonia publications adopted by the Publishing Committee on 27 June 2006.

Conclusions

1. We do not need to follow the traditional model of all reserved. 2. Only what is necessary needs to be reserved. 3. We need to provide access to and reuse of information paid by all. 4. Indication should always be given of what is permitted and it should be the least restrictive possible. 5. A real study needs to be conducted into the possibilities of licences and their applicability.

Diffusion Service. Barcelona, October 2006

6th web session at the CEJFE

Internet tools that make people interact in the Administration

Roc Fages, consultant journalist specialising in the Internet. He frequently writes comments on e-administration in the broadest sense in his cyber-diary www.goldmundus.com. The event was presented by Joan Xirau, director of the Centre for Legal Studies and Specialist Training.

CEJFE assembly room, 30 January 2007. 175 participants

Introduction

Technology helps people exchange knowledge and good practices using interaction tools on the Internet such as blogs, wikis and other resources, especially interactive tools of the so-called web 2.0.

Interaction and blogs

Blogs are online personal or group diaries where information is published in the form of articles or posts on a range of subjects. They are displayed in a chronological structure which is usually updated regularly and allow readers visiting the blog to add comments. There are a number of tools for creating blogs: Blogger, e-Catalunya... In addition, the syndication of content using RSS allows notifications to be received when the blogs of interest to us are updated with the use of local applications such as Feedreader or web access applications such as Bloglines (bloglines of Roc Fages).

Blogs have become a participative tool in both the public and the private spheres. Consequently, ministers, mayors and politicians have created their own blogs to comment on measures adopted or to reflect on the day-to-day of a city and to gather the opinions of their readers (blog of the Public Administrations Minister Jordi Sevilla, blog of the Mayor of Mataró Joan Antoni Baron, blog of Administration workers such as that of Alberto Ortiz de Zárate and Iñaki Ortiz).

Some companies use corporate blogs to put their workers in contact and to interact with users or customers (IBM, Microsoft).

Interaction and web 2.0

Web 2.0 incorporates tools that enable online collaborative work quickly, easily and in real time. The e-Catalunya platform is an example of how different professionals can work together with others in the same field, discussing and benefiting from each other's contributions. The platform offers its members such tools as wikis, blogs and storage of all kind of files to interact and share knowledge. Leadership plays a decisive role here.

Civic activism can also be enhanced with interaction using mobile phones: the e-lens project, which is based on a system of labels with chips that allow information to be received by mobile which can be modified on the mobile (pilot trial in Manresa), and Zexe.net, which is an accessible channel in Barcelona where people with physical disabilities take photographs of places that are not accessible and post them on the web.

By way of conclusion

1. Interaction goes beyond the Internet. We now need to look at integrated interaction tools (blogs, wikis, RSS, etc.) and platforms (computer, TV, mobile, PDA).

2. We need to explore and enhance the interactive tools to generate participation. 3. Interaction tools that are useful and easy to use should be used.

Blogs and wikis are ideal tools for the relationship between the Administration and the users. Internally – with its employees – because they favour reflection and cohesion as an organisation. Externally, they enhance the institution's brand by favouring participation in the generation of ideas.

Diffusion Service. Barcelona, January 2007

7th web session at the CEJFE

In what direction is training in organisations going?

Javier Martínez Aldanondo, manager of the Knowledge Management Division at Catenaria is one of the leading experts in e-learning and knowledge management in the Spanish-speaking world. The event was presented by Joan Xirau, director of the Centre for Legal Studies and Specialist Training.

CEJFE assembly room, 21 March 2007. 120 participants

Introduction

We generally do not remember the knowledge imparted in an onsite course; by contrast, we do remember experiences, storytelling and learning from mistakes. To learn, we need to remember: we do not need course or contents, but someone who knows how to teach and who knows how to do what they are teaching. In training, there are 3 revolutions waiting in the wings:

1st revolution: training linked to the organisation's results

Training objectives should be part of the organisation's strategic objectives. Training is given to change behaviour, and for this we need to ascertain what it is that is not working, what the employees do and what the organisation would like them to do, what problems they have, who the experts are, what the main mistakes that they make are, etc. We also need indicators to assess training.

2nd revolution: learning by doing

Practice is necessary to learn: if what we teach cannot be practised, maybe it is not worth teaching it. The mistake is the most important element of learning as we learn from mistakes. The aim of this learning is to store experience that we can reuse in the future.

3rd revolution: learning with technology

E-learning cannot be based solely on flexibility: it must offer things that the onsite world cannot offer. It is people who have intelligence, technology is an instrument. The problem with e-learning is that onsite training has been transferred to the virtual world without any adaptation: we often read on screen what we used to read in a manual, yet the computer is an instrument that allows us to practice, get feedback, network, etc.

Conclusion

There are basically two problems in training:

1. We usually teach things that no one needs, we do not teach what is really necessary, and when we do, it is not at the time that people need it.

2. We need to change the way that we teach as it is condemned to fail. There are three pillars on which learning processes stand:

a. People learn by doing, practising things that interest them. If you don't practise, you don't learn. b. The mistake is the most important element in a learning process. c. Story telling is a vehicle of incalculable worth for conveying knowledge: we learn from others, with

others and teaching others.

Learning (and doing so more quickly than competitors) is the essential skill for surviving in the present system, where change is a constant. Organisations can only last if they help workers adapt to these changes, i.e. learn. Change demands working collaboratively, it demands an intensive use of technologies, it demands innovation and, above all, it demands that we focus on people. Diffusion Service. Barcelona, March 2007

8th web session at the CEJFE

Can the Administration seduce over the Internet?

David Boronat, Internet specialist and founder partner of the Multiplica company, frequently writes comments on persuadability on the Internet at www.persuabilidad.com, a website that explains the importance of persuading to convert users into customers. The event was presented by Joan Xirau, director of the Centre for Legal Studies and Specialist Training (CEJFE).

CEJFE assembly room, 27 March 2007. 130 participants

Introduction

The public administrations have to take into account the evolution of the private sector in the use of strategies to attract the attention of users and try to gain their loyalty as customers. In this sense, they need to use the Internet more intensely to raise awareness, communicate and involve citizens emotionally or show regional values and optimum management.

The private sector on the Internet

Companies have users, with whom they have to establish a dialogue and whom they have to motivate emotionally. Challenges facing companies on the Internet:

- Saying things another way, speaking the same language as their users and explaining things simply and visually.

- Awarding every relevance to e-mail addresses and making intelligent use of e-mail. Multi-channel usage and getting to know the user without asking them for a lot of details (e.g. through cookies) is also important.

- Creating special conditions for customers with whom they want to deal telematically.

Administration on the Internet

Administration on the Internet:

- It has to attract, it has to seduce and it has to foster certain regional values. - As with companies, it has to explain things simply and visually to citizens and users in more everyday

language. And it also has to encourage the citizen to contact it telematically. - It has to sell its programmes and its services online (and so that the citizens use them), but it also has

to be transparent (explain the action of government, its strategic priorities, its objectives and publish its results).

- It has to foster push services and be able to take advantage of success stories (e.g. a high percentage of visitors to the Barcelona City Council website do so to consult the map and it is on this page where anything that needs highlighting can be disseminated).

Conclusion

The persuadability of e-Administration is not a fallacy. There are currently many examples of persuasive Administration on the Internet:

- Chilecompra (Government of Chile): online public purchasing and procurement system. - My eCitizen (Government of Singapore): privatisation of institutional information. - One Cent Now (Toronto): mobilisation of citizens in favour of the region (cyber-activism).

The Administration, therefore, has to be able to use strategies and resources from the business world to approach citizens and other customers with success and establish a relationship of trust that allows their loyalty to be gained.

Diffusion Service. Barcelona, March 2007

9th web session at the CEJFE

What can the Administration do with the knowledge it produces?

Mario Pérez-Montoro, is a doctor in philosophy and education sciences from the University of Barcelona (UB) and senior lecturer in the Faculty of Library and Information Science at the UB. The event was presented by Joan Mauri, secretary general of the Ministry of Justice.

CEJFE assembly room, 5 June 2007. 200 participants

Introduction

In the knowledge economy, knowledge is the principal source of activity of organisations and the value incorporated into goods and services that makes them competitively distinctive and that makes users accept them (requirements for there to be innovation). Organisations are structured around knowledge and see learning as a means of improving and, consequently, adapting to processes of change.

Managing knowledge in organisations

Types of knowledge:

- Tacit (personal and difficult to convey) and explicit (can be verbalised and conveyed). - Individual (tacit + explicit knowledge held by everyone) and corporate (belonging to organisations). - Internal (critical knowledge that enables an organisation to meet its objectives) and external (for dealing

with other organisations and people).

Knowledge management consists of designing a system that incorporates all the knowledge types of the organisation and that transforms it into corporate knowledge to enable the organisation to meet its objectives. Corporate knowledge is affected, however, when staff leave and through obsolescence of knowledge. Classical learning and other forms such as e-learning, collaborative learning, experience, etc. help offset the knowledge lost by these drains.

What price knowledge management and what we can get in exchange

Obstacles: resistance to change and to sharing, lack of time and incentives, need for training in technology and for group work, lack of common organisational culture, intolerance of mistakes, etc.

Personal benefits: solving everyday work problems, improving decision-taking, gaining flexibility, accessing new ways of learning, acquiring professional recognition, etc. Collective benefits: increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of the organisation, reducing the knowledge deficit, avoiding doubling-up of knowledge, fostering investment in training, increasing the commitment to the organisation, creating a knowledge ecology environment (only useful knowledge stays in the organisation).

Recipes for starting up knowledge management: the Ministry of Justice model

- Strategic phases of the project: 1. Identify potential communities. 2. Provide them with the logistics. 3. Assess the contribution to the organisation.

- Community of practice: e-moderators (leaders) + 15 groups that work following the project methodology. 190 people working in it and some 900 linked to it (external groups, etc.).

- Work structure: face-to-face meetings + collaborative work on the e-Catalunya platform. - Setting out problems, proposing standardised solutions and creating products (standard documents,

action protocols, etc.). - Dissemination of the project: intranet [knowledge portal], website, e-moderators blog, digital journal. - Assessment: indicators of activities (number of activities per group and per tool), production (number of

face-to-face session and number of products created) and impact (related to efficiency and experience).

Conclusion

"In questions of culture and knowledge, you only lose what you keep, you only gain what you give." Antonio Machado

Diffusion Service. Barcelona, June 2007

10th web session at the CEJFE

Social networks on the Internet: the added value of our contacts

Albert Armengol is a graduate in medicine and surgery from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), he has an MBA from ESADE and is the founder of eConozco www.econozco.com, the first online contacts network in the Spanish-speaking world. The event was presented by Joan Xirau, director of the Centre for Legal Studies and Specialist Training (CEJFE)

CEJFE assembly room, 16 October 2007. 170 participants

In the face-to-face sphere, networking is the development and dissemination of the good management of the network of personal and professional contacts.

Social networks online

Together with forums, wikis, mail, instant messaging and blogs, social network software is a tool that helps the collaborative construction of the knowledge of an organisation.

It is interesting to observe the contrast in the graphic representation of contacts networks in organisations: the organisational relationships, referring to the hierarchical organisation, and relational ones, which are in effect what we call the social network.

What is networking?

Networking consists of developing and sharing our network of contacts; it is, therefore, a highly appropriate resource for promoting collaborative work projects. There are two types: personal and professional. Within networking we can differentiate between strong links (those contacts with whom we share a similar circle of contacts to our own) and weak links (people that we have just met). Strong links offer a framework of trust while weak links offer diversity and are highly recommendable for strengthening with networking.

What is online networking?

Online networking (social networking software) consists of a network of professional contacts that can be extended with the contacts from our present contacts. This way, we end up weaving a large network of relationships.

Through online networking we can find people that would otherwise have been very difficult to contact. Online networking, then, allows us to be in the right place at the right time.

The online networking concept emerged in around 2002 on open websites. To become part of a social networking website, you first have to enter a good professional profile or CV so that you are accessible to anyone wanting to contact you (passive visibility).

Within online networking networks, there are social and professional networks. In a possible classification of networks from a geographical point of view, we find ones ranging from the more local (such as e-Catalunya http://ecatalunya.gencat.net, with communities promoted by the Government of Catalonia or the Catalan sphere) to others with an international scope, such as the German Xing (which has taken over eConozco and Neurona), which is the leader in Europe, and Linked-In (with the hegemony in the English-speaking world).

Conclusion. "Dig the well before you become thirsty" (Chinese proverb)

Just as we can determine specific uses for the other Internet tools (forum = debate; blog = explicitation of implicit knowledge, conversation; wiki = joint creation of the resulting document), social networking software helps us efficiently manage and extend our network of contacts as a resource that aids the structuring of collective intelligence.

Diffusion Service. Barcelona, October 2007

11th web session at the CEJFE

Why do we have to innovate in the Administration?

Joan Majó Cruzate. A doctor in industrial engineering and director of the Catalan Broadcasting Corporation, he has been linked to the business world and to institutions related with telecommunications, research and science both locally and internationally. The event was presented by Joan Mauri, secretary general of the Ministry of Justice.

CEJFE assembly room, 23 January 2008. 175 participants

What is innovation

In the business world, innovation is understood as the ability to turn knowledge into economic gain. In the non-mercantile world, such as the Public Administration, innovation is the ability to turn knowledge into value to improve services. Innovation is always a tool with which to achieve objectives and not an objective in itself.

Rather than making a better product, innovation is thinking of a new one where people clearly see the use.

The ability to innovate is a general characteristic of an area or country. It is part of a specific culture, it is in people and from them it spreads. For innovation to exist and for its development and implementation, there are four essential elements> networks of education systems and of professionals, business models and public administration policies.

Innovation in the processes of the economy

The aim of companies is to be competitive in order to get results. In business development, there are three phases: competitiveness through costs, through quality and through innovation. Today, western companies can only be competitive through innovation, as other countries are more competitive economically and have the same technological capacity to make quality products.

The European Union has monitored the capacity for innovation of the various states and regions. Based on the definition of 17 indicators, such as the number of science and engineering graduates, the percentage of the population between the ages of 25 and 64 with a tertiary education or on institutional refresher courses, the percentage of the GDP devoted to research and development, etc., a measurement is taken of how European countries are evolving towards innovation. The figures show that in recent years Catalonia has been dropping position in terms of innovation.

How to innovate in the Public Administration?

The Administration finds it hard to accept innovations and overcome inertia. Things are done well, but it is the same things that are still being done. In the public sphere, rather than exchange knowledge, what we need to exchange is experience and to be always aware of improving the public service that is offered. For example, to innovate, we need to offer services that adapt to the new consumption habits of citizens (Internet, mobile telephony, etc.).

Conclusion

Innovation is a change in the system of consumption that is always in response to people's needs. A good example of an innovated and widely accepted product is the mobile phone and the range of associated applications that allow mobile access to all kinds of content and services.

Innovation of the procedure entails an improvement in the quality of the service. We have to be imaginative and anticipate the real needs that people will have in the future to ready our activity in this respect.

Diffusion Service. Barcelona, January 2008

12th web session at the CEJFE

Can we achieve an Administration 2.0? Collaborative tools and attitudes

Carlos Guadián Orta www.k-government.com, specialist consultant in communication and content on the Internet. The event was presented by Joan Xirau, director of the Centre for Legal Studies .

CEJFE assembly room, 16 April 2008. 200 participants

The web 2.0 notion changes the mentality of the user and of the Administration

Internet, and more specifically the web 2.0, provides channels of communication that impact on the way we relate socially, on our learning and on the acquisition of knowledge.

With the web 2.0, the Net is a huge conversation that allows the formation of communities of proximity (of interest) and fosters the merits of everyone. The user goes from being a mere receiver to being the centre, as everything becomes two-way. This is how the global conversation is set up.

In this new context, a collaborative attitude is essential, i.e. an interest in producing and sharing knowledge.

How to integrate the web 2.0 model into the Administration

The Administration has to manage this change well, helping the attitude of directors and managers, training and technical solutions to adapt to it. In short, staff working for the Administration need to acquire confidence in this new collaborative setting so that they can both contribute and acquire professional knowledge.

In this context, the Administration should not be controlling the public but collaborating with it so that citizens add value to the services.

Collaborative tools and resources on the Internet: blogs, RSS, bookmarking and social news filters, social network, wikis, etc.

There are a number of collaborative tools and resources on the Internet that favour change, such as blogs (Wordpress, Blogger), RSS (Bloglines, Google Reader, Thunderbird), bookmarking, such as Del.icio.us), social news filters (Digg, Menéame) and news or posts search engines (Wikio, Blogsearch), social networks (Linkedin, Facebook), wikis, etc.

Web 2.0 experiences in the Administration

There are administrations, such as the Ministry of Justice, that have entered whole-heartedly in the web 2.0. The Compartim (Let's Share) programme is a good example of this.

This and other experiences (such as the e-Catalunya platform, etc.) conceive the service they provide as a platform on which a network of relations between its personnel and with the public is constructed.

Conclusion

The web 2.0 aids the participation of everyone in a free medium. To get the most out of this new environment, it is essential that organisations and people (including administrations and their staff) adopt a collaborative attitude that favours the production and sharing of knowledge. In the sphere of the Administration, there are already valuable experiences. We need to carry on acquiring knowledge and confidence in the use of tools that aid work in this new environment (blogs, RSS, bookmarking, search engines, social news filters, wikis, etc.).

Diffusion Service. Barcelona, April 2008

13th web session at the CEJFE

The transformation of online learning through social networking and video

Gregor Gimmy www.sclipo.com, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Sclipo company. The event was presented by Joan Xirau, director of the Centre for Legal Studies .

CEJFE assembly room, 11 June 2008. 194 participants

Traditional education poses shortcomings in infrastructure such as location, synchrony and lack of interaction. The web 2.0, and specifically social networking technologies and video and webcam technologies, offer new opportunities for improving learning as they enable us to learn from the best wherever they are (delocation), know who and what is the best, reduce the cost of assessment, aid learning of any content no matter how minority it is and save and find relevant audiovisual contents and interactions.

Web 2.0 and social networks

Whereas the web 1.0 basically allowed us to receive information, shop and search, the web 2.0 also enables us to create content (texts, photos, audio, video) without having any knowledge of programming. It also aids the assessment and socialisation of the content so that there is interaction between users.

The common characteristics of the web 2.0 are that users have their own public profile (public space), they can create and share content and they can interact publicly and privately. This interaction favours the promotion of users or of the content that they create.

There are different types of web 2.0 depending on the aims of the users: propose and find content (digg, Technorati), promote themselves (Blogger, Youtube, Flickr, MySpace), nurture friendships (Facebook), learn and teach (Sclipo), professional networking (Xing).

Social network + education = Sclipo: social education

The combination of the social network with the aim of learning and teaching has made Sclipo a pioneering company in social education.

Sclipo is a social network on which anyone can post any number of videos (there are no restrictions) to aid learning of any content, including minority. Assessment of the content is very extensive as the participants assess directly and indirectly (views, forwarding to friends, votes, comments). For this reason, knowing who is the best is easier on Sclipo as it is the users who choose the best contents, which reduces assessment costs.

SclipoLive is a pioneering service allowing synchronous teaching via a webcam and the recording of contents and chats (notes indexed in the class video), as well as saving the audiovisual contents and the relevant interactions to be able to find them afterwards easily. There will shortly be a new version where there will be a teacher for various students, with the possibility of adding texts to complement the video.

Conclusion

The basic use of the Internet is learning. Online learning is a very great opportunity with a great deal of potential to improve education through social networking technologies combined with the audiovisual medium. It also allows tailor-made solutions for companies and administrations to socialise good practices among workers.

Diffusion Service. Barcelona, June 2008

14th web session at the CEJFE

Collective intelligence and the web 2.0

Ricardo Baeza Yates www.dcc.uchile.cl/~rbaeza/spanish.html, director of Yahoo! Research Barcelona and Santiago de Chile. The event was presented by Joan Xirau, director of the Centre for Legal Studies .

CEJFE assembly room, 9 October 2008. 200 participants

The web 2.0 notion. Impact on the present Internet

It is now calculated that there are between 1 and 2.5 million people online and it is predicted that this will rise to 5 million by 2015; Internet traffic has multiplied by 20 in 5 years and there are more than 181 million web servers. The main characteristic of the web 2.0, constituted by social networks or social media, is the fragmentation of the property of the content and the fragmentation of access.

Characteristics of the web 2.0: content generated by people and group intelligence

The principal ingredient of the web 2.0 is the community dynamics: new products blur the distinctions between creators, synthesisers and consumers. Let us look, for example, at the case of Flickr www.flickr.com: it is the users who generate the content, organise it, distribute it and develop new functions from it. The ecosystem of the web 2.0 is made up of blogs; social networks such as MySpace www.myspace.com, Facebook http://ca-es.facebook.com, Friendster www.friendster.com; sharing favourite links http://delicious.com; instant messaging, photo sharing (Flickr) or video sharing www.youtube.com; participation in groups http://es.groups.yahoo.com and people replying to people http://es.answers.yahoo.com. South Korea is the most advanced country in terms of social networks.

Web usage data mining

In 2004, journalist James Surowiecki published the book The Wisdom of Crowds. On the web 2.0, information extraction (data mining) based on the wisdom of crowds improves the user's experience on the basis of data gathered: it is crucial for improving the web search (ranking of search engines), the content and structure of the information (thanks to the anchor text)

Digital communities systems, new emerging science, and the implicit wisdom of people

Digital communities systems are a new way of participating, belonging and sharing: the present web reflects the economy and society in general, it is scientifically young and intellectually diverse. The implicit wisdom of people is seen in the folksonomy (collaborative classification by labels, tagging) and knowledge, and its consequence is the implicit social network, such as the Open Directory Project www.dmoz.org and Wikipedia www.wikipedia.org. In the governmental sphere, digital communities have also been created in a number of countries. The most notable example in Catalonia is the Compartim (Let's Share) knowledge management programme and the collaborative preparation of the programme's annual conference through the social blog http://compartim.socializame.com.

Conclusion

On the web 2.0 the content is generated and shared by the users themselves, and this has a great impact not only on the Internet but also on society, the economy, the advertising world, education, etc. Acts of consumption are implicit acts of production that do not require an incremental effort. It is a question of capturing people's experience, enabling the dynamic assignment of confidence to different people.

Diffusion Service. Barcelona, October 2008

15th web session at the CEJFE

Do people have to have a digital identity? How to construct it

Juan Freire http://juanfreire.net, expert in innovation and strategies in networks and organisations. The event was presented by Jordi Graells, Contents and Innovation coordinator of the Directorate General of Citizen Attention (Ministry in charge of Presidency).

CEJFE assembly room, 18 February 2009. 194 participants

Digital identity

Nowadays, the intensive use of 2.0 tools, and especially of social networking services, make it necessary to have a digital identity to make ourselves visible to the rest of society: we need to control which identity is shown on the Internet; therefore, it is preferable for us to manage it ourselves rather than not being present and rather than other people managing it for us.

Learning and construction of the digital identity

The construction of the digital identity is part of the learning process in the digital culture. We are heading towards a context with a hybrid identity (physical and digital) but we do not have two identities, rather our identity is unique, even though it is difficult sometimes to discriminate the personal sphere from the professional sphere.

Teenagers now only perceive a single identity. A study conducted in 2008 in the United States on the use made by teenagers of digital media concluded that teenagers relate in two types of community: a) local networks of friends, as an extension of physical relationships, through calls, texting, instant messaging, and b) networks of interest, global in scope, where they relate with other people with similar interests, and it is in these networks where they develop creative abilities (writing blogs, posting videos, etc.) and gain visibility and reputation.

Teenagers participate in the network in three different ways: 1) to spend some time (hanging out); 2) to search for information with no specific aim (messing around), and 3) they appropriate the technology and make an autonomous and specialist use of it (geeking out).

There are two ways of understanding the Internet: as a huge rubbish space (games, inexact information, advertising, etc.) or as a space of learning and socialisation. Depending on our learning process, we will be on one side or the other.

In constructing the digital identity, the instruments that we use are not so important as what we use them for. The concept of digital skills has evolved: it has gone from a technological focus (1990s – early 2000s) to a social and participative communicative focus (from 2003).

Conclusion

- There are no rules for constructing and controlling the digital identity; it is an individual learning process. The rules of the game have yet to be defined.

- We need to be careful with the information that we post, which in itself may not mean anything, but data mining can be done and patterns established.

- If we do not have a digital identity created it is easier to supplant it. - Digital identity also affects organisations; therefore, the Administration also has to construct its own

identity and has to know what it wants to convey to the public. The Administration also has to train its workers so that they know how to construct their own identity and for this to reflect on the organisation, and this is especially necessary for institutions that have embarked on social networking and collaborative work projects.

Government of Catalonia. Barcelona, February 2009

16th web session at the CEJFE

Darwin in the information society: adaptation (and benefits) or extinction

Ismael Peña-López http://ictlogy.net, lecturer at the Open University of Catalonia and expert in information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) and digital learning. The event was presented by Marta Continente, director general of Citizen Attention of the Ministry in charge of Presidency.

CEJFE assembly room, 10 June 2009. 163 participants

Towards a knowledge society

The economic paradigm of the industrial society is based on the management of scarce resources and transaction costs, and the world revolves around and is defined by these two parameters. Internet access and the extensive use of ICT is configuring an economy based increasingly more on knowledge, with horizontal organic structures and in which information is abundant, is distributed at practically nil cost, is multi-directional and is accessible to everyone. How should citizens and institutions face these changes?

Adapt or become extinct

Technological literacy and digital skill will not take us away from the risk of social exclusion if we are not capable of being structurally relevant to the system and creating value for society. And this is valid both for companies and citizens and for institutions. If we want to survive, we should not limit ourselves to being mere executors or users of ICT. We have to know how to auto-program ourselves and evolve to adapt to the continuous changes.

Following the evolutionary theory of Darwin, we can say that those who do not adapt to the new environment are condemned to become extinct. Some companies or institutions will disappear overnight, others will slowly fade away, and others will take quite a few years to adapt to the skills and demands of the information society.

In this process of adaptation, we will have to rethink once again how we teach, work and relate, and it is here where institutions play a crucial role. Besides technological and multimedia literacy and a digital presence, governments need to foster appropriate policies that help citizens and companies see the usefulness of entering the information society (pull strategies) so that they share the need to become integrated in this new social and structural model in order not to get left behind. If they see the usefulness, they readily accept changes.

Conclusions

- Today's society is based on knowledge, abundant and at low cost, as compared with the industrial society, based on the scarcity of resources and on transaction costs.

- Technological and multimedia literacy are elements that aid integration in the new knowledge society model, but to avoid social exclusion we need digital awareness and to create value in society.

- Our survival depends on adapting to the changes and being structurally relevant to the system. - Citizens and institutions have to interact closely to rethink and remodel all spheres of everyday life

according to the new needs. - Institutional polices based on pull strategies are key to bringing about a change of attitude.

Government of Catalonia. Barcelona, June 2009

17th web session at the CEJFE

Networking in the Administration: where do we start?

Genís Roca www.genisroca.cat, specialist in strategy and the Internet. The event was presented by Roser Bach, director of the CEJFE, and Marta Continente, director general of Citizen Attention.

CEJFE assembly room, 14 October 2009. 213 participants

In a different format from the previous ones, the session was highly participative. Genís Roca acted as the conductor of the session after the intense debate that occurred, before the web session, on the Internet: in the space enabled on Facebook, in various blogs and also on Twitter. There were over 100 participants and more than 200 contributions. Genís Roca wrote the script for the session based on these contributions and, after analysing and classing them, proposed a reflection on what we understand by Administration 2.0 and began a debate focused on five topics.

The environment

Citizens do not ask for 2.0 projects, what they want is an efficient and streamlined Administration, even though there is also a part of society immersed in 2.0 that seeks to relate directly. Also, the Administration should not wait for society to ask for 2.0 projects, it has to anticipate them.

The invironment (internal organisation of the Administration, according to Genís Roca)

The use and implementation of 2.0 tools is not such a great priority as, for example, the digitalisation of processes, which has to be completed by 2010 in accordance with Law 11/2007. The 2.0 projects also generate a certain fear of criticism and of not being able to answer citizens' requests properly.

The projects

Before setting up a 2.0 project, we need to have clear objectives, observe the environment and determine whether there are similar projects as perhaps they simply have to be adapted or a different focus given to them. Also, projects are in constant evolution and in a permanent beta version.

The leaderships

The 2.0 projects have to combine hierarchy and meritocracy, i.e. they have to have a dual leadership: a hierarchical leader who understands the project and provides the necessary resources and a project leader who animates the network. Directors need to be made to see that networking offers an added value, which is why adequate metrics need to be established.

The legality

The Administration already uses profitable 2.0 tools; it simply has to take care with the information it posts on external platforms as there is content that should not be made public (such as personal data).

Conclusions

To conclude, Genís Roca chose three sentences that exemplified the ingredients needed to push through 2.0 projects in the Administration: - If you want to do a 2.0 project, detect, ally and add. - Leadership, values and methodology are needed. - If you want to foster a 2.0 project in the Administration... you need patience.

Government of Catalonia. Barcelona, October 2009

18th web session at the CEJFE

New forms of institutional communication

Jordi Segarra www.stpolitics.com, consultant in political and institutional communication. The event was presented by Marta Continente, director general of Citizen Attention of the Ministry in charge of Presidency.

CEJFE assembly room, 19 January 2010. 200 participants

Technology is simply a tool

Technology is an instrument at the service of a strategy. Nowadays we have many tools with which to communicate, but before anything else, we need to research: we need to know what we want, how we want it or how it can be done and, based on this, to do it. This is why it is essential to know the target public and the environment.

We need to know what the target is because politics is local, yet also personal. This is done on the basis of what is known as microtargeting: identifying the public we are aiming at through various tools, such as buzz monitoring (tracks the conversations and social trends on forums, social networks, etc); specialist social networks; data mining; offline regional implementation (through local leaders, people capable of influencing and who are naturally trusted).

Cut and paste doesn't work

We do not have to copy successful communication strategies as it is more profitable to adapt what we have learned from others to our context.

Dialogue/conversation instead of monologue

The external and internal communication of organisations must be based on the generation of information, debate and participation.

All politics is personal

Messages are no longer aimed at a group but at a person. Technology affords us the direct audiovisual creation and dissemination of citizens. The multiplication of the media market allows greater personalisation. Through technology, we can segment our public individually. Politics, however, is still not 100% viral, as socially the traditional media still dominate.

The future trends are geolocalisation, specialisation of social media and the transformation of the traditional media.

Without emotion there is no reaction

In politics, emotion always wins out over reason. What makes voters believe something or want change is not new information but new emotions.

From the public sphere to the public spore

Politics has to use the media to communicate with people. There should not just be a programme but emotions, social networks and connection with people.

Conclusions

- What is needed is a reason, a message with a story (storytelling), an emotion, a spark (momentum). - The right language and channel need to be used. - People need to be mobilised: we should not try to convince them, they have to be involved and

motivated.

Government of Catalonia. Barcelona, January 2010

19th web session at the CEJFE

Institutional leadership on the Net

Antoni Gutiérrez-Rubí www.gutierrez-rubi.es, political communication advisor and political consultant. The event was presented by Marta Continente, director general of Citizen Attention of the Ministry in charge of Presidency.

CEJFE assembly room, 9 March 2010. 148 participants

Context

Today's society is in a process of transformation: the changes are social and economic, but also cultural, relational and geopolitical. In this context, the Administration is seen with prejudices and stereotypes in an increasingly more demanding society: the concepts (value-price, employment-work, skills-profession) change and new actors emerge: online citizens, digital activists, e-consumers... who expect quality of service, speedy answers, transparency and the possibility of participation. The Administration should not do marketing but should converse with these new actors.

Institutional leadership on the Net: ideas are power

In this new context of the digital society, traditional communication is not enough to keep up a dialogue with the citizen and satisfy their demands. The sole discourse is no longer possible, as the social networks show. The power relationship has changed, it is no longer hierarchical: digital identity depends on reputation; this is why we need to be on the Net contributing ideas and information of value and committing to co-creation with the service providers and with the citizens.

Power now is agility, speed, creativity and ideas with value. Power is no longer a position but presence, and presence configures the position.

Resources

- Virtual press offices. - New open web spaces, optimised for search engines and with personalisation of content. - Extensive digital repositories and open databases. - Use of 2.0 tools. - Monitoring of the presence of the institution on the Internet and of responses to citizens.

Key ideas: 1.0 communication with 2.0 tools is condemned to fail

Change is not technological, it is cultural and entails a new culture of communication and a different organisational model that fosters creative talent: collaborative creation and collective intelligence.

Conclusions: it is not a case of cosmetics, it is a case of change

- The Administration has to respond transparently to the demands of an increasingly more critical and demanding society.

- The aim of information is not to detect power but to share it to improve and change things. - Innovating is not doing something that you did not do before, but doing a new thing that you need to

learn. - Innovation entails the pleasure of learning, but also of knowing and sharing. This will make us better

professionals and better people and we will be happier.

Government of Catalonia. Barcelona, March 2010

20th web session at the CEJFE

Digital skills and learning

Boris Mir www.xtec.cat/~bmir, secondary school teacher and currently a member of the team behind the EDUCAT1x1 Project. The event was presented by Marta Continente, director general of Citizen Attention.

CEJFE assembly room, 11 May 2010. 124 participants

1. School and learning

In Catalan classrooms there are 1,180,460 students; 62,805 teachers in state schools, and 4,373 schools, between state, direct-grant and private. School has the non-exclusive function of learning, but it also has the non-exclusive function of safekeeping and socialisation, and it appears that these functions will not diminish, but quite the contrary. School is not just a service, it is an institution, which is why user satisfaction is always subordinate to the degree of respect for educational and ethical principles that are the basis of the school institution.

2. Cross-disciplinary skills in the new education system

Both the State Education Act (2006) and Catalan Decrees 142 and 143/2007 include cross-disciplinary and specific skills to the new curricula, one of which is information treatment and digital skill. This skills-based learning represents the integrated and strategic use of different skills in real, contextualised, non-school situations and entails changes in teaching practices that cannot be decreed. In all, it leads us to believe that we are undergoing a transition between different models that will call for more far-reaching changes.

3. Digital skill: learning, information, communication, digital culture and technology

There are diverse visions and trends that speak of digital skill, but many have a common basis, a background music that converges in key dimensions that would comprise learning, information, communication, digital culture and technology.

Digital skill has to combine knowledge, abilities and skills, in conjunction with values and attitudes, in order to achieve objectives effectively and efficiently in digital contexts and with digital tools. Digital skill takes on meaning if it is tackled from the framework of knowledge, and as it forms part of knowledge, it can be learnt and taught.

A digitally skilled person has to be able to generate knowledge, with digital tools and in digital environments, but they also have to know how to treat and assess information, they have to know how to communicate, relate and collaborate, they have to act responsibly, civic-mindedly and securely and, naturally, they also have to know how to use the tools, not so much any specific software but the common baseboard that is behind the tools.

4. Innovation and management of educational change

The 2009 Catalan Education Act proposed changes to the organisation and management of the human and economic resources of schools and envisaged a progressive increase in education expenditure.

Innovations in education have to be scalable in order for them to have an overall impact. Simply improving education infrastructures is not enough, what is needed is decisive change management that involves teachers and helps them move closer to the new digital context. Maybe we have to be modest in the changes to ensure the involvement of everyone.

Conclusions

- Digital skill is the strategic use of skills in five areas: learning, information, communication, digital culture and technology.

- The mass introduction of technology into classrooms does not ensure that digital skill is learned but creates the conditions to make it possible.

- Schools cannot change themselves, they need the help of the whole of society.

- Changes come about by doing them. We cannot wait until we have the perfect conditions to start, we will create the conditions as we steadily change and improve.

Government of Catalonia. Barcelona, May 2010

21st Web session at the Centre for Legal Studies and Specialised Training

Competitive Intelligence in Government Bodies

Ramon Maspons, teacher, researcher and specialist in competitive intelligence. The session was introduced by Marta Continente, Director General of Citizen Attention.

Hall of the Centre for Legal Studies and Specialised Training, 19 October 2010. 186 people attended.

From post-industrial society to the knowledge society

In the knowledge society there is a great accumulation of information and we are finding it increasingly difficult to capture, process and analyse it. Intelligence activities help us to identify our information needs (if it exists and where it can be found). In our country, however, there is no information culture and the necessary resources are not allocated for information to be captured and processed, which is done in other countries around us.

By competitive intelligence we understand obtaining, analysing, interpreting and disseminating information of strategic value concerning society and our competitors.

Competitive intelligence can increase an organisation’s profits in the short term by improving the quality of decisions and can increase them in the long term by providing management with patterns for strategic decision making which can increase customer satisfaction.

Traditionally organisations have focused their efforts on spreading information about the company outwards. However, today, in a complex environment brought about by constant technological change, market globalisation and demassification (the personalisation of products), organisations need to be more open. Suppliers, customers and the whole corporate environment are sources of innovation.

Any organisation has to be able to answer some basic questions about the focus of its intelligence: what information is needed, where it can be found, how it should be communicated, who it is intended for and what resources are allocated to the process. It is also necessary to identify changes which might take place in the environment and give us more room for manoeuvre.

Intelligence activities in government bodies

The public sector needs to apply competitive intelligence effectively. The main difference from the private sector is the absence of profit as a motive. The incentives are concerned more with managing a budget (input) than with measuring results.

We are moving towards open organisations, in which suppliers and customers are a source of innovation and information. There are open organisations that look for solutions directly in their environment: they create virtual communities to obtain answers. Our strategies must be more effective and cost-efficient.

Public organisations also have customers, but their relationship with them is different, as they may have stakeholders in their value chains and competitors (competition for funding, staff, users, influence, prestige, etc.).

Conclusions

- Information needs must be aligned with the organisation’s strategy. - Public organisations are receptors of information entering through different channels and must be able

to develop tools to analyse it, allowing them to provide services as efficiently as possible. - Competitive intelligence only makes sense in the public sector if the value of the agents taking part in

the process is maximised. Government of Catalonia. Barcelona, October 2010

22nd Web session at the Centre for Legal Studies and Specialised Training

Community managers in government? What they should be like.

José Antonio Gallego is the founder and CEO of Aerco. The session was introduced by Ignasi Genovès, Director General of Citizen Assistance and Dissemination, and Roser Bach, Director of the Centre for Legal Studies and Specialised Training.

Hall of the Centre for Legal Studies and Specialised Training, 1 February 2011. 180 people attended (+52 via streaming).

The recession brings about a social transformation

Throughout history there have been recessions which have led to social transformations. At these times society realises that it cannot rely on existing social and economic drivers because they are not sufficiently agile. Today there are 2.0 tools, social networks, which can facilitate the transformation in response to people’s input; it is no longer a matter of changing from one elite group to another. The tools available include Ushahidi, Flood aid, etc. and, in government bodies, BlueServo, which has placed control of the border between the US and Mexico in the hands of the community.

Governments can promote the use of social technologies, as occurs in most Anglo-Saxon countries, or hinder their use by doing nothing or taking action at the wrong time.

The keys to success for social media projects in government

- Training participants and a clear regulatory framework: public servants have to know how they work, how they can participate and how they can add value (e.g. Guide to Usage and Style in Government of Catalonia Social Networks). It is very important to be tolerant regarding well-intentioned mistakes.

- Internal participation: clear inter-departamental communication is needed, calling for involvement and tools accessible to everyone

- Creating value: offering quality information and not just issuing press releases - Meritocracy, reputation: there is more respect for those who become actively involved - Active listening and internal change: it is important to listen to what users say and make changes

accordingly. - Defined strategy: what do we want? how can we measure it? Any project by an organisation must

achieve at least one of these objectives: reducing costs, increasing existing levels of income, or creating new sources of income.

The importance of metrics

The benefits of social media need to be measured: the metrics can be based on activity (the number of visitors, of pages visited, etc.), sales and marketing, customer support, product development (e.g. the number of ideas for new products) or human resources (e.g. time per employee).

Role of the community manager

The community is the objective of community managers. They know they are doing the job properly when they become an awkward character, questioning the habitual way of doing things and obtaining greater recognition from colleagues than that attached to the position. They are consulted about different issues, are not bound by hierarchies or departments, and succeed in putting some of their ideas into practice.

According to Jeremiah Owyang, the community manager’s professional cycle passes through different stages: awakening, ascension, storm of cultural conflict, and career decision point (provide customer support or make the project grow and allow it to be scalable).

The community manager has to carry out 5 tasks:

- Listen, the fundamental task. - Make information circulate internally. - Explain the position of the company or the government body. - Identify leaders inside and outside the organisation and motivate them. - Find new channels of communication between the business and the community. Government of Catalonia. Barcelona, February 2011

Web session 23.

From Pau to Pau: Internet for learning and entrepreneurship.

Genís Roca presents and interviews Pau Argelaguet and Aleix Pujadas, third year secondary school pupils and authors of a blog, and Jordi Collell, Head of Communications for EyeOS.

Hall of the Centre for Legal Studies and Specialised Training, 8 March 2011. 175 people attended.

Internet for personal growth

The founders of EyeOS launched their project when they were 16 or 17 years old (initially, as a web desktop). Secondary school pupils Pau, Aleix and Enric are aged 13 to 14 and what they want to do is offer users programs that help them to solve problems and share their knowledge.

The internet for professional development

Pau Argelaguet and Aleix Pujadas do not propose to start a business with their blog. However, they are interested in including advertising banners to cover the cost of running their server and improving content. They have 150 daily users and the blog is updated every day, with their own knowledge and the results of research. All the programs they offer are free, the images are their own and the material is published under a Creative Commons licence.

EyeOS, for its part, demonstrates that it is feasible to do business with open source programs. The company’s annual turnover is approximately 1 million euros and the business involves 17,000 people in 64 countries. It is divided into 64 departments along cultural, linguistic and geographical lines.

Both the students and Jordi Collell agree that English is the working language on the internet. EyeOS works mainly in English to ensure the global coverage it enjoys.

The internet for work and projects. The case of EyeOS

EyeOS has grown exponentially since it first published code on the internet in 2005: anyone can access it and modify it, solely on condition that they then make it available to everyone else again.

Jordi Collell offers a number of recommendations for moving from a group to a global project: don’t lose sight of reality (don’t expect to acquire a multi-million business overnight), grow in stages (at all times you need to know who you are, where you are and what you know), make sure you have people with the right academic training (it’s not just a matter of programming, although this skill is fundamental; there are many other important qualities).

The most important project for EyeOS at present is the move towards cloud computing.

The injection of venture capital may lead to a change in the company’s DNA.

The internet as a means of relating to and participating in government

The internet is a space which generates feelings of identity and belonging.

Government bodies need to bear in mind that, if they ask for and hope to take advantage of public participation, they need to make both digital and analogue channels available. Students often complain about teachers’ lack of expertise in the area of ICT. Genis Roca argues that we cannot expect a body of over 60,000 individuals to become fully proficient in a few years and that the use of ICT depends less on people’s age than their needs.

Government of Catalonia. Barcelona, March 2011

Web session 24. Open data in Catalonia.

José Manuel Alonso, program manager of the World Wide Web Foundation, Co-director of the eGovernment Group in the W3C Consortium and a member of CTIC. The session was introduced by Ignasi Genovès, Director General of Citizen Assistance and Dissemination.

Hall of the Centre for Legal Studies and Specialised Training, 25 May 2011. 210 people attended.

Changes in the relations between government, the public and business. Before the arrival of open data the information provided for the public by government bodies on their websites was inadequate, the administration often being accused of having tunnel vision. In the Birmingham experiment the public created the website they would have liked their council to have. Everything began to change when the US Library of Congress and Flickr launched an open data pilot project, publishing photographs of the library’s resources on its portal. This led to an unexpected level of response from the public, which enabled them to improve their service.

The importance of information in the public sector The public sector generates vast amounts of information. Freeing this data means returning it to its rightful owners: the people. Moreover, the best way to reuse the information always occurs to someone from outside. The reuse of data by the public and by companies is totally justified, as it is a source of innovation that can generate economic and social wealth.

Examples of initiatives and applications with open data from all parts of the world There are many and they vary widely. They are to be found mainly in Europe and North America. They include: applications for mobile phones in Paris and Barcelona, giving information about underground railway services; in Madrid an information service about levels of atmospheric pollution, which presents the data graphically; in the San Francisco Bay area a public transport route application, and also in the US an interactive application which shows public spending on technology. The two most advanced countries in open data are the US and the UK, which were pioneers in the field.

How to develop and implement a successful open data strategy seeking technological excellence We need a strategy for governance (internal and external), for methodology (to identify relevant data, publish it and use it) and for promoting projects. Tim Berners-Lee established 5 levels of technological excellence for open data. The lowest level (1) consists simply of putting material on the web; the highest level (5) contains structured data, non-proprietary formats, URLs which identify data, and links between data and other data elsewhere (mashups). the first level is much cheaper to achieve but the highest gives a much better medium- and long-term return on investment (ROI) by optimising the reuse of data.

Open data in Catalonia. Background, the current situation and outlook for the future

In Catalonia the culture of open data which can be reused goes back some way. In June 2007, the Ministry of Justice published the first book with a Creative Commons licence. The Gencat open data portal contains many examples of open data. The reuse of data by the private sector has led to the successful development of a number of applications, such as a mobile phone application for public facilities and another for weather information using Android. Gencat's strategic objectives are business change, encouraging the reuse of data and a new technological model for publication. In terms of the Berners-Lee scale, Gencat is now at level 4 and is working well towards level 5.To achieve this it will be necessary to make good practice standard and ensure that everyone is working in the same direction.

Government of Catalonia. Barcelona, May 2011

25th Web session at the Centre for Legal Studies and Specialised Training

Entrepreneurship in government?

Didac Lee is an entrepreneur, CEO of the Inspirit technology group and a member of the Board of Directors of Barcelona Football Club. The session was introduced by Ignasi Genovès, Director General of Citizen Assistance and Dissemination, and Xavier Hernández, Director of the Centre for Legal Studies and Specialised Training.

Hall of the Centre for Legal Studies and Specialised Training, 19 October 2011. 193 people attended (+74 via streaming).

Entrepreneurial undertakings for innovation in all kinds of organisation

A mistaken reading of Chinese characters has led to a widespread belief that the word "crisis" in Mandarin is composed of the words “danger” and “opportunity”. However, the idea is perfectly valid: at a time when patterns are changing (affecting all kinds of organisation, both private and public), the recession has to be an opportunity to see that innovation (understood as a process of cultural, operational and strategic change) is the most important tool we have at our disposal to turn the situation round. Such changes inevitably involve dangers but an entrepreneur is a person who assumes the risks but pushes ahead with an idea. Indeed, a crisis constitutes the entrepreneur’s natural habitat.

To be a successful entrepreneur

There are five basic rules:

1. “Normal” and “habitual” should not be confused with “right”: find out all about the environment in which you want to work and the people with whom you will be working.

2. Don’t make excuses! Excuses are the greatest enemy of progress. When things don’t work out, don’t look for someone to blame. Look for solutions.

3. People aren’t unproductive, they haven’t found the right motivation. Knowing how to motivate people is a key skill for an entrepreneur and motivation need not be exclusively financial. Sometimes enthusiasm makes up for shortcomings.

4. Whenever we leave the comfort zone we make a qualitative leap. We have to dare to go further and make the leap.

5. The only limit is your mind! Remember that the limits to what we are capable of are those we set ourselves.

The basic conditions for innovation to take place are finding good ideas, finding people who are able to handle these ideas and respecting them as they are: geniuses have the ability to make exceptional things happen. Working in small teams facilitates the process.

Entrepreneurship in government

Entrepreneurship and innovation are difficult in government and in business because they involve managing change. Moreover, government bodies have certain special features which sometimes make innovation slower and more complicated. For example, it is common to find people who are settled in the comfort zone and for the hierarchical structure to hinder innovation because of inertia dating back many years. People often leave the comfort zone when the situation is very negative and, although leaving the comfort zone is unsettling and may even be painful, it always leads to a qualitative leap.

Sometimes it is better to apologise than to ask permission and it is very important to know how to present ideas to your superiors in terms of value, performance and the return for the organisation and for the public.

It must be remembered that the government works for the public and it is under an obligation to use its resources to offer better services. Government of Catalonia. Barcelona, October 2011