This evening, I attended a great presentation on OPSpedia organized by Toronto Wiki Tuesdays. The presentation covered how a small team of three people built a social media space with blogging, networking and professional networking with almost no budget. Technologically, the team used a combination of MediaWiki (also used for Intellipedia and GCpedia), WordPress and BuddyPress. Socially, approximately 3900 users are registered to OSpedia (i.e. about 6% of the Ontario government’s 65,000 workers). The system, still in pilot status, looks like it has been very successful so far. The implementation was also fairly fast – some discussions started in the fall of 2008 and it was launched by the spring of 2009. The internal case for the project rested on three pillars: to better capture the knowledge of retiring/departing staff, to encourage technologically savvy staff to engage more deeply with the organization and to help staff in different units and ministries work together on problems of common interest.
Going through my notes for the event, I found a few other aspects of the project noteworthy. To address concerns about possible abuse or misuse of the system, the designers implemented a two strikes rule for news (i.e. if a news item – be it a blog post or link to a resource – received two warning/negative votes, it would disappear from public view and by reviewed in greater detail by others). The other general rule adopted for the system was called “accountability through attribution”: you have to sign your name to your contributions so that encourages people to behave well. The wiki aspect of the system currently has approximately three thousand well developed articles.
This was the first time I have attended a Toronto Wiki Tuesday event and I found it a valuable experience. I got to see how an organization has developed these tools and encouraged people to use them. It is also inspiring to see an example of a new system being built and seeing social media tools being used to serve larger goals. The casual atmosphere – good natured heckling is encouraged – also fostered an atmosphere of frank discussion and lively debate that really pulled me into the event and made me smile.
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Hi Bruce:
Thank you for the great write-up. That was one of the best-subscribed Toronto Wiki Tuesday meetings I’ve seen–sorry I didn’t get a chance to say hello!
Cheers,
Connie
I found it really interesting! I just wish I had been able to attend more of these events.
Maybe I’ll see you at the next TWT or Knowledge Workers Toronto event?
I would like to know if you know of any Ontario Government workers who blog on their personal time. Just doing a work assignment at my university? If so can you direct me to some so I can do my research.
What I meant above is that if anyone knows of any Ontario Goverment employees that have their own personal blog. I am conducting research at my university. Can you please forward some info if anyone can help me with my assignment.
Does anyone knows of any Ontario Goverment employees that have their own personal blog. I am conducting research at my university. Can you please forward some info if anyone can help me with my assignment.
I am conducting research at my university. Can you please forward some info if anyone can help me with my assignment. Does anyone knows of any Ontario Goverment employees that have their own personal blog?
Thanks for your interesting question. I don’t know of any Ontario public servants that blog unfortunately. I have seen instances of federal public servants who have blogged. My impression is that public servants rarely blog in Canada but I’m happy to be proven wrong.
Thanks for you reply Bruce. Its not an easy topic to do but I hope someone sees this blog and replys.
thank you again
Carm.
I work in the Ontario Public Service and I’m aware of some senior executives in the OPS who blog. Namely, Ron J. McKerlie, Deputy Minister of Ministry of Government Services, Bob Stark, CEO/Deputy Minister of ServiceOntario.
Miralem,
Thanks for your comment – I’m curious to know more about Canadian public sector bloggers. Are these blogs available to the public or are they internal only?
Bruce,
The blogs I mentioned are internal, but below is an external blog from an exec in Ontario public service:
http://www.csf.gouv.on.ca/blogue/?lang=en