# Presentation: 092438

## From Stovepipes to Wind-chimes: Advancing Agility Through Communities of Practice

**Susan Turnbull, GSA, Senior Program Advisor,  Intergovernmental Solutions Division, Office of Citizen Services and Communications, Co-chair, Emerging Technology Subcommittee and Co-chair, Social Economic and Workforce Implications of IT and IT Development, Subcommittee on Networking and IT R&D**

**Notes:**
The Collaboration Expedition Workshops are a place for individuals and CoPs to explore how to create, as DougEngelbart would say, "Frontier Outposts" to help us to collectively envision possibilities. When our different ways of seeing and being in the world can be attuned, we all experience a longer, clearer horizon for strategic, coordinated action.  

The first workshop, in March 2001 was a simple brown bag lunch. GeorgeBrett shared with SusanTurnbull and several colleagues his perspective about tools to help individuals work in community. As of April, 2004, all-day workshops draw 60-80 people together from multiple perspectives. Participants share a sense of purpose around societal challenges immune to tactics by single groups. The Expedition workshop story is being documented as a technological change process that goes beyond "technology-driven" change. By centering around people and the "whole system" challenges they organize around, IT design and development processes can mature with less risk and greater national yield of breakthrough performance innovations. 

## Building Sustainable Stewardship Practices Across Institutions

- How can multiple Communities of Practice discover and organize around common mission needs to **build shared understanding**?
- How can shared understanding around several select, urgent **cross-boundary scenarios** be accelerated?
- What is the role of **collaborative prototyping** around emerging potentials and cross-boundary challenges?

**Notes:**
c.	New Processes: 
i.	practicing collaborative prototyping with real-world scenario as multiple CoPs/CoIs might do in the future (July 19, August 16 workshops with hands-on exercises)
ii.	open virtual collaboration with open comment process
d.	New Technology role
Lightweight tools that emphasize augmenting the capacities of communities to develop shared understanding around joint mission-related actions
e. New Questions
III.  Building Collaboration Readiness / Discernment Questions: 

1. How can multiple communities work together using relevant scenarios to build stewardship practices that support readiness and realization of a mission-driven, data-sharing network and architecture in light of the Data Reference Model? 
2. How is the emerging maturity of notation systems generally, enabling multiple notation systems to reinforce and map to one another, while contributing to current demands for real-time readiness and visibility of the "whole picture"? 
3. How can the capacities of trust, agility, and accountability be achieved through federated stewardship among communities still building common ground and understanding? 
4. How can Communities of Interest define their identities, roles, and relationships in a manner that reinforces their individual and collective capacities? 

## Communities of Practice in the Frontier Space

- In the Spirit of the Lewis & Clark Expedition, but global and virtual...
- Advancing light, deft governance for frontier challenges
- Similar sense of expansiveness, but expansiveness around purpose
- Frontier Outposts and Collaborative Expeditions:
- 1. Tsunami response by 150 global, self-organizing volunteers using blog, wiki, flickr
- 2. Global Ontology Community – virtual organization
- 3. Influenced governance model for Federal Data Reference Model V2.0.  This success, in turn, has institutionalized formation of communities of practice/ interest with US gov’t. settings.
- 4. On-going – Formation of Communities of Practice to steward emerging technology potentials and build coordinated response capacity.

- In design we either hobble or support people’s natural ability to express forms of expertise...Self-organizing for Information Sharing in the first hours after the Tsunami – blog, wiki, flickr – 150 global volunteers

**  **

## Slide 5

## Slide 6

## Data Reference Model 2.0 – Closed community of CIO representatives, Distributed Collaboration,

- more than 300 documents, eight teams, developed in 180 days

## Wikipedia entry of Data Reference Model

## DRM Public Forum – Open Community

## Five Expedition Workshops and Public Forums on DRM – 585 people

## Building Sustainable Stewardship Practices Across Communities

**Collaborative Expedition Workshops and Collaborative Work Environment  Co-sponsors**:
- 1. GSA's USA Services – Intergovernmental Solutions
- 2. Emerging Technology SC (ETSC), Architecture and Infrastructure Committee (AIC) of the Federal CIO Council – _[http://cio.gov](http://cio.gov/)_
- “Facilitate strategic dialogue among communities of interest.  Through the Expedition Workshops, sponsored by AIC, interested participants experience and learn about new opportunities to adhere to sound architectural principles and implement shared, service-oriented solutions.” from CIOC Strategic Plan
- 3. Subcommittee on Networking and Information Technology R & D (NITRD) and Social, Economic and Workforce Implications of IT and IT Workforce Development (SEW) Coordinating Group, NITRD – http://nitrd.gov
- _[http://www.](http://www.gsa.gov/collaborate)__[gsa](http://www.gsa.gov/collaborate)__[.](http://www.gsa.gov/collaborate)__[gov](http://www.gsa.gov/collaborate)__[/collaborate](http://www.gsa.gov/collaborate)_

## Emerging Technology Subcommittee  - ET SC

**Tuning ET Together - From Stovepipes to Wind Chimes**
**Purpose:** An “incubator” organizing process to accelerate discovery, maturation, and validation of capabilities that leverage Enterprise Architecture principles and priorities.  The key components of charter :
- Greater foresight and discernment as established and emerging technologies compete and converge
- Longer life-cycles through market-based, open standards technologies
- Common understanding of business scenarios to anticipate performance outcomes and mitigate risks.
- Improve strategic foresight and collaboration capacity around strategic IT assets.

**Key FY08 Activities**
- Conduct ET Life-cycle process  http://ET.gov
- Conduct Collaborative Expedition Workshops with GSA and Subcommittee on Networking for IT Research and Development

**      ****ET SC Co-chairs**

| Susan Turnbull | Richard Spivack |
| --- | --- |
| Susan.turnbull@gsa.gov | Richard.Spivack@nist.gov 
 |
| 202-501-6214 | 301-975-5063 |

## Slide 13

## Collaborative Expedition Workshops Purpose: Transcend Insularity

- Organize around **common purpose**, larger than any institution, to appreciate potentials and realities
- Improve **quality of dialogue** and collaborative prototyping at intergovernmental crossroads
- Participants, representing many forms of expertise, return to their settings with a larger perspective of the “**whole**”
- Can be conducted virtually only!

**Notes:**
1.	Mature open forum process in place  - Crossroads for building trusted relationships and alignment among Communities of Practice (CoPs) and other stakeholders in light of shared goals to leverage EA.
a.	New Communities of Practice to network with:
i.	Federal Data Repository Users Group
ii.	Interoperable Manufacturing - NIST 
Grants.gov communities – toward uniform budget and financial reporting for recipients of grants from state and local governments
	GEOINT community
SICoP/ Ontology Taxonomy Coodinating WG
Health IT Ontology Project
b.	Additional Forum Partner: Human Computer Interaction and Information Management Coordinating Group, NITRD – November 8 joint workshop on information integration in light of complex legal and access sensitivities

## Collaborative Expedition Workshops

- Create conducive conditions for** “Breakthrough” Innovations – from “Need to Know” -> “Need to Share” -> “Build to Share”**
- To be **Informed (not Overwhelmed)** by the Combined Complexity of our Multiple Forms of Expertise
**Authoritative Communities of Interest/ Practice** around Common Business Lines
**Agile Framework** for Building Intergovernmental Services
- Emergence of **Open Collaboration, Open Standards, Semantic Technologies**
- “In design, we either** hobble or support people’s natural ability **to express forms of expertise.”  Prof. David D. Woods

**Notes:**
To build common understanding of fundamental concepts needed for communities, representing diverse forms of expertise, to work together to leverage EA toward improved public service delivery at lower cost.

Leverages learning and collaborative prototyping around how emerging data sets, tools and services could be deployed within and across communities. 

Facilitates socializing around emerging institutional components (open collaboration, governance for DRM evolution) and cyber-infrastructure components, currently under development by all the subcommittees of the AIC. 

Creates conducive conditions for co-development of emerging institutional and cyber-infrastructure components in a problem -centered, cross-boundary context with greater potential for re-use and reduced risk (including lock-in, disconnected system costs)

 Creates conducive conditions, through Communities of Practice, for agencies using the Performance Reference Model to identify performance improvement opportunities crossing traditional structures and boundaries. 

## Building Sustainable Stewardship Practices Across Communities

***Key Findings:***
- FY03 - **Agile business components** in innovative settings **not easily discovered** by e-government managers, resulting in lost or delayed opportunities for all parties.
- FY04 - Growing Opportunity to apply **Emerging Technologies** (web services, grid computing, and semantic web) to tune up Innovation Pipeline with better linkages.
** **FY05 -** Collaborative Work Environment** expands effective networking across intergovernmental communities and complements monthly Collaborative Expedition Workshops; validated efficacy with Data Reference Model Working Group
- FY06-07 - **Networking Among Communities of Practice/ Interest** with Communities co-organizing the workshops, provides conducive environment to build shared understanding toward joint action around promising technology potentials

## Going Forward: From Stovepipes to Wind-Chimes

***Value:***
**"Frontier Outpost"** to open up quality conversations, augmented by “light-weight” tools, to leverage collaborative capacity of united, but diverse sectors of society, seeking to discover, frame, and act on national potentials. 66 workshops since March, 2001
- 60-80 participants per workshop
- > 20 Communities of Practice
- FY07: 1.7 millions visits to site/5.62 million file downloads
***FY08 Alignment:***** Networking for Multiplicative Returns **
- Putting it all together - Planning upcoming workshops together
- Building shared understanding of fundamental concepts needed for communities representing diverse forms of expertise, to work together **to leverage toward improved citizen service delivery** at lower cost.

## Recent Workshop Questions

- 1. What are the potentials and realities for Networking among Intergovernmental Communities of Practice and Communities of Interest (CoPs/ _[CoIs](http://colab.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?CoI)_)? What role(s) can these Communities play as Innovation Catalysts in a Global Services Economy?
- 2. How can we establish new “norms” for collaborating together across institutional boundaries?
- 3. What are the national and global scenarios where distributed collaboration will be fundamental to readiness and effective joint action by institutions?

## Workshop Questions

- 4. How can we draw on strategic leadership communities and "best practices" to move toward  more agile cyberinfrastructure that transcends the high costs of insularity and is conducive to innovation?
- 5. What are the opportunities for leveraging greater transparency and openness to achieve mission agility and greater value from existing and future information assets?
- 6. What "light-weight" tools are needed to support emergent governance across intergovernmental communities? How can these tools bootstrap open collaborative development with the agility needed by intergovernmental communities and their individual host institutions?

## Sample Expedition Workshops 2001 - 2002

- Introduction to Online Communities and New Online Conferencing Places
- How can Intergovernmental CoPs Foster Breakthrough Capabilities that Matter Most to the Public?
- How can On-line Communities Help us Advance Citizen-Centric Government and Multi-stakeholder Collaborative Partnerships?
- Multi-channel Delivery of Health Information: How Can We Improve the Flow of Health Information by Structuring it in Two-way, Interactive, XML/based channels (web, phone, and audio ebooks)
- An Innovation Diffusion Commons: How Can Innovators Use Digital Production Technologies to Accelerate Learning Exchange?

## Sample Workshops 2002 2003

- People-Centric Computing: What Happens When Individuals Can Work Across Institutional Boundaries to Address Societal Challenges?
- Multi-lateral Organizing for Public Health Informatics and Preparedness: How do CoPs form the Connected Relationships Needed to Amplify Distributed Intelligence and Sharing in High-Stakes Settings?
- Multiple Taxonomies: How Can Citizens, Business, and Public Servants Traverse the Repositories and Workings of Government?
- Achieving Excellence in Public Space: Architecting Forms with Meaning that Stand the Test of Time: How can Collaborative Discovery and Engagement Tools Broaden How Societies Share and Preserve Meaning Over Time?

## 2004 - Communities began using Collaborative Work Environment (CWE, with wiki)

## CWE Augments People’s Natural Ability for Quality Dialogue  and  Sharing in a New Form: Distributed Collaboration 

**Fluid**
- Augments flow of purposeful conversations
- Sharing is paramount
- Context advances understanding
- Supports quality of dialogue, openness and transparency needed to build trust
- Supports CoP planning and development of events and documents
- Uses only everyday tools: phone and browser
- Open or closed communities
- Community sets the pace

**Solid**
- Past contributions and conversations always available
- Content never lost, wiki changes visible/ accountable by name
- High confidence level in 24/7 availability
- Hosted on high performance infrastructure
- Platform independent
- >20 “best of breed” Open Source components
- Any file format in shared repository
- fine-grained access – “virtual pointer on infinite whiteboard“
- Community in control

## Questions?

- You’re welcome to join us!
- http://www.gsa.gov/collaborate
- Susan Turnbull
- US General Services Administration
- Susan.Turnbull@gsa.gov
- 202-5016214