The IDOX Open Day, December 2011

IDOX Information Services is a division of IDOX, a company that provides  Information Solutions, Information Services, technical support and evidential basis for policy formulation primarily for the public sector, but is also used by private companies.

IDOX usually has an Open Day around December each year in the Glasgow office, a chance for subscribers to their various services to go in, meet people, hear about the latest developments.  This year there were more presentation-type aspects to the afternoon so the below is a quick gab through these.

IDOX Overview

We started with an overview of IDOX and Information Services and the impact of the economic environment upon their clients and their own business and the changing information landscape necessitating a need to review their offer and services.  Therefore there is work underway to evolve the existing service e.g. taking account of social media through tweeting and a new blog coming, adding on related produces and  services e.g. becoming an accredited training provider.

First Presentation – value of information services and the evolving IDOX Information Service

The first presentation was on the value of information services generally and how the IDOX Information Service can help their clients deliver their own agendas. It talked through the changes in the information landscape with an emphasis on the use of good information and research to underpin policy formulation which was given funding to make possible.  It was noted that link had disappeared under recent and continuing funding pressures, much less new information and research was being produced and there was a need for intelligent use of what already existed so information was best fit – correct, up-to-date, clear, understandable, accessible, concise.  Information specialists save time and money to organisations by giving quality assessment and assurance to information and using their skills to save staff time elsewhere in the organisation.  Downsizing in organisations has meant a lot of staff have been lost along with their knowledge, skills and expertise, corporate memory is lost, people start to repeat themselves and spending money on it without realising.

In response to all these pressures IDOX would still give a full library service, but it was also branching out increasingly to give information on funding and grants, produce CPD accredited training, produce products that could be sold independently to the market e.g. GRANTfinder.

Second Presentation – Use of Communities of Practice in local government

The second presentation was by Mike McLean, Head of Knowledge Management at The Improvement Service.  He was talking about the use of knowledge management, what it brought to his organisation, and how they were utilising Communities of Practice on an IT platform to bring people and expertise together at a time of severe pressure on local government and finance.

The Improvement Service assists local government in Scotland. The local government sector generally is huge in the UK (employing 2.1 million people, 370 councils, providing 700 services in the UK) to improve their practices and services in a collaborative manner.  The speaker talked through why knowledge management is important and how it can be used generally before concentrating on the use of Communities of Practice (CoPs).  He talked us through the use of the CoP platform they had built and noted it had a very slow take-up initially in December 2007 but now had 110,000 people registered on it (of which 10,500 were in Scotland), 2,200 Committees were present on it, it had members from every Council in the UK.

He noted that the actual platform is locked down in design and layout, it cannot be changed by individuals, , no training is given to use it though support is given to people acting as facilitators, anyone with a local authority connection can register to use it, it has a single sign-in, up-dates are linked to email.  It consists of core area’s – forum, events (used for event planning, circulating agendas, documents etc.), new members, library, wikis (for document collaboration etc), blogs (limited to specific people or open to whole platform).

He talked about the key uses of the CoP (and the accompanying benefits too), from team workspaces, to responses to government consultations, to space to host online conferences. 

The online conferences struck me as particularly good, he noted that there was nothing stopping willing international speakers giving talks online, never mind local ones, with bookings and agenda circulated first, materials posted up, and comments taken which the speaker responded to in a timescale afterwards.  Everything available afterwards through the CoP. No direct expenses for the much distributed delegate list geographically, no travel time or expense for anyone, least break in own work achievable, no inconvenience. As he noted it’s even good for carbon footprints and many Councils are no longer authorising travel expenses outside their own boundaries as part of cost control so there needs to be other ways of bringing people together.

His list for a good Community of Practice was:-

Clear purpose on what it is to be used to do.

Creating a safe and trusted environment.

Commited core group of active participants.

Being motivated.

Knowing the needs of participants.

Having a clear action plan with activity to meet needs.

Blending face-to-face and online activity.

Good active facilitation.

He ended with discussing the new Knowledge Hub they had under development.