The knowledge sharing programme was developed to turn the above vision into reality by:

• establishing a learning culture through sharing experiences;
• increasing collaborative working across local authorities and partners;
• improving access to relevant expertise and resources.
  

• advising on building and nurturing communities of practice;
• researching users’ information needs;
• advising on facilitating face-to-face and online events;
• advising on methodologies, process, and IT solutions to capture and share good practices;
• establishing a website to share improvement service resources with Scottish local government;
• advising on content management process, including how content should be packaged and displayed on our website to maximize its re-use value;
• promoting the use of knowledge resources in critical business processes such as planning and decision making;
• raising users’ awareness and buy-in to a knowledge sharing and learning culture;
• building knowledge sharing modules/awareness into the development programmes.
  

We also provide direct advice, training and support to colleagues who are promoting and facilitating knowledge sharing across Scottish local government. This includes building a network of knowledge champions and raising awareness of their role and of knowledge sharing in general. We are always on the lookout for partners who are researching and disseminating information on subjects relevant to Scottish local government to make their material available on our website.

Contact Us

For more information about the knowledge sharing programme, please call 01506 775558 or email. This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Further resources

The documents listed below are a selection of useful references and how-to guides with particular emphasis on building communities that help knowledge sharing across local government. These - and more - are available in the document library on this website under the Knowledge Management section.

The following document gives you some ideas about setting up, cultivating and managing an online community of practice.

Setting up a community of practice 33.00 Kb

Community of practice template (49Kb)

The following document is a draft completed version of the template above. This was created by members of the Research community of practice's and may help to give you some ideas on what sort of things you should be thinking about.

Sample completed community of practice (CoP) template 59.00 Kb

This document outlines some issues that you should consider to create an environment that people want to come to in the community of practice space. it is aimed at facilitators and moderators, but is a useful reference for anyone involved in communities of practice as it helps you to see what makes a community active, vibrant and interesting and how you can contribute to this.

Top Tips for Community of Practice Facilitators 22.00 Kb

An overview of the Knowledge Mangement Programme, Feb 2006 (1.36 MB)

A step-by-step guide to building community of practice (104.5 KB)

Overview of Social Computing Tools (39 KB)