Socitm’s Information Age Group (SIAG) has launched a knowledge sharing exchange for public sector IT managers to collaborate on projects.

The GovXchange portal is open to all members of Socitm, the professional association for public sector IT managers, enabling them to create and disseminate new knowledge and information by building communities of interest.

GovXchange will focus on regional and national issues with particular emphasis on transformational government enabled by technology. Its collaborative functionality is based on Kinomi MailSpaces software.

Adrian Hancock, who is managing the project on behalf of Socitm, says the aim is to create an active network of communities to align policy, strategy and practice, supported by the sharing of case studies, success stories and other knowledge.

‘We want to encourage collaboration and get people to talk and work together,’ he said.

‘Rules-based access means that users can choose whether a discussion group is open or has restricted membership.’

Information is indexed and added to a fully searchable and dynamic knowledge base. Once indexed, it can be personalised to create scheduled alerts, newsletters or digests of activity across communities.

Andrew De’Ath, programme manager at North East Connect and a member of the Framework for Multi-Agency Environments partnership (Fame), says GovXchange will launch through Fame.

‘GovXchange could be used for information sharing about identity management and how policy should be developed locally, regionally and nationally,’ he said. ‘People are more comfortable writing views and opinions in a forum complex and we are optimistic it will have wide appeal.’

Another local authority user said: ‘GovXchange is just one of a number of technologies that we are looking at in this area.’

‘We are trying to raise awareness of collaborative technology as project teams must operate across organisational boundaries, but it raises issues such as security, storage space and hosting,’ he said.

What do you think? Email us at: feedback@computing.co.uk