Open Text launches virtual online community
Open Text launches virtual online community
Open Text is thinking about setting up an online community for government departments in Australia to discuss important project ideas, but they want to see how the forum takes off in the U.S. first.
The American e-community, launched a few weeks ago, intends to unite government departments via software based on Livelink, to create a forum where they can share ideas and best practices for applying enterprise content management software into the government.
The community already has about 120 members from major U.S. government agencies, the U.S. military and government contractors. Open Text product experts and executives, who specialise in the government sector, also take part in the forum.
William Dennehy, process analyst at Eglin Air Force Base in Valparaiso, Florida said. "Collaborating with peers in an online community provides a powerful new source of information and ideas. Open Text's government forum delivers the complete essence of what a community of practice is supposed to be and offers essential knowledge management tools, such as expert identification."
Members are able to create new special interest groups in their own look and feel too, and invite other people in to share their ideas. In essence, this service creates a space where new ideas can be discussed and developed until an important decision can be made about what is the best step forward to take in order to solve the particular problem.
Charles Lattuca, general manager of Open Text for the Asia Pacific, hopes that Australian governments will soon be able to join the U.S. led forum, so that ideas can be shared across the ocean too. "We would love to see it catch on over here. We not only want government departments to get involved, but we are also looking to spread it out into the reach of corporate organisations too.
"It gives us the chance to offer them a variety of solutions, for areas such as records management, so that their problems can be fixed much more quickly too. In addition, we host 'webinars' inside the system launched in the States, so people can preview these solutions and consider whether they are suitable for their particular issue addressed in the forum."
Members can also take create their own polls, share documents, articles, presentations, URLs, media files and other materials.
In addition, government IT standards and requirements will be available in the forum. It is hoped that this virtual committee live environment will provide access to a wider range of knowledge which would otherwise require people to travel long distances for a meeting.
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