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Thursday, December 18, 2008

How do you introduce a web2.0 way of working in your organisation?


Guess who these two gentlemen are? They are two of the 'civil servants2.0' or rather the initiators of such a project within the ministry of agriculture in the Netherlands. I interviewed them and posted it in my Dutch blog, but since their lessons about introducing web2.0 in a (civil service) organisation are very relevant I'm going to cross-blog it.

The initiative started with a small (roughly 10) group of people from different departments, but it started from the information policy side. They wanted to create room to discuss the implication of an open, web2.0 way of working as a strategic change for the ministry. They started with the joint drafting of a plan: in a wiki because they wanted to walk the web2.0 talk. In the meantime, they worked on influencing the various management layers. Almost two years later, Davied was appointed full-time project leader of 'civil servant2.0'. They formulated 4 critical success factors looking back at the process so far:


  1. The small but growing network they created was crucial. It created its own dynamics and energy.

  2. Creation of support throughout the layers of the organisation by means of informal contacts rather than using the formal decision-making ways.

  3. Recruting and working with people with enthusiasm and energy. Not investing time in people who are not interested at all. (but remain aware of those people at all times)

  4. Collaboration and interaction with other organisations (the 'outside') has had a positive influence on putting web2.0 high on the agenda.

Interestingly enough, this could read like advice for any change trajectory... I'd be happy to explore more in-depth how you can design the introduction trajectory as a change process.. What's special about this process as compared to other change processes?

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