This initiative  will enable the  collection, creation, collation and dissemination of knowledge from across the public sector and can be freely used by any cross cutting public sector programmes or initiatives who wish to have an online collaborative presence and create a network of communities of practice and interest.

Socitm spaces are built upon a flexible knowledge sharing platform called MailSpaces from Kinomi. Following the current popularity of having an online ‘space’ (cf MySpace) Socitm spaces will enable communities of practice and interest to be created and to communicate with each other and with those who sign up to receive updates from the group. Activity within and across groups is captured, indexed and added to a fully searchable and dynamic knowledge repository. This knowledge repository will also benefit from the combined input from each of our key stakeholders from across government and the private sector.

A 'space' can be a community of practice or interest, a community or personal 'blog' or a wiki for collaborative working. You are not limited to either one or the other of these options as a space can incorporate each of the channels.

A number of the spaces (or communities) are open to non registered users, see links below, whereas others can be seen but not acessed until a user has registered. you can also create a totally private area that can only be seen and accessed by users registered to that particular space.

The exciting developments are around the ability for any individual or organisation to freely create and manage their own community (space), which includes interactive discussion groups, ‘wikki’ style ideas development and searchable knowledge stores.

Once indexed (and 'tagged'), the knowledge is searchable within or across communities and can be personalised to create scheduled alerts, newsletters or digests of activity across communities. One of the simple but innovative features is that of being able to search for people within and across communities who have the same areas of interest as you, have an area of expertise that you require or perhaps have experience in particular areas of work that would be useful for your organisation.

A network of networks?

As people register for communities or suggest and develop communities the infrastructure opens the possibility of a 'network of networks' across local government and beyond. There are a number of areas into which this 'knowledge sharing' platform can be extended and as we develop and communities begin to explore what is available we want to hear your ideas about development opportunities.

What do Socitm spaces offer to users?

• comprehensive online knowledge management and search options covering policy and related technology issues,
• personalised communications via alerts, RSS feeds, activity summaries
• personal interactive engagement through knowledge exchange
• access to expertise across and within organisational networks
• maintenance of Communities of Interest and Practice with multi organisation support