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What is it?
e-Catalunya is a platform of virtual communities constructed with free software. ?This space allows that collectives of diverse citizens can communicate, work in teams and manage knowledge distributed by means of various participation tools that are part of web 2.0. The interface of e-Catalunya is available in three languages: Catalan, Spanish and English.
Public communities
Public communities or portals open to everyone can be accessed from the home page.
Private portals
After identifying themselves, users also have access to the private portals at which they are registered members.
Growth
Two new portals a month
During the first six months of 2007, e-Catalunya housed more than 30 social networks, with more than 4,000 registered users and it continues to grow at a sustained pace of two new portals a month.
Diverse themes
The activity of these portals covers themes as diverse as justice, health, education, the knowledge society, the prevention of abusive relationships against women, cultural promotion, creating companies, Catalan activities abroad, university quality or the reform of the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia.
Diverses measures
Some of them are very large and active; others are smaller, as they can be configured to suit needs. For example, the Justice portal started with a single group, destined to professionals in family mediation, and it now has 32 groups in which some 1,700 members participate.
Communities
Each community is organised into groups that can be given the tools that are needed for their activity, and are able to activate the resources they require from each tool. The participation tools available are:
- blog: news
- calendar: guide to activities
- forum: conversation, debate
- file container: documental management
- photo album: image manager
- participative processes: surveys
- wiki: collaborative publication of documents
- mailing list: simultaneous e-mails to all members.
Other functions
Other functions provided by the e-Catalunya platform are a search engine that indexes all the contributions and contents, notification of new things by e-mail, RSS to follow the activity, statistics and help.
Social network
In addition, the portals have a graphic representation of the social network formed by its members. Users can make contacts and get to know new people by increasing their personal network.
Net of knowledge
?Likewise, the net of knowledge allows the user to know people with the same interests.
Use and administration of the space
The use and the administration of all these tools and functionality is simple. However, the success of a virtual community depends to a large extent on the tasks that the administrators and moderators of the space carry out.
The future
The future of e-Catalunya involves:
- improving usability, thanks to the experience acquired by users who have provided suggestions
- the incorporation of graphic solutions that enable the appearance of the communities to be personalised
- the introduction of new versions that add functions and technological improvements
- the packeting, release and distribution of the code.
This last item will benefit the project, with the developments that are carried out in other environments and, in general, will revert on the development of the knowledge society in Catalonia
Interview to Jordi Graells - Diffusion Service. Ministry of Justice.
The Justice Portal
At the Department of Justice we decided that what we wanted was to apply a set of methodological guidelines that would enable us to innovate in the services we were already rendering, but also allow us to promote collective knowledge. To have people contribute what they know to the organisation as a whole.
The blog
The blog we use with a group of e-moderators connects us to the outside world. It allows people to publish posts or articles, or comments on articles published by others.
Example
In the case of the prison social workers work group, a protocol for aliens has been drawn up and a social report on permits. Another example is the group of filing clerks at the Department of Justice, who are drawing up a protocol for access to court documentation.
