Edinburgh Napier University

  A Community of Practice was found supporting the digital engagement practitioners in the neighbouring CCs, and that this is situated within a context of interested non-practitioners who share knowledge with practitioners.
However, the Community of Practice is fragile, and knowledge management is conspicuously absent. Knowledge management is also not used other CCs that have fuller suites of digital engagement channels. An action research strand showed that active use of Twitter can increase engagement with citizens, and that collaboration brings unexpected rewards.
This project investigated only one digital initiative set within one small Community of Practice. It is proposed to continue this work by investigating CCs’ digital communication across Scotland – and similar organisations in other context – starting with bringing together CC members involved in digital engagement work from across Scotland, understanding the barriers they face and the solutions they have found, and starting to build relationships that can help share good practices.
This led to digital engagement workshops in January 2015 (funded by Napier's public engagement budget - final report is in the resources section below) and the #digiCC workshops in October-November 2015.