Public sector Wikis

This page is a bit easier to write than Private sector wikis because I've already found a fair bit of stuff on the subject.

There were a few articles a while back that hailed the rise of wiki technology in the public sector.

I've already talked about Wiki or won't he? but I don't think I cited many of the examples he/she(?) mentions:

• DoWire's E-Democracy Best Practices Wiki - describes itself as 'A collaborative drafting environment' . Guy says of it: 'a primary source for important developments concerning the convergence of democracy and the Internet around the world'
• Bristol wireless - Guy says 'is a co-operative set up to develop a free-to-access broadband intranet using radio to communities around Birstol, UK, that find themselves on the wrong side of the digital divide.'
  
• Flu Wiki - 'a national online resource created to help local communities prepare for and perhaps cope with a possible influenza pandemic.' (Guy)
  

Then of course there's the famous, or rather infamous DEFRA Wiki which everyone uses as an example of why you should have some protection from SPAM. (Surely a caveat to this should be 'if you're a massive government department with a lot of people that don't like you!'? Or maybe I'm being naive) The DEFRA Wiki was brought down within a day because of the SPAM and malicious editing that it suffered. It is now available 'for reference purposes - but further editing is not encouraged'.

Another article, Public sector catches wikimania, mentions the e-innovations wiki. It takes only a few seconds to realise that this site is overrun with Viagra SPAM! It was supposed to be 'a "tester"... it may soon be modified and retargeted. The aim was to involve senior staff leading local e-government innovations, but only 20 out of some 200 invited to participate have done so.'

So that's a quick survey of public sector wikis. I'm sure more will appear as I read more.

Private sector Wikis

Certified Twiki claims to be able to 'optimize your business', so I explored their site a little to see who was using it and how. They have some useful quotes from clients which do nicely for my purposes of brief summaries of how some big companies are using Wikis. Here are some examples:

Nokia: 'At Nokia we are always looking for new and improved ways of communicating. In use since 2002, TWiki has developed inside Nokia into a valuable tool for team collaboration, sharing of ideas and promoting innovation.' Harri Lakkala, Social Software Expert at Nokia

Motorola: 'There are many people at Motorola actively using TWiki for ISO 9000 compliancy, reporting, project management and other applications.' Kenneth Lavrsen, Engineering Manager, Motorola

Yahoo: 'We use TWiki internally to manage documentation and project planning for our products. Our development team includes hundreds of people in various locations all over the world, so web collaboration is VERY important to us. TWiki has changed the way we run meetings, plan releases, document our product and generally communicate with each other. We're great fans of your work!' Eric Baldeschwieler, Director of Software Development, Yahoo!

These are prime examples of the use of private wikis within an organisation, used to boost productivity and collaboration.

In August 2005, Ezra Goodnoe reported in his article 'How To Use Wikis For Business' in Information Week that ' Although wikis have been around for a decade, they're just starting to take off in business'. He later asks the question that I hoped he would ask: 'what companies are actually using wikis?'. He answers himself with the following paragraph:

'Nokia has been using Socialtext wiki software for a year and a half to facilitate information exchange within its Insight & Foresight group. Yahoo uses Twiki software to help its development team overcome the problems associated with working from a variety of separate locations. Michelin China also uses Twiki as a knowledge management tool. Jean-Noel Simonnet, from the company's IT department, writes, "Our purpose was to share ALL the information, procedures, setup documents, so that we were less dependent on a particular staff member knowledge, so that nobody in the team has any document left in a personal directory."'

Twiki also has a success stories page which looks in a bit more detail at what some of its clients are using Wiki for. I really don't think I can justify going into the topic too deeply because of my word count, so I won't bother to explore them at the moment, at least I've noted the link.

Other Museum Wikis

At present I just want this to be a place where I can list all the other Museum Wikis, or Wikis related to museums that I come across. If you come across others, please let me know about them in the comments below.

These are the ones listed in Jonathan Bowen's paper for his Wiki Software and Facilities for Museums workshop that he will give at this years Museums and the Web Conference in April:

• The general museums Wiki: http://museums.wikia.com
• The Museum Virtual World Wiki: http://apps.exploratorium.edu/worlds/wiki
• The Newark Museum Wiki: http://www.newarkmuseumpr.org/mwiki/
• The Brooklyn Museum's The Dinner Party Wiki: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/eascfa/dinner_party/about_wiki.php
• The Amersham Museum Wiki: http://amershammuseum.pbwiki.com
• The MN150 Wiki: http://discovery.mnhs.org/MN150
• The Thomas Jefferson Wiki: http://wiki.monticello.org
• Placeography: http://placeography.org

During my 'data capture' month, I hope to be able to explore these a bit, see how they tackle some of the issues that the BPMA Wiki is facing etc.