A CASE STUDY OF COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE AND ICT TOOLS IN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT ON INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH

摘要

This paper discusses how Formal Workgroups within the framework of Coordination Actions projects funded by the EU Commission within the context of the MEDA and the different Framework Programmes on Scientific and Technological Research (STR) initiatives, have assisted and nurtured the existing and emerging Communities of Practice (CoP) in International Cooperation on STR, Development and Innovation in the Euro-Mediterranean Area. It also illustrates how in some specific cases these CoP are evolving towards Formal Electronic Networks of Practice (NoP) thanks to the application of specialized thematic-oriented Knowledge Management (KM) methodologies, by means of the intensive use of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) instruments, mainly based on the adaptation of open source Content Management Systems (CMS) architectures. Hybrid platforms, specifically based on "mixed" schemes between LAMP (Linux+Apache+MySQL+PHP) and Plone/Zope (Python programming language scripting) architectures and technologies are proposed to achieve these ambitious objectives. A case study of the Euro-Mediterranean Integrated Water Resources Management (EU-MED-IWRM) CoP is presented as an example of an on-going development.