1- The World Is Not Small for Everyone: Inequality in Searching for and access to Knowledge
From a recent article in Management Science it appears that whereas:
- The "small-world" argument in social network theory emphasizes that people are, on average, only a few connections away from the information they seek.
there seems to be empirical support for the argument that:
- such a network structure does not benefit everyone: some (employees) may have longer search paths in locating knowledge in an organization—their world may be large.
It is important for achieving development outcomes that the drivers for societal inequality in the access to knowledge - are neutralised (ref: two mechanisms - periphery status and homophily - jointly operate to aggravate the inefficiency of search for knowledge).
By introducing systematically defined hashtags (as in the #Tag pivot below) one facilitates heterophilous search behaviours that cross social boundaries.
Alongside the hashtags, wikis are defined with a reference page for each tag, and a pivotal page for each series of tags.
When browsing these wikis you will notice the utility of pivotal pages such as for:
Together, the tags, the wikis and additional systematized content commons have this purpose: contribute to make the world of knowledge smaller for all members of society.
Further suggestions in support of the creation of local inclusive knowledge economies are in the Convention on Knowledge Commons.
2- Solid wiki foundations that enable sustainable and equitable value constellations
The systematized content commons consists of these wiki-based components:
- a global agreement: the Convention on Knowledge Commons;
- a methodology: the Collective Regulative Bundle (CRB) methodology
- five dictionaries:
- on interactions (interact)
- on atomic entities (ens)
- on actants (roles that entities fulfill in interactions)
- on constraints
- on indicators
- two atlasses:
- an actor atlas, with actor maps for relevant territories; each actor map has its own administrator
- an initiative atlas, with different kinds of nodes supporting multi-stakeholder initiatives (projects and programmes); each node has its own administrator. Baseline and blueprint nodes can be shared among various initiative nodes.
3- A practice vision for global to local development
Communications in development will be based on a high-quality web-of-open-access-wikis, rather than on content packaged and frozen in brochures, reports, books and other "silo" presentation formats that were created in the printing press age.
The proposed systematized content commons enable the substitution of the "content-silo based communications in programme and project communications" by "web-of-wikis based communications." (a conjecture, the validity of which is being demonstrated).
Development, Sustainability and Growth Reporting
Content commons based reporting on development, sustainability and growth can be conducted at personal, corporate, sectoral, national and international level. This can be done with cross-cutting reporting standards explored in A multi level monitoring and evaluation standard in health care systems: exploring the option (at Scribd).
ICT-reliant Operations in a Global Market Place
Shared classifications are part of content commons. They are an essential enabler of efficient logistics processes. See the work of CEN Workshop on 'Multilingual eCataloguing and eClassification in eBusiness' (WS/eCAT) - ePPS & CC3P projects for more details.
Assessment and Interventions
In clinical settings, for pico and micro level actors and their interactions, the systematized content commons can be used for functional and resource-endowment status assessment, goal setting & action or intervention planning and monitoring, as well as outcome measurement.
Socio-economic Policy
In landscape settings, for meso and macro level actors and their interactions, the systematized content commons can be used for lean monitoring and evaluation, collective goal setting, policy planning, as well as outcome measurement.
Research & Innovation
Indexing of research projects and results by means of content commons (and the included classifications) will facilitate comparability and cumulativity of the research and innovation projects and their results.
4- The Basic Change Cycle
With systematized content commons provided, a change cycle would involve frequent references to the systematized content commons in planning and implementing joint initiatives that follow the Collective Regulative Bundle methodology.
Each initiative will in principle be supported by a baseline, a blueprint and a number of initiative nodes, one per delineated action as explained in yield/Initiative Management. The initiative node should only contain those details of the initiative that cannot be included in any of the dictionaries, nor in the Actor Atlas or the social capital wikis, baseline nodes, blueprint nodes or open web-pages of pre-existing initiatives (once-only principle). Guidelines for the initiative node implementation are in assets for glocal partnering.
CRB-compliant joint initiatives will feed, by creating wikis following the initiative node guidelines, the cumulative growth of the dictionaries and atlas while deploying their contents:
- Atomic entities such as principals, institution objects, entitlements and claims are described in the Entity Dictionary and interact according to patterns that are described in the Interaction Dictionary, yet are compliant to constraints described in Constraint Dictionary .
- Actor Network Theory allows both animate and inanimate actants to participate in interactions. In the Actant Dictionary, the possible roles in interactions of Principals, these are described in the Actor Atlas, are refined, and added to it are other important classes of inanimate actants, especially information actants, or info-actants such as documents, events and services.
- The description of patterns is largely neutral regarding valuations that establish proportions in the interactions, for instance, what is the price of a bread, or what income threshold separates the poor from the non-poor? To support further quantitative and qualitative refinement of the interactions and claims of principals, we must use metrics and measurements. These are introduced in the Indicator Dictionary. The indicators support a range of activities, including the definition of attributes of Institution Objects and Principals, and the specification of quantities in interactions.
5- Collective Portfolio
A Collective Portfolio facilitates a collective decision and action methodology that is harmonized across actors, worksystems and operations theatres. The methodology is called the Collective Regulative Bundle (CRB).
Where multiple actors are engaged in several joint initiatives, each of them has a CRB node that offers status information and content on the initiatives (projects and programmes) in which the actor is involved.
Multiple CRB nodes constitute a repository. This is a location (or set of locations) where systems analysts, systems designers, and system builders keep all of the documentation associated with one or more systems, programmes or projects.
The CRB (Change) Methodology and Collective Portfolio are interdependent as follows:
- the Collective Regulative Bundle defines the different (decision support and transformation) activities, their required inputs and deliverables, and their possible orderings in change initiatives.
- the Collective Portfolio defines the containers (CRB-nodes) and linkages (CRB-rings) of work system descriptive models and related content (externalized knowledge) that is worked with in initiatives, programmes and projects.
As worksystems at different scales coexist, and as large scale systems (and their transformation) affect the effectiveness of included smaller-scale systems (and their transformations and interactions) a Collective Portfolio approach enables the multi-level perspective, and its implications both in programme and project workflow (see project scripts page) and the content-related project work.
The Collective Portfolio comprises CRB-nodes of different kinds that are connected in CRB-rings. CRB-compliant operations enable cross-level, cross-scale and cross-actor alignment of content in support of collective decision and action. This implies important benefits for smallholders with limited access to worksystem re-engineering skills and know-how. The benefits include accelerated problem identification, stronger problem analyses and solution design, and the avoidance of pitfalls. Lower costs of the knowledge work, and less implementation risks are additional benefits in collectives with low-resource endowments.
The cross-scale, cross-level and cross-actor assets requires content interoperability: each actor provides relevant content in a format to which other actors can easily relate. A Convention on Knowledge Commons articulates which are the knowledge commons that can be liberally exchanged and built upon in the nodes. Harmonized CRB nodes provide a means for achieving such interoperability while it also ensures a minimal burden to smallholders. The guiding principle is that the most resourceful stakeholders take the burden of the CRB-compliant packaging of their programme and project content for smallholder ease-of-access and utility.
The section CRB Reference introduces and defines:
- the LIFE CYCLE stages of worksystems or livelihoods,
- the relationship between a worksystem and PORTFOLIO Management,
- the impact of performance alerts on PROJECT Execution,
- and the REFERENCE MODELS that facilitate the knowledge management.
As a stakeholder instantiates a CRB Node for a worksystem or livelihood, the representation of that worksystem or livelihood in the Collective Portfolio is articulated by including it in several CRB-rings. This in its turn will imply that existing externalized knowledge pertaining to the worksystem or habitat becomes actionable for the users of the CRB node.
As soon as all initializations have been performed, and interdependencies established, the CRB Node becomes a Worksystem Dashboard or Livelihood Dashboard.
Outer-scale CRB nodes, typically Language, Country and Sector nodes, offer reference models and related services for inner-scale CRB nodes of communities, experts and (small-scale) organisations.
See Public Domain Day: January 1, 2012 — The (Life Plus) Seventy Year Itch . . . at Duke Law, Center for the Study of the Public Domain.
Jan Goossenaerts
@collaboratewiki