Ways in which the New Zealand government's Shared Workspace can be used as a tool for greater collaboration amongst government agency information centres

Abstract

The development of Shared Workspace for New Zealand State Service agencies presented an opportunity for government agency information centres to make use of the collaborative tool to enhance collaboration with other State Sector information centres. The purpose of this study was to determine what technologies are offered through Shared Workspace, which resources most New Zealand Government information centres (NZGICs) use and how these resources can be organised on Shared Workspace. The literature was studied and a survey conducted amongst New Zealand State Sector information centres. It was found that Shared Workspace supports the Public Sector intranet, intranet sub-sites, team workspaces and discussion lists. Furthermore it was established that NZGICs use a range of resources, accessed from a number of access points. The majority of participants indicated that the categories of resources covered in the survey should be shared on Shared Workspace, nevertheless barriers against such sharing were identified. The main recommendations are that all of the categories covered in the survey are included on Shared Workspace, all resources are listed on one website on Shared Workspace, links to external resources are provided where possible to reduce maintenance, Maori resources are developed as another category, disaster salvage resources are further refined, making NZGICs' online catalogues available to other NZGICs is investigated, and that legal issues around sharing of information are considered.