Canadian Government Launches Internal Wiki

As reported on the front page of today's Ottawa Citizen, the federal government has launched its own internal version of Wikipedia to which all federal public servants will be able to contribute:

"At the annual Government in Technology (GTEC) conference, taking place at the Westin Hotel in downtown Ottawa, federal officials took the wraps off the government's internal version of the popular online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, which it calls GCpedia."

"The service will allow federal employees to post, comment and edit articles placed on GCpedia by their peers (...) "

"For example, information about climate change policies could be posted and commented on by scientists and bureaucrats from National Resources Canada (NRCan), Environment Canada and Industry Canada. The concept may help break down walls between government departments that have traditionally been stingy when it comes to sharing information."

The pioneers in the federal government on Web 2.0 initiatives have been the people at Natural Resources Canada. The October 2008 issue of NetworkedGovernment, a publication for Canadian government executives, describes how NRCan has approached the implementation of Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis, blogs, etc.

Earlier Library Boy posts about Web 2.0 in the Canadian government include:

• Federal Library Community Forms Web 2.0 Interest Group (May 3, 2008): "We are proposing (...) to identify & publish a list of key resources on Web 2.0 specifically for federal libraries; to identify topics of interest in Web 2.0 for discussion, for example, wikis, RSS, collaborative technologies, open source, etc.; to identify departments engaged in Web 2.0 projects and to show the results to the community this fall."
• Government of Canada: The Web 2.0 Genie Is Finally Out of the Bottle (June 6, 2008): "A contribution today on the FLC/CBF listserv (Federal libraries community/Collectivité des bibliothèques) pointed to examples of implementation of social networking on government Web sites: ... 'A comprehensive system for online collaboration and social networking projects by government departments is in the works. The project involves systems that can provide social networking capabilities for around 250,000 people and will cover 58 government departments. Key technology for this initiative is being provided by Waterloo, Ont.-based OpenText...' ".
• Federal Library Web 2.0 Interest Group News (June 23, 2008): "Federal government librarians in Canada recently created a Web 2.0 Interest Group (WIG) to explore ways of incorporating wikis, RSS, collaborative technologies, open source, etc. into their work. he WIG's first meeting took place June 9 here in Ottawa. Here is a summary."
• More News From Federal Library Web 2.0 Interest Group (September 16, 2008): "In the summer, federal government librarians in Canada created a Web 2.0 Interest Group (WIG) to explore ways of incorporating collaborative technologies into their work.The most recent meeting was held yesterday at Library and Archives Canada.It was a great opportunity to see what work has been done on the Web 2.0 front. Here are a few of the projects mentioned at the roundtable that opened the meeting..."