A knowledge management environment for knowledge working communities fostering local development

The paper presents a case study dealing with an e-govemment system specifically designed and implemented for supporting knowledge working metropolitan communities and their internetworking to favour local development, where "local" doesn't have a bureaucratic meaning (city or county) rather it is centred on the notion of basic economic-productive community upon which the virtual community of the net-economy rests. The system provides knowledge-based services such as information on plans, programs and projects dealing with local development and supports several simultaneously working groups. Each group may access a common board, whereas authorized users may access an advertising service for communication and workflow synchronization, an advanced information retrieval service on relevant web documents and best practices, joint authoring of documents, peer reviewing and access to expert assistance. The first experiences indicate that the interface simplicity has been a key factor for the successful acceptance of the system.