UNESCAP published a blog on 15 October 2020 describing our community's experience and discussing whether we are now convinced of the value of communities of practice (spoiler alert: we are – with the right conditions).
The blog tells the story of our journey, how after the UNESCAP Committee on Statistics decided in 2018 to establish communities of practice, we started with researching existing communities and developed our approach. It shows the steps we took and talks about the evaluation of the pilot.
The blog concludes that communities of practice are a cost-effective way to share knowledge and experience. They complement conventional ways of communication and collaboration, such as emails and physical meetings. The communities have also engaged more technical staff, in addition to higher-level management, by focusing on a specific area of expertise. They attract the right staff for the right purpose. They allow involvement of a broader range of minds than would be possible with more costly physical meetings and thus to progress faster.
In our minds, online communities of practice are the future – albeit requiring work and resources to be successful. Online collaboration is most certainly here to stay.
Thank you to all our community members for helping to make this happen!
Please read and share the blog with your networks.
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