GCTools

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GCTools is a suite of enterprise digital collaboration applications maintained by the Canadian Government. It consists of:

Contents

The GCTools enable interdepartmental sharing of knowledge and information, and helping public servants build and grow communities to work together to meet the needs of Canadians in an open and transparent environment. With a focus on agile development and user-centric design, the GCTools provide channels to navigate ecosystems that connect more than 160,000 federal public servants (representing over 60% of the federal public service), and since 2016, with cross-jurisdictional partners, students, academics, experts and any Canadian citizen by invitation (GCcollab). They help to create relationships, spark experimentation and innovation, and support the sharing of best practices. They have been used to drive and sustain whole-of-government employee engagement activities (e.g., Beyond 2020), a reset of the Government of Canada's policy management framework, peer-to-peer IT support services and many other initiatives. [1] [2] [3] [4]

GCcollab

GCcollab is a newer GCTools platform, designed as an external collaboration and professional networking platform hosted by the Government of Canada. It is accessible to Canadian federal, provincial and territorial public servants, as well as open to academics and students of all Canadian universities and colleges. Other external users can also be invited to use the platform through email invitations.

GCcollab is an open source (powered by Elgg), cloud-based collaboration and professional networking tool designed to better enable public servants in their daily work. For instance, users can create their own profiles, add their work experience information, their interests and skills, and use many features to collaborate and share their knowledge on a wide range of topics.

The tool is also equipped with its own wiki-based collaborative workspace and knowledge sharing platform similar to Wikipedia, GCwiki,

GCcollab is managed by the GCTools Team, which also manages the GCconnex and GCpedia platforms. The team works under the Office of the Chief Information Officer of Canada in the Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada. [5] [6]

Launch

GCcollab was established in September 2016 as a one-year pilot project with the objective of offering a variety of Web 2.0 and social media functions.

Features

GCcollab offers many features that emulate those of external social networking and collaboration sites, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google Docs, Flickr and Reddit.

For instance:

GCconnex

GCconnex is a legacy GCTools platform, designed as the Government of Canada's internal collaboration and professional networking platform. GCconnex enables public servants to connect, collaborate and share information more efficiently. [8]

Users can also use the tool to update their professional profiles with their work experience, interests and skills. [9]

GCconnex is managed by the GCTools Team, which also manages GCpedia and GCcollab. The team works under the Office of the Chief Information Officer of Canada in the Treasury Board Secretariat of Canada. [10]

Launch

GCconnex was established in January, 2009, with the objective of offering a variety of social media functions to federal employees within the Government of Canada. [11]

Features

GCconnex offers many features that emulate those of external social networking and collaboration sites, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google Drive, Flickr, Reddit, and Messenger.

For instance:

GCpedia

GCpedia is a legacy GCTools component, designed as an internal wiki used by the Government of Canada’s employees for collaboration and knowledge sharing. [12] Over 90 thousand federal employees are registered users and the platform holds around 400 thousand articles.

GCpedia has been used as a platform to take, publish, and distribute meeting minutes, to create project status dashboards, to collaboratively author interdepartmental papers, to brainstorm, and to create wiki-based briefing books.

GCpedia is managed by the GCTools Team, which also manages GCconnex and GCcollab. The team works under the Office of the Chief Information Officer of Canada in the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat. [13]

Launch

GCpedia was formally launched as a government-wide pilot, at the annual Government Technology Exhibition and Conference (GTEC) in Ottawa, Canada on October 28, 2008.

Potential uses

This is a list of existing and possible uses on GCpedia:

See also

Related Research Articles

Wiki Type of website that visitors can edit

A wiki is a hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience directly using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project and could be either open to the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base.

Wiki software Collaborative software that runs a wiki

A Wiki software is collaborative software that runs a wiki, which allows users to create and collaboratively edit pages or entries via a web browser. A wiki system is usually a web application that runs on one or more web servers. The content, including previous revisions, is usually stored in either a file system or a database. Wikis are a type of web content management system, and the most commonly supported off-the-shelf software that web hosting facilities offer.

Intranet Network of private resources in an organization

An intranet is a computer network for sharing information, collaboration tools, operational systems, and other computing services within an organization, usually to the exclusion of access by outsiders. The term is used in contrast to public networks, such as the Internet, but uses most of the same technology based on the Internet Protocol Suite.

Collaborative software or groupware is application software designed to help people working on a common task to attain their goals. One of the earliest definitions of groupware is "intentional group processes plus software to support them".

Social software, also known as social apps, include communication and interactive tools often based on the Internet. Communication tools typically handle the capturing, storing and presentation of communication, usually written but increasingly including audio and video as well. Interactive tools handle mediated interactions between a pair or group of users. They focus on establishing and maintaining a connection among users, facilitating the mechanics of conversation and talk. Social software generally refers to software that makes collaborative behaviour, the organisation and moulding of communities, self-expression, social interaction and feedback possible for individuals. Another element of the existing definition of social software is that it allows for the structured mediation of opinion between people, in a centralized or self-regulating manner. The most improved area for social software is that Web 2.0 applications can all promote cooperation between people and the creation of online communities more than ever before.

An intraweb is a web comprising all HTTP nodes on an intranet; synonyms are corporate web, internal web.

Open-source governance is a political philosophy which advocates the application of the philosophies of the open-source and open-content movements to democratic principles to enable any interested citizen to add to the creation of policy, as with a wiki document. Legislation is democratically opened to the general citizenry, employing their collective wisdom to benefit the decision-making process and improve democracy.

Collaborative innovation is a process in which multiple players contribute towards creating new products with customers and suppliers.

An integrated collaboration environment (ICE) is an environment in which a virtual team does its work. Such environments allow companies to realize a number of competitive advantages by using their existing computers and network infrastructure for group and personal collaboration. These fully featured environments combine the best features of web-based conferencing and collaboration, desktop videoconferencing, and instant message into a single easy-to-use, intuitive environment. Recent developments have allowed companies include streaming in real-time and archived modes into their ICE.

Intellipedia online encyclopedia for collaborative data sharing used by the United States Intelligence Community (IC)

Intellipedia is an online system for collaborative data sharing used by the United States Intelligence Community (IC). It was established as a pilot project in late 2005 and formally announced in April 2006. Intellipedia consists of three wikis running on the separate JWICS (Intellipedia-TS), SIPRNet (Intellipedia-S), and DNI-U (Intellipedia-U) networks. The levels of classification allowed for information on the three wikis are Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information, Secret (S), and Sensitive But Unclassified information, respectively. Each of the wikis is used by individuals with appropriate clearances from the 16 agencies of the US intelligence community and other national-security related organizations, including Combatant Commands and other federal departments. The wikis are not open to the public.

HCL Connections is a Web 2.0 enterprise social software application developed originally by IBM and acquired by HCL Technologies in July 2019. Connections is an enterprise-collaboration platform which helps teams work more efficiently. Connections is part of HCL collaboration suite which also includes Notes / Domino, Sametime, Portal and Connections.

Collaborative mapping is the aggregation of Web mapping and user-generated content, from a group of individuals or entities, and can take several distinct forms. With the growth of technology for storing and sharing maps, collaborative maps have become competitors to commercial services, in the case of OpenStreetMap, or components of them, as in Google Map Maker and Yandex.Map editor.

An intranet portal is the gateway that unifies access to enterprise information and applications on an intranet. It is a tool that helps a company manage its data, applications, and information more easily through personalized views. Some portal solutions are able to integrate legacy applications, objects from other portals, and handle thousands of user requests. In a corporate enterprise environment, it is also known as an enterprise portal.

Open Cobalt

Open Cobalt is a free and open-source software platform for constructing, accessing, and sharing virtual worlds both on local area networks or across the Internet, with no need for centralized servers.

DoDTechipedia

DoDTechipedia is a wiki developed by the United States Department of Defense (DoD), to facilitate increased communication and collaboration among DoD scientists, engineers, program managers, acquisition professionals, and operational warfighters. DoDTechipedia is a living knowledge base that reduces duplication of effort, encourages collaboration among program areas, and connects capability providers with technology developers. DoDTechipedia runs on Confluence wiki engine, unlike a number of MediaWiki-based government wikis like Diplopedia and Bureaupedia.

The KARL Project is the open source project name for a web-based application called KARL. KARL is an open source, web-based product for collaboration, organizational intranets and knowledge management. Developed by the Open Society Foundations (OSF), it was first introduced in 2008 and is now used by a broad range of international organizations including OXFAM GB and OSF.

Open-source architecture is an emerging paradigm that advocates new procedures in imagination and formation of virtual and real spaces within a universal infrastructure. Drawing from references as diverse as open-source culture, modular design, avant-garde architectural, science fiction, language theory, and neuro-surgery, it adopts an inclusive approach as per spatial design towards a collaborative use of design and design tools by professionals and ordinary citizen users. The umbrella term citizen-centered design harnesses the notion of open-source architecture, which in itself involves the non-building architecture of computer networks, and goes beyond it to the movement that encompass the building design professions, as a whole.

Digital collaboration is using digital technologies for collaboration. Dramatically different from traditional collaboration, it connects a broader network of participants who can accomplish much more than they would on their own.

Open educational resources in Canada are the various initiatives related to open education, open educational resources (OER), open pedagogies (OEP), open educational practices (OEP), and open scholarship that are established nationally and provincially across Canadian K-12 and higher education sectors, and where Canadian based inititatives extend to international collaborations.

References

  1. [v.fastcdn.co/u/d6d6ac2d/20188561-0-TBSC---EN.pdf "The GCTools | Connecting public servants to the information and people they need to work better"] Check |url= value (help)(PDF).
  2. GCcollab. "Terms : GCcollab". gccollab.ca. Retrieved 2019-06-20.
  3. "What is GCconnex? : GCconnex - Support". gcconnex.gctools-outilsgc.ca. Retrieved 2019-06-20.
  4. "GCTools/GCintranet - wiki". wiki.gccollab.ca. Retrieved 2019-06-20.
  5. GCcollab. "About : GCcollab". gccollab.ca. Retrieved 2019-05-07.
  6. "wiki". wiki.gccollab.ca. Retrieved 2019-06-20.
  7. "FAQ GCcollab".
  8. Oecd (2017-04-25). Fostering innovation in the public sector. Paris. p. 233. ISBN   9789264270862. OCLC   985087066.
  9. "Open Government Portal". open.canada.ca. Retrieved 2019-05-08.
  10. 1 2 GitHub - gctools-outilsgc/gcconnex: A social network based on Elgg., gctools-outilsgc, 2019-04-29, retrieved 2019-05-07
  11. "Feds launch networking site for academics, students and public servants". University Affairs. Retrieved 2019-05-08.
  12. Oecd (2017-04-25). Fostering innovation in the public sector. Paris. p. 233. ISBN   9789264270862. OCLC   985087066.
  13. 1 2 "GCTools/GCpedia - wiki". wiki.gccollab.ca. Retrieved 2019-05-07.