e-Catalunya: An e-Government Service for Virtual Communities of Practice

e-Catalunya is the platform promoted by the Government of Catalonia for virtual communities of practice. Using collaborative tools the participants produce collective knowledge and stimulate change towards a more efficient organization. This site was born from the initiative of the department of the presidency and is the result of the collaboration between the regional Government of Catalonia and the Computing Laboratory of the School of Informatics at UPC BarcelonaTech. The platform is on service, with more than 25.000 registered users sharing information and resources in more than 2.110 groups. This article explains how e-Catalunya can be understood as a service and to what extent this platform can be considered a service system. We will study the creation of value within the system and how customer relationship, distribution mechanisms, service organization and service customization concepts fit into the e-Catalunya environment.