GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION – TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATION SERVICES

Reimagining Communities of Practice

CASE STUDY

Introduction

Growing & Nourishing Federal Communities

As part of the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Technology Transformation Services (TTS), the Centers of Excellence (CoE) initiative accelerates IT modernization at federal agencies by leveraging private sector innovation and government services while centralizing best practices and expertise for holistic transformation.

There are five Communities of Practice (CoPs) within CoE which comprise more than 5,000 government employees who support each other as they learn, share, and adopt innovative approaches and new ways of working within federal organizations. In those collaborative and supportive spaces, members come together across hierarchies and organizational boundaries to share wins and best practices, challenges and questions, opportunities and resources.

General Services Administration centers of excellence seal

CASE STUDY

Workforce Transformation

Challenge

When the five communities first started, they were in various states. Some had been dormant for months while others were just getting started. In order for the communities to engage effectively, and to ensure each was properly prepared, a planning framework needed to be created to facilitate collaboration and coordination between the communities.

Solution

In collaboration with the CoE IA Lead, Longevity personnel worked with TTS and CoE to ‘reimagine’ the CoP program, creating a Shared Services Model (Management, Policy, Membership, Communications, and Event Facilitation) informed by stakeholder user research to enable the agency to better identify program gaps and manager (provider) and member (end-user) needs.

Business Impact

Having the communities operate in a shared services model resulted in more cost-effective, centralized support; streamlined operations; and improved capture of key metrics and measures to calculate ROI. These efforts supported the development of several key programs like community modalities for shaping annual goals and objectives, business cases and budget models to obtain funding for future services and CoP Program Resources (i.e., playbooks, guides, handbooks, toolkits, trackers, manuals, templates, etc.).