GETTING EXTRA LEVERAGE FROM RESEARCH RESOURCES SOME RECENT EXPERIENCE FROM THE UK

Transcription

1 GETTING EXTRA LEVERAGE FROM RESEARCH RESOURCES SOME RECENT EXPERIENCE FROM THE UK 1. The demands on parliamentary research services continue to grow. Whilst Members of Parliament now have more access to online tools for their basic information needs, their requirements for research and analysis keep on rising, reflecting the increasing complexity of their own roles. 2. Given that resource constraints are also getting more severe, it is important for parliamentary research services to become more flexible. We need to be imaginative in how we get the best from the resources we have and to find ways of getting leverage through the expertise of others. 3. This paper reviews our experience with two very different examples. It is designed to present a practitioner perspective and openly identifies points of failure as well as of success. The first concerns use of social media tools. The second the use of fellowships. USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS 4. The UK House of Commons research service is increasingly seeing the need for easy collaboration amongst researchers in the preparation of reports for parliamentarians. This reflects the fact that topics of interest often require input from a range of specialists. Collaboration is well-established within the research service, but the advent of social media tools provided an opportunity to explore new ways of doing this. In this section of the paper I report on two pilot exercises, both using Microsoft SharePoint. The first pilot 5. The first pilot was set up in 2007 using the product out of the box, with little configuration or customisation. The Pilot was limited to 20 users who were provided with access to a discussion forum and wiki area. Each user also had a profile which they could personalise by adding photographs and descriptions about themselves and their work. An administrator was selected from the 20 users. The administrator was able to redesign pages and control access to discussion groups. The aim of the pilot was to get a basic idea of how SharePoint worked, what it could be used for, and how easy it was to use. It was also run to gauge user interest. 6. Once set up the platform required little maintenance. The burden on the administrator was light. 7. No training was provided. Most users, with varying levels of IT literacy, were able to contribute to the online discussion areas and a number of users filled out their profiles in detail by adding photographs and descriptions of themselves.

2 8. The wiki area was simple and it was easy to publish material on it. The wiki was used to provide the contributors with instructions on how to edit, and publish material on the site and how to use the discussion area. 9. Interest in the platform slowly diminished after a period of weeks. The limited number of users meant the platform couldn t be used as an effective medium for presenting information. At the start it was hoped that the discussion area would serve as a forum in which ideas about how SharePoint could be used would develop. The scale of the pilot wasn t sufficient to ensure a regular input into the discussions and interest faded. It became clear that a critical mass of users was needed to make contributing to the platform a worthwhile practice. 10. One useful idea did emerge from experimenting with the platform. Another work group, the Information Exchange Group, had been looking for a new form of interactive directory of specialists which would hold information on the subject interests of people working across the House of Commons. This could be searched by staff to find colleagues with the appropriate knowledge to answer research enquiries. The personal profiles in SharePoint could be used to record this information in an updateable, current and searchable form. This will be taken forward in a further pilot late summer The second pilot 11. A second round of pilots was begun in It was decided that a more focussed and application specific approach would be taken in delivering these. This note covers a SharePoint platform used to collaborate on the preparation of research papers within a defined group of ten people. 12. A short requirements gathering exercise was conducted and was used to select an appropriate tool set to be included on the platform from the generic tools available in SharePoint. 13. The platform consisted of four parts: Papers Repository: a storage space for the research papers. It includes a facility to check in and out documents to prevent two people working on a document at once, and a version control that numbers revisions of documents and stores previous versions. Knowledge Base: this is a repository for information materials associated with the research papers. Any type of document file can be placed in this and indexed or tagged to attached subject headings or link it to other documents. SharePoint provided some facility to manage these tags. Links directory: this is a repository for weblinks, again these can be tagged. Discussion Area: in which work can be discussed.

3 An administrator was provided with some further content control so that they could redesign page lay outs. 14. The overall aim was to provide a pilot workspace that could be used to help colleagues collaborate on a single piece of work in a virtual space, where associated documents and discussion on that piece of work could be stored. 15. The SharePoint collaborative workspace failed to provide an environment in which documents could be managed more effectively than currently exists. The version control tools were seen to be complicated and difficult to understand. Training was provided in how to use these but the complexity of the process put people off using the platform to save and edit documents. It was much easier to use existing shared folders to do this. 16. The knowledge base and links directory was more simple to understand and was used by the users. However the benefits of sharing the files placed here was limited. A number of other databases are used to store and search for the sort of current awareness information that was placed here. These were also more widely accessible. To duplicate storing it elsewhere was not seen as beneficial. The tagging and indexing aspects of these repositories was not fully used by those participating in the pilot. They were experimented with and it was seen how they could be used to make searching, or aggregation of files easier. 17. The discussion area was tested in the pilot and found to be easy to use as a tool but it wasn t found to be useful in helping people collaborate on a document. Review of the pilots 18. The two pilots looked at SharePoint in very different ways. The first was an exploration of the platform providing the curious with a chance to think about its potential. It was limited in that a lot of the functionality was switched off and it was only provided to a small group of people. These limitations meant it could not be adopted as it was. Most importantly, too few participants meant that there wasn t enough information put onto the platform to make it useful - for an information tool to work well it has to be open to as many people as possible. 19. The pilot did result in some useful ideas and thoughts. The discussion areas were easy to use and provided a space for stored, searchable, many to many conversations. The wiki space was quick and easy to edit and was a simple way of posting information. The personal profiles could provide a current searchable database of staff and could potentially be used to provide a Facebook-style directory of staff. Indeed one could imagine that if all these elements were put together in a flexible way it might be possible for a whole community site to be developed. This could be used quickly to represent the work of teams or working groups and be a quick way for disparate groups to share information internally and externally.

4 20. The second pilot was a lot more structured and addressed a work process. The tools presented to do this were sometimes complicated and difficult to use. The effort to use the platform far exceeded the benefits that it provided and staff acceptance of it was low. There were a number of reasons for this. The suite of tools made available on SharePoint didn t align with the different aspects of the overall task. It felt contrived to interrupt the normal communications and information gathering processes people were used to when producing research papers, so they could store the information in SharePoint. These interruptions could have been reduced if the interface with SharePoint was less detached from working processes (for example if a web page link could be input to the directory with the click of an icon in a tool bar in Internet Explorer). People felt that the systems that were currently used were already adequate and to impose SharePoint as another layer of work on top was unnecessary. It was also clear that more effective methods of communication were being used in the team and the discussion board provided in SharePoint wasn t worth using. Perhaps if the participants were not already so used to easy collaboration with each other without such a tool it might have been more use. 21. For SharePoint to be useful it must satisfy a need. In neither of the two pilots was there a successfully targeted need. The enthusiasm of the participants in the pilots waned because the platforms didn t positively contribute to their working environment. The first pilot did generate ideas about the sorts of problems that SharePoint could tackle and as result work will continue in setting up the user profiles database later this summer. 22. The second pilot failed at a general level because the extra work created by inputting information into SharePoint provided no benefit. If this could have been made simpler and fitted better with existing systems and working practices it might have provided greater benefits. FELLOWSHIPS 23. The UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) is charged with providing balanced and independent analysis of science and technology based issues of relevance to Parliament. To complement POST s in-house capabilities a scheme is run to enable academically funded research students to work with POST on a short (usually three month) fellowship. During their time at Parliament, interns will explore a policy topic grounded in science and technology, focussing on informing parliamentarians on the issues arising. Fellows are typically 2 nd or 3 rd year post-graduate students. 24. POST regularly publishes short briefing papers (POSTnotes) as well as longer reports giving parliamentarians a broad overview of the background to an issue and an analysis of the policy implications. The team also works closely with a wide range of select committees in both Houses. 25. In their time in Parliament a fellow is expected to produce a POSTnote, to contribute to a longer report or assist a select committee in a current enquiry. The topic for study is determined by liaison between the fellow and

5 POST staff, balancing the research interests of the fellow and the relevance and timeliness of the topic in Parliament. The overall work programme is approved by POST s parliamentary Board. Applicants are made aware that parliamentary requirements may change and fellows may be required to work on something other than their originally proposed topic. 26. The fellowship involves: Identifying and liaising with a wide range of interested parties including business, academia, regulatory bodies, non-governmental organisations and government departments Drafting concise briefing materials Responding to comments from internal and external peer review There may also be opportunities for fellows to organise seminars to inform or disseminate their work, in Parliament or elsewhere. 27. In all cases, fellows are encouraged to interact closely with people and activities in the two House of Parliament, including select committees, Members of Parliament, their support staff and a wide range of others. Fellows may also draw on training facilities provided by the Houses of Parliament. 28. Fellows work alongside the permanent staff of POST. Typically, at any one time, the balance is about 50/50 between permanent staff and fellows. 29. As part of a strictly non-partisan service, fellows are required to abstain from any party political lobbying activity and generally to uphold the principles of parliamentary service, including a commitment to confidentiality during their time in Parliament. All those must sign a declaration to this effect. They must also receive security clearance from the parliamentary security authorities. 30. Once placements are completed, fellows are usually required to submit a report to their funding organisation based on their experiences. CONCLUSION 31. It is essential that parliamentary research services get the maximum value for parliamentarians from scarce research resources. This paper has described two approaches to this being adopted by the UK Parliament. 32. The use of social media tools is still at an experimental stage and the pilots conducted to date have provided more lessons for the future than practical benefits. We will, however, continue to examine the possibilities of social media tools. Later in 2009 SharePoint is being adopted by all parliamentary staff and this may provide the critical mass that has so far been lacking. 33. The use of fellowships has been highly successful in bringing in additional expertise to provide research on issues of interest to

6 parliamentarians. It has also helped connect a wide range of academic bodies to parliamentary work providing a double opportunity for leverage of our own scarce resources. John Pullinger July 2009