Presentation of the proposed Task Group on

Community Information Systems Development

- Virtual communities are increasingly important elements of the knowledge economy and civil society. Examples are research communities, knowledge management communities within/between organizations, consumer communities, citizen communities, etc.

- Online support for these communities is still mostly determined ad hoc. Much trial-and-error with a plethora of communication tools is going on.
However, wheels are being reinvented over and over again, and many experiments and communities fail as a result.

- Taking a systems design perspective on online communities may help in detecting patterns and heuristics that can better inform the process of
matching communities with effective technologies. To this purpose, the complete lifecycle of analysis, design, implementation, management, and
use of information systems needs to be investigated.

- (Initial) objectives of the task group could be to:

(1) determine which traditional IS development models and methods are most suitable for capturing the particular needs of virtual communities.

(2) use these approaches to make an inventory of
 a) IS development issues and problems in virtual communities
 b) solutions from the general IS literature

(3) make recommendations for research directions for Community IS Development

June 11, 2005