European Journal of ePractice

This article aims to explore and describe the attempt of the European Commission to establish a Community of Practice amongst European eGovernment practitioners through the ePractice.eu project. The focus of the European Commission's attempt lies hereby in the facilitation of eGovernment good practice exchange throughout Europe.

Theory, namely the concept of Boundary Objects and the Communities of Practice approach, was used as an initial guide to design the case study and the data collection. Data was collected through the author's participation at workshops, the examination of relevant eGovernment online forums and the conduction of semi-structured interviews.

The used theory enabled to gain a better understanding of the relevant issues in the process of building such a distributed Community of Practice. The case study shows that eGovernment practitioners see themselves rather as members of a local community or a small community focussed around a specific topic or technology than as members of a European eGovernment Community of Practice. The concept of boundary objects helped to identify the diverse perceptions of different actors and lead to recommendations on how to manage them in order to better facilitate the good practice exchange in Europe.