This issue brings to Community Informatics a focused and systematic
set of discussions on methods and methodology for Community Informatics
practice. Not incidentally as well, the papers in this issue
raise but of course don’t resolve a number of the issues preparatory to
broader discussions and debate concerning the role and possibilities
for theory building in Community Informatics.
As well, this issue reinforces the links, sometimes forgotten in
overall CI discussions, between CI and the practice of Information
Systems. Since so much of CI as a practice is concerned with
system implementation and thus the social (community) behaviours
associated with those implementations, the necessary connection (and
opportunities that go along with this) between CI and Information
Systems design and development is often overlooked. This issue
brings those questions immediately to the fore and provides a very rich
set of questions for further research and more specifically for action
research not only in system implementation but also in system design as
a prelude to implementation.
Also, by highlighting CI in the context of design practice it changes
the framework within which issues of Community Informatics theory may
be articulated. Design of course, is about approximations and iterative
responses to articulated or identified needs or behaviours. Design is
about “best fits” and proximate models and the role for prediction or
explanation from first principles is severely limited. So in many ways
this special issue presents new and exciting challenges and
opportunities for CI.
This is also, the second “theme” issue of the Journal and likely
initiates what will be the future publishing pattern for JoCI which is
an alternation between “themed” issues and “general” issues.
And finally, the reader’s attention should be drawn to the proposed
Code of Ethics for Community Informatics research and presumably
Community Informatics practice (including design) as well. As CI comes
into more general application as the basis for the local implementation
of Information Systems the need for such a Code of Ethics becomes ever
more acute. We can be grateful to Susan O’Donnell and Ude Averweg for
having taken the initiative to develop the draft of such a Code for
discussion within the CI community.