There are 444 municipalities in Ontario all ranging from various sizes and tiers (Ontario.ca, 2020). As communities continue to grow and develop, there are greater demands for increased services and to build better infrastructure. Municipalities are required to become increasingly more strategic, innovative, and forward thinking in order to create a sustainable future. Depending on its population size and geography, municipalities will have varying priorities and needs. With such a massive and diverse umbrella of work, professional organizations such as the Municipal Finance Officers’ Association of Ontario (MFOA) strive to provide timely and relevant training and policy work to support municipal finance staff in their roles.

With the change over in governments and recent pandemic effects of COVID-19, municipalities have been racing against the clock to adapt at a quicker pace to meet the demands and needs of the changing landscape. MFOA saw a need to provide a virtual space where its members, stakeholders, and provincial partners could easily communicate, share resources and ideas at minimal costs. I saw a need to understand and examine the virtualization of traditional environments, and its impact on the individuals’ experience. What kind of conditions are required to create such a space? Can the experience be truly replicated?

With social distancing measures in place, MFOA is unable to host workshops or their annual conference. The uncertainty of travel and potential budget cuts has propelled the idea of moving the remainder of our training events virtually. Going virtual could mean potentially lower costs and time savings for members, which are very attractive to municipalities at the moment (Klement, 2017). However, what will be cost upfront? What kind of infrastructure will be required?

Another traditional space that comes to mind is face to face networking. People leveraged the social aspect of networking to foster learning, develop relationships, brainstorm, and to share information (Haas, Abonneau, Borzillo, and Guillaume, 2020). Time and budgetary constraints are often some of the barriers that prevent people from attending these days, as a response to that, the concept of virtual communities of practice (VCoP) can support MFOA members in making those experiences more accessible. However, the success of growing a VCoP within a group of municipal finance staff will be dependent on them to find value in participating and contributing to the community (Wenger, 1998 as cited in Haas, et al., 2020). What will motivate and encourage people to participate? What can MFOA staff do to facilitate learning and information sharing?

The virtualization of traditional environments has created new alternatives when traditional spaces may not be a viable option. What can be done to ensure that the experience is still valuable and enriching?

 

References

Haas, A., Abonneau, D., Borzillo, S., & Guillaume, L.-P. (2020). Afraid of engagement? Towards an understanding of engagement in virtual communities of practice. Knowledge Management Research & Practice, 0(0), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/14778238.2020.1745704

Klement, M. (2017). Models of integration of virtualization in education: Virtualization technology and possibilities of its use in education. Computers & Education, 105, 31–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2016.11.006

List of Ontario municipalities | Ontario.ca. (2020). Retrieved April 21, 2020, from https://www.ontario.ca/page/list-ontario-municipalities

[Image of virtual web]. (n.d.) Retrieved from https://medium.com/@devanshagarwal121/virtualization-and-hypervisors-9c4c8f4ab27d