It’s time to end this blog series. I’ll begin with a brief guide and links to each of the fourteen previous blogs and end by repeating my proposal for a National KM Center, or Knowledge Accountability Office (KAO) responsible to the Congress of the United States.
The Guide
— Part One dealt with the context of National Governmental Knowledge Management in complexity and the need to adapt to challenges, proposed a definition of KM, and examined the view that formal NGKM isn’t needed.
— Part Two covers formal decentralized KM and its advantages and disadvantages and also proposes another alternative including a National KM Center (the Knowledge Accountability Office) directly responsible to the legislative fiduciary.
— Following Part Two was a guest comment by Richard Vines about the potential of the fiduciary model outlined in Part Two.
— Part Three critically reviews an initiative of The Federal Knowledge Management Working as expressed in a presentation of Neil Olonoff’s.
— Part Four continues the critical review of Neil’s presentation.
— Part Five records a dialogue with Professor of Management Steven A. Cavaleri, my co-author, in the PSP matters series, on the distinction between First and Second Generation KM and the relation of that distinction to the Federal KM Working KM Group’s KM initiative.
— Part Six gives more details about the proposed National KM Center’s R & D function, including the research questions it would address.
— Part Seven revisits the issue of KM definition and argues that it would be a mistake for the Federal KM Working group to use certain “simple” definitions as the basis of their initiative because these definitions only define KM in such a way that it is equivalent to Information Management
— Part Eight gives more details about the proposed coordination function of the National KM Center, including both its social process and IT aspects.
— Part Nine outlines the funding function of the National KM Center in more detail including its venture capital and evaluation aspects.
— Part Ten is a comment replying to a question from Neil Olonoff about Federal KM Solutions for the coming hiring wave.
— Part Eleven discusses the National KM Center’s function of evaluating the impact of KM and knowledge processing activity across the decentralized, partially self-organizing clusters of KM activity in the Federal Government. It also discusses four methodological difficulties in evaluating impact that will have to be addressed by the Center.
— Part Twelve continues the discussion of evaluating impact by putting forward three differing approaches to KM having different implications for evaluating impact.
— Part Thirteen discusses the relations of the three approaches to the four difficulties, and the relevance of the combination of approaches and difficulties for the organization of the National KM’s Center evaluation function.
— Part Fourteen is a brief reply to another question of Neil Olonoff’s: “How can we stimulate knowledge sharing and collaboration in government?”
The Proposal
In Parts One and Two of this series I considered the context of Federal KM and some alternative ways of organizing it. I then proposed a fiduciary model of KM (see the graphic) in which decentralized local KM efforts would self-organize around a National KM Center called The Knowledge Accountability Office (KAO) that would be responsible to the Congress of the United States.
I proposed four functions for the KAO:
1) Performing KM Research and Development;
2) Coordinating information availability about KM and knowledge processing including information about KM R & D performed elsewhere;
3) Funding KM programs and projects across the National Government; and also
4) Evaluating the impact of KM and knowledge processing activity across the decentralized, partially self-organizing clusters of KM activity.
The KAO would have the following features. It would not have direct line authority over KM staffs and activities in locales, but, would fund programs and projects across the Government. Nor would it be housed with, or subject to the central executive authority in the National Government. That authority would have its own KM activities and staffs, which would be viewed as one of the “locales” of KM activity, to which other locales in the Executive Branch would be accountable. The KAO would function autonomously relative to the Executive, and would be directly responsible to the Legislative Authority which would directly fund it and evaluate its performance. The KAO would also be responsible for reporting its activities and impact to the White House.
The advantages of the KAO include its: ability to support self-organization, distributed KM and continued de-centralization; amelioration of the strategy exception error, by making sure that local KM chiefs can get funding for projects strengthening both strategy-making and knowledge processing in various domains, regardless of whether local agency strategies emphasize adaptation and problem solving; amelioration of the tendency to locale-based stove-piping, by enabling knowledge and information sharing, and also collaboration across locales and agencies through its knowledge and information sharing programs and facilities, its cross-locale funding, and making available its evaluation reports about KM impact; and, finally, accountability to the Congressional Fiduciary, while maintaining the formal accountability of KM in the locales to the executive function.
In future blogs on National Governmental KM, which won’t be part of this series, but which I’m sure will be frequent, I’ll be considering the disadvantages of this proposal, as well as problems besetting the Executive Model of the National KM Center focused on Knowledge Management for Knowledge Sharing. Meanwhile, I look forward to healthy exchanges about the beginning I’ve made here.