One reason why I haven’t blogged in the last week or so, is that a very active discussion about the Federal KM Initiative has been going on in the new FedKM google group. At one point in the discussions I had occasion to offer a first crack at an elevator speech for the Federal KM initiative. I thought I’d share it here, in a slightly revised version, as well. The speech reflects my own proposal for Federal KM written up previously in my National Governmental KM series.
The United States Government is facing the most serious set of national problems since World War II. These problems beset most of its agencies, and many observers have said that the Government is “broken.” We need to change the way we do things to create a network of open, transparent, high-velocity problem solving enterprises to better serve the American people. Since these enterprises will need higher quality solutions for better decisions, and better problem solving capabilities in every area of Government to get to those solutions, it needs a Federal Problem Solving Enhancement Policy and a new set of resources to implement it. That policy is to seek to enhance activities of problem solving and integrating new solutions throughout the Federal Government, and to establish a network of Knowledge Managers across the Government which will enhance distributed problem solving, self-organization, and lean innovation everywhere. The network will be supported by a Knowledge Accountability Office (KAO) in the Legislative Branch, whose two main purposes will be to encourage and support management activities intended to enhance distributed problem solving and solution integration, and to evaluate and assess the performance of the Executive Branch and its agencies in fulfilling these purposes.