Last July I wrote two posts on National Governmental Knowledge Management. In the first, I made the case that there was a need to organize and implement formal KM in National Governments to see whether it can produce an ecology of rationality that will work to enhance knowledge processing, knowledge and adaptation throughout such Governments. In the second, I considered the alternative of formal, decentralized, “local KM,” and its considerable advantages while also pointing to its three crippling disadvantages: the strategy exception error, the absence of any way to prevent stove-piping, and the failure to provide a structure for regulating KM performance in the Government that connects KM to a recognized fiduciary authority.
I then proposed a possible organization for National KM in which one adds to decentralized KM, a National Government KM Center for
— 1) Performing KM Research and Development;
— 2) Coordinating information availability about KM and knowledge processing including information about KM R & D performed elsewhere, both in and outside the Government;
— 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.
In other words, this Center would be a combined “clearinghouse,” KM scientific research center, funding source for programs and projects, and evaluation agency.
In the next series of posts, I’ll expand my thinking about the National Government KM Center (perhaps it might be be called the Knowledge Accountability Office or KAO), by visualizing in a bit greater detail the activities of the proposed Center in each of the above four areas. I’ll begin in this post with its activities performing KM research and development. Why should the KAO have a research component? The answer is that KM, as a formal discipline is only about 20 years old and it doesn’t yet have a settled body of knowledge. A National KM Research Program located in the Center would provide a focal point for self-organization in KM research nationally. Research at the Center would be independent of research priorities set in the Executive Branch, because the KAO would be independent of the Executive. Instead, it would focus on research problems that are critical for enhancing adaptive capability, whether or not such research contributed to the problems of the moment.
A National KM Research Center would increase the status and popularity of KM research and serve as a stimulus for research programs in KM at Universities across the United States. Over a period of years it would help us to grow our knowledge about KM and the impact KM activities can have in enhancing performance of the various aspects of knowledge processing – problem seeking, recognition, and formulation, problem solving (knowledge production), and knowledge integration in organizations and in the Government. In short, it would grow our knowledge about how to enhance the Government’s adaptive capacity so that it can cope with the myriad neglected challenges facing the United States.
In its research function, the National KM Research Center would operate like a National Laboratory, but with a specialization in creating knowledge about how to enhance Knowledge Management and Knowledge Processing. The agenda of the Center will depend on the conceptual framework it will use to map out the scope of the disciplinary concerns of KM, as well as on its evaluation of the most urgent needs of the Federal Government in enhancing its adaptive capability.
Given the wide-ranging disagreements in KM over the scope of the field, the Center will need to begin with an accelerated project to create a KM/knowledge processing conceptual framework and to prioritize research needs within the context of that framework. Since the very basis of the National KM Center is the idea that KM is activity intended to enhance knowledge processing including: problem seeking, recognition, and formulation; problem solving (knowledge production); and knowledge integration the framework will need to begin with these conceptual commitments – commitments to a variant of Second Generation KM concerned both with making and integrating knowledge, rather than to a variant of a First Generation, relatively narrow, knowledge sharing orientation. Beyond these conceptual commitments, the rest of the framework ought to be formulated by the National KM Research Center in its initial accelerated research program. It ought to involve the broadest possible participation in this program and to consider all of the major KM Second Generation conceptual frameworks as well as any elements of First Generation conceptual frameworks that are not acknowledged in the broader Second Generation frameworks. I hesitate to suggest specific methods eliciting broad participation, but certainly Web 2.0 tools will be useful in surveying frameworks, and will group facilitation methods will be useful in synthesizing and prioritizing them.
Finally, I also suggest that the following are key questions to be considered in this foundational framing effort:
— What is knowledge and how do you distinguish it from information?
— How can we tell when information becomes knowledge?
— How ought we to select among competing knowledge claims to create knowledge?
— Why is it that knowledge can’t be commanded into existence?
— What is the Complex Adaptive Systems backdrop of the social processes of KM, problem formulation, knowledge production, integration, and use?
— Where does knowledge fit into this context?
— Can the growth of knowledge be predicted?
— How do intelligent agents solve problems, learn, and produce knowledge they can use?
— What is the character of mental knowledge? Is it tacit, implicit, explicit? Situationally tied? Predispositional?
— Can we provide a foundation for analyzing the impact of KM by making clear what KM is and what it is not?
— How can we usefully specify the targets of KM in knowledge processing and its ecology to support auditing and benchmarking prior to KM interventions?
— How should we segment KM activities in a way that will be useful for impact analysis?
— How should we specify the KM and knowledge processing conceptual framework to support metrics development for KM impact analysis?
— How can we specify a conceptual framework so that it will support comprehensive evaluations of KM Impact in terms of both economic and non-economic benefits and comparisons of the two on a common scale of measurement?
— What is sustainable innovation and how can we conceptualize it in terms of our Second Generation conceptual framework?
— What should be the comprehensive goal or normative vision of National KM policies and programs seeking to maximize transparency and continuous and effective problem solving?
— How can we change organizations so that all participants may contribute to (distributed) problem solving and adaptation, while still maintaining the authority and integrity of management?
Future blogs in this series will fill in more detail on the other three aspects of the National KM center
To Be Continued