All Life Is Problem Solving

The Federal Government really needs Knowledge Management. It needs Knowledge Management in many, if not most of its agencies. It needs Knowledge Management in its inter-agency teams. It needs Knowledge Management in the Congress. It needs Knowledge Management in the Judiciary. It needs Knowledge Management in the Federal Reserve System. And it needs Knowledge Management in the White House. How do I know?

Well, I know because it has done such a poor job of what I call knowledge processing, namely seeing problems in Government behavior, solving those problems, and communicating the solutions to people in the Federal Government who might need them, or to the public where that’s important. How do I know I that?

Just because there are so many accumulating national problems that the Government hasn’t been able to cope with. In my more grandiose moments I call these the adaptive burdens of national knowledge processing. Here’s an incomplete list (I’m sure you can think of a few more I may have forgotten): sustainable economic recovery and re-investment; declining relative health care quality; growing energy dependence and insecurity; decline of the educational system; environmental degradation and global warming; growing economic inequality; racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual orientation inequality; the decline of constitutionalism and fairness in the administration of justice and the law; an immobilist political system increasingly resistant to continuous change and perfecting public policy over time; increasingly chaotic relations with the international system and its major trends in economic globalization, emergent changes in economic and political power, and reactive protest activity; an immigration system that is largely broken; and an increasingly serious border security problem.

Now, I don’t know if Knowledge Management can improve our chances of solving any specific problem I’ve listed. But I do know that our chances of arriving at successful solutions of each of them will be improved greatly if we can enhance the primary aspects of seeing problems, solving them, and communicating the solutions to those who need them in each of these problem domains. Activity intended to enhance these activities is Knowledge Management, at least as the term is used here. So, if we want to get better at taking care of our problems and reducing the adaptive burdens on national knowledge processing, the Government has to get better at Knowledge Management, and to do that it needs Knowledge Management programs in most governmental venues, and an institution to coordinate and support the various “local” Knowledge Management efforts. That institution is a National Center for Knowledge Management, and I’ve discussed its functions in some detail in earlier blogs.

In saying that the Government needs Knowledge Management, I do want to be very clear about what I mean. Knowledge Management is a diverse field, and sadly, there are many definitions of the term, and many views of what it is really about. Some think that Knowledge Management is only, or at least primarily about enhancing knowledge sharing, and they think that the Government would be greatly improved if if this idea of Knowledge Management were implemented. But, even though this might incrementally improve things, I really don’t think it will help much with all of the problems we have to solve, both large and small; especially since Knowledge Management focused on knowledge sharing, or First Generation Knowledge Management as it has been called, can’t really distinguish between sharing knowledge and sharing information, and also isn’t tightly coupled to enhancing seeing problems, and solving them.

So, in saying that the Federal Government really needs Knowledge Management, I’m not saying that it really needs any kind of Knowledge Management. I’m saying very explicitly that it needs the kind of Knowledge Management, Second Generation Knowledge Management, that is about enhancing seeing problems for what they are, solving them in a way that is lasting and sustainable, and communicating the results to all who may need them.

I’ll end this short statement with a schematic of an argument for National Knowledge Management using a simple chain of influence, but without claiming strict causation:
Better KM ->Higher Quality Problem Seeing, Problem solving and Communicating new solutions -> Higher Quality Knowledge -> Better Decisions -> Fewer serious Government-induced, or abetted problems such as the ones I listed above, that have occurred during the past few Administrations, due to low quality knowledge and, in part, poor Knowledge Management. In short, KM is activity intended to promote higher quality problem seeing, problem solving, and communicating new solutions. Its goals are to enhance the quality of knowledge and decisions. It’s benefits are, in general, much better adaptiveness, and in specifics: the capability to avoid many failures and problems such as the ones I’ve named, and other possible failures and problems still to come.