Knowledge Matters™

I've been head-hunted to be the principal change champion in a large health services organisation, and to work up the information/knowledge management requirements for what will be potentially a multi-million dollar initiative. Whilst I am very excited I am also quite sad because this means I will be leaving HolisTech® Pty Ltd and TARDIS .

TARDIS is a joint venture between HolisTech® and the Australian Department of Defence to build and maintain a knowledge management system. I believe it to be one of the most significant attempts at knowledge management within the Australian public sector: an attempt that truly has tried to integrate people, process, technology and content. I'm very proud to have been associated with TARDIS, so today I thought I would share with you some of the lessons I will take away.

Just over four years ago Pat Byrne and I began to put the TARDIS dream into reality. We began with an interesting set of high-level requirements and constraints, with the constraints largely setting the direction of TARDIS. The two most important constraints were:

• only existing software and hardware were to be used, and
• software coding was to be absolutely minimised and kept to the application level.

Now with the benefit of hindsight I think these two constraints were truly inspired. ...

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I’ve been corresponding lately with Wayne Thompson, who is interested in medical knowledge management in austere conditions, and contributes to the Journal of Special Operations Medicine . Wayne sent me this article titled “Germany to open Holocaust records ”. For the first time in 60 years extended family of Holocaust victims, researchers and other interested parties will be able to access Nazi records held in an archive at Bad Arolsen, Germany. Apparently there are between 30 million and 50 million records about 17 million Jews and enslaved labourers. The archives contain information about Schindler’s List, Anne Frank’s deportation and three million testimonies of survivors explaining their harrowing experience. Of course these numbers are estimates, but the sheer volume is mind-boggling. By one estimate if these records were laid end to end they would cover 25 linear kilometres . Just imagine the information management problem, let alone the knowledge management problem!

The most interesting thing about the release of these documents is that for 60 years the International Committee of the Red Cross has used these records to trace missing and dead Jews and forced labourers, but seemingly denied access to them by other agencies, Holocaust survivor families, and researchers! ...

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It has been a busy week again, but a thoroughly enjoyable and productive one. On Wednesday and Thursday I attended the ‘Promoting a Culture of Knowledge in the Public Service’ conference in Sydney, which was organised by the Ark Group . On Friday I helped to run two post-conference workshops with my business partner Patrick Byrne . The conference was a small boutique affair with only about 30 people attending, which provided plenty of opportunities for networking. Several themes emerged from the conference, which are not new and are consistent with the popular literature. I’ll recount them below and offer some comment.

Unfortunately I missed most of day one, but the slide set and notes give some pretty good insights. Further because of the small size of the conference it was possible to talk to most of the participants. The keynote was given by Paul McDowall who talked about knowledge management in the Canadian Public Service . The slide set shows some models in use by various departments in the Canadian Public service and highlights to me the absolute need to tailor an initiative to the organisation. It also seems in common with Australia that “knowledge management” is a dirty phrase, and hence knowledge management initiatives are badged as something else. This was a theme in one of our workshops, where we suggested the value proposition of a knowledge management initiative is “using knowledge productively”, rather than “we are going to manage knowledge”. ...

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Ethical matters for various reasons have been on my mind quite a bit in the last few months. In Australia we are in the throes of an election campaign, and to put it frankly the ethics of the two major parties are questionable. Normally I avoid public political comment, and in my former calling as a soldier I wasn’t allowed to make comment. Now I can and I will voice my disgust at the antics of the two major parties at the moment. Take for example postal votes. Both parties have sent letters to every household in my electorate. These letters at first and second glance appear to be from the Electoral Commission. They tell one how to make a postal vote and even provide a form for the postal vote. The trouble is it isn’t an official form and the return address in both cases is a party office. Is it a public service as it is touted to be? I don’t think so. Is it deceitful? The answer is a resounding yes! Is it ethical? I think not!

From time to time I give a presentation called ‘Rwanda: A Case Study in Ethical and Leadership Dilemmas’ to military and public organisations. The presentation examines the experience of the Australian contribution to UNAMIR II, where we provided health support in Rwanda following the 1994 genocide. Each and every one of us faced ethical difficulties every day, and those of us that are psychologically intact are better people for the experience. All of us have an acute sense of what is right and wrong, and what is ethical. The lessons I learnt were: ...

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Yesterday I was interviewed by Eric Burns from the Babson College Working Knowledge Research Center in Boston. (Tom Davenport and Larry Prusak are the Center Directors). Eric is exploring the links between knowledge management and innovation, and wanted to get a sense of the current status of knowledge management practices in industry. I spoke about my 4-year involvement with TARDIS , which is a knowledge management initiative within the Australian Defence Force. I am one of the developers of TARDIS and have been involved with it since its conception. As such I am very aware that anything I say and write is coloured by my deep and personal involvement. Indeed David Snowden blogged three days ago about this problem. He said – “I have sat in many a conference listening to a presentation from a KM person is a company where the statements about what has happened bear little relation to the reality on the ground.” I pointed this world view problem out to Eric and suggested he may want to speak to some of the users.

Coincidentally, two weeks ago Patrick Lambe invited me to be one of the judges for the Singapore iKMS KM Excellence Awards. He sent some documentation to each of the potential judges for comment. I commented by saying - “We need to understand the organisational motivations and know something about the organisation. … I also think we need to clearly understand the scope and intent of the initiative. A webpage is not knowledge management, nor is a database, and nor is a blog, or a collection of stories. These are enablers and a step along the path. Any initiative should demonstrate a holistic attempt to bring together the people, process and technology elements, for organisational and knowledge worker benefit.” ...

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The Journey of a Knowledge Management System in the Department of Defence - TARDIS . A presentation to the KM Australia 2007 Conference given in July 2007.

Rwanda: A Case Study in Ethical and Leadership Dilemmas . A presentation on operational ethics periodically given to the Australian Defence College , and occasionally to other organisations. Warning: Some photographs are gruesome .

Discipline is Not a Dirty Word! The actKM 2006 conference keynote speech written for Lieutenant General Hurley and Brigadier Welch from Capability Development Executive .