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Knowledge Management Framework for Government
Concept Note (2007)
They copied all that they could follow but they could not copy my mind, and I left 'em sweating and
stealing and a year and half behind.
—Rudyard Kipling

Puneet Kalia, Piyush Gupta

National Institute for Smart Government

Hyderabad (AP) INDIA, www.nisg.org

Purpose of this Document

This document presents the conceptual understanding of Knowledge Management in context of Government
organizations; the challenges faced by them in managing knowledge and present an approach to implementation of KM
systems in Government and Public Sector organizations.

© 2007 NISG. All rights reserved. Reproduction and distribution of this publication in any form without prior written permission is
forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. NISG disclaims all warranties
as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. NISG shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies
in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these
materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.
NISG:CB&KM:2007: KMF – A Concept note on Knowledge Management

Context:
Knowledge management is the process of creating value from an organization’s tangible and intangible assets. Many
organizations in the private or public sectors across the globe have started to realize the importance of knowledge
management in streamlining their operations. The importance of the term Knowledge and its management can be gauzed
from the fact that the age old notion of “Industrial economy and industrial nations” has taken a back-seat and is being
replaced by more enticing notion of “Knowledge economy”. All the developed countries of the world would like them to be
touted as Knowledge economies in the 21st century. Many of the developing countries are also trying to move from the
industrial economy towards Knowledge economy by investing not in machines but in human capital.

The important component of the knowledge economy is that the reliance here is on human capital than on machines. The
private sector has already realized the importance of investing in human capital and this had lead to the emergence of
the concept of knowledge management as a practice in private enterprises. Industry has been involved in formal
knowledge management practices over the years, even hiring Chief Knowledge Officers to spearhead their knowledge
management initiatives.

Government by virtue of its size and complexity is the biggest source of information and knowledge. The government
knowledge typically resides in dusty files lying in the back office cabinets or in the brains of the employees. Poor or no
knowledge management practices generally lead to loss of opportunity as a result of lost institutional memory, knowledge
gaps and poor decision making. Government has lagged behind a bit in realizing the importance of knowledge
management, but with the tremendous investment in KM in private enterprises leading to innumerable benefits,
governments too have started to appreciate the benefits of embracing KM prompted by environmental factors like
shrinking Government budgets, ensuing retirements of their employees and the need to better share information and
knowledge within and across government organizations.

This paper presents an approach to the implementation of Knowledge Management initiatives in Government by studying
the principles and practices of KM applied in Governments throughout the globe. The approach paper is structured in the
following manner.

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1. Defining Knowledge
2. Need for Knowledge Based Governance
3. Defining Knowledge in context to government
4. Defining Knowledge management
5. Challenges faced by Governments in managing knowledge
6. Road map for KM in government
7. References and additional readings

What is Knowledge: Before delving deep in to management of knowledge, it is important to understand what
we want to manage – The Knowledge. The term “knowledge” is one of the more confusing aspects of KM. The terms
“information” and “data” are often used interchangeably with the term “knowledge”. In fact they have different meanings.
And understanding the differences is essential to doing knowledge work successfully. Knowledge is derived from
information. It results from making comparisons, identifying consequences, and making connections. Knowledge also
includes judgment and “rules of thumb” developed over time through trial and error. Here is a working definition of
Knowledge suggested by Thomas Davenport and Laurence Prusak. (Amrit Tiwana, 2000)
“Knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, expert insight and grounded intuition that
provides an environment and framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. It originates
and is applied in the minds of knowers. In organizations, it often becomes embedded not only in documents or
repositories but also in organizational routines, processes, practices and norms.
The further understanding of Knowledge can be built using “DIKW hierarchy”. (Jonathan Hey, 2004). The hierarchy is
often referred as Knowledge hierarchy or Knowledge pyramid. DIKW stands for Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom.
The figure below represents the DIKW pyramid.

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When to use
knowledge
Wisdom
How to use
Knowledge information

Adds
Information context

Basic
Level
Data

Data : There are numerous definitions of Data largely depending upon the context of use. Information science
professional defines “Data” as unprocessed information. Another theoretical definition of data is a set of particular and
objective facts about an event or simply a structured record of a transaction. Data is discrete, can be recorded, captured,
manipulated or retrieved. Data can be mined for useful information. Despite the possibility of data manipulation, there is
limited amount of actions that we can perform on Data. In short, data is the most basic level of the pyramid.

Information: As Peter Drucker Describes it, “Information is data endowed with relevance and purpose”. When some
context is added to the data, it becomes information. The five processes of Calculation, Condensation, Contextualization,
Correction and Categorization when applied to data lead to Information. (Amrit Tiwana, 2000)

Knowledge: The knowledge can be described as capability to act on information. Simply put, it provides answer to the
question, “How to use information”. The relationship between data, information and knowledge is recursive and depends
on the degree of “organisation” and “interpretation”. Data and information are distinguished by their “organisation”, and
information and knowledge are differentiated by “interpretation”. So knowledge is neither data nor information. Knowledge
is an understanding, and one gains knowledge through experience, reasoning, intuition and learning. Individuals expand
their knowledge when others share their knowledge, and one’s knowledge is combined with the knowledge of others to
create new knowledge. (Xiaoming Cong, 2003). There are two broad categories of knowledge:

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• Tacit Knowledge: Tacit knowledge is personnel and context specific knowledge. It is difficult to formalize, record
or articulate. It is stored in the memory of the people. Such knowledge is developed through trial and error and is
developed with experience.
• Explicit Knowledge: This type of knowledge can be codified and transmitted in a systematic and formal
language. Eg. Documents, databases, web, e-mail, graphs, charts etc.
Further knowledge has different types such as Externalized knowledge, multi-locational knowledge or migratory
knowledge. (Amrit Tiwana, 2000)
Wisdom: Some experts include wisdom and insight in their definitions of knowledge. However, wisdom is the utilisation
of accumulated knowledge. Wisdom is the ability of an individual to determine when to use knowledge. Wisdom is an
advanced level of knowledge which comes with experience and is utilization of accumulated knowledge.

Defining Knowledge for Government: Knowledge is universally same, be it a private sector

conglomerate, government department or some public sector unit. However, for the purpose of understanding the
knowledge and its constituents, the knowledge for Government functionaries can be categorized in three categories.
(Wikipedia)
Organizational memory - A collection of best practices, heuristics, process documents and other texts that help define
how an organization operates. Fundamental rules, Office orders, Rule book, Office manual, Memorandum etc are
examples of Organizational memory.
Intellectual capital - The intangible assets of an organization. These include Best Practices, Learning’s, competencies,
culture and connections that enable and foster innovation, agility, awareness, adaptation and corporate survival. This
type of knowledge is produced during day to day working of the organization across different units and geographies. KM
plays a role in mapping, recording, evaluating, stewarding, marketing and growing intellectual capital and knowledge
assets.
Personal Knowledge – A KM theme, that stems from an individual’s urge for learning, connecting, organizing and
producing knowledge. This type of knowledge is tacit in nature and resides in the minds of the employees. KM provides
ways and means to capture such knowledge. Blogging, personal information management and branding are some of the
ways to capture and distribute personnel knowledge.

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What is Knowledge Management: The viewpoints about knowledge vary from individual, community,
society, personnel development or national development. Hence defining knowledge management in limited terms with
the help of selected one or two definitions will not serve the purpose. However, for the purpose of understanding:
“KM can be defined as a process where knowledge, skills, expertise, communication and collaboration are cared for,
administered and steered with skills and wisdom in a goal oriented fashion by using different techniques and
technologies.” (Riitta Suurla). There are various challenges to the administration and management of attributes paused
by work, work culture, individuals, communities and society etc. The challenges list gets populated with the addition of
other equally pressing factors like rapid globalization, networking, and a deluge of information enabled by different
technologies.
In another equally interesting definition, Knowledge Management can be defined as the ability of an organization to
create, share and use the collective knowledge of its products, processes and people to increase workplace productivity
and reduce activities that “reinvent the wheel” ( Michael Fontaine, Eric Lesser)

Need for Knowledge based governance? (Alex Motsenigos, Jocelyn Young, Oct 2002)
Knowledge management is a core competency that is increasingly differentiating the successful enterprises in the
globally competitive economy of the 21st century. Knowledge Management is recognized as a key enabler of internal
efficiencies and a competitive differentiator across many types of companies and various vertical industries. Knowledge
Management has to be seen in different context in Government than the private sector. One has to appreciate the not-for-
profit orientation of Government with a motivation to please different group of stakeholders. In contrast to private sector,
where the bottom line is always profit, government’s ultimate directive is to better serve its citizens with speed, certainty
and efficiency. With the advent of e-government, government agencies are under pressure to merge the island of
activities (Departments, Ministries, organizations) with in Government in terms of collaboration and promote better
sharing of information. Governments are under pressure to share critical information and knowledge across the
departments. e-Government is changing the relationship between government and citizens, government and business as
well as between government themselves (G2G). The investment in knowledge based systems leading to better
knowledge management with in government should not be viewed as a incurring of cost by the Government; as such
systems will bring efficiency gains and substantive cost savings. Many of the developed governments across the globe
have taken a lead in the implementation of knowledge management system and are reaping the benefits. The following
are the key motivations for implementing KM in Government, which makes it a strong business case for implementation.

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• KM ensures that the right information is delivered to the right person just in time, in order to take the most
appropriate decision.
• KM helps the organizations to understand that how knowledge is created, used and shared within organizations
• KM helps avoid unnecessary work duplications, expensive re-invention and repeated mistakes.
• KM saves the organizations from inevitable “Knowledge Walk-outs”.
• KM promotes intelligent collaboration both with-in and outside the Government.
• KM promotes the concept of learning organization therefore contributing to the personnel growth of the
employees.
• Above all, KM helps Government organizations to comply with regulatory compliances like Right to Information
Act, 2005, which mandate provisioning of availability and dissemination of right information at right time.

Challenges faced by Government in managing knowledge

Government agencies face various challenges in their day to day operations of effectively and efficiently using and
managing organizational knowledge. The understanding of these challenges will help governments in the new knowledge
led economy to deliver more with the same or less resources. These challenges are equally applicable to large private
organizations which aims to promote knowledge sharing and re-use of know how for the benefit of whole organization.
Such challenges are listed below:
1. Resistance to share information: Government employees strongly believe in the power of information. The
age old Government processes does not motivate them to share information even within the same department
with their colleagues. They hesitate in sharing information which could be beneficial for other members in better
discharge of their duties. Such resistance to share information is mainly influenced by organizational culture.
The challenge lies in developing a culture with in the organization that not only encourages the provision of
information sharing but also encourages people to seek advice and help from people outside of their immediate
environments leaving aside all shyness. One of the many reasons for employees not feeling motivated to share
information is lack of availability of a proper tool to manage and share information and knowledge.
2. Lack of processes for conversion of tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge: Government employees gain
rich knowledge in the form of organizational processes and developing policies, working on various projects and
programs by virtue of their day to day experience in the field. But all this knowledge is tacit knowledge and
resides with the officers concerned. There are no formal processes or knowledge capturing tools, like end of
project interviews, focused documentation efforts, project learning’s sessions, document storage and archival

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mechanism etc to convert this immensely valued tacit knowledge in to well documented explicit knowledge which
can be used in future.
3. Defining knowledge for different audience: Identifying and correctly describing the know-how (knowledge) for
different group of audience so that it is beneficial to the whole of organization is challenge for the KM
implementation teams. The know-how may be different for policy maker, different for his subordinate and
different for liaison officer. The needs assessment and knowledge audit will help the implementers in choosing
the right set of processes and tools.
4. Information sharing and information access (Alex Motsenigos, Jocelyn Young, Oct 2002): Information is an
asset which if managed successfully can enhance the productivity of employees leading to enhancement of
government agency operations. The governments in developed countries have always emphasized on the need
for increased information sharing and access within agencies and across agencies as well as with constituents.
In India, the enactment of legislations like Right to Information Act 2005 has necessitated the need for creation of
infrastructure and processes for capturing, managing and accessing information efficiently. The lack of such
infrastructure is a challenge to information sharing and information access.
5. Security issues (Alex Motsenigos, Jocelyn Young, Oct 2002): Security of information is a very important issue,
which must be treated with high-priority. The issue of security has manifold meanings for government agencies.
With regards to agencies IT infrastructure, transmission of information must be secure, access to information
must be controlled, sensitive information must be accessible to intended recipients at intended times in intended
fashion only. Further, the privacy of information is an important issue which no Government organization would
like to compromise. Privacy of personnel knowledge acquired through experience and intuition based on which
certain decisions are taken by the Government functionary is a major cultural issue in the Knowledge
Management, which the implementers must take in to consideration. Similarly, noting sheets containing the
decision points may not be shared with everyone in the organization.
6. Issues of privacy of Personnel knowledge: Government employees by virtue of working on diverse subjects
during their tenure develop rich personnel knowledge which they use in their day to day decision making. Such
decision making is based on intuitions and wisdom of the decision maker factoring in constraints of the socio-
political environment within which they operate. The rationale behind taking decisions is usually hard to articulate
due to tacit nature of such personnel knowledge. Even if the decision maker is able to articulate such knowledge,
he may not like to share it with colleagues and subordinates due to issues of privacy associated with such
knowledge and fear of being scrutinized by fellow employees for the style of working. For instance, the noting
sheet may contain only record of the decisions and not information about how those decisions were arrived at.

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However, such knowledge which is highly personnel has great significance and should be shared with the
relevant people, which would greatly help in the decision making process. The availability of Descision Support
systems will facilitate such decision making to a great extent.
7. Retaining employees and retiring work-force (Alex Motsenigos, Jocelyn Young, Oct 2002): Although the
global challenge paused by a huge number of employees retiring in near future is not as prominent in India as
globally mainly due to the fact that ageing process started in India only in the late-1980s. However, with the
phenomenal growth witnessed by Indian IT economy, there has been a strong demand for skilled professionals
across the industries thus giving rough times to the HR department of the organizations, which are under huge
pressure to devise ways to retain the talent-base in their organization thus stopping the brain-drain. To make the
matter-worse, government agencies have been plaguing with this syndrome the most due to its inability to retain
its employees owing to low salaries, inconsequential career growth, and fewer growth prospects among other
factors. The employees tend to leave the organizations in search of greener avenues taking with them the tacit
knowledge built over the years thus leaving the organization at a loss.
8. The problem of capturing data (Dejan Nenov, 2005) The knowledge management cycle starts with the capture
or creation of data. Capturing structured and unstructured data in a government department is a complicated and
difficult task since information resides in variety of systems, like
a. Varierty of Formats - documents, messages, conventional file system, internet and intranet sites and
other multimedia types.
b. Systems - ERP, Financial, Human Resources, Citizen Databases, and other content management
systems or at the most basic level in personnel computers or hard files.
c. Locations- Organization wide data and file servers, departmental network/shared drives, and employees
and desktops.
9. Creation of repositories without addressing the strategy to manage content (Michael Fontaine, Eric
Lesser): Most of the knowledge management efforts begin with creation of intranet sites, portal or other
repositories to store each of the documents that gets generated out of the organization or its associated entities
without verifying the relevance and usefulness of the content. The process of capturing of written knowledge is
generally made possible by easy availability of bundle of technologies designed to capture and store data and
information. Although, creation of such repositories is a significant step towards storage and retrieval of
organizational knowledge, installing these systems without addressing the content management strategy can be
a big risk factor and critical failure factor. The implementation of successful repositories can be achieved through
human intervention required for identifying relevant information, soliciting content from practitioners, updating the

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site on regular basis and filtering the content that is no more relevant. Such content management efforts can be
assisted by indexing, cataloguing and search technologies.
10. Failure to analyze and map knowledge management system to user’s needs: A commonly committed
mistake is to design a knowledge management system without analyzing the user’s needs and mapping them
with their day to day job functions. An ideal KM system will be the one which the users of the system can use for
increasing their productivity of the work and can correlate to their day to day working. It should not involve
duplication of work or adding complexity to their job roles. In short, “one-size-fits-all” approach should be avoided
while designing such systems so as to deliver to various user groups as per their needs.
11. An emphasis on formal learning efforts as a mechanism for knowledge sharing: Governments by virtue of
their organizational structure and legacy tend to believe lot more in the power of formal learning methods like
class-room trainings. Although the usefulness of these training programs is not questioned, it is suggested that
the reliance on these formal methods of learning should be reduced and a culture of more informal learning
should be fostered with in the organization. These informal methods can be building a community of practice
among practitioners, organizing a knowledge sharing session among the interested participants, Web-cast of
speech of an invitee to the audience etc.
12. Organization’s inability to motivate employees by addressing their knowledge and learning needs: The
employees are the most important asset of an organization. They drive the growth of the organization through
their intellectual capital. Employee retention usually is dealt by addressing compensation issues rather than
addressing educational and learning needs of the employees. Employees usually take away the intellectual
capital accumulated through years of work experience along with them. There is no concept like human capital
management in Government enterprises. A knowledge management solution should address the issue of work-
force planning whereby Government employees ‘s knowledge and learning needs are addressed and they are
motivated to perform their jobs. The workforce planning should clearly draw the career path of the government
employee with a flexibility of choosing the career path given to employees.
13. Selection of right tools and technologies: After the identification of right people, processes, and proper
definition of knowledge for different audience, the challenges lies in identification of systems, both electronic and
human, that should be put in place to ensure efficient flow and distribution of knowledge. The KM implementers
need to scan the market holistically to take informed decision.
14. Failure to avoid re-invention of the wheel: Governments worldwide are plagued by re-invention of the wheel
syndrome because of factors like tendency to neglect the work of earlier officers and starting from scratch,
absence of organization wide MIS thus leading to duplication of effort. In the absence of integrated effort at the

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highest level, compartmentalization of initiatives occurs and in-silo initiatives keep on happening. Hence, one of
the challenges to KM implementation is to take into consideration the already existing practices of the
organisation and integrate all the major and minor knowledge management initiatives already initiated with in the
organization and not just create another initiative amongst dozen of such initiatives.

Roadmap for KM in Government: (Amrit Tiwana, 2000): The implementation of KM in Government is

guided through the building of a roadmap consisting of various phases and steps. The implementation of KM through
following of a roadmap will ensure that all the challenges related to people, process, technology and resources are
addressed at the right place in right manner.The roadmap is adapted from the book “The KM Toolbook – Practical
techniques for building a KM system” by Amrit Tiwana, Pearson Education and is supplemented with other literature on
the subject. The components of the KM roadmap are given below:
1. Defining Knowledge Management Vision
2. Defining Knowledge Management Strategy and identifying its components.
3. Approach for implementing KM strategy
Defining KM Vision: The development of vision is all about imagining the most desirable state of the organization by
ignoring all the constraints like financial, human, technology or procedural. The vision statement tells the stakeholders to
align their efforts along with the organization’s efforts. The steps for development of the vision are:
1. Get the management buy-in for implementing KM. Realize the benefits of KM to the leaders.
2. Analyze the environment. Carry a SWOT analysis.
3. Build agenda for implementing KM (Improvement in processes, introduction of technology, change management,
regulatory compliance etc.)
4. Build organization’s vision statement for KM.
Defining KM Strategy: A strategy is an approach that answers questions like

WHERE do we want to reach?

WHAT do we want to achieve?

HOW do we want to reach the goal?

WHERE do we begin?
Components of Knowledge Management strategy
The following components form the core of the KM strategy. However, the KM strategy should not be limited to the
following components only. Components may be added / deleted depending upon the needs of the organization.

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1. Information Management: This component will identify best practices in information management and will give
recommendations as to how to define an organization wide information management policy. The information
management component provides strategies for management of information exchanged with in and outside the
organization both in electronic (e-mail) as well as hard copy formats (Letters, Fax). The component will focus on
creation of a single organization wide information register which will serve as yellow pages for the organization.
Further, almost all of the Government departments collect huge amount of citizens’ data in their day to day
functioning. However, the data collected is hardly used in coordinated way for effective policy making. There are
widely appreciated instances of usage of customer data by private sector companies like Dell Computer or
Amazon. This component will look at what lessons can be learned from the private sector to make better use of
the customer data for effective policy making.
2. Communications & Collaboration: Communication is the most important aspect of knowledge management
strategy. An essential part of the KM strategy is ability to communicate knowledge, ideas and data throughout the
organization. Collaboration is another important area which promotes the knowledge culture with in the
organization. This component is best suited to make use of information and communication technologies in
promoting the culture of knowledge sharing. This component will identify best practices in the communication of
knowledge through tool and technologies like intranet, knowledge board etc and will provide a checklist to the
decision makers on how they might better leverage existing communication channels to create knowledge
sharing and dissemination environment.
3. The Learning Organization: The concept of knowledge organizations when coupled with learning organizations
leads to improved organizational performance. The component includes both formal and informal methods of
learning. The Learning organization component will study best practices of how learning as a concept with in the
organizations can lead to improved performance when integrated with knowledge management strategy. The
component will address the training requirement of the staff, mediums to be used for imparting learning and
synchronizing the effort with other capacity building initiatives. The formal and informal methods of learning are
described below:
a. Formal learning: Web-based courses, Learning Management system, Peer assist model, knowledge
sharing sessions, Conferences, Knowledge transfer projects
b. Informal learning: Knowledge Communities (Communities of Practices), Discussion Forums, Recognition
and encouragement
4. Intellectual capital Management: As described in the definition of knowledge, organizational memory,
intellectual capital and personal knowledge are the three different types of knowledge in context to government.

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Three of these taken together are referred to as Intellectual capital of an organization here. There is a need to
effectively manage the three types using different tools and techniques. This component will identify various
ways to manage these three types. The component will identify best practices in key areas of knowledge
development and acquisition (Creation), sharing, storage, retrieval and knowledge utilization. The component will
identify various tools and technologies that enable these processes of knowledge management.
5. Leadership and Culture: Leadership and culture is at the core of the Knowledge management system
implementation in any organization. This shows that any KM implementation is not about technology but about
providing right type of leadership support for such initiatives, creating a structure of rewards, encourage
knowledge sharing culture. Knowledge Management is closely linked to people side of management such as
change management and organization Development. This component will identify the best practices in these
areas which will act as enablers to the implementation of Knowledge management in Government. Below is the
pictorial representation of the above discussed areas.

•Defining Information Management Policy

•Information Asset Register
•Best Practices Information •Single Information Database ( MIS)
•Key Learning documents Management •Yellow Pages
•Knowledge Repository
•Organizational Memory
•Intellectual Knowledge
•Personnel Knowledge
Management

Learning
Intellectual Leadership Organization
capital &
Management Culture
•Formal Learning Methods
•Web Based Courses
•Class room Training
•Informal Learning Methods
Community of Practice
K-Sharing Sessions Communication
Chatting & Collaboration
Discussion Forums, Blogs
Expertise Locator

Approach for implementation of KM strategy:

The roadmap to implementation of KM strategy is divided in to four phases consisting of 10 steps. The four phases are:
1. Infrastructure evaluation
2. Knowledge Management system analysis, design and development
3. KM System Deployment

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4. Impact assessment and Performance evaluation

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The 10-step KM road-map will guide the KM implementers in strategizing, designing, developing, and implementing a KM
initiative in Government departments. It may be noted that the steps detailed here are steps of a roadmap and do not
contain a step by step methodology of KM implementation. The KM system and KM strategy has to be unique to each
department/ministry with respect to its people, processes and functions. The methodology of KM implementation will
have to be crafted for each department separately depending upon the environmental factors after studying the best
practices of similar type of organizations.

The 10 steps and the phases in which they appear are given below:

1. Phase 1: Infrastructural evaluation

a. Step 1: Analyzing existing infrastructure
b. Step 2: Aligning KM and business strategy
2. KM system analysis, design, and development
a. Step 3: -Designing the KM architecture, and integrating existing infrastructure
b. Step 4: Auditing and analyzing existing knowledge
c. Step 5: Designing the KM team
d. Step 6: Creating the KM blueprint
e. Step 7: Developing the KM system
3. Phase 3: KM System Deployment
a. Step 8: Deploying results-driven incremental (RDI) methodology
b. Step 9: Leadership issues
4. Phase 4: Metrics for performance evaluation
a. Step 10: Impact assessment of returns and performance

Step 1: Analyzing existing infrastructure: This step gives an understanding of the components that helps in building
the KM strategy. By analyzing the existing infrastructure, critical gaps can be identified in the infrastructure.
Consequently, this will help in avoiding the re-invention of the wheel and leveraging what already exists in building a new
comprehensive system. Building upon already existing systems and processes also helps in getting in management
support because of the fact that existing investment is not abandoned and is being utilized in some way of other. It is
important to analyze the existing policies to enforce KM and the gaps to be addressed. KM implementation shall greatly
depend on policy interventions and a rugged, sustainable technology framework.

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Step 2: Aligning Knowledge Management and Business (Organizational) Strategy: Knowledge drives strategy and
strategy drives knowledge management. Organizational strategy is usually at a high level and development of systems is
at low level. Development of systems require specifications and features and not the visions or business ideas. Senior
management is always concerned with organizational performance and not with development of systems. Hence,
convincing them about creating new organizational culture and sanctioning amount towards development of new system
can be an uphill task. However, if project implementers are able to make connection between the two, the buy-in
becomes very easy to get. Hence, KM system design should be raised to the level of Organizational strategy and the
strategy should be pulled down to the level of system design to create a link between the two.
Step 3: Knowledge Management Architecture and Design: The third step involves selecting the infrastructural
components that constitute the KM system architecture. Policy, Process, People, and Technology are the key
infrastructure pieces of the KM system architecture (David J. Skyrme). The Policy level interventions in a
Government department are illustrated below:
1. Following of good practice regulation
2. Collaborative association to encourage intra-organization trust
3. Knowledge based organizations
4. Mandating tasks and outcomes based team structures
5. Career / life planning for individual/ department/organization.

Process level interventions includes

1. Framing guidelines/standards for organizational working
2. Developing collaboration methods and standards
3. Building KM Process for supporting KM systems
4. Virtual style of working among teams
5. Building KM specialties among individuals
The policy level interventions involves numerous activities like facilitation of a KM culture through proper awareness and
communication, positioning of enabling leadership headed by CKO coupled with creation of rewards structure. Other
policy level interventions include mandating the implementation of KM principles and procedures in organizational day to
day operations like supporting collaboration among employees (intra/inter department), supporting learning requirements
of the employees by way of trainings and other informal means and encouraging knowledge sharing with in the
organization. Policy level interventions motivate the staff to embrace such initiatives whole-heartedly.

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Speaking in terms of non-policy level infrastructural components, KM systems use multi-layer technology architecture,
and the technology required to build each layer is readily available. The integration of these components to build a KM
system requires thinking in terms of Infostructure rather than Infrastructure. The step helps in deciding various tools and
technologies that will support the KM architecture consisting of one or all of the features like collaboration platform,
search platform, data warehouses, intranet or web portals, expert finders etc. The decisions like opting to use an open
standard such as web or a packaged solution such as Lotus Notes or a similar proprietary group platform, decision to
create profiling mechanism for content like push or pull based knowledge delivery are effected in this step.
Step 4: Knowledge Audit and Analysis: Any KM project must begin with analyzing what an organization already knows
and what it needs to know. In this step, the project teams audit and analyze knowledge. The audit team is aided by
representatives from various organizational units in carrying out preliminary assessment of the knowledge assets with in
the organization and examining its criticality. This step helps in profiling of the organizational users and their knowledge
needs.
Step 5: Designing the Knowledge Management Team: The 5th step in KM roadmap preparation consists of forming the
KM team that will design, build, implement, and deploy the organization’s KM system. An effective KM team must be a
mix of key stakeholders both within and outside the organization. The identification of sources of expertise capable of
doing the precise tasks while maintaining a balance of technical and managerial requirement is the key to building a right
team.
Step 6: Creating the Knowledge Management System Blueprint: The KM team identified in step 5 builds on a KM
blueprint that provides a plan for building and incrementally improving the KM system. The design of the KM architecture
should be made keeping in the mind the requirement for scalability, performance and high level of interoperability. It
should also take in to consideration other factors like technology obsolescence. The KM system blueprint should
precisely identify the KM subsystems that will form part of the complete picture. Such subsystems can be a provision of a
collaboration platform, employee database, announcement portal, repository of organizational knowledge base etc
depending upon each department’s requirement.
Step 7: Developing the Knowledge Management System: Once the blueprint has been created, the next step entails
building a functional system consisting of all the subsystems defined in the blueprint.
Step 8: Pilot Testing and Deployment Using RDI Methodology: A large scale project such as KM deployment must
take in to account the actual needs of its users. Although cross functional teams can be helpful in understanding the
criticality and information bottlenecks, a pilot deployment is the ultimate reality check. In this step, a decision with respect
to selection of the pilot and releases with highest pay off should be made. The pilot project should be of right size, non-

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trivial in nature and representative in nature so as to arouse the interest of all the stakeholders in the organization.
Finally, Result Driven Incremental methodology of deployment should be used for the release of the system.
Step 9: Create Leadership and Reward Structures: The most commonly quoted failure point in projects like KM
implementations is lack of support for the initiative in terms of usage by the employees. Project sponsors must
understand that employees are not to be treated like troops for whom knowledge sharing can be mandated by the order
of the whip; rather knowledge sharing has to be voluntary effort. Encouraging usage of the system and garnering
employee support requires new reward structure that motivates employees to use the system and contribute to its
enthusiastic adoption. Above all, an enthusiastic and undying support of the leader is required to sustain such efforts.
This step shall analyze the need for appointment of Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) for spearheading the Knowledge
Management Program, who will evangelize the KM adoption in the organization, understand and differentiate the CKO’s
technical and functional roles and responsibilities so as to differentiate the role from CIO and CTO, identify the process
triggers for Knowledge Management system success, plan for Knowledge Management success using the knowledge
evangelist for selling the idea of KM to the organization. The step will devise ways to overcome the barriers posed by
cultural change, low motivation level among the employees and non-existent reward structure with in the organization.

Step 10: Impact assessment of Knowledge Management: This step is most difficult step to execute. Even private
companies have been struggling to measure the impact of KM systems. The step must account for both financial and
intangible impact of KM on organization. This step will be used to define a matrix for measuring the impact of such
systems. Being able to measure the impact serves the purpose of refining the KM design through subsequent iterations.

Defining the KM System Blueprint: The KM system blueprint is developed as part of the KM strategy implementation
process as defined in step 6 of Phase 2. The Blueprint contains details of the seven layers as proposed in the KM
architecture which further helps in identifying KM components like repositories, content centers, aggregation and mining
tools, collaborative platforms, Knowledge directories, push and pull technique of knowledge sharing. The blueprint also
helps in giving an organizational view of the KM systems and interoperability with existing IT structures.

References:
1. Amrit Tiwana , The Knowledge Management Toolkit, Practical techniques for building a Knowledge Management
System, Pearson Education, 2000
2. David J. Skyrme (Dr.), Knowledge Management: Approaches and Policies. Paper available at
http://www.providersedge.com/docs/km_articles/KM_-_Approaches_and_Policies.pdf

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NISG:CB&KM:2007: KMF – A Concept note on Knowledge Management

3. Jonathan Hey, The Data, Information, Knowledge, Wisdom Chain:The Metaphorical link, December 2004
4. Xiaoming Cong and Kaushik V. Pandya, Issues of Knowledge Management in the Public Sector, Electronic
Journal of Knowledge Management Volume 1 Issue 2 (2003) 25-33 available at http://www.ejkm.com/volume-
1/volume1-issue-2/issue-2-art-3-cong-pandya.pdf
5. Riitta Suurla, Markku Markkula and Olli Mustajärvi, Developing and implementing knowledge management in the
Parliament of Finland, A report available at http://www.eduskunta.fi/fakta/vk/tuv/KM_Finnish_Parliament.pdf
6. Michael Fontaine, Eric Lesser, Challenges in managing organizational knowledge – A report published for IBM
Institute for Knowledge-Based Organizations.
7. Alex Motsenigos, Jocelyn Young, KM in the U.S. government sector, KM World October 2002, Volume 11, Issue
9
8. Dejan Nenov, New Approaches to KM in Government: User-Centric Enterprise Information Retrieval, March
2005, available at www.x1.com/download/x1_platform_whitepaper.pdf

Additional References:
1. Thomas H. Davenport, David W. De Long, Michael C. Beers, Building successful Knowledge Management Projects
Working Paper published by Center for Business Innovation, 1997.
2. D.C.Misra (Dr.), Ten guiding principles for introduction of knowledge management in e-government in developing
economies for increased productivity (Paper presented at First International Conference on Knowledge Management
for Productivity and Competitiveness, 11-12, January, 2007, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi)
3. Richard G. Harris, Enterprise Information Management for Government (Gartner, Industry Research)
4. Knowledge Management, Best Practices Checklist, Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO)
5. Angelica Coviello et al, Standardised KM Implementation Approach IST-2000-26393, European KM Forum, 2001

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