12 principles of knowledge management
Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, the Army's chief information officer, shared the service's newly released principles for improving knowledge management during a presentation Aug. 19 at the LandWarNet conference.
The following principles provide authoritative guidance to Army commands and organizations developing or engaging in knowledge management efforts, Sorenson said.
1. Train and educate leaders, managers and champions.
2. Reward knowledge sharing and make knowledge management a career-enhancing activity.
3. Establish a doctrine of collaboration.
4. Use every interaction, whether face-to-face or virtual, as an opportunity to acquire and share knowledge.
5. Prevent knowledge loss.
6. Protect and secure information and knowledge assets.
7. Embed knowledge assets (links, podcasts, videos, simulations, wikis, etc.) in standard business processes and provide access to those who need it.
8. Use standard legal and business rules and processes enterprisewide.
9. Use standardized, collaborative toolsets.
10. Use open architectures to permit access and searching across boundaries.
11. Incorporate a robust search capability to access contextual knowledge.
12. Use portals that permit single sign-on authentication for all users, including partners.
A more detailed document that includes rationales and implications is available at
www.army.mil/ciog6/docs/AKMPrinciples.pdf.
About the Author
Wyatt Kash served as chief editor of GCN (October 2004 to August 2010) and also of Defense Systems (January 2009 to August 2010). He currently serves as Content Director and Editor at Large of 1105 Media.