Transcript Leni Oman presentation--Thursday session July 28

Whaddaya Know?
A Workshop on Managing
Research Program Knowledge
Leni Oman
Director
Office of Research & Library Services
AASHTO RAC/TRB State Representatives Annual Meeting
Salt Lake City, Utah
July 28, 2011
Structure of Session
• Snap shot of knowledge management and why
it’s important
• Common practices in knowledge management
• Uses in transportation today
• Applications to the research management
community
What is Knowledge Management?
• Several definitions – all revolve
around People, Process, Technology
• Knowledge Management (KM) is
NOT a single practice or software
program.
• Like Performance Management it:
– Is a culture that supports an intended
outcome; in this case, management of
knowledge resources.
– Employs a variety of strategies
including policy and procedure that is
supported by technology and software
applications.
People
Process
Knowledge Management:
The systematic means of
capturing, organizing,
retrieving, sharing, and
generating organizational
knowledge.
Technology
Federal Knowledge
Management Working Group
Mission: Inform and support
federal government departments,
agencies, organizations, and their
constituencies in the research,
development, identification, and
implementation of knowledge
management (KM) activities,
practices, lessons learned, and
technologies.
KM Mind Map
A high-level look into a Knowledge
Management System and its
relationships to ideas, principles,
and interconnected elements.
Link to KM Mind Map
Knowledge Challenges
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80% of an organization’s information content is unmanaged
15-35% of employees’ time spent searching for information
Searchers only find what they want ~50% of the time
16-19% of Internet content is searchable
Agencies losing brain trust
– Retirements and Reduction in Force
• Work trends
– More specialization and less cross-training/mentoring
– Frequent job movement
– “Just in time” information consumption
– Demographic changes/changing information expectations
• Explosion of information available – especially digital
– Impossible to keep up – even for niche areas
– Relevance is critical – and needs improvement
How Does Knowledge Management
Help?
• Improving productivity and efficiency
• Getting the right knowledge to the right people at the right time
• Identifying, capturing, organizing and disseminating critical
institutional knowledge
• Establishing networks between people to share knowledge
• Sharing lessons learned and best practices to avoid reinventing
the wheel
• Knowing the why behind decisions and actions
• Knowing what we know
• Supporting change management
• Intangible assets of the organization
Important Distinctions
Explicit Knowledge
•Knowledge that has been codified: Information
Tacit Knowledge
•Unarticulated, not codified, experience based, more easily shared person to
person
Nonaka and Takeuchi
•Socialization: tacit to tacit
•Externalization: tacit to explicit
KM
•Combination: explicit to explicit
•Internalization: explicit to tacit
Library
Polanyi
•All knowledge is either tacit or rooted in tacit, no matter what we are doing we
are relying on background skills and beliefs so tacit and explicit are dimensions of
the same knowledge
How is KM being used in Transportation?
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Workforce Risk Assessment
Succession Planning
Knowledge Profiles/Legacy Capture
Lessons Learned
Communities of Practice
Cross Training, Rotational Assignments
Functional Org Charts
Information Management Plans
Knowledge Portals
Organizational Network Analysis
FHWA
Your
Agency
Here
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Using KM in Research Management
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Program Management
Process focused
People: Expertise; Contact Lists; Roles; Risk
Governance Roles: Who are the decision-makers?
Research Procedures Manual
Decision Documents
Contract Files
Agency Procedures/Desk Manuals
How does information move?
Who’s responsible for what information? Where’s in
stored, in what format? How are you going to share it,
find it?
Performance Metrics
Using KM in Research Management
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Research Management
Subject Focused
People: Expertise; Contact Lists; Roles; Risk
Research Needs & Agency Priorities
Research Results/What’s been done/Return on
Investment
How does information move?
Who’s responsible for what information? Where is it
stored? In what format? How are you going to share it,
find it?
Crosswalks between topics
Governance Roles: Who are the decision-makers?
Facilitating Collaboration
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Organizations
Who we are
What we do
How we are funded
Staff
Expertise
Facilities
Contact info
Projects
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Needs
Funded projects
Outcomes
Reports
Return on investment
Contact information
Where to Start
Identify areas of highest risk for knowledge loss
– Is the person the Subject Matter Expert?
– Is this a positions with no redundancy (no one else
performs the duties)
– Individuals that work with high independency and
haven’t shared much information
– The position is a unique specialty
– Incumbent personality/style limits sharing
– A high percentage of individuals may leave a
functional area (through retirement and/or transition)
Tools to Mitigate Knowledge Loss
• Identify the successor of the functional duties
and begin cross training
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Formal training as available
Dedicated time to walk through procedures
Shadowing
Involving the successor in activities/decision-making
Mentoring
Mitigate Knowledge Loss continued
• Document what you can
– Document the “knowledge profile” for the position
– Video tape skilled employees implementing activities
where documentation is difficult or visuals add value
– Make sure information is stored on shared sites
– Assign time to document and organize information – and
monitor progress. This cannot be left to the last minute.
– Identify and make sure copies remain of
documents/resources that provide information essential to
this position
• Conduct knowledge profile interviews
– Transcribe and post information
Foster Knowledge Sharing
• Set aside time for debriefing/after action reviews that
involve employees in similar functional roles
– Dig into challenging projects to discuss why decisions
were made. Very important to have strong meeting
leadership/facilitation to support a comfortable
environment for information sharing.
• Establish communities of practice
• Use the lessons learned database
• Consider semi-social events
– FHWA has “Road Gang” meetings that bring retirees and
current employees together to discuss historical projects or
turning points in the agency
Explanations & Examples
Documenting Your Organization: Maryland
State Highway’s Functional Org Chart
A Closer View: Maryland State Highway’s
Functional Org Chart
The Knowledge Profile
WSDOT’s variation on Virginia DOT’s Knowledge Management Program
Knowledge Profile Process
Knowledge Profiles are created through interviews with employees.
• Typically up to three 2 hour recorded interviews
• The audio file is confidential and destroyed after the summary is
approved
• The summary is reviewed by employee for accuracy and comfort
• The point is to capture information in an environment in which
employees may speak without concern that misspoken or unflattering
information is transcribed and shared.
• Begin with review of a person’s career
• The following information elements guide the interview but there isn’t
a rigid format
Tribal Liaison Profile
Knowledge Profile
Examples
POSITION HISTORY
Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald created the Tribal Liaison position within the
Government Relations Office to support government-to-government consultation between
WSDOT and the state’s tribes. Between 2001 and 2003, a consultation policy was developed and
then the Centennial Accord Plan, in cooperation with the tribes and each office of WSDOT.
WSDOT offices described their programs, funding opportunities, cycles of work, how they would
cooperate with the tribes, and how they would incorporate tribal interactions into their own office.
An initial goal of the tribal liaison was to educate the department on tribal issues. Work with tribes
requires extra time and paperwork, especially early in a partnership, so a training program was
established to inform WSDOT employees on general issues and solutions, and to encourage
outreach to the tribes. Regular training sessions were coordinated for mode offices and regions.
Currently, training occurs once per year through all offices.
GENERAL DUTIES
Primary concern: Impact of projects on tribal interests.
Primary duty: Provide tribal consultation in order to avoid, minimize, or mitigate damages and
impacts to tribes’ cultural and natural resources.
Other duties:
 Assist in completion of WSDOT projects.
 Facilitate meetings between project teams, tribal leaders, and the tribal community. Preside
over initial meetings.
 Coordinate department training projects on tribal issues.
 Remain available to tribes to facilitate transportation needs and represent their concerns
within the department.
 Ensure consultants consider tribal issues.
Administrative duties:
 Provide departments with contact information for tribal planners.
 Respond to emails from WSDOT offices, state agencies, tribal members, and others.
 Attend monthly meeting of tribal liaisons through Governor’s Office of Indian Affairs to discuss
problems and broad issues, e.g., legal challenges to projects, upcoming conferences.
 Attend yearly Centennial Accord meeting between governor and tribal chairs.
 Attend WSDOT annual meeting to review accomplishments and areas of concern, e.g., public
transportation funding, traffic data.
Department training programs:
 Coordinated yearly for regional offices, headquarters, and the Urban Corridors and Ferries
offices to inform WSDOT employees of tribal issues.
 General training (full day), cultural resources protection (4 hours), tribal sovereignty and
taxation issues (half day).
 Currently training about 150 people per year.
 Trainees will often debate the trainer over tribal issues
 This program should be encouraged for all new employees, including ranking administrators.
 Training can be repeated every five years, and helps experience employees hone their ability
to work with tribes.
Intangibles:
 Maintaining contact with involved parties to resolve issues.
Keep other liaisons informed of projects which may impact them.
Property Acquisitions Specialist Profile
Special Acquisition/Project Coordination Section
Leni’s Lessons on Knowledge Profiles
• Beneficial for the interviewer to be familiar with the
department but not well known to the interviewee.
• The interviewer should be able to draw out a variety
of personalities.
• Summarizing the interview takes a LOT of time –
know how you will staff this.
• The summary or transcription needs some clean up
– spellings, program names
• The outcome is useful. Know how you’ll store and
share them.
• It’s rewarding for most employees and fun for the
interviewer.
What’s a Community of Practice?
• Communities of Practice (CoP) bring together
individuals with shared interest on a topic (a domain).
– members are connected by interdependent knowledge and a
commitment to exploring the domain and developing and sharing
relevant knowledge about the domain.
– Community coordinators don’t lead in the traditional sense but
do enable the community to find its direction and practice.
– Communities may understand specific tasks or sponsor a tem
but the community isn’t defined by its task.
• A Team brings together individuals with expertise on
interdependent tasks that contribute to predefined,
shared objective.
– Their work is focused on producing the deliverable.
Knowledge Communities
Dimensions
communities of practice
(CoPs)
communities of interest
(CoIs)
nature of problems
common task across multiple
domains
synthesis and mutual learning
through the integration of
multiple knowledge systems
weaknesses
different tasks in the same
domain
refinement of one
knowledge system; new
ideas coming from within
the practice
codified knowledge,
domain coverage
group think
strengths
shared ontologies
people
beginners and experts;
apprentices and masters
learning
legitimate peripheral
participation
social creativity; diversity;
making all voices heard
stakeholders (owners of
problems) from different
perspectives
informed participation
knowledge
development
major objectives
shared understanding; making
all voices heard
lack of shared understanding
Prepared by Amanda Wilson, National Transportation Library from
Richard Claassens, Information Architect, SNS Bank, the Netherlands
Examples of CoPs
Virginia DOT’s uses of CoPs
CoPs/CoIs in Research
• Research Program & Project Management
(RPPM)
• Research Clusters (link)
• FHWA Communities of Practice (link)
Managing a Community of Practice
• Planning: Define the need for a community, engage
management, identify initial members.
• Start Up: Learning what you can do together. Need for
patience: the community needs time to develop and deliver
value.
• Growth: Grow with the need/benefit to do so. Be aware of the
potential for disruption and consciously manage transition.
• Sustainment: Without continual growth or value, the
community can stagnate. Consider how to maintain interest
or consciously close the community.
• Closure: Celebrate successes and bring it to an end
Knowledge Profiles
Basic Operational Knowledge - Primary Job Functions
Operating Data - Current information that is routinely used,
Key Operational Knowledge – decisions, assignments, questions, tasks,
controversies, opportunities, threats, or anything else that may require
quick action with potentially serious consequences. Hibernating issues:
Key customers - an incumbent’s most important customers inside the
organization (internal) and outside the organization (external)
Completed & Pending Projects
Knowledge Network - Who you turn to for knowledge and information—
think especially about those with unique knowledge you need to tap into.
Unexploited Ideas - Ideas, suggestions or recommendations that you
have thought about but did not have time to implement
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Unit/Feedback for the organization
Knowledge Mapping
VDOT uses Knowledge Mapping to help identify areas of need for
succession planning and to build networks
WSDOT Knowledge Mapping Pilot
• Organizational network analysis of two internal networks:
– Climate Change: this was a newly formed and evolving network.
The intent was to use knowledge mapping to help the network
develop in a constructive manner.
– Tribal Network: this was an existing network experiences some
challenges. Knowledge mapping was undertaken to assess
network function and identify options for improvement.
• Both networks are broadly disseminated throughout the
programs and offices of the agency and represent
multiple levels of management and technical expertise
– Some network members work on the network subject on a daily
basis, others are only engaged intermittently.
– Both networks have strong connections to external partners but
these external connections were not included in the survey.
Pilot Project Findings
• There were individuals in both networks who felt they were
peripheral who turned out to play a central role in network
communications.
– Network functions/expectations should be reviewed for individuals
who thought they would be peripheral but were found to be central.
– Is the communication necessary or are they receiving similar
information from multiple sources? Are they perceived as a
decision-maker and is that role appropriate or can the decision be
made elsewhere?
• Both networks would benefit from identifying network
functions and members more explicitly.
– Information on functions and members should be stored in a stable
environment.
– Intermittent members should be notified when an agency action is
initiated that will require their attention.
WA-RD 754.1 Organizational Network Analysis for Two Networks in the
Washington State Department of Transportation
Tribal Network Findings
Tribal Liaisons were expected to be
fairly well connected but the degree of
connectedness varied substantially.
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Duties varied substantially though
titles were the same.
Recommendations
• Clarification of roles within the department and expectations
within the network
• Formalize their community of practice to promote knowledge
and workload sharing and problem solving
• An information repository should be developed for network
members so they can access the most current resources.
What Do You Need to Document?
Know what you need to know and who manages it:
• Why do you do the work you do? Laws, policies, executive orders…
• How do you do the work? Procedures manuals, standards, desk
references…
• Who is involved? Distribution lists, suppliers and customers, who is
responsible for each type of information? Who do you get
information from? Who do you give it to?
• Where? What’s the geographic scope of the material? Where is the
information stored?
• What material gets stored? Are you storing data, text documents,
images? What is your enterprise strategy for complying with records
management, meeting your information needs, complying with open
government expectations, what to do with draft documents?
• When? What’s your records retention schedule for information?
When do materials go into an enterprise filing system?
Managing Documented Data and Information
• Produce text readable files: PDFs are frequently stored as images
and search engines can’t read them.
• Clarify expectations: We save information because we aren’t sure
what to do or who is doing it. Clarify expectations about who is
managing the information.
• File naming: Provide guidance for commonly shared or high priority
documents. What will have recognition over the lifetime of the
information use for most users?
• Capture metadata. How do you search for information? Capture that
in the file title, text or property fields so you or others can find it later.
• Is your information unique? If not, are you the information steward?
Are you modifying the original material? Can you point to another
resource for the document rather than store it?
• Other management needs: version control; electronic and/or paper;
iterative products; images….
Have a plan to manage your information
Research Reports
• Where to send them
– Transportation Research Information Database (TRID)
– National Technical Information Service (NTIS)
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Why catalog them
Paper and/or electronic
What’s a PURL?
Your own reports, the reports of other
How do you share them?
What about the data behind the report?
Transportation Research Information Database
• A resource of international transportation
research
• A bibliographic database indexed using
the Transportation Research Thesaurus
• Free access to the database. Many free
documents but some not.
• Can link to National Transportation
Library for archiving
• Sensitive to the interests of the
transportation community.
• We’re REQUIRED to submit reports
from SPR funded research – but TRB
has to track down some state reports.
http://trid.trb.org/submit.aspx
National Technical Information Service
• A permanent clearinghouse of government-funded scientific,
technical, engineering, and business related information available
today
• A bibliographic database, uses their own indexing system
• A subscription based services so you pay for the information you
retrieve
• A good resource, NOT transportation specific
• Part of the “Dark Web”
(not readily findable)
• We’re REQUIRED to submit
reports from federally funded
research
http://www.ntis.gov/
Libraries
• With bibliographic databases, why are libraries
still important?
– Promotes access to information by people outside the
transportation community
– Broader use of a common language help find
information across literature sources
– You don’t need to access a specific resource
– World-wide access to collections through WorldCat
– Track record of sustaining access to and preserving
information resources over extended time period
– The system works!
Research Report Management
• Need for expectations, guidance, and best
practices for research report management
– Distribution amongst state DOTs, USDOT
Administrations, universities, and other interested
parties
– Managing collections and repositories
– Report formats
Other Research Information Needs
• What do we expect to find from our web sites
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Research unit description
Research Procedures Manual
SPR Research Workplans?
Research Projects and Reports… or is that TRB?
High Value Research – can we automate the
collection?
Information Management Challenges
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Findability & Access: Issues related to search and retrieval of all
types of information by agency employees and business partners.
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Information creation, collection and maintenance: Designing to
avoid redundancy and improve reusability of authoritative information.
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Database Design: Technical database design issues that facilitate
use of information resources throughout the organization (platform,
naming conventions, data architecture).
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User Interfaces: Design of applications that support enterprise data
information delivery and information presentation, including tools like
dashboards, graphics and maps.
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Legal Considerations: Protection of data from theft, loss and abuse,
WSDOT’s obligation to adhere to regulations and industry standards
required for conducting business, and licensing and use agreements.
Within Each Challenge are Common Issues
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Cultural Issues
– My data is unique
– Designing for everyone’s needs will slow me down
– Ownership v. Stewardship – “it’s my data”
– Funding silos – “I can’t address your need with this source of money”
Governance
– A clear and consistent vision that enterprise design is the goal.
– Clear priorities
– Clarification about decision-making authority
– Data-sharing agreements
– Anyone can create a database on their PC without regard for redundancy,
standards, security or sustainability
Technical Issues
– Lack of clear standards and equipment
• Collecting in similar information in different formats
• Variation in collection tools (e.g., GPS equipment standards, collection vans)
– Changing software formats/marketplace changes
Training Needs
– Clear competencies
– Generic training needs to be modified to fit the local/topical context