Knowledge Is Power. Really.

n the 1980s, it was fashionable to talk about the difficulty of making good use of raw data. The prescription for that problem: Transform data into information, with the help of next-generation technology and better management. So corporations and government agencies poured billions of dollars into new systems that held out the promise of a cure for poor information.

It hasn't quite worked. "Our investment in information technology outweighed the value we were getting," says Daniel E. Porter, chief information officer of the Navy. Now Porter is among the many CIOs and other managers who are looking to knowledge management as a means of leveraging their IT investments and transforming information into knowledge.

Knowledge management is hot. Market researchers at Federal Sources Inc. report that federal spending on knowledge management products and services will double annually between now and fiscal 2003, reaching $6.3 billion in that year.

The enthusiasm seems to be almost as pronounced in the private sector as in federal agencies. The big consulting and accounting firms have established knowledge management practices, conferences are held on the subject, and software companies advertise knowledge management products. In view of the intense interest, it's remarkable that there's no widely accepted definition of the term.

The Navy's Porter cheerfully acknowledges that he can't readily define knowledge management, but he's listed it among his office's major initiatives. The CIO is considering whether it makes sense to establish a chief knowledge officer at Navy headquarters and perhaps at each major command.

Pressed for a definition, Porter says he's partial to one that he attributes to Gordon Petrash, a PricewaterhouseCoopers partner: "Providing the right information to the right decision-maker at the right time, thus creating the right conditions for new knowledge to be created." This definition is a little fuzzy, but it points to the business value of information. Business value is the key to deciding whether it might make sense to invest in knowledge management.

For the military services, the primary line of business is war, and they are pursuing knowledge management as a means of achieving the "information superiority" with which they expect to win wars in the next century.

Warfare "really hasn't changed since 'Saving Private Ryan,' " says Ed J. Schmitz, a member of Porter's staff. If the squad in that movie had had better knowledge of Normandy in the aftermath of D-Day, fewer lives would have been lost. But for both civilian and military organizations, there's potential business value from these perspectives as well:

• Capturing and distributing employees' undocumented knowledge. This is particularly important in a time of downsizing and outsourcing, and when the workforce is aging and headed toward retirement.
• Making existing data and documents more widely available and more useful.
• Combining dissimilar data and information to get a more holistic picture of opportunities and challenges.

• Expanding and improving training. Training should continue throughout an employee's tenure, so the organization is continually upgrading its skills. What's more, it should come in smaller chunks and just when it's needed.
• Dealing with information overload. Most of us aren't suffering from a lack of information. Instead of more information, we need better ways of filtering, storing and retrieving the information we already have.

Ultimately, the interest in knowledge management is being driven by the recognition that we are, indeed, living in an information age. More than ever, "knowledge is power," Porter says. He grimaces a little to hear himself giving voice to such a cliche, but he has to say it because it is the foundation of everyone's interest in knowledge management.

Many Technologies

What technologies are involved in managing knowledge? Here's where the picture gets murky. Almost every contemporary IT product can contribute to knowledge management, and none of these products is integral to knowledge management.

So it's difficult to single out the ones that are most useful at this point in the evolution of the discipline. "There's massive confusion is the marketplace right now," Michael Helfrich, knowledge management chief for Lotus Development Corp., said last fall. Little has changed since then. Nonetheless, some technology and product categories recur in discussions of the subject.

First is what's being called the "knowledge portal." It's a World Wide Web page that provides pointers to other online information on a focused topic. Agencies already have established a number of these sites.

For example, anyone interested in how the Defense Department is streamlining its contracting processes and avoiding $400 hammer purchases should be using the DoD acquisition reform page at www.acq.osd.mil/ar. It provides a wealth of information and links to still more information.

Even richer knowledge portals exist inside agencies as part of their internal networks, or intranets. Lawyers in the Army's Judge Advocate General's Corps, for instance, can access specialized online legal documents and databases through JAGCNet, a custom system available to JAG personnel worldwide.

Another set of technologies often employed in knowledge management falls under the heading of document management. For many agencies, document management is the key to going paperless. Document management systems track their documents and locate information quickly. Documents are put online and indexed for ready retrieval.

But many experts consider document management only one piece of the knowledge management effort. "Most of an organization's knowledge obviously resides in its people," says Kelvin Womack, a partner in KPMG's federal government practice. By limiting the system to documents, developers fail to make much of the organization's knowledge accessible.

Enhanced Document Systems

Some knowledge management systems might be described as enhanced document management systems. Besides the core information contained in documents, the contents can include information developed in the interests of collaboration. For example, a knowledge manager could develop records of employees' capabilities and their current and past assignments. Then if expertise on a topic such as environmental regulations or astrophysics is needed, any employees with relevant experience can be found easily.

Personnel records typically are contained in older computer systems that were not designed for online access from ordinary desktop PCs. To overcome this structural barrier, some organizations are turning to data warehousing, which involves using software tools as bridges among incompatible systems. Some people regard knowledge management and data warehousing as closely related. Navy CIO Porter, however, says he does not think they are necessarily connected.

Other information, such as external or commercial databases, can be included in the knowledge system. Porter has included the Navy librarian, Joan Buntzen, who recently was named federal librarian of the year, as a key member of his staff. To his knowledge, this hasn't happened in many other places, but to Porter it seems like a natural because she is the official custodian of the Navy's published information.

Online repositories of knowledge have proven their worth because they save time, leverage human expertise and prevent people from reinventing the wheel.

There remains, however, the delicate question of how to get the know-how out of employees' heads and desks and into a computer network. There is a natural tendency to hoard knowledge because of its power. The recent enthusiasm for collaboration among employees goes against the grain. Knowledge management can facilitate collaboration, but the reluctance to share knowledge must be overcome.

In addition, assembling, maintaining and serving up a comprehensive set of online knowledge could be expensive. Some corporations have abandoned their knowledge management initiatives because the results did not justify the costs. The Navy is starting small, with a few pilot programs, and Porter has not had to fight for funding yet. His staff acknowledges that cost justification may be difficult.

Porter also is pondering what role the service's human resources managers should have. Human resources and IT interests intersect at the topic of training, which is increasingly automated and networked. From a big-picture, strategic perspective, training is a matter of capturing how-to knowledge and then making it available to those who need it. Porter also is interested in upgrading Navy employees' skills in acquiring and using knowledge.

People Perspective

But Porter's interest in the human side of knowledge management goes beyond training. Unlike most CIOs, he describes people as an integral element of his knowledge management strategy. A discussion of knowledge management with Porter, Schmitz and Deputy CIO Alex Bennet veers off into conversations about change management; collaboration in project teams; business process reengineering; decision support systems; stories, games and simulations as means of learning; a theory called system dynamics; and many other perspectives on how people work.

Porter says he's fighting against a common tendency among information technology specialists, who predominate on CIO staffs, to try to solve every problem with technology alone. In the past, he says, "we limited the definition of information management because we were IT people."

The CIO's office is not alone in its interest in knowledge management. Adm. Archie Clemins, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, has been pushing for network infrastructure and an intranet to make knowledge widely accessible to the service's operational units at sea and in port. Clemins sees knowledge management as the next wave of IT that will enable naval forces to become still more lean and mean.

The Navy CIO staff also is working with other federal agencies. A recently formed Federal Knowledge Management Council, with two dozen participating agencies, and a predominantly private-sector Knowledge Management Consortium are among the forums where Porter's staff is exchanging information with peers.

But Schmitz says "there is no model out there" for how to manage the Navy's knowledge. He and his colleagues on Porter's staff are developing a strategy based on providing the necessary infrastructure and tools, promoting knowledge management and demonstrating its value. The CIO's faith in the "knowledge-centric enterprise" is at the heart of the initiative.

Years ago, when he proposed to develop one of the Navy's first Web pages, Porter recalls, his boss discouraged him, asking who would look at it. "After 1 million hits," the CIO says dryly, "he changed his mind." Porter expects knowledge management will have a similar inevitability.