Making use of knowledge as a critical and dynamic resource in your organisation

1. Making use of knowledge as a critical and dynamic resource in your organisation

2. About ACELG: • A unique collaboration of universities and bodies committed to the advancement of local government • The centre's vision is for "world class local government to meet the emerging challenges of the 21st century"

3. ACELG's program areas : • Research and policy foresight • Innovation and best practice • Governance and strategic leadership • Organisation capacity building • Rural-remote and indigenous local government • Workforce development

4. Specific challenges facing local government : • Diverse range of services • Ageing workforce • Legislative requirements • Volume of records • Diverse workforce – • Education • Literacy • Computer skills

5. What do we know: There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. Donald Rumsfeld

6. What do we know: • Social media is increasingly being used by local government but often in an "old media way" • Half of councils do not let staff access social media/networks from work • Community is looking to have conversations with council, not receive press releases on their iPhone

7. Specific challenges for local government: • Diverse range of services • Ageing workforce • Legislative requirements • Volume of records • Diverse workforce – • Education • Literacy • Computer skills

8. A word about Records Management: • Use TRIM – or some other document management system • Records policy • Legislative requirements • Typical council • 80,000 documents registered PA • 5,037 subject based folders • enormous thesaurus • expensive monolithic system of management which won't talk to any other system

9. User friendly knowledge repository? Gender balance in local government is important because: • Strengthening democracy: • “A council that does not reflect its community cannot hope to represent it” • Where women are not represented at senior levels within government, gender analysis of issues such as the work and family area is non-existant, or poorly framed • Strong female role models in local government encourage grass roots participation in community and government

10. Other changes: • Recent changes to freedom of information act • Need for web compliance with accessibility guidelines (no more PDF's?) • All state and federal records departments working on/developing guidelines for retention of social media records

11. How that is changing: External apps changing the way LG does business: • Planning alerts • Fix my street • Council Gripe • BYOD – • Heard of it? • Have a BYOD policy? • Who does it?

12. Knowledge management - it's the people, stupid! • How many of your colleagues in your councils see themselves as "knowledge workers" • How many would see council as a "knowledge organisation"? • How many would term what they know as knowledge?

13. Knowledge is… Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something, which can include facts, information, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. It can be implicit (as with practical skill or expertise) or explicit (as with the theoretical understanding of a subject); and it can be more or less formal or systematic. Wikepedia

14. The journey:

15. Knowledge Culture: • Create an environment where knowledge of all shapes and sizes is shared • Don't assume people only have knowledge/skills in their work area • Develop corporate online FAQ • Encourage a culture of knowledge sharing in a less formal way • Value story telling and create opportunities through intranets, brown bag talks etc

16. Encourage knowledge sharing: • Skills audit • Environmental scans • Develop internal communities of practice • Play dates • Conference reports • Innovation programs • Involve staff in development and delivery of training

17. Build knowledge capabilities: • Don't assume that people know stuff - • Use yammer - good practice for using Twitter later • Familiarisation with the internet is very important • Top results in Google search not the most reliable! • Problems often not where you expect them • Teach them how to use wikipedia, how to evaluate Web sources...you all have librarians who can do that in a heart beat • Staff are often accessing work related things outside of work

18. What we found: • Not everyone can compile, analyse or interpret data • But everyone who has access to excel or googlepedia thinks they can • Even degree qualified people may be unfamiliar with interpreting statistics • Hence a prominent seaside council Council confidently reported 27 million visitors to our beaches per year

19. Give people tools… • Teach critical thinking

20. Give people tools… • Access to information

21. Give people tools… • Teach basic statistics - excel is scary!

22. What we found: • We ran popular Facts on Stats and Web Research Basics courses for all staff who are interested • Courses were hands-on workshop style and relate to personal use • Training materials were available and lunchtime updates were scheduled as new info becomes available

23. Give people tools… • Encourage access to professional networks

24. Professional forums…

25. Professional forums…

26. Retain existing knowledge… • Identify key potential retirees - acknowledge expertise • Allow team to determine which of a range of techniques they want to use: • interview sessions, • video, • written work programs • on site demonstrations • Recognise the importance of the program - peers and management • Build in organisationalimprovement component

27. Retain existing knowledge… • Recognise the importance of the program - peers and management • Build in organisational improvement component

28. Questions?