KMonline

Knowledge management, or lack of it, in government astounds me.

In the private sector the market capitalisation of a company is a combination of what they have (assets) and what they know (intellectual capital). Due to the fact that government is not driven by a profit motive, the value of what people in their employment know is never managed. This is the function of Knowledge Management.

The federal government is loosing a large swag of SES personnel. These baby boomers are simply leaving without any management of their corporate knowledge. Yet they concentrate on looking for new apprentices in the gen Y group that on average will move on within a couple of years (and take their learning's with them).

A combination of technology and human resource management is required to train departments to manage knowledge as an asset. Unfortunately, the lack of understanding of knowledge as a reportable asset means that it can be safely ignored in government. Private industry however understand its value simply by reviewing their stock price.

You have written best practice guides on the subject but you still do nothing about.

Get on with it and start saving the billions it costs to train people up to where they could have been if simple retention plans, succession plans along with information and communications strategies where built and used.

Why is an effort to protect and manage information only made when it is registered via a copyright, patent or trademark?