What Is Knowledge Management?

“Knowledge Management” (KM) is an umbrella term for a variety of techniques for building, leveraging and sustaining the know-how and experience of an organization’s employees. The goal of KM is to make the organization act in an intelligent manner. KM emerged as a recognized discipline in the 1980’s, and is now a well-established field with documented successes in both the private and public sectors. Fundamental to KM is the recognition that the intellectual capital (or collective knowledge) of an organization is an essential asset that should be recognized and managed to ensure organizational efficiency and effectiveness.

KM has been embraced by a diverse group of organizations, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the World Bank, State Farm Insurance and Kraft Foods, to name a few. KM programs or initiatives are also in place at several USDOT administrations (Highways, Transit and Aviation) and state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) including Caltrans, Georgia DOT, Virginia DOT, and Wisconsin DOT. Private companies use KM to build competitive advantage over other companies; public sector organizations use KM to manage risk, improve operational effectiveness, and make maximum use of employee talents.

Why Should DOTs Be Interested in KM?

State DOTs rely on the skills and experience of their workforces to plan, fund, design, construct and maintain multi-modal transportation systems. Knowledge about what to do, when and how to do it, AND what not to do is critical to success – and much of this knowledge resides only in the heads of employees, especially the most experienced employees.

Maintaining a strong knowledge base agency-wide is not easy: “baby boomers” are retiring and taking knowledge with them; mid-career employees at the peak of their productivity are looking to leave for higher salaries, and the millennial generation has less interest in learning from and staying with one agency than did their parents’ generation. Without a conscious strategy for replacing critical employees, building bench strength, (possible successors for a given position), getting new staff up to speed and growing expertise and experience in the right areas, DOTs face a steady decline in their resilience – and an increased risk of poor performance and public criticism.

There is no such thing as a “corporate brain” in a DOT, but there is such a thing as a corporate brain trust. When a DOT faces an emergency situation, it is primarily the agency’s people and their ability to act that make the difference between public appreciation for a job well done and an embarrassing disaster. Success depends less on the DOT’s physical assets than it does on employees’ knowledge and how they are able to apply this knowledge in a given situation.

The DOT landscape is changing – dollars for transportation are declining yet public expectations for service remain very high. Knowledge and performance are inextricably linked. And a strong knowledge base for DOTs is too precious a resource to leave to chance. KM offers an effective set of strategies not only to maintain the knowledge required to meet today’s needs, but also to expand agency knowledge resources in order to meet tomorrow’s new challenges.

What Is the Payoff from KM?

In the current environment of declining revenues and shrinking workforces, where every agency is challenged to “do more with less,” DOTs need new approaches for operating in a more streamlined manner. KM is an important piece of the puzzle for agency executives seeking to shore up their organization’s capabilities to deliver projects and services more effectively and efficiently, on time and within budget. KM practices can:

• Provide opportunities for experienced employees to get newer employees up to speed, increasing productivity and reducing the need to “reinvent the wheel.”
• Minimize impacts of workforce transitions - if not carefully managed, these transitions can result in loss of important institutional knowledge, which increases risks of ill-informed decisions and repeated mistakes.
• Ensure that DOTs can retain and build essential expertise “in-house” as they make increased use of outsourcing and public-private partnerships for delivery of projects and services.

Increasingly, DOTs operate in a fishbowl. Inefficiency or poor decisions on the part of inexperienced staff leave the agency open to a loss of public confidence. In this environment, the importance of the knowledge possessed by each and every employee is magnified. Proactive steps to strengthen and leverage available employee expertise are more important than ever.