Search the Archive

The Australian Government Information Management Office Archive

APS KM Case Studies

Enabling Knowledge Management @ the ABS

February 2004

Introduction

• An organisational culture which values sharing of information
• A framework which defines the place of all information and knowledge in the agency
• A set of information behaviours which encourage the management and sharing of information
• Extensive use of knowledge enabled "workplaces"
• An innovative approach to managing email and electronic recordkeeping
• Sophisticated "management" of metadata and its application in business processes

About the ABS

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is Australia's national statistical agency. Its mission is to assist and encourage informed decision making, research and discussion within governments and the community. The agency is also one of Australia's largest publishers with hundreds of titles in print and a website containing close to 200,000 pages of content.

Rationale for Adopting KM

ABS' interest in "knowledge management" is simple - the agency wants to be as productive as it can. As the majority of its staff are "knowledge workers" it is logical for the agency to look for effective management of work and to assist its staff to contribute and share effectively.

ABS is not particularly interested in debates around the definition of Knowledge Management but does keep an eye on the various frameworks and ideas emerging from the "KM community". Where these ideas look sensible it attempts to put them into practice.

Information Management (IM) and Knowledge Management (KM) in the ABS have a long association with technology. Considerable early experience with satellite and network computing enabled management to develop an understanding of the interaction of people and technology. In particular, ABS became aware of the extent to which technology could inspire different ways of working (supporting innovation and creativity). Great productivity gains have been made by ABS through the integration of technology into the work of the agency's business - assisting the organisation and its people to stay in front rather than behind in meeting the demands for statistical information. To aid this process the agency has standardised on generalised systems in preference to unique systems - the ABS' Enterprise Architecture, which incorporates the agency's Knowledge Framework, emphasises the integration of ABS business systems.

Developing the ABS Knowledge Management Strategy

An explicit knowledge strategy (called the ABS Object Management Strategy) was adopted in conjunction with the rollout of Lotus Notes in late 1993. The emphasis on 'objects' reflected ABS' interest in managing both the object (any type) and the information (metadata) that described it. This strategy incorporated a simple knowledge framework and identified the cultural and technical elements which ABS senior management believed were necessary to successfully foster a work environment characterised by communication, collaboration, automated workflow, effective resource discovery and hopefully the transfer of knowledge.

The strategy specifically identified the extent to which the underlying technology might, or might not, be an essential underlying enabler. When ABS went looking for an Office Computing environment in the early 1990s it knew what it was looking for - it was seeking a platform to facilitate organisational and personal productivity (a knowledgeable way of working). To this day ABS continues to extract significant productivity gains from strategies exploiting technology and the manner in which people interact with it (are enabled).

The Object Management Strategy was updated in 2000 by the ABS Knowledge Strategy. The 2000 strategy was more specific in its aims but still sought to facilitate a 'knowledgeable way of working'. The most important feature of the 2000 strategy was the development of a set of information behaviours which specifically sought to encourage the development of a sharing philosophy. All staff are introduced to these principles as Lesson 1 in the agency's basic 'Introduction to the Desktop' [Desktop Fundamentals] course.

Key Tools and Techniques Used

An organisational culture which values sharing of information

The ABS culture is one which is generally supportive of knowledge management. Staff tend to have long and diverse careers within the ABS so they appreciate the benefits that come from documenting and sharing. Anyone who moves around an organisation quickly appreciates the value of a good knowledge-base which helps them perform in a new role and they are encouraged to leave a similar legacy for their successor. Also, ABS promotes a collaborative (ie. non-competitive) approach to our work - we make extensive use of multi-disciplined teams and place a lot of emphasis on adopting a "corporate approach". This means that workgroups are usually very willing to share their information and knowledge with others.

Knowledge framework

A key element in the ABS approach to managing knowledge is its simplicity. In 1993 the agency adopted a framework for managing its knowledge which allocates information and knowledge to one of three domains - Corporate - Workgroup - Personal. All communication/work /information/ knowledge is considered to be produced or undertaken in one of these domains. ABS encourages its staff to "work" in only two of these domains - Workgroup or Corporate. By working in these domains the information produced can be managed, supported, discovered and shared as a corporate asset.

ABS' knowledge behaviours and enabling tools are specifically targeted at supporting working in the Workgroup and Corporate environments. Tools which have been developed to support work at the Personal level specifically incorporate features which facilitate transfer to the Workgroup or Corporate environments. An outcome of this approach is that ABS meets its recordkeeping obligations by simply managing the content in the corporate and workgroup environment - ignoring content in the Personal domain.

Information behaviours

To support the knowledge framework a set of personal, workgroup and corporate KM behaviours which encourage staff to create information that can be used and shared have been developed. These behaviours make explicit the types of work-practices which support knowledgeable working. They include ideas like:

• seeking out, reusing, and building on existing knowledge wherever you can;
• working to ensure that you have the skills to efficiently and effectively locate information;
• recognising that workgroups need to share knowledge;
• playing a part in maintaining workgroup knowledge to facilitate access by others, and;
• promoting the benefits of information sharing.

Common tools

Another essential element in the ABS is the use of common or generalised tools and systems as enablers. Over many years ABS has learned that productivity benefits accrue from the reuse of ideas/systems/processes and the agency has been prepared to mandate the use of particular tools and techniques. Specifically, the ABS has come to understand the extent to which extensive familiarity with a toolset across the agency can support the exchange of ideas, and promote productivity, innovation and creativity by challenging staff to familiarise themselves with, and utilise tools to their full capacity. This is probably most in evidence in ABS' use of Lotus Notes as its desktop platform (over 1100 applications developed). But the method can also be seen in the agency's approach to data management where extensive work has been devoted to adding and organising our statistical data into Input and Output Data Warehouses in order to create a single publishing source. Underpinning this work at all levels is an extensive understanding of the role that metadata plays in facilitating exploitation of resources.

Extensive use of "workgroup" databases which underpin effective approaches to communication, collaboration and information asset management

When ABS originally deployed Lotus Notes it decided to promote the use of shared discussion forums as an alternative to email. To emphasise this the Notes email application was renamed "personal holdings" (indicating that it was for information that belonged in a "personal" domain). The original "discussion database" application has evolved considerably since then and now contains a range of features, including workgroup level email, developed specifically to support working as part of a group.

ABS now has several hundred workgroup databases - about three times as many as it does defined organisational teams. Effectively, these extra workgroup databases support internal "communities of practice" and can be seen as working in parallel to the agency's defined organisational structure. By default Workgroups are "open access" - anyone can search, read and author documents in other workgroup databases. Another feature of ABS workgroup databases is the embedding of strong "metadata" support. When a document is created and assigned a category it automatically acquires a set of metadata which controls the access, filing and life-cycle of the document (recordkeeping attributes).

Structure and Coordination of KM Approach Including Funding & Staff

A designated Knowledge Director position at APS Executive Level 2 has existed in the ABS since 1993. The occupant develops, extends and ensures coordination of the agency's knowledge enabling initiatives, which were, and still are primarily based around exploiting staff interaction with the agency's technology platform. For the first few years, the Knowledge Manager was supported in their role by a Steering Group comprising SES Officers and selected Director Level (APS EL2) staff, providing high-level leadership and ensuring links to senior management objectives. In more recent times the KM Director has been supported by a KM Centre of Excellence (based in South Australia) which supports, investigates and/or develops services to assist the ABS KM program. ABS currently refers to its KM activities as an "initiative" or "practice" and the KM Director reports directly to the Head of the Technology Services Division.

In terms of funding, the ABS KM initiative has been funded to the extent of around $300k per annum for the last four years and at around $200k per annum prior to 2000. Funds cover salaries and the development and configuration of most of the organisations knowledge services and technologies, including learning content and technical developments such as the Welcome Page (ABS portal) and the in-house recordkeeping system. More general enabling infrastructure such as the promotion of ABS' sharing philosophy (a cultural KM initiative) are embedded in the organisation's induction and learning programs. Much of the core technical infrastructure such as the organisation's Workgroup Database Design template and discovery services are funded as core infrastructure developments with each rollout of a new release of Lotus Notes. That way, any new KM infrastructure is rolled out as part of core infrastructure changes.

Evaluation and Lessons Learned

Strong leadership and governance is required

The push to develop a knowledge enabling environment in the early 90s was led from the top. Senior people were strong advocates, not just of the technology, but of the manner in which it enables you to work and share. The investment has been considerable but has been aided by strong governance emphasising a simple knowledge management model, business commitment, ownership of the platform and processes.

You can help change the way people think about the way they work

Buckminster Fuller, a famous 20th century thinker said 'If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don't bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.' In developing its working environment over the last decade, ABS has found that by empowering its people - letting them contribute and add value in an supporting environment characterised by trust and openness - you can help your people change the way they think about work by influencing the way they work. The Australian Public Service publication, "Embedding the APS Values", contains a case study on ABS information sharing approach. Considerable anecdotal evidence also indicates that ABS staff who have moved on to other government agencies come to miss the "knowledge enabling" aspects of ABS' working environment most of all.

Future Plans

About a year ago ABS realised that while we might be doing a good job of managing "information assets" we are rather less effective when it comes to managing "process knowledge". Much of the detail of "how things are really done" lies in the heads of our staff. We have embarked on an ambitious project to provide better support for what we call "Business Process Management". Our aim is to make it much easier to document, operate, understand and modify business processes which are typically a mix of automated and human activities. The key elements of this new system are :

• a corporate library of business processes (in the form of process definitions stored as XML but displayed as flowcharts);
• services (which are invoked by processes - eg. "schedule a meeting" or "run this SAS job");
• a workflow engine (which carries out the automated parts of a process), and;
• Process Control Portals which will provide the interface for operating, managing and documenting the status of a process.

The Process Control Portal will be a new component of our Workgroup Databases (WDBs). By creating and running the processes from our WDBs the recordkeeping infrastructure in the WDBs will automatically be inherited. Our business processes then will be as just as visible and as well managed as our other information assets. A prototype is under development and we plan to deploy this approach widely in 2004.

Contact Details

Dale Chatwin

Director, ABS Knowledge Management Initiative

Phone: +61 2 6252 6610