KM initiatives are on an upswing as managers at all levels within all organizations face mounting pressure to work smarter and faster while wrestling with the demands of advanced technology and a shrinking work force.
Practices of the bygone era are not applicable in the highly techno savvy environment and transient work force of today. KM techniques and technologies can help organizations to examine their processes and improve their services to customers.
Projections for worldwide spending by the private and public sectors on KM services by 2004 range from $5 billion to $12 billion, depending on the nature of the market research group’s estimate employed. One of the biggest drivers of the KM movement is the issue of e-governance.
i.ytimg.com
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Some countries and governments actually set deadlines for launching a host of on-line initiatives. One of the first states in India to come out with a comprehensive IT blueprint and a ten year plan to bring the benefits of e-governance and technology to the grassroots is Andhra Pradesh.
The Indian government is also bringing about policy changes as well as simplifying procedures to shore up its intellectual capital as well as bringing the benefits of technology to the masses.
One of the initiatives is the setting up of a consortium of IT companies that would be encouraged to establish ‘Indian Institute of Global Services’ specializing in Global Services for providing market intelligence on domestic and global services industry to disseminate information such as new trends, market conditions, key indicators, new opportunity areas, etc.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
The Institute will conduct research and suggest best practices, positioning of India as a global hub for IT enabled services, helping start-ups with marketing plans and contact databases, etc., design and facilitate courses for graduating and developing professionals for this sector.
The need of the hour is the need to build knowledge bases that help government agencies and institutions, to get a better understanding of things such as, who are the recipients of those services, who are the providers, and where is the room for improvement and cost control.
This would result in a significant investment in education driven by a nationwide push among school systems to learn about best practices that can lead to improved test results.
There is also interesting work being done with criminal investigation knowledge bases that allow law enforcement officials to conduct pattern analyses in high crime areas.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
This has been funneled by a worldwide realization by organizations on the tremendous need to consolidate their knowledge assets; how their internal operations work and how that dovetails with their constituent bases.
Organizations are realizing that there is a tremendous amount of information that they have been storing. What they are struggling with is how they can put this data into context so that the same could be employed to bring about tangible benefits to the organization.
KM systems are also being extensively deployed by military establishments, primarily in the United States, to unearth knowledge from the extensive amounts of data available, both processes oriented as well as situational.