The Way Forward For The Knowledge Store

The Knowledge Store has now been successfully piloted with a group of seventy users. It has been propagated with the contact details for 9,000 QinetiQ employees and 25,000 projects, as well as over 600 documents. Now that initial usability problems have been ironed out, there are plans to roll the system out to other groups within QinetiQ, in a phased approach.

Other potential areas for development include:

• Building in a business taxonomy to compliment the scientific taxonomy

• Providing management information from the data contained within the Knowledge Store. This could help support that the business benefits are being realised.

• Having developed in-house expertise for delivering knowledge management solutions this expertise could be packaged as an offering to QinetiQ’s clients.

‘Yellow Pages’ then, or more sophisticated directory systems, provide a vehicle for individuals working in a market economy to really sell themselves, through the quality of the information that they provide in their personal entries. Individuals therefore need to develop the discipline of ensuring that their personal pages are regularly updated, in this way maintaining their ‘in demand’ factor.

One final thought, while the initial stimulus for introducing directory systems is to make it easier for individuals and teams to locate and connect ‘know how’ within an organisation, these systems can be used as effective management tools too. From HR’s perspective one of the basic questions to be asked is what information can directory type systems provide that will help HR become more effective. For example:

Will it enable you to identify who is talking to who, and who the ‘Knowledge connectors’, ‘Knowledge brokers’ and ‘Boundary spanners’ are, and whether enough is being done to recognize and support their contributions?

Will it enable you to identify what new ideas are emerging from the interactions with knowledge workers?

Will it enable you to identify what development needs are emerging?

Will it help you identify some of your most vulnerable assets, i.e. the ones you would least like to lose?

Will it enable you to identify how much time people are spending on knowledge sharing activities?