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How GCPEDIA will save the public service

12 March 2009 | David Eaves | | Comments

GCPEDIA (also check out this link) is one of the most exciting projects going on in the public service. If you don't know what GCPEDIA is - check out the links. It is a massive wiki where public servants can share knowledge, publish their current work, or collaborate on projects. I think it is one of two revolutionary changes going on that will transform how the public service works (more on this another time).

I know some supporters out there fear that GCPEDIA - if it becomes too successful - will be shut down by senior executives. These supporters fear the idea of public servants sharing information with one another will simply prove to be too threatening to some entrenched interests. I recognize the concern, but I think it is ultimately flawed for two reasons.

The less important reason is that it appears a growing number of senior public servants "get it." They understand that this technology - and more importantly the social changes in how people work and organize themselves that come along with them - are here to stay. Moreover, killing this type of project would simply send the worst possible message about public service sector renewal - it would be an admission that any real efforts at modernizing the public service are nothing more than window dressing. Good news for GCPEDIA supporters - but also not really the key determinant.

The second, and pivotal reason, is that GCPEDIA is going to save the public service.

I'm not joking.

Experts and observers of the Public Service has been talking for the last decade about the demographic tsunami that is going to hit the public service. The tsunami has to do with age. In short, a lot of people are going to retire. In 2006 52% of public servants are 44-65. in 1981 it was 38%, in 1991 it was 32%. Among executives the average ages are higher still. EX-1's (the most junior executive level) has an average age of 50, Ex 2's are at 51.9, Ex 3's at 52.7 and Ex 4's at 54.1. (numbers from David Zussman - link is a powerpoint deck)

Remember these are average ages.

In short, there are a lot of people who, at some point in the next 10 years, are going to leave the public service. Indeed, in the nightmare scenario, they all leave within a short period of time - say 1-2 years, and suddenly an enormous amount of knowledge and institutional memory walks out the door with them. Such a loss would have staggering implications. Some will be good - new ways of thinking may become easier. But most will be negative, the amount of work and knowledge that will have to be redone to regain the lost institutional memory and knowledge cannot be underestimated.

GCPEDIA is the public service's best, and perhaps only, effective way to capture the social capital of an entire generation in an indexed and searchable database that future generations can leverage and add to. 10's of millions of man-hours, and possible far more, are at stake.

This is why GCPEDIA will survive. We can't afford for it not to.

As an aside, this has one dramatic implication. People are already leaving so we need to populate GCPEDIA faster. Indeed, if I were a Deputy Minister I would immediately create a 5 person communications team whose sole purpose was two fold. First to spread the word about the existence of GCPEDIA as well as help and encourage people to contribute to it. Second, this team would actually interview key boomers who may not be comfortable with the technology and transcribe their work for them onto the wiki. Every department has a legend who is an ES-6 and who will retire an ES-6 but everybody knows that they know everything about everything that ever happened, why it happened and why it matters. It's that person everybody wants to consult with in the cafeteria. Get that person, and find a way to get their knowledge into the wiki, before their pension vests.

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Categories: open source, public policy, public service sector renewal, technology | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
  • Stephane Dubord
    Excellent post David.

    While I agree with you that GCPedia isn't going away, I do fear how it will be adapted into the public service.

    It will not be abolished. Not now that it has gained a foothold (or toehold) in many departments. However, what I fear is that Sr. Management won't abolish it, but impose multiple levels of rules and policies on GCPedia's inclusion in their department, based on flawed logic.

    I.e.: Sr. Management agree that GCPedia is a great resource, however they don't get the fact that to be useful, it has to be inclusive. Instead, policies are put in place to regulate who gets to contribute, what level of vetting does it have to go through before it can be submitted, what subjects are off-limits, briefing notes to explain the risk management for postings, etc. etc. etc. I could even see something as ironic as having to meet in person with everyone to draft and review a submission before posting it, essentially circumventing GCPedia's goal entirely.

    To me, that's the scary part of GCPedia's future. Bob Chartier's quote keeps coming back to me on this: "The best way to kill a good initiative is turn it into a program." That's what I fear might happen to GCPedia. As an early-adopter, here's hoping that won't happen!
  • Great comment Stephane, your fears are good ones (or bad ones?) - going to sleep on these, see if I can think of a strategy for minimizing the risks they create.
  • Every time I try to access the GCpedia site I get a page load error. Is it real, in Beta or behind a fire wall?
  • Hi Harold, apologies for that, it is behind a firewall. It was however, working last night when from outside the firewall (which I cannot get behind - I'm not a public servant) but is no longer working. Not sure why I had access however briefly...
  • Harold - yeah the tbs link was working last night but now it is down. Only people behind the government firewall can see GCPedia.
  • Good post David. I only have a small team but we have started adding GCpedia content about our projects and include reference to it in our communications, outreach and learning plans.
  • With all those people retiring from the public service, though it looks good IN THEORY that they offload their memories and knowledge onto a wiki, I doubt it will happen. Why? cuz:
    1. GCPEDIA is not the Matrix that you can plug into the back of your head and offload. The typing, structuring and Information Management practices to follow to add value to these facts and knowledge are arduous.
    2. We're doing things differently than they're used to;
    3. We'LL do it a lot more differently after they retire, when they retire.

    Yeah, that's right. #3. The number of knowledge workers in the government has doubled in the past 10 years. Meaning people retiring are NOT getting replaced. Because they don't need to be.

    Maybe the saving grace for the Public Service is for it to finally reinvent itself, so the rest isn't compromised but can move faster ahead. Then we can progress and advance and use tools like GCPEDIA to help with our productivity than being lambasted by those who don't get it (i.e.: "old guard").

    David, can you give firm examples of some of this prized knowledge these soon-to-be-retirees can offload onto GCPEDIA? What would be some typical examples? The history of the department? Grants and Contributions application process steps? Contacts for Typewriters repairmen in the NCR?
    If we actually go through the exercise, we may be surprised to see how redundant and antiquated what some of this knowledge is, and how it's already being archived with Library and Archives as it's already supposed to be.
  • Stephane Dubord
    I think the most value-added input we can get from the "old guard" before they leave is to know how they do things, so we don't lose what they've come to understand about the process.

    Yes, we'll do things differently. But that doesn't necessarily mean we'll do it BETTER, unless we can fully understand why the old way worked.

    The key here is the intricate, "off the books" type of info. Who to contact to get the extra info, who you need to check with to vet the information, who you need to talk to for tips on what priorities are gaining ground, etc. As transparent and accessible as we aim government to become, the truth of the matter is that networking is still an invaluable ingredient in getting things done today.

    The other point is that "we" might want to scrap the old way and reinvent the entire process, but the transition needs to be done without jeopardizing our raison-d'être of delivering services to Canadians.

    We can't scrap the EI system and start from scratch, because people depend on those cheques coming in on a regular basis to live. We can't temporarily suspend food inspections while we overhaul our processes, because people depend on food safety.

    It's about implementing the change gradually. You don't blow up a hospital to clear the way to build a more modern version. Too many people depend on the services. Same goes here, no matter how bureaucratic it might be. People depend on the outputs of your division, branch, department, etc. If they don't, then the process isn't what should be questioned, but the purpose.
  • Natural Resources Canada is somewhat ahead of the game with the NRCan Resource Wiki, and I can't say enough about what a valuable tool it is. I'd like to emphasize to everyone that a Wiki is not simply a tool for storing information -- it can be used for collaboration on documents, project management and task tracking, event coordination, polling, online handouts or manuals, reducing email attachment buildup and photocopying, news updates, interactive maps... the list goes on.

    I will shortly be leaving the Public Service, and I am making an effort to put my frequently-needed knowledge on the Wiki before my departure. I really should be making a point of considering whether my knowledge benefits NRCan exclusively or if it would merit posting on GCPEDIA to benefit the Public Service at large. I'm guilty of prioritizing the NRCan Wiki over GCPEDIA -- perhaps due to its superior functionality.

    Regardless of age, I recommend to all (especially soon-to-be-departing) public servants that you keep a list on your desk where you can track every time someone comes to ask you a question, and the subject of the question. You'd be surprised how long this list can get in a week or two... and more importantly, you'll be surprised how much of that knowledge is hard to find anywhere else. This is the type of information (both explicit and tacit knowledge) that we need to make an effort to preserve.
  • Peter Cowan
    Will GCpedia save the public service or at least perserve some of it? I have to agree with your arguement. The GCPedia is a a foundation on which to capture and manage knowledge, if only because it allows public servants to post their information and make connections to other sources in a widely accessible environment and over time.

    But it is only a foundation element to what has to be a broader approach that looks at blogs and video, twitter and all those other tools that we will use to capture the narrative of a public servant's worklife. I believe also that this broader approach means getting out of departments stovepipes and sharing our own wiki information with the broader world through gcpedia. Scale is everything with Wikis so is community writ large.

    Finally, sorry to hear that youre leaving Chelsea
  • paul_mcdowall
    Will GCPEDIA save the public service, or capture all the tacit knowledge that will walk out the door? No, of course not! To suggest otherwise is, frankly, naive hyperbole.

    As great and as promising as GCPEDIA and other Web 2.0 tools are, tools will never save the public service. People are the public service and only people have the capacity to save the public service, and it will take a whole lot more to improve the weak areas of the public service than a tool. Things like leadership play a pretty important role in organizational effectiveness. There are many good Organizational Excellence models (I have researched this area) and they all include people and leadership as two elements, but funny enough, tools aren't included. Why? Because it is not so much a tool issue as it is a craftsman issue.

    With respect to your comment about tacit knowledge and social capital (not the same things by the way), I think it may be helfpul to brush up on what tacit knowledge is, and what Knowledge Management is.

    It is unquestionably true that the public service continues to face a potential impact from demographic changes that are both extremely significant and yet unquantified. It is also unquestionably true that most public service organizations haven't truly understood or addressed these potential impacts, to say nothing of the potential of improving their effectiness right NOW from better Knowledge Management (productivity, innovation, etc).

    These issues need to be addressed by public service leaders in an intelligent and thoughtful manner. Tools can and certainly should help but only when wielded by craftsmen and women. For too long vendors have made grandiose and unrealizable promises about their 'solutions'. I thought we had learned our lessons from all that experience.
    Let's not get the cart before the horse, shall we?

    Paul McDowall
    Knowledge Management Advisor
    and chairperson of the Interdepartmental Knowledge Management Forum
  • paul_mcdowall
  • I don’t really see much purpose for these closed-off projects.

    We would be better off it public servants just updated Wikipedia pages and interacted via Facebook. There would be occasional embarrassments, but it would lead to a lot of good information getting out there.
  • When it comes to sites like Wikipedia, it takes a lot of knowledge and dedication to get the community running properly. The real Wikipedia has procedures and knowledgeable people. GCPedia will take a long time to ever coming close to matching what is already there.
  • Milan - thank you for the comment. I agree it will take time, but that isn't reason not to try or do it. We should at least be able to match, and really improve on, Wikipedia - which is now, just over 8 years. So maybe 5 years? That also feels like a reasonable time frame. Probably a lot shorter than the timeline around the introduction of the telephone, computer or email into the public service. And, probably right around the minimum timeframe anyone should be thinking about on the issue of renewing the public service or bringing it into the 21st century.
  • It is certainly a real challenge. The people within government with the most useful information and personal knowledge are usually the busiest, the most senior, and often the least tech-savvy.

    While I was working at a certain federal department, two people either retired or moved on, each of which had a huge body of institutional knowledge. They had been working on a particular file for several decades, taken together. They didn’t even hand over any paper files, much less put any of their knowledge into an easily accessible forum.

    Admittedly, I have raised two rather separate issues. Getting people with knowledge to put in the time and effort is one thing. The question of whether to put a firewall around the whole project is another. They are linked in one way, however: the more people who have access to the information, the more value it has. While a person might not feel motivated to input data into a site used only by a geeky subset of civil servants, they might be more willing to put it onto the public internet if encouraged to do so and given good tools.
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