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.

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.

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 might be helpful 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

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 you may be beneficial 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

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

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.