Jul 16th, 2008 |
Sometimes we forget that government is usually ahead of the private sector in building programs and policies to protect its core intellectual assets and records. Many businesses in North America only took content management and records retention seriously after 2001 when more laws and regulations were imposed to combat financial misdeeds and fraud. Government understands the value of protecting content, safely destroying expired sensitive records, and preserving and disclosing information that has long term public value. It’s not new in public sector like it is for many commercial enterprises. Compliance with National or Provincial Archives mandates, ATIP/FOI disclosures, protection of sensitive and personal information – all decades old requirements.
But somewhere in the 1980s and 1990s, technology burst through and changed the way many public sector information workers did their jobs. Email, networks, personal desktop computers, everyone with their own word-processor – technology helped melt down traditional hierarchies and changed how content was created and distributed. It was possible and common for a document to live only in electronic form, never having a paper ‘original’. Getting a handle on new work practices and new content forms took time – and not all departments or agencies have been able to bring information governance principles to electronic content. Yet, even as many of us still struggle with the volume of email, we still need to look ahead.
Technology is about to burst through a second time. And this time it will be with new content authoring tools inspired by the personal productivity tools many of us have learned in personal online activities – wikis, blogs, interactive discussion sites, instant messaging. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be exploring a few aspects of what we mean by the buzzword Web 2.0, and what is might mean inside public sector. What should we expect? And how do we learn from the lessons of email in the ‘90s and not get caught unready.
However, inside an agency, critical resources are often intangible: know-how, specialized knowledge, experience, and team culture. Planning for the projected retirement wave disruption needs to bring together human resources and the lines of the agency business most at risk, supported by records and knowledge management professionals within the organization. Establishing mentorship programs, collaborative work environments and a structured approach to the capture, protection and dissemination of legacy work are activities that need to happen today. Clear recommendations and best practices are emerging.
Agencies should look at the demographics and at the mechanisms and programs that can be put in place now to capture key competencies and critical work knowledge of employees who will soon be eligible to retire. When blending a work force of young and old workers, managers should consider different learning needs and prepare to customize programs.
The development of structured knowledge-gathering or exit interview sessions in advance of the departure of a scheduled retirement is key. Bringing junior staff into the process as part of corporate memory transfer is important for continuity and maintenance of long-term best practices. Creating context around the artifacts left behind – boxes, files, even ore and lab samples – better ensures the preservation of a career’s worth of research and work and salvages the agency’s investment.
At the same time, agencies must incorporate the new work styles of the 20-somethings who are working their way up the ladder: Agencies should expect their technology envelops to be pushed. Demands for rapid search, online access to agency content, collaborative chats, and Web or video conferencing are increasing to default channels of communication. The incoming generation is more wired, more mobile and more demanding of technology for productivity and networking. With the demands of this new online generation, government is presented with a new opportunity to take control of electronic knowledge assets.
