Last week NRCan gave a presentation to the Conference Board of Canada on the role of social media in risk management. The presentation took the usual form: we discussed our experiences in managing the risk of social media implementation, focused on how to address quality of content on wikis, and how to guide and inform employees on the acceptable use of new and open technologies.

What was different about this particular presentation was the inclusion of a few slides on how social media could be used to contribute to – and in fact reinforce – risk management activities. We had an audience interested in all aspects of risk management, and as good presenters we looked at our own NRCan Wiki, our blogs and other tools to find good examples to illustrate how social media could help reduce risks – or at least serve as a way to identify risks earlier.

Joe the security guy
Take one of our IT security guys for example – let’s call him Joe . He’s a well-respected and knowledgeable NRCan employee, whose work concerns protecting corporate systems and ensuring that we’re kept well informed on any potential risks. Joe wrote a blog entry about the dangers of Twitter. It was a good, well thought out entry that generated a discussion amongst employees. Some employees were concerned that this attention to potential risk could slow things down, and the issue was discussed from a diverse variety of perspectives.

How does this support better risk management? The first thing to note is that Joe posted his blog entry voluntarily – not because he was asked or because there had been a problem, but because he saw something on the horizon and took the initiative to address it by starting a discussion with his fellow employees. This discussion took place before the Department had officially identified Twitter as a tool being used by employees, and long before it had indentified the need to provide relevant policies and guidelines.

Now that the need has arisen, the policy does not need to start from square one. There is already a base of research and opinion to be found in the discussion sparked by Joe’s blog entry. Joe has created a living repository for information and knowledge that could play a valuable role in building a risk management approach, a repository fuelled by the experiences of NRCan employees. Now policies can be built not only on theoretical implementation plans, but also on how real employees have chosen to make use of social media tools.

This is the power of social media: to build on the wisdom of crowds. In the social media forum, the latest concepts are discussed by people that have an interest in the topic, no matter whether they have an official role in the file or not. With social media, a body of valuable knowledge and experience can grow organically, fuelled by the passion and interest of real people, including those who may not have been reached through traditional lines of communication.

We must not only recognize the value but also make use of the discussions and analyses that are generated through the knowledge skunkworks of social media. Taking this inclusive and proactive approach will help us anticipate new trends and build corporate knowledge, not only for managing risk but also for any other subject matter or mandate.

In 2006, it was decided that traditional IM approaches were not working at NRCan. The information explosion was continuing, our information resources were treated as isolated repositories, and most fundamentally there was no broad-based IM culture in the Department. Despite the fact that NRCan had an award-winning IM Awareness program, most employees did not understand. They did not understand the value of IM, nor did they understand its relevance – and what’s more, most employees lacked the competencies to administer the (admittedly complex) set of IM processes. Information Management needed to be rethought, and a new approach needed to be taken.

Beginning with a new vision, NRCan focused its attention on building a single, coherent and integrated knowledge base. More important was establishing a single gateway, through which all information sources could be accessible. From documents to databases and from intranets to blogs, all sites needed to be integrated and made broadly accessible.

Because of their potential to impact the way we capture, share, and manage knowledge, collaborative technologies quickly formed the central pillar of our IM strategy. Employees are motivated to classify and manage their information using these tools, and can do so effectively. This is a dream that seemed unattainable in the world of shared drives.

Faced with the challenge of harmonizing these new systems with our traditional, subject-based methods, NRCan adopted a multi-faceted classification approach. At the heart of this new classification structure is the recognition that the tools have changed. Traditional IM classification methods were trapped in a paper-bound, physical world. With new search engine technologies we could explore simplified approaches that are easier for our communities to use – and easier to use means more readily accepted. Operating on a search engine base makes matters easier. Just look at Google! Social classification systems now motivate more employees to take a role in classifying information, both broadening and diversifying the spectrum of IM. For instance, NRCan’s wiki pages are categorized extensively by NRCan employees, largely because they know that by applying a category to the content they create, they are immediately sharing their information with the whole department. They do not see information categorized and then lost in the deeper levels of a shared drive never to be seen again.

Modernizing records management to inhabit the electronic rather than the paper world has become a key pillar in the new IM. The work around e-records and retention is charting a course away from the paper mountain and towards the true root cause of the department’s information explosion: the electronic mountain. For every paper record created in the last 15 years, there is at least one electronic correlate. At NRCan, this is now taken as a fundamental principle.

Underlying the new world of IM is a fundamental recognition. By empowering our employees through an organizing vision that everyone understands, by simplifying the classification structures and by providing collaborative tools, we are making information and knowledge broadly accessible in shared environments to the whole department. At NRCan, an IM culture is emerging in ways that have not been seen before.