Back Issues
THE RILEY REPORT - July 2005
from Thomas B. Riley RTRiley6@cs.com
www.rileyis.com
www.egov2005.com
Following is the Riley Report for July 2005. Please feel free to pass this on as you see fit. If you wish to use any part of the Report in an offline publication please acknowledge the author or contact the author for permission if it is to be fully republished offline. If you are not currently subscribed to the Riley Report (there is no charge) you may email RTRiley6@cs.com and simply put "subscribe" in the body of the text.
This month's report
explores the value of governments at all levels developing e-government
knowledge repositories. The purpose of such an exercise would be to capture
e-governance and e-government practices, applications and services that have
been built over the past few decades and that could then be shared and used now
and in the future. The full paper on this subject can be found at: www.rileyis.com/publications/research_papers/sharing/EgovRep.html
BUILDING
E-GOVERNMENT KNOWLEDGE REPOSITORIES:
Introduction
Knowledge sharing is an important
activity for organizations, whether public, private or in civil society, to
enhance learning, to improve efficiencies and to build better organizations.
It serves the needs of both the organization at hand and the publics
served. Sharing of knowledge has
been a long standing practice in many disciplines, ranging from the social
sciences, to research development, to government informing the public on a range
of subject matters. Sharing goes on
at many levels of society from the trivial to the profound.
The development of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in
the past few decades has not only facilitated with ease the sharing of
information and knowledge, but contributed to the leap of creation of knowledge
and information. It is estimated
that more information has been created since 1990 than has been created in
recorded time in history. However,
this does not necessarily mean that the information is accessible or organized
in such a way that it is useable.
It is for this reason that governments
around the world should consider properly archiving their vast information
holdings in regards to their e-governance and e-government programs.
There is an opportunity here for governments to harvest a wealth of
information and knowledge from projects that have touched almost every aspect of
organizations within governments at the local, regional and national levels.
E-government practices, applications and knowledge are now built up in networks
and databases. The solution to
capturing the extensive knowledge accumulated through the e-government stages of
development is to build an e-government knowledge repository.
If this information and knowledge are mobilized and applied, it will pay
for itself in terms of improved productivity and avoidance of multiple instances
of "re-inventing the wheel."
Without access to information and
knowledge resources, an agency cannot provide any return on the investment that
created them. Many governments do
have a good reputation as leaders in technology adoptions in government and are
proceeding to capture their e-government knowledge, innovations, practices and
services developed over the past two decades.
Now, not only those technology solutions themselves, but the knowledge
that accompanies them, can be made available.
The knowledge sharing approach that Canada is taking will help keep the
Canadian federal government on the short list of Accenture leaders in electronic
governance and maintain its prominence as a leader in e-government around the
world. Other jurisdictions that
take this strategic approach to their e-government knowledge holdings can share
significant successes both within government and with the public.
This project is doable but requires leadership, sufficient resources and
commitment by officials at many levels of government.
This can be a test case for
horizontality and the overcoming of information and knowledge silos.
Canadian social scientist John Willinsky stated this dilemma very
succinctly in the title of his recent book If
Only We Knew. What he was
observing was that without awareness of the knowledge we have stored away, we
are not in a position to benefit from its use.
Others have observed that there is so much knowledge and information
being collected by governments, but not captured and stored for posterity, that
we are in danger of becoming the least documented decade in history.
Insiders can share this knowledge, and
outsiders can license it. Hence it
will offer two kinds of cost recovery - reduction of further expenditures
internally, and generation of revenues by external users.
And through its ongoing operations, a virtual repository can
continue to receive and reuse additional "lessons learned" as they
accumulate from further organizational applications.
Since the introduction of ICTs into
government around the world, considerable ongoing investment has been made in
e-government knowledge, expertise, programs, applications and services.
In Canada, at the present time the federal Government On Line (GOL)
project, the single biggest source of that e-government knowledge and expertise
to date, is nearing an end. The
government department in which the program has been lodged, the Information
Technology Services Branch, Public Works and Government Services Canada, is now
taking steps to both save the knowledge gained from the evolution of their
e-government history and build the tools to ensure it can be accessed and used
by a multitude of stakeholders. It
is now apparent that if the knowledge of any government that has evolved in
different forms of e-government services and applications is not properly
organized and used, it will be lost for future use.
This can have serious consequences for any government in the world that
does not address this issue. It is
relevant to all governments who continue to develop and implement e-government
services.
A virtual repository, as the Canadian
government has shown, can be created to link and access this e-government
knowledge so it could be shared both inside and outside of government.
There are four major questions that government officials address when
seeking to decide to develop their own unique e-government knowledge repository.
- Why do it?
- Who gets access?
- Is it worth it?
- Is it feasible?
The answer to the question of "why create such a repository?" is to preserve the results of a long-term investment process. Access can begin narrowly and expand later. The worth of such a project comes from the value of the "Lessons Learned", in the process of evolving e-government initiatives, that can be re-used. By implementing past practices as a virtual repository, materials can simply be marked and linked to a common access point, which is feasible. The strategy is to audit the existing e-government environment, mark and link it, create a virtual website and a marketing plan. Online tools would include a search engine, help desk, and consulting services.
Full details on the development of a
strategy for the building of an e-government knowledge sharing repository can be
found in the paper: A
REPOSITORY FOR
www.rileyis.com/publications/research_papers/sharing/EgovRep.html
Thomas Riley is available for consultations, preparation of reports, presenting workshops or delivering speeches at conferences and seminars on e-government, e-governance and e-democracy. Please contact me at the email address below for further details.
Thomas B. Riley
Executive Director and Chair
Commonwealth Centre for E-Governance
www.electronicgov.net
Visiting Professor, University of Glasgow
President, Riley Information Services Inc.
www.rileyis.com
email:
rtriley6@cs.com
Author: Time's End
www.amazon.com
(see under books: Thomas B. Riley)