Charting a Knowledge Management Course

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August 21, 2000 (Computerworld) -- The predawn silence at the U.S. Embassy in Indonesia is shattered by automatic weapons fire, and a small force of U.S. Marines barely prevents the attackers from entering the compound. Within the next few hours, the embassy sends information about the attack to the Combat Development Command in Quantico, Va. There, a team analyzes the data and sees that it matches a pattern of activity by a fundamentalist rebel group operating in the region.
Another team at Quantico taps into a Community of Practice knowledge database to review new tactical maneuvers being developed in a modeling game room. Experts from across the U.S. Marine Corps join an online discussion, aided by the latest intelligence information and satellite photographs merged into an electronic work space. Within a few hours, a new urban tactic is developed, tested in the modeling game room and sent to the Marine commander in Indonesia.

			Navigating a Sea of Knowledge One of the crown jewels of the U.S. Navy's huge knowledge management program is a CD-ROM intended to help organizations become "knowledge-centric." "It's a tool kit to help you change your organization," says Alex Bennet, the Navy's deputy CIO for enterprise integration. "It has everything you need to start focusing on and identifying knowledge centers, to understand where expertise resides in the organization and to build systems to support the sharing of that expertise." The CD is organized into seven operational areas. They correspond to phases of a knowledge management initiative, including building awareness, preparing the organization and "brokering knowledge." Each area includes objectives, a discussion of key concepts and a checklist of tasks and exercises. The 3MB disk (from which the images pictured here were taken) also contains a rich set of appendices: profiles of knowledge management software from 50 companies, a bibliography listing hundreds of books, a library of best practices from companies such as Ford Motor Co. and Chevron Corp., countless links to other Web sites, articles and case studies and some 25 tools such as a balanced scorecard and interviewing guidelines.

The commander coordinates plans with the USS Winston Churchill, a guided-missile destroyer some 500 kilometers to the east. Later that day, he calls for fire, and 90 seconds later, the ship launches a dual salvo of Tomahawk missiles at a key rebel communications center 10 kilometers from the embassy.
It's just a "story," says Alex Bennet, the U.S. Navy's deputy CIO for enterprise integration. But such stories are an important ingredient in what observers describe as the largest knowledge management effort in the world, she says.
The military's knowledge management programs are so comprehensive, in fact, that the private sector can

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