Knowledge Management Strategy - Workshop Outcomes: December 2003

Achievement of Market-Friendly Initiatives and Results Program
(AMIR 2.0 Program)
Funded by
U.S. Agency for International Development
Knowledge Management Strategy –

Workshop Outcomes
Final Report
Deliverable for PSPI Activity No. 587.05 (586.5) COE Enabling Environment
Consultancy Agreement No. 278-C-00-02-00210-00
December 2003
Knowledge Management Strategy – Workshop Outcomes Final Report
This report was prepared by Andrew Ford and Lubomir Dvorsky, in collaboration with The
Services Group Inc., contractor to the U.S. Agency for International Development for the AMIR
Program in Jordan.
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Data Page
Name of Component: Private Sector Policy Initiative
Author: Andrew Ford and Lubomir Dvorsky
Practice Area: Democracy and Governance
Service Offering: N/A
List of Key Words

Contained in Report: Knowledge Management, Center of Excellence
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Abstract
This report includes a presentation on knowledge management given on 7 September 2003 to

agencies participating in the Center of Excellence program. It also includes the outcomes of
workshops held with each agency which were held to help provide a framework for a detailed
knowledge management strategy, including a set of follow-up actions for implementation.
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Table of Contents
List of Figures
Executive Summary
Background ............................................................................................................................................................... 8
Statement of Work .................................................................................................................................................. 10
Knowledge Management Presentation.................................................................................................................... 11
Why is KM necessary? ....................................................................................................................................... 11
Definitions of knowledge management............................................................................................................. 111
The pyramid of knowledge ................................................................................................................................. 13
Our approach to KM ........................................................................................................................................... 15
Knowledge Management Strategy ...................................................................................................................... 19
Understanding Change ........................................................................................................................................ 20
Final Caveat – KM in the Public Sector.............................................................................................................. 20
Knowledge Management Strategy Framework....................................................................................................... 21
Knowledge Management Vision and Strategy.................................................................................................... 22
Governance ......................................................................................................................................................... 23
Culture................................................................................................................................................................. 23
Content Management .......................................................................................................................................... 24
Knowledge Mapping........................................................................................................................................... 25
Technology ......................................................................................................................................................... 26
Application & Implementation............................................................................................................................ 26
Measurement....................................................................................................................................................... 27
Combined Workshop Results – Outcomes.............................................................................................................. 29
Individual Workshop Results.................................................................................................................................. 33
Jordan Export Development and Commercial Centers Corporation (JEDCO) ................................................... 33
Jordan Investment Board (JIB) ........................................................................................................................... 34
Ministry of Industry and Trade (MIT) ................................................................................................................ 35
Ministry of Planning (MOP) ............................................................................................................................... 37
Jordanian Customs Department .......................................................................................................................... 38
Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) ........................................................................................ 43
Jordan Institution for Standards and Metrology (JISM)...................................................................................... 47
Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (MOICT) ............................................................... 49
Appendix 1: COE Knowledge Management Criteria.............................................................................................. 53
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List of Figures
1 Why is Knowledge Management Needed? ....................................................................... 10
2 Definitions of Knowledge Management ........................................................................... 11
3 More Definitions of Knowledge Management.................................................................. 12
4 The Pyramid of knowledge ............................................................................................... 13
5 Knowledge Management and the Gartner Hype Cycle..................................................... 14
6 Knowledge Management and the COE Framework ......................................................... 15
7 A Knowledge Management Vision ................................................................................... 16
8 Knowledge Management Strategy .................................................................................... 18
9 Knowledge Management Strategy Framework................................................................. 20
10 Knowledge Management Vision and Strategy.................................................................. 21
11 Governance........................................................................................................................ 22
12 Culture............................................................................................................................... 23
13 Knowledge Management Technology .............................................................................. 25
14 Measurement of Knowledge Management Benefits ......................................................... 26
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Executive Summary
A formal presentation on Knowledge Management (KM) was given to COE participants

on the 7 September 2003 at the Hotel Marriott in Amman. The first part of this report
reviews the presentation that was made.
The presentation was followed up by a series of individual workshops for each of the
COE partner agencies on 8-9 September 2003. The individual outcomes for each of these
workshops are listed below, in addition to a compiled set of actions to be followed up by
each agency. A detailed framework for undertaking a detailed KM strategy was
presented at both the presentation and the workshops, and it is expected that each agency
will now begin to pull together the respective elements of this strategy as part of their
COE activities.
When reviewing the outcomes of the individual workshops and compiling these results
into a single table, the following conclusions were made:
• Each agency complained of poor communication both vertically (from the

Director General and senior executive to middle management and to line-
employees and vice-versa) and horizontally (between business lines or “silos”
within the organization;
• Most agencies expressed concerned about poor delegation of authority,

knowledge hoarding and a reluctance to mentor or provide on-the-job training.
Knowledge as power is a prevailing mindset and poor or non-existent workforce
planning (human resource planning and development) has resulted in a lack of
succession planning and risks exposing each agency to critical shortages in
knowledge and skills in the future;
• Inflexible Civil Service Bureau regulations limit the ability of organizations to

introduce new forms of incentives or rewards for knowledge sharing/best practice
performed by teams or by individuals within their agencies; and
• No agency addressed the need to measure any of the recommended actions

proposed. This suggests that either the return on investment for the KM-related
measures is not understood at this point in time or that such KM-related initiatives
are novel and there is no experience against which these measures can yet be
measured and compared.
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1. Background
The Government of Jordan, under King Abdullah II, has continued the open economic
policies started by the late King Hussein, accelerated Jordan’s entry into the global
economy, and recently adopted a new, socio-economic plan which, among other things,
espouses private-sector led economic development based on private investment.
However, a great deal of work remains to be done to assist various important economic-
oriented ministries to move beyond their traditional roles as regulators of industry and
commerce, and adopt more proactive roles as facilitators of an enabling environment
attractive to investors and enterprises, and as knowledge managers for better informing
government and private sector decisions. These new roles need to be consistent with
international best practices in excellence in government and accelerated economic
development, and imply significant shifts in paradigm that will have to be carefully
managed. Fundamental to the new way of operating is the adoption of effective strategic
planning, management and leadership.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MIT), Ministry of Planning (MoP), Jordan Institute
of Standards and Metrology (JISM), Ministry of Information and Communications
Technology (MICT), Jordan Investment Board (JIB), Jordan Economic Development
Corporation (JEDCO), Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC), Security
and Depository Commission (SDC), and Customs Department are all working with the
AMIR Program Centers of Excellence (COE) program to achieve COE status.
Much work has already been done to assess goals, objectives, lines of responsibility and
current and future foci and directions of these partners. All of these institutions are
currently engaging in some form of strategic planning with COE support. Furthermore,
all of these institutions have formed COE teams of six to eight senior staff members who
are dedicating their time to achieving substantial and sustainable institutional reform in
line with international best practice standard for government.
For these teams to be better informed as to where their institutions stand with respect to
the international best practice standards, the COE program has worked with individual
team members in each of the five COE criteria to carry out a benchmarking self-
assessment (refer Appendix 1). These assessments will serve to guide COE teams as they
conceptualize and carry out internal reforms. To follow up on this work, the COE
program is sponsoring COE forums in each of the five COE criteria: Leadership, Human
Resources, Knowledge, Processes, and Outcomes. Forums are COE program-sponsored
events through which COE team members responsible for like criteria from different
institutions can come together. They serve to identify shared opportunities and
constraints, discuss best-practices and successes, and leverage ongoing initiatives. They
also serve to target priority areas for shared future technical assistance.
As part of the COE program, the consultants were engaged to address the Knowledge
criteria of the COE program. This included the following:
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1. Training partner institutions on the fundamentals of KM, including what KM is,

how to develop a strong KM strategy, and how to communicate an understanding
of the value of effective KM across the organization; and
2. Assist the eight COE partners to develop and implement strategies and systems
for identifying knowledge needs, capturing knowledge and information, analyzing
the cost/benefit of information and/or knowledge acquisition and, most
importantly, sharing knowledge across divisions, with field operations, and with
stakeholders.
To this extent, a formal presentation on KM was given to COE participants on the 7

September 2003 at the Hotel Marriott in Amman. The first part of this report reviews the
presentation that was made.
The presentation was followed up by a series of individual workshops for each of the
agencies mentioned above on 8-9 September 2003. The individual outcomes for each of
these workshops are listed below, in addition to a compiled set of actions to be followed
up by each agency. A detailed framework for undertaking a detailed KM strategy was
presented at both the presentation and the workshops, and it is expected that each agency
will now begin to pull together the respective elements of this strategy as part of their
COE activities.
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2. Statement of Work
The consultants were asked to undertake the following work components:
1. Carry out a group training covering the fundamentals of KM, including how to
develop a strong KM strategy, and how to communicate an understanding of the
value of effective KM across the organization;
2. Provide best practice resources and case studies for participants to continue
building their KM skills;
3. Carry out follow-up workshop involving an interactive question and answer

session with COE team KM personnel;
4. Work with AMIR Program communication team to agree upon recommended

communication tools for COE partner agencies;
5. Advise consultants carrying out “knowledge sharing” portion of this scope of

work, recommending strategies and approaches for ongoing follow-up and
effective integration of KM tools in partner institutions; and
6. Review KM assessment tool.
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3. Knowledge Management Presentation
3.1 Why is Knowledge Management Necessary?
Why is KM necessary?
Evolution of wealth creation

Medieval period: wealth = land
Industrial era: wealth = turning over
capital
Knowledge era: wealth = acquisition and
use of knowledge
Figure 1: Why is Knowledge Management Needed?
There are a variety of reasons why KM has emerged as an issue of critical importance to
organizations. Some of these have their roots in the corporate downsizing and
outsourcing that occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Other reasons include the
rise of the digital economy associated with the ubiquity of electronic delivery of services
associated with the Internet.
The nature of wealth creation has been changing over the last few hundred years –
knowledge has become more important in terms of wealth generation, corporate
competitiveness and operational/organizational effectiveness. In Australia, 80 per cent of
the gross domestic product (GDP) is now being generated in services – driven by
knowledge; whereas 15 per cent of GDP is in manufacturing and only 5 per cent in
agriculture.
3.2 Definitions of Knowledge Management
Knowledge management is not well understood – it is an evolving and emerging

discipline that is probably impossible to standardize – even though this is being attempted
(e.g., Australian Standards Interim Knowledge Management Standards).
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There are too many competing definitions and too much hype by the vendor and
consultant community. It is best to keep things simple by using a definition that makes
sense to your organization to help the enterprise understand KM, which should include:
• What KM is and what it is not

• What the organization expects
• How you are going to do KM
• Why it is important to your organization
• Who is involved in the effort
• Why employees should care – what is in it for them
• What are the consequences of not doing KM both for the organization and for its
members
• What behavioral changes need to be made for a success KM initiative
What KM gurus say

Knowledge management is the art of creating commercial
value from intangible assets. Karl Erik Sveiby
Knowledge management is a formal, structured initiative to

improve the creation, distribution, or use of knowledge in an
organization. It is a formal process of turning corporate
knowledge into corporate value. Thomas Davenport
Leveraging the processes and content of intellectual capital to

enhance the organization's ability to achieve its mission.
Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC)
Knowledge Management is promoting ongoing business

success through the systematic acquisition, synthesis,
sharing and use of information, insights and experiences.
Andersen Consulting
Figure 2: Definitions of Knowledge Management
Many people have addressed KM in the past – while none of the definitions provided in
Figures 2 and 3 are inadequate, by and large they remain incomplete. We require a more
holistic understanding of KM.
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What KM gurus say

Knowledge management is to enhance performance through
a purposeful and systematic approach to the creation,
development, and application of knowledge to the value-
creating processes of an organization. McKinsey & Co.
Knowledge Management is a set of practices that

allows/enables organizations to better create, understand,
and utilize what they know. IBM Consulting Group
Knowledge management is a set of processes for identifying,

filtering, and organizing what we know for the purpose of
sharing the knowledge with each other and leveraging it so
that it provides value for our clients. American Management
Systems
Figure 3: More Definitions of Knowledge Management
How do we know when we are practicing KM? Just because you have been given a
manual on KM associated with the COE program, and just because you have not called it
KM before, does not mean that you are not doing it somewhere within your organization.
Go through each of the examples mentioned here and think about where you may be
already doing KM without realizing that you are doing it.
• Blacksmith – does he practice KM?

• Einstein in the desert – what use is his knowledge in that context?
• Pulling the rope – the importance of teamwork and collaboration
• Engine in the shoebox – there needs to be balance in effort expenditure
• High performance teams – emergent properties
• Everybody understands their contribution to the organizational goals – wartime
and teaching of English to Czechs.
• KM after downsizing – CSC example.
3.3 The Pyramid of Knowledge
Just as with a crossword puzzle, information is only useful if it is used in context. Data is
any manifestation in the environment, including symbolic representations that in
combination may for the basis of information. In combination it tells us what is going on
within an organization.
Information is data in context to which meaning has been attributed – it tells us why
certain things within the organization are happening. Knowledge is a body of
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understanding and skills that is constructed by people. Knowledge is increased through

interaction with information (typically from other people). It helps us answer “what if”
type questions – what if we change this, or do that?, etc. Wisdom comes through
accumulated knowledge over a long period of time. Those who possess wisdom know
what to do.
It is also helpful to distinguish between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Tacit
knowledge is knowledge that resides in a person’s mind and may include aspects of
culture or “ways of doing things”. Explicit knowledge is knowledge that has been
recorded as information in a document, image, film clip, recording or some other
medium.
Knowledge has been discussed throughout history as an important branch of philosophy

(epistemology). It takes many forms – it can transient and elusive or practical and able to
be captured. It can be exchanged as an object or considered as a flow. It can be kept of a
long time, or can be kept only for a short period of time. We will address all of these
aspects shortly.
Wisdom - Proven confidence in your

knowledge or decision
making, usually gained
through experience, and
sharing business focuses.
What to do
Knowledge - That which guides humans in their

use of information and data to
make judgments and decisions
and do work - the context of who,
what, when, where, why, and how
to be most effective.
What if we…..
Information - Data plus contextual references of meaning or

value to the business or someone associated
with it.
Why is it happening
Data - Structured facts, values of parameters, and measures, usually

without significant context - an Information database.
What is going on
Figure 4: The Pyramid of Knowledge
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3.4 Knowledge Management – Practical or Management ‘Hype’?
The Gartner hype cycle for KM places each of the KM “solutions” into perspective.
Knowledge management in general has gone through the same development. Everybody
wants a silver bullet t solve problems. Consultants and IT companies offered the silver
bullets, raised expectations and mostly did not deliver. The outcome of this has been
failure, disappointment, cynicism and confusion. Indeed for many, KM has become yet
another management fad.
KM hype as seen by IT industry
Figure 5: Knowledge Management and the Gartner Hype Cycle
3.5 Our Approach to Knowledge Management
The definitions provided in Figures 2 and 3, while good tend to be abstract. We want to
move from the books to concrete reality; from the academic to the practical. We want to
focus on implementation, action and results. We want to convert guru statements into
something that both we, and you, can relate to. Our approach is different because we do
not just want to end up with a strategy containing abstract words and motherhood
statements – we want to see it implemented and result in concrete actions. Our objective
is to see the organization adapt a strategy that moves it from where it is today to where it
wants to be – using knowledge management as a powerful force for change.
Go back to the gurus’ definitions in Figures 2 and 3 – we want to use a much simpler
framework to describe KM. It starts with strategy:
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• What do we do?
• Who do we want to become?
• Where do we want to go?
• How do we do what we do?
• What do we need to know to do what we do?
• Who needs to know about what we do?
This links to the COE work regarding strategic planning – what the consultants are doing
is to continue and complement this work. The major value add of this is to get people
thinking about these things.
KM and the COE Framework

Quality of
Quality of
1. Leadership Planning
Outcomes
2. Human Resources
Leadership
3. Knowledge Quality of Operations,
Processes and
Services
4. Processes Culture
ops
Lo
ck
5. Outcomes
ba
ed
Fe
Knowledge sharing People and their
and Learning development
HR Policies
Figure 6: Knowledge Management and the COE Framework
Where do we start? With asking some of the following questions:
• Why do we do strategic planning?

• Why do we produce a vision statement?
Because….
• We want to evolve
• We want to change to something better, be more effective and more competitive
• We are committed to change.
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All of this links to national goals – what each Government agency does to mobilize its
knowledge to help it achieve its mission has broader national implications – it will make
Jordan a better place. It is important to have a vision for a knowledge-managed
organization. Here is one that the consultants did for a small public sector agency in
Australia.
Our vision – What do we want to

become? The “dream”. “To be”
Your organization is an amazing place. Where once invisible

walls separated operating units, complicating and discouraging
communication and knowledge exchange, there is now free flow
of information. No one is reluctant to seek—or offer—assistance
within the local office or across the country. People know whom
to ask or where to go to find the information they need. People
seldom seem too busy to help one another, and there exists a
great spirit of cooperation.
Virtual communities of interest have sprung up, promoting

informal knowledge exchange and the development of
relationships, and helping individuals feel more a part of the
bigger organizational team.
Communication from the top is now quicker, messages are more

clearly understood and feedback from staff is both qualitatively
and quantitatively better. No one feels left out of the loop.
Figure 7: A Knowledge Management Vision

The organization that wished to achieve this vision articulated the following in its KM
Strategy:
Minimal Knowledge Loss
While there is the normal employee attrition as the older population continues to retire,
there is now only minimal threat to the organization of knowledge loss. The leadership
team realises that some turnover is necessary for organisational health. Recruitment,
selection, and succession planning practices contribute to this sense of confidence, as the
organisation is clear on the knowledge and skills it has and needs today, and those that
will be needed tomorrow. The clarity and commitment to the organisation’s vision,
mission, direction, and strategic plan has made it possible to develop an effective
knowledge and skill assessment and development program.
Skills Transfer
Mentoring and coaching, formal and informal, and other forms of partnering on tasks and
assignments, enabled by simple, intuitive but powerful IT tools, assure that the
knowledge and skill once resident in senior employees is now transferring to newer and
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younger employees. Everyone is proud of how well these partner approaches are
working: not only are knowledge and skills being shared and future capability built, but
productivity and effectiveness have actually improved. The employees of the
organization have “tapped into” the heart of performance and continuous improvement of
the organisation. Knowledge management-related technology and associated business
processes improvements promote performance improvements, providing people what
they need, just when they need it, and where they need it. There has been a substantial
reduction in duplication of effort and cumbersome work methods and procedures.
Supporting Tools
People have embraced new tools and ways of working, making them integral parts of
their knowledge and performance culture. People know how to use these tools and
processes to get the most out of them, and while they have never lost their tendency to
critically question, they appreciate the costs and dangers of neglecting and circumventing
the tools and processes available to them.
A vibrant knowledge environment, which includes recruitment and selection, succession

planning, a performance management system, and induction / orientation all contribute
directly to building and reinforcing a culture that thrives in and capitalises upon the
organization’s strengths. From initial concept to full deployment of the KM
environment, leaders have been clear on operational principles and what they are trying
to achieve. They have known what management behaviours are required to cultivate the
environment. Everyone in the organisation is clear on what is expected of them in terms
of performance and knowledge, and expectations are continually reinforced through
internal memoranda, professional development, and the conduct of day-to-day work,
including the focus and approach to teamwork and running meetings.
Not only is knowledge sharing and building future capability a source of pride for
employees, but also they feel a deep sense of responsibility for contributing to this. A set
of project management systems, delivered through the Knowledge Management Office
(KMO), helps to support this. They know that in return for a challenging and fulfilling
career at the organization that they must do their part to promote and facilitate the growth
and development of their peers and to create a knowledge and performance culture that
endures and evolves to meet ever-changing demands and circumstances. The KM tools
and processes they have in place help them do this, but in the end they know that its
people first.
After articulating the vision, we also need to understand the starting point – what are
today, that is, the “as is” situation as at today. This involves understanding the following:
• Organization – are we empowering our people?

• Leadership – is this visionary and transparent?
• Culture and behavior – do we reward and recognize knowledge-sharing,
teamwork and collaboration?
• Values and ethics – are the values today the same that we want them to be?
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3.6 Knowledge Management Strategy
Where does KM strategy come

from?
Content Application/
Vision Strategy Governance Culture Technology Measurement
Management Implementation
Figure 8: Knowledge Management Strategy

Before we can say what a knowledge management strategy looks like, we first need to
say what a strategy is.
• A strategy is the pattern or plan that integrates an organization’s major goals,

policies, and actions into a cohesive whole. At its simplest, a strategy can be a
very specific plan or action directed at a specified result within a specified period
of time.
• A KM strategy is therefore a specific plan of action, laying out the activities

necessary to embed knowledge management into an organization within a
specified period of time.
• A strategy will create a picture of how the organization’s KM capabilities will be

integrated into a cohesive whole (like bits of a jigsaw puzzle).
It should be designed to guide investment in the right resources – human, structural,

organizational and technological – to drive the KM initiative and it should highlight the
skills, the cultural change, organizational change, content required, and the technologies
and toolsets needed to support it. The realization of the organization’s mission and goals
MUST always be the aim of a KM strategy. A KM strategy must therefore be consistent
with other organizational investments and with decisions made elsewhere within a
strategic context.
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3.7 Understanding Change
What we hope to achieve through the workshops is a better understanding of the forces
driving or inhibiting the changes we seek from your organizations.
• How can we handle the obstacles we come across?
• Does it make sense to develop a risk management plan – assess the likelihood of
these inhibitors and plan ways and means around them.
• Understanding complexity and addressing relevant and well-understood risks.
• For example, is the Civil Service structure in Jordan a force for change or an
inhibitor and what can be done about it?
We need to have a good understanding of forces for and against change – what we call
the Force Field Analysis. This consists of the following:
Forces for Change Forces against Change

Major emphasis on clients Administrative history, culture and business
practices
Major commercialization/decentralization Public sector bureaucratic organization paradigm
Desire and need for more modern, more helpful History of parochialism, information hoarding and
technologies poor functionality
Need to demonstrate performance and value for Pessimistic attitude towards arrival of new systems
money and their value
Need for efficiency – to do more with less People feel overworked already
Restructuring releases vitality and motivation People fear about cuts
Important opportunity for leverage Residual mistrust
Distributed location
Breadth of competing initiatives impede progress
3.8 Final Caveat – Knowledge Management in the Public Sector
Public service is not involved in a simple transaction of services between themselves as a

supplier and others as customers, as in private sector. It is much more complex than this.
Public sector organizations, while they may see themselves as being run like a business
are not profit-driven. Financial management is only one part of accountability amongst
many and is not the primary task. Measuring the success of any public-sector
organization’s KM strategy must include how knowledge supports the organization’s
contribution to national goals.
Need organizations that are:
• Citizen centered
• Efficient and results focused
• Transparent
• Outcome driven
• Provide high quality services to the public
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4. Knowledge Management Strategy Framework
The framework that we will use for creating knowledge management strategies for the
organizations involved in the COE process include the following elements:
• Leadership, strategy, missions and objectives

• People and culture
• Processes
• Content – Knowledge Mapping and Networking
• Technology
• Barriers & constraints
• Opportunities – identification of quick wins
• Measurement – Return on investment (ROI) and continuous monitoring
These are addressed in great detail below.
First Steps
Vision, mission, strategy, and objectives

Leadership
Organization, behavior and culture
People
Processes
Content – Knowledge Mapping and Networking
Technology
Barriers & constraints
Opportunities – identification of quick wins
Measurement – ROI U& continuous monitoring
Figure 9: Knowledge Management Strategy Framework
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4.1 Knowledge Management Vision and Strategy
The first step usually begins with locking in executive support – someone who
understands KM and then leads the effort to communicate and promote the strategy and
its execution. Getting buy-in from senior management, and indeed the rest of the
organization may be hard to achieve, but it is CRITICAL to successful implementation of
the KM strategy. If you don’t have this, then STOP!
A KM strategist needs to have a good understanding of the whole industry or

environment in which the organization is operating in. For example, within a private
sector context, this involves the regulatory environment, the level of competitiveness
(should a competitive intelligence strategy be adopted?), the dynamics of consolidation
(e.g., mergers and acquisitions, etc), and whether the organization works in a domestic or
international environment.
Last item here – assessing organizational connectivity: KM is about connecting people

with all types of knowledge (internal, external, tacit and explicit). The KM strategy
should address how this is to be achieved. E.g., how do employees find subject matter
experts, colleagues with similar experience, or people who can handle problems or
answer difficult questions? Leveraging what the organization knows is one of the key
benefits of investing in KM.
KM Strategy
Get Executive buy-in: powerful sponsor
Build a compelling business case for KM
The KMS must understand the organizational goals, so
that plans and investments can be made in capabilities to
help realize the organization’s vision.
Have a clear answer to these questions:
l Where is the organization heading?
l What’s important to it?
l How will these objective be achieved?
Assessing organizational connectivity: encourages
knowledge sharing and accelerates learning
Figure 10: Knowledge Management Vision & Strategy
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4.2 Governance
Finding out where KM should sit in the organization and assigning control and defining
leadership roles are the most critical – and potentially difficult – decisions to make.
Organizations need to answer the following questions:
1. Where is the organization heading?

2. What is important to the organization?
3. How will its objectives be achieved?
These questions need to be consistent with the organization’s existing structure and
culture – how are other resource allocation questions (e.g., capital allocation/approval)
and IT spending made? Follow the existing corporate governance model
Governance
Who will decide where investments in KM will be made?

Where will funding for KM come from?
Will there be a coordinated approach to KM across the
organization? If so, who will do this?
Will there be human resources dedicated to KM? If so,
what are their roles, and to whom will they report?
Will KM be driven/managed by a central corporate staff,
or by division, function or line of business?
Who will establish the standards for KM and KM-related
technologies?
Figure 11: Governance

4.3 Culture
The willingness of employees to share/contribute what they know and to leverage explicit
content from inside/outside the organization is a critical success factor for KM. Culture
and behavior is essential to success KM.
KM usually represents significant change to the organization and the organizations that
recognize this and support their KM applications with a change management program are
much more likely to receive high returns on their investment. It is important to create a
proper environment for knowledge sharing involves understanding the cultural barriers
that impede sharing and looking for ways to remove these impediments (e.g. Customs –
remuneration based on seizures – why help someone who may be your competitor).
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Culture
Critical success factor

KM means change – this needs to be
managed
Create the proper environment for
knowledge sharing to occur
WIFM = what’s in it for me
Figure 12: Culture

Put yourself in the knowledge worker’s shoes and ask the question: what’s in it for me to
share? This may involve some of the following:
• Establish ownership – involve users in planning and development; incorporate

and recognize user contributions; solicit and respond to ongoing user feedback
• Design intuitive solutions for work processes – select content for impact; and
implement processes consistent with culture and work styles
• Change what is important – demonstrate the value to users; measure use and
impact and reward and promote success
4.3 Content Management
Content management (not to be confused with content management systems) is at the

heart of KM and is often overlooked. It is concerned with the retrieval, distribution and
application of previously acquired knowledge to help workers do their jobs better (single
loop versus double loop learning)
Target is: Right content to the right people at the right time – to do this, the KM strategy
must identify the content a knowledge worker will need within the context of his own
job. Content exists both inside and outside an organization and is both tacit and explicit.
We need to understand how each of these domains can be applied to help knowledge
workers accomplish their primary business objectives and then create a strategy to make
this content accessible. The tool we will use here is knowledge mapping.
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4.4 Knowledge Mapping
A knowledge map organizes knowledge that practitioners or knowledge workers need to

do their work by providing structures that enable the effective development, recognition,
retrieval, and contribution of knowledge. A knowledge map typically comprises a
hierarchy of concepts and links from concepts to knowledge. It highlights the
organization’s knowledge areas and helps in assessing their degree importance to the
organization.
Knowledge mapping provides a visual representation of knowledge processes, sources,

assets, flows, gaps and barriers across and within an organization. While there is no
standard approach to knowledge mapping, and it is tailored to the knowledge
environment of each organization, it generally focuses on people, expertise,
communication, relationships, business processes, systems, products and documents.
Information gathering techniques include observation, interviews, group discussion,

process tracking, questionnaires and surveys. Knowledge mapping can map expertise,
links between people across the organization and identify missing knowledge areas. By
making organizational knowledge visible, a knowledge map can support improvements
and changes to the way knowledge is used, shared and transferred across the
organization.
The K-map provides three benefits:
1. It enhances the ability to find or discover knowledge. Associating knowledge

assets to enterprise terminology, information needs and priorities pre-determines
their relevance and relationships. K-maps also remove irrelevant information from
the user’s path. This reduction of “info glut” reduces user time to access and to
assimilate needed information.
2. It adds human value to knowledge. Associating information content from multiple

sources and identifying experts within a shared context links their credibility and
relevance. This upfront assignment of credibility and relevance reduces user time
to validate information and to assemble a critical mass of information for decision
making.
3. It translates information into a social context. The ability to search and find
knowledge content (both primary sources and related information) using familiar
terminology stimulates collaboration and the formation of work communities. A
K-map that increases users’ success in locating the appropriate information or
people for the user’s task or interest will stimulate subsequent reliance on the KM
environment.
K-maps should not replicate the enterprise’s organizational chart – this is simply an
administrative tool. In general, if knowledge and experts are difficult to find in today’s
organization, building a K-map based on the organization chart will not improve the
user’s ability to find them.
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In addition, K-maps should not replicate business process maps (P-maps). P-maps
represent the flow of work and data through the enterprise to create an end product or
service. A P-map continually decomposes higher-level processes into detailed processes.
Although P-maps represent relationships among the work steps, they do not group or
relate relationships adequately for a K-map. In addition, low-level P-maps contain too
finely detailed information to convert to a manageable or navigable K-map. The indexing
and the navigation of such a detailed K-map may be so burdensome as to void its
usability. P-maps do provide good input into the analysis for K-maps, but they should not
be adopted as a design framework without in-depth scrutiny.
4.5 Technology
Technology
Document management Collaboration and

Multimedia-enabled personalization
Power of the search engine Active collection &
(indexing, efficiency, etc) distribution of knowledge
Flexibility and ease in Repository creation
browsing Operational statistics
Visualization tools Linkages to external sources
Automatic classification Agent applications
(taxonomy/ontology)
Figure 13: Knowledge Management Technology
It is important to remember that IT is a necessary but not sufficient component of

knowledge management. Too many start with IT as the most important aspect of KM but
neglect all of the other components addressed in the methodology spelled out here.
4.6 Application and Implementation
It is important to determine where the areas of strategic importance are for the
organization. This involves identifying groups or communities of practice within the
organization that have common objectives/information needs:
l These are organic not designed

l These need to be energized
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The KM Sponsor also needs to communicate the plan to the whole organization and
provide visible leadership and commitment to the project. It often helps to think big and
start small – search for “low hanging fruit” and easy and early wins. Identify KM practice
already underway in your organization and replicate it where it is applicable.
4.7 Measurement
Measurement
Application Benefits Intermediate Benefits (Local Final Outcomes (Global
(KM Process Benefits) Process or Functional Benefits)
l Improved decision Benefits) l Faster services
making l Cost reductions l Satisfied citizens
l Increased empirical l Improved quality of outcomes l More informed policies
support for l Efficiency improvements l Greater support to the
ideas/decisions private sector
l Innovations
l Improved l Increased transparency
l New ideas
communications
l Troubleshooting
l Better intelligence
l Expanded capabilities of
l Improved client &
knowledge workers
stakeholder information
l Improvement in skills or
expertise
l Personal time saving
Figure 14: Measurement of Knowledge Management Benefits
Measurement of the benefits of KM include the following:
• Define objectives and purpose

• Select a method
• Determine specific performance metrics
• Structure the measurement process
• Establish baseline measurement
• Review/modify as needed
This needs to be part of the other COE activities – it is important to keep the link.
The important thing is to remember that if you can’t define what you want success and
the future to look like, how will you know when you have arrived there? Ongoing
performance is crucial to knowing whether or not the chosen strategy is working or if
course correction is required.
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Performance Management Framework that measures KM outcomes:
• Increased collaboration within an organization, its stakeholders and project

partners
• Improving information sharing between staff and with stakeholders
• Faster responses to the organization’s external environment
• Better coordination of development projects under the organization’s
responsibilities.
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5. Combined Workshop Results – Outcomes
The following table compiles the action items identified in the workshops held with each
agency and organized into the main heading areas addressed in the KM presentation
discussed in Chapter 4 of this report. Many of the initiatives that were articulated by
specific agencies have potential application across all of the agencies concerned.
Therefore, this table represents a menu from which agencies can select specific activities
of relevance to them, which could be used as the basis of a knowledge management
strategy.
It should be borne in mind that these activities were derived from a four hour workshop
covering all components of knowledge management facilitated by an expert in
knowledge management theory and practice. A more detailed articulation of these
measures will be required, either using the Center of Excellence Knowledge Management
criterion or following the components of a knowledge management strategy discussed in
the preceding chapter of this report.
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Table 1. Components of a Knowledge Management Strategy and the COE Program

Description of Activity KM Strategy Related COE Criteria/Sub-Criteria
Element
• Communicate leadership vision to all component parts of the organization; Vision Criterion 1: Leadership
• Run a campaign throughout 2004 as the “Year of Knowledge Management” or Subcriterion 1: Strategic Planning
a “Knowledge Management Day” within the organization; Framework
• Provide a communications strategy so that all employees are aware of the Strategy Criterion 1: Leadership
organizations mandate, vision, purpose, objectives and performance; Subcriterion 1: Strategic Planning
• Bring the importance of KM to the attention of senior management so that Framework
they will know the importance of critical pieces of information and report this
to all interested parties, both inside and outside the organization;
• Create a Knowledge Management Office (KMO) that reports directly to the Governance Criterion 1: Leadership
Minister and Director General (Secretary General) Subcriterion 2: Supportive Culture
• Undertake periodic inter-Departmental meetings, record the discussions and Subcriterion 3: Relationship with
outcomes of these meetings; and make sure that these are distributed to all Stakeholders
who need to know within the organization – to employees, managers and Criterion 2: Human Resources
committees; Subcriterion 2: Human Resources
• Undertake better communication with other agencies and review and address Planning
laws that impede this inter-agency communication; Subcriterion 3: Human Resources
• Delegation of authority to middle-management to better empower people in Development
their jobs; Criterion 3: Knowledge
• Human resources should be more involved with staff in career development Management
and should assist staff in outlining their career paths within the organization Subcriterion 1: Understanding KM
• Design a skills development program and link this to the career paths of Subcriterion 2: KM Operations
individuals in the organization Subcriterion 3: Learning
• Review legal status of email within whole-of-Jordan Government context Organization
• Implement a succession planning strategy to maintain key skills within the People & Culture Criterion 1: Leadership
organization and to preserve key knowledge held within the organization; Subcriterion 2: Supportive Culture
• Identify key groups or communities of practice or special interest groups Subcriterion 3: Relationship with
within the organization and seek Executive mandate to support them; Stakeholders
• Develop an incentives/rewards system for knowledge sharing, skills Criterion 2: Human Resources
development and training; Subcriterion 1: Human Resources
• Rotate employees throughout the organization so that skills are spread and Management
learning can take place; Subcriterion 2: Human Resources
• Recognize the individual achievements of people, particularly where they Planning
share knowledge with others to reach these achievements; Subcriterion 3: Human Resources
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Element
• Reward knowledge management behavior/best practice in performance Development
assessments, either on an individual or team basis; Sub-Criterion 4: Employee
• Explore alternative forms of providing rewards, whether this be monetary Relations
(bonus, trips, dinners, etc) or non-monetary (e.g., special awards, recognition Criterion 3: Knowledge
ceremonies, etc) Management
• Implement on-the-job training and mentoring schemes to assist employee Subcriterion 1: Understanding KM
performance and improve efficiency. Subcriterion 2: KM Operations
• Identify high performers within the organization and provide them with Subcriterion 3: Learning
incentives to share their knowledge and delegate their responsibilities; Organization
• Explore ways of overcoming the constraints imposed on recruiting and
promoting employees bound by the Civil Service Code;
• Involve non-technical people in HR management and training committees
• Make business processes formal and institutionalized (i.e., consistent Process Criterion 4: Processes
throughout the organization). Subcriterion 1: Process
• Identify parts of business processes where collaboration, decision-making or Management and Streamlining
knowledge sharing/exchange takes place or should occur; Subcriterion 2: Resource
• Describe skills required and knowledge needed to undertake the business Management
processes identified;
• A business owner should be assigned to each of the processes identified in
the organization so that there is responsibility for best practice process and
performance;
• Break up silo culture by institutionalizing well-documented and well-
communicated cross-functional processes, which include activities, roles and
responsibilities, decision-making points and knowledge
• Map out where key skills and knowledge are held within the organization and Content Criterion 1: Leadership
provide a Directory of Expertise to all employees within the organization; Management Subcriterion 3: Relationship with
• Better utilization and capture of knowledge from external consultants; Stakeholders
• Establish a platform, either electronic or physical, for external organizations Criterion 3: Knowledge
and consultants to exchange experience with the implementation of projects. Management
Subcriterion 1: Understanding KM
• Create a knowledge repository and provide access to it for everyone within Technology Criterion 3: Knowledge
the organization; Management
• Encourage the use of technology to acquire knowledge and support this via Subcriterion 1: Understanding KM
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Element
training and awareness-raising; Subcriterion 2: KM Operations
• Provide a lively Intranet or database as a collaboration/information tool and Subcriterion 3: Learning
get better use out of existing information technology; Organization
• Measurement Criterion 5: Outcomes
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6. Individual Workshop Results
6.1 Jordan Export Development and Commercial Centers Corporation
Definitions
• Each employee knows what he/she needs to know in JEDCO
• Transferring ethics and values into practice – getting an alignment of individual
and corporate values
• To share knowledge with others in a managed way
• To acquire skills to do our jobs better
• Vertical and horizontal communication of knowledge via communication,
training, job rotation, and succession planning
Benefits of Knowledge Management

• More efficient organization that is better able to meet organizational goals
• Organization that can deliver its services faster and better
• No reinvention of the wheel – reuse of knowledge within the organization
• Better performance and better planning
Vision & Strategy

JEDCO’s vision is to provide the highest quality services to the Jordanian export
community to make Jordan the most competitive country in the region within 5 years.
JEDCO Objectives (in this order of priority):

1. Get Jordanian companies to export
2. Contribute to export development in Jordan by providing technical and financial
assistance to Jordanian exporters, undertake a national export strategy and
administer funds for industry development
3. Provide assistance to Jordanian exporters by organizing trade fairs and missions
and coordinate donor agencies
4. To represent Jordanian exporters in the region and in the United States
Constraints
• Key people are leaving the organization leaving critical gaps in skills.
• There is no succession planning
• The CEO refuses to delegate responsibility – he insists on signing all official
documentation
• The organization is in turmoil – there is no clear direction articulated for the
future, there is considerable uncertainty about the future of the organization,
including its structure and financing
• There is a prevailing attitude of “knowledge is power” – why should people share
knowledge is the future is so uncertain.
• Knowledge hoarding prevails – there are silos in the organization
• Human Resources is not involved in succession planning or in capability planning
• Resources are limited by what the government determines
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• No adoption of best practice
JEDCO: High Level Knowledge Map (Listed in Order of Priority)

Source of Knowledge Inputs Destination of Knowledge Outputs
Exporters Exporters, manufacturers, industry associations and
chambers of commerce
Staff, Board of Directors and CEO Potential importers of Jordanian exports
Departments of Statistics (local and international – Research firms, consultants, government
e.g., Eurostats) institutions, ministries, university students,
international counterparts,
Government policies/visions – trade agreements, Ministers, government agencies, donor agencies,
international reports (private and government) and exporters from abroad, trade fair organizers
intelligence reports
Jordanian embassies abroad and embassies of Board of Directors
other countries
Internet and online information sources, and Staff
publications from banking and financial institutions
Opportunities
• Committees exist that are empowered to achieve objectives
• There is a move in mindset from a public sector to a private sector organization
• It is possible to map out expertise within JEDCO – who knows what and who
needs to know and to link these people
• Mentoring and informal knowledge exchange already occurs within the
organization via email and discussions between employees
• There are task force communities of practice that will persist despite the re-
organization of JEDCO – this need to be built upon.
• Trading employees will mean there will be new skills brought into the
organization.
Action Items
• JEDCO needs a succession planning strategy to be put in place in order to
maintain key skills and key knowledge within the organization;
• JEDCO needs to identify the key groups or communities of practice within
JEDCO and seek Executive mandate to support them;
• JEDCO needs to develop an incentive/reward system for knowledge sharing,
skills development and training.
6.2 Jordan Investment Board
Definitions
• KM is based on people who have the right knowledge to perform their tasks
• KM is a computer system that is used to help people understand what knowledge
is in the organization and can be used to retrieve it
• KM is a systematic approach or set of processes within the organization to use
and manage both information and knowledge
• KM is all about how to better distribute knowledge either by IT or by other
means, to people who have a need to know within the organization.
• Analytical tool to understand what it is that we do and how we can improve it
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Benefits of Knowledge Management

• Faster retrieval of information/data leading to better delivery of services to clients
and better client satisfaction
• Faster learning
• No duplication of effort
• Better performing staff
Vision
• In five years JIB will be the leading corporation within the region and will be
Jordan’s ultimate investment generator
• In five years JIB will be the leading agency in the region that will attract foreign
direct investment and domestic direct investment in Jordan
Constraints
• JIB doesn’t have the right people in place to make decision – people are not
empowered
• Middle management is a barrier between employees and upper management
• There are no rewards or incentives in place to share knowledge
• There is no communication strategy in place to help employees understand the
strategic directions of the organization
Opportunities
• Job rotation for knowledge sharing
• Middle managers to be full empowered
Action Items
• There should be periodical departmental meetings and minutes of meetings should
reach upper management
• Include initiatives with owner in a special section as part of minutes of meeting
• Create a knowledge repository and provide access to it for everyone within the
organization
• Encourage the use of technology to acquire knowledge and support this via
training and awareness-raising
• Create a Knowledge Management Office (KMO) that reports directly to the
Minister and Secretary General
6.3 Ministry of Industry and Trade
Vision
• A vibrant ministry that effectively contributes to the economic prosperity of
Jordanians through having highly qualified employees who utilize technology in
their daily work.
• Shape or create a conducive and enabling environment to achieve a higher
sustainable socio-economic development for all Jordanians.
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Mission
• Promote industrial development through bilateral commercial agreements and ties
• Applying WTO rules in Jordan
• Protecting consumers
• Quality assurance of food products
• Registering companies
• Protecting competition (local versus foreign)
• Controlling monopolies
• Protecting Intellectual Property Rights
• Maintaining a strategic stock inventory
• Foreign imports
Constraints
• There is no support for informal communities of practice
• CITO structure
• Results of studies and outcomes of committees stay on paper – there appears to be
no distribution of these findings
• Findings go into projects that contribute little to MIT objectives
• Leadership vision is not communicated to lower levels – there is little
transparency in decision-making
MIT: High Level Knowledge Map (Listed in Order of Priority)

Industry, including Chambers of Commerce & Clients, including citizens, companies,
Chambers of Industry industrialists and the private sector
Government ministries, including Customs, Donors and industry and trade related entities
Ministry of Planning, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
and other institutions
Jordanian Institutions abroad Jordanian embassies
Law firms Commercial attaches abroad
Citizens, consumers Consumer Protection Association
International Organizations Staff and upper management
Staff
Jordan Investment Board
Action Items
• Encourage communication within the organization – between employees,
managers and committees
• Better coordination with other agencies and renewing laws which would be
necessary to achieve this
• To bring the importance of knowledge management to the attention of senior
management so that they will know the importance of critical pieces of
information and report this to all interested parties, both inside and outside of the
organization
• Provide a set of incentives and reward systems for employees based on
performance and sharing knowledge and information amongst staff
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• Delegation of authority to middle management to better empower people in their

jobs
• Better communication of the strategic direction of the organization to staff
• Human resources should be more involved with staff in career development and
should assist staff in outlining their career paths within the organization
• Create a new Department for Planning and Development within the organization
• Implement on-the-job training and mentoring schemes to assist employee
performance and improve efficiency.
6.4 Ministry of Planning
Definitions
• Sharing/transfer of key information and knowledge across the organization
• Gathering, filtering, processing, analyzing, sharing and using knowledge
• A system, mechanism or repository that can search for and retrieve data,
information and knowledge across all resources (HR, financial, IT, etc) within the
organization
• The right knowledge to the right person at the right time and in the right context
to support the right decision.
Benefits
• A better performing Ministry that improves the socioeconomic position of the
Jordanian people.
Vision
Shape/craft a conducive/enabling environment to achieve higher sustainable socio-
economic development for all Jordanians.
Mission
To be a driving force for guiding and coordinating governmental socio-economic
policies, programs and priorities as well as enhancing developing international
cooperation for addressing those goals.
Objectives
• Take lead in developing the national social and economic development plan
• Enhance donor relations
• Secure adequate funding at appropriate times for priority development projects
• Serve as liaison between national institutions and donors/international institutions
• Lead negotiations and packaging of loans
• Monitor donor-funded projects to ensure effective implementation
• Facilitate the process for cultural cooperation between Jordan and other nations
• Work with the private sector to enhance Jordan’s competitiveness
Constraints
• People who work only for the paycheck and are not motivated to share knowledge
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• Need to get executive buy-in for knowledge management

• No strategic planning – the organization works by crisis management
• There is no human resource planning – there are either people who do not perform
or people who need to over-perform in order to compensate for the others
• Staff empowerment is not uniform throughout the organization
• There are no tools to help the Ministry cope with too much information
• Email has no legal status
• There is a lot of re-inventing the wheel and duplicate tasking within the
organization
• There is poor communication and often multiple requests from management to do
the same work.
Opportunities
• Leverage on high performers within the organization who want to delegate more
of their responsibilities
• Use influence of Minister and CEO to get backing for KM-related work
MOP: High Level Knowledge Map (Listed in Order of Priority)

Minister, Ministry and Royal Court Prime Minister and Royal Court
Non-Governmental Organizations and Donor NGOs and Donor Organizations
Organizations
Public and Parliament – who demand Public and Parliament
accountability
Private Sector Ministry of Planning Staff
Other Government Departments Other Ministries
Ministry of Planning (field work) Other countries
Other Countries (including Benchmarking Sub-contractors and the private sector
analysis)
Action Items
• Get executive buy-in and commitment for knowledge management and extend
this buy-in to middle management and staff
• Ensure there is better communication about the direction of the organization and
that people understand the nature and roles they have in their job
• Provide an incentive system (rewards, recognition, etc) to change culture so
people embrace knowledge management and get the rest of MoP staff involved
• Provide a lively intranet or database as a collaboration/information tool and get
better use out of existing IT
• Undertake a detailed knowledge mapping exercise within the MoP.
6.4 Customs Department
• Today, there are about 1400 employees in the Jordanian Customs;

• Customs is geographically spread across the whole Jordan
Vision
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“In five years the Customs department will be among the world’s best Customs
administrations implementing e-Customs operations and providing excellent Customs
services.”
• Customs vision has a 100% commitment and support by Customs employees;

• Customs strengths:
o Very proactive and innovative middle management;
o IT infrastructure - Customs vision has been aligned with the Customs IT
strategy
Knowledge Management Strategy

Knowledge Management Strategy has to be aligned with the goals and objectives of the
organizations – what does it mean for your organization? What does it mean for you and
your day-to-day job activities?
Future - Shifts to
Desired future is described by an organization’s vision. What are the attributes of the
organization and its culture enabling the vision?
• Excellent;
• Transparent;
• Accountable;
• Leadership – lead by example, empowering employees, no micromanagement;
• Committed and informed employees – this attribute has to come from within the
organization, cannot be imposed from the top or from outside;
• There are incentives to become better;
• Motivation;
• Fairness and justice;
• Everybody is involved;
• Everybody’s work is appreciated;
• Collaboration and sharing become the way of doing a job;
Today - Shifts from – Strategies

How do we become the organization capable of achieving our vision?
• Differentiation from other departments – currently Customs have 46 different

kind of incentives to reward employees;
• Employees’ competence – improvement in that domain would benefit greatly to
achieving the vision, this is also perceived as a major shortcoming; there are
incentives to train and training is done in a few different ways
o On the job training

o Seminars
o Meeting
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o Customs Training Center provides many English, computer and technical

job related courses
• Examples of knowledge being power are addressed by:

o training people,
o awareness campaign,
o coaching and mentoring,
o job rotation - sharing knowledge might lead to getting a better position
• System computerization at Customs enables information spreading and

knowledge sharing; examples of this in practice:
o A list of experts at Customs – any freshmen can look up Customs
expertise
o Case system an example of departmental collaboration between Risk
management and Intelligence
o A database in Aqaba is an example of data sharing between different
departments
• There is a strong consensus that innovation and new ideas are supported in
Customs, there is strong support from the very top, and anyone can convey good
ideas;
• Customs business processes - review of current business processes and
documentation – improvement and reengineering will be required to make
Customs a more efficient organization; the review should be an ongoing process;
• Certain areas have reward systems linked to an individual’s experience and
success,
o sharing the knowledge and experience would impact on the individual’s
income, thus working counterproductively against encouraging culture of
sharing;
o there isn’t any systematic approach to incentives to share and collaborate
today;
o There is effort, within Customs, to build culture where people would feel
happy to share – this needs to be explored further;
• Commitment of Customs employees and Customs’ image

o Some people perceive reward system as not very fair;
o There is a need to improve image of Customs and its employees, certain
part of public might question honesty and integrity of Customs officers,
people need to be proud of working for Customs;
o What does Jordanian Customs do for Jordan?
o Ask employees about how to improve the image;
• It is difficult to find all necessary job related and decision making information –
knowledge mapping might improve that,
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o this is an action item on the Customs’ knowledge management strategy

plan for 2004;
• Connecting people, either internal or external to Customs, with similar technical

skills or similar jobs, e.g. border directors met first time ever only recently, or
interested in the same piece of information, e.g. intelligence activities, evaluation
o there could be a significant benefit to Customs if such knowledge and
experience exchanges happen on a more regular basis;
o supporting informal communities;
o technology might help a lot to foster such communities
• Documenting successes, capturing experience and processes leading to the

success; adding a step in a process to document or to report or to inform of a
success,
o e.g., uncovering an attempt to smuggle certain goods at the border
reported to all border operations that my benefit from such knowledge,
might improve that – finding ways how to achieve that in a geographically
spread organization
• Major forces working against achieving the vision:

o Civil service recruitment, regulations and promotion processes
• More autonomy in budgeting and recruitment is required;

• There is a theme running in Customs each year, 2003 was year of the Total
Quality Management; a proposal to have 2004 as the year of Customs knowledge
sharing
Knowledge flows
• Inputs
o Private sector,
o Other Government Agencies,
o Passengers,
o Citizens
• Supporting core business
o Trade facilitation
o Compliance
• Outputs
o Trade statistics,
o Income Tax and Sales Tax,
o Revenue collection,
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o Compliance,
o Policies
Knowledge Assets
• The most important knowledge assets in Customs
o Customs experts, employees and their knowledge,
o Client data – all we know about our clients to support Customs major
objectives – smooth trade facilitations and compliance
o procedures, databases, rules and regulations, training programs
• E-Customs – communication and information dissemination supported and

enabled electronically;
• Classify jobs on basis of what kind of information is necessary to perform the
jobs, e.g. help desk – using structured explicit knowledge; management - problem
solving - more improvisation is necessary;
• There is a good understanding in Customs that there is no straight forward
transfer of implicit knowledge into explicit while keeping its value - value of
explicit knowledge can only be expressed within a certain context
Recommended Activities
• Business Processes – make them formal and institutionalized
o Identify parts in a process where collaboration, decision making or
knowledge sharing and exchange should occur
o Identify knowledge flows, knowledge assets and expertise along the
business activities flows
§ What do I need to know to perform the task?

§ Where do I get it from? Who do I need to talk to?
§ Who should know about what I just have done?
§ How should I document what I have done?
§ Where should I store the experience?
• Based on the processes and expertise identified – describe the jobs and their skill
and expertise requirements
o Design skill development programs and link them to the career path for
employees – Individual development plans designed and progress
reviewed by an employee and the employee’s manger,
o Human Resources policies and recruitment need be to adjusted to support
Customs’ vision
• Reward knowledge management behavior in performance assessment
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o Evaluate different ways of rewards

o Team rewards as opposed to individual rewards
o Rewards given on the basis of peer assessment
• Document, review and understand better knowledge flows external to Customs;

o What agencies do Customs communicate with?
o Who do Customs need to exchange information with?
• Establishing and supporting interest groups and special awards for the best
sharing team and best practice implementation;
6.5 Telecommunications Regulatory Commission
The Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) has about 100 employees. It is

a centralized organization with its entire staff located in one place in Amman.
TRC consists of:

• Regulatory (now 12 will be 35 by the end of the year) and Economics
departments – most of the knowledge is concentrated in these 2 departments
• Technical department
• Spectrum management
• Operations department
• Administrative support department
• Financial department
• Legal department
• Internal audit group
Vision
A telecommunications environment that is competitive, advanced, regulated and
available to all.
Mission Statement
To ensure the availability of advanced and high quality Information and Communications
Technology (ICT) services to all users at just, reasonable, and affordable prices by
working with all stakeholders in an independent, open and transparent manner to create a
regulatory environment that promotes fairness, competition and investment, thus assuring
fulfillment of the Kingdom‘s long-term ICT needs.

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• Since TRC is a regulatory agency it needs to ensure that:
o There is an operator providing service
o TRC was fair in the process of evaluation and fair during the decision
making
o That the decision process was transparent and the rules were followed
o All parties involved have been consulted
• To ensure that processes are clear
• To ensure a high quality of services provided by the department
TRC engage on average about 30 consultants per year in short and long term projects.
Major tasks ahead:
• 2004 is going to be a significant year for TRC because of the mobile phone
market deregulations; and
• 2005 fixed line market deregulation is planned.
• To cope with the significant increase in workload, TRC is planning a considerable
growth in size and there is an expectation that the number of employees will
increase to 150 from current 100 by the end of 2003.
• New staff ramp up period has to be addressed
o Knowledge maps could be used as a very helpful tool to ease the induction
period for new recruits
• Human resource development responsible for training

• There is also human resource management, as well
• It is a government requirement that each position is described before it is filled
• Core departments - provide advice on core business
• Number of people will jump from 20 to 50
• The goal of Knowledge Management strategy is sharing knowledge between
management and staff, public and other organizations in efficient, timely and
optimal way
• What products do you create?
o Regulations
o Produce and maintain licenses
o Provide opinion and advice
o Set Service quality criteria
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AMIR Program 44
• TRC use a lot of external consultants to provide expertise in and advice on

specific technical issues
o Knowledge exchange between external experts and TRC is not systematic
o Having a counterpart/understudy to the ECs
o Knowledge transfer should be a part of the engagement for the ECs
o Better transparency and reporting of the work ECs
• Sharing and capturing knowledge acquired at conferences is not systematic

• A nice act of communications - World Telecom Day – TRC published a report for
general public about their activities
• Process about making rules and guidelines is missing
• Work at TRC is very operationally focused
• A steering committee to monitor all KM initiatives is required
• Understanding organizational values and ethics among all employees
• Improve communication channels both vertical and horizontal
• What needs to change
o Better communicational channels – cross functional and vertical
o Better focus on corporate values that affect peoples behavior
o Transparency – a lot of work is confidential prior to release on a particular
date; there need to be clear and documented guidelines, procedures and
processes about transparent behavior
o Faster and accurate decision making
o Consistency of outputs
o Better quality of service to increase customer satisfaction
o Achieving commitments to the vision and mission statements at all levels
in the organization, including the senior management
o Documenting operations procedures
• The type of work is mostly cross functional
• A new performance appraisal scheme is being developed
• Redefined psychological content of the organizational structure, e.g. relationship
between management and employees
• How could we observe that knowledge management is happening in the
organization?
o Faster and more accurate decision making process

o Less complaints
o The same job can be assigned to different people while preserving the
quality of output
o Increase in staff efficiency
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AMIR Program 45
o Employee job satisfaction improved

o Increase the quality
• Improvement of industry in general can be a measure of TRC doing job right
Knowledge flows
• Inputs
o External consultants
o Research – a task force giving research tasks
o Attending conferences abroad
• Where is all the information stored

• Regulated environment just established
o Customers
o Licensees – operators – communication is rare
o Customers – consumers – complaints, asking for instructions
o Government entities
o Potential investors
Knowledge Assets
• There used to be a monthly newsletter at TRC publishing major events and
activities, training courses
• A job description and set activities for each of the positions at the department is
being created
• There is going to be an electronic library set up for internal use
• FAQs on the web site – not monitored, most asked questions can be received from
the call center
• A training plan and a knowledge map to keep the ramp up period for the new
employees short
• Renew publishing of the newsletter
o a communication of successes in KM, conferences,
o communities of common interests
• Documentation of business processes and knowledge flows and understanding

decision making points are very needed
o A owner assigned for each process to manage documentation and
streamlining
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AMIR Program 46
o Internal people could be trained to perform this activity
• Better utilization and capture of knowledge from external consultants
6.6 Jordan Institution for Standards and Metrology
• JISM has about 190 employees. Most of the people in the organization are
engineers
• JISM services can be divided into two main groups, mandatory or voluntary
services, where JISM competes with other organization
• JISM strengths:
o Very proactive and innovative KM group;

o JISM has already prepared a Knowledge Management Strategy , where
JISM’s objectives have been linked to particular activities
Vision
“JISM is distinguished on the national, regional and international levels as a center of
excellence in the area of standardization and related fields for:
• Its commitment to applying internationally accepted best management and

technical practices.
• Its quality of services and products and responsiveness to the needs, expectations
and requirements of the economic sectors and consumers.
Thus, positively contributing to ensuring the safety and well being of the society as well
as to the enhanced competitiveness of the national economy in keeping with the national
objectives and our core values and contributes to their achievement within the set
priorities.”


• There was a survey conducted among employees in the department “What do you
think of others?”
• Employees tend rely on managers for setting instruction directions
• Many people feel unsafe in their positions because of plans to transfer employees
hired before 1995 or letting them retire, many senior people would fall into this
category – new retirement policies have been put in place recently
__________________________________________________________________________________
AMIR Program 47
• Continuity management appears to be a problem, inflexible hiring policies

• There a lot of committees in JISM, which could benefit from bon technical staff
being involved
• KM committee – all members are from the technical part of the JISM
• Constraints in achieving the KM objectives:
o Cross divisional collaboration and teamwork is not always appreciated by

the middle management
o Knowledge is power – unwillingness to share
o Micromanagement
o Functional silos
o Perceived value of different parts of the department, technical positions
are perceived as having a higher value
o Continuity management
• Civil services recruiting policies are in issue, it is difficult to get people who are
really wanted
• Director general considers the teamwork is more important than individual work,
yet the middle management fails to implement this
o Currently there are means to feed suggestions back to a committee chaired

by the Director General, good suggestions are rewarded by the DG
o Current mindset is, however, holding employees back from going directly
to the DG
• There is a need to create knowledge maps and mapping the processes, including
knowledge flows in between process steps
• A Cultural day – all employees are invited to that day and selected employees get
recognized by the DG for good work; this happens annually
Future - Shifts to
Desired future is described by an organization’s vision. What are the attributes of the
organization and its culture enabling the vision?
• We want to a be a learning organization in 12 months time

o Learn from previous experience and from mistakes of others
• New services provided to Industry as a part of knowledge management

o One new service for each department, there are 8 operational departments,
8 new services from the next year
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AMIR Program 48
• Regular meeting with senior people

• Recognized and appreciated team work and cross divisional collaboration
o Monthly report exchanges among divisions
• There is a plan to implemental technology – document management system
Knowledge flows
• Inputs sources
o International organizations
o Industry
o Traders
o Labs
o Cert bodies
o Service providers
o Staff
o Board of Directors
o Other government agencies
• JISM provides outputs to users are the same set of organizations
• Make people feel more important, a part of the whole, especially non-technical
staff to increase performance, efficiency and effectiveness
o Include non-technical people in HR and training committee,
Environmentally friendly department committee
• Incentives for sharing knowledge to increase loyalty, better sharing of tacit

knowledge, continuity in organizational performance
o Career path
o Recognition of knowledge sharing and recognition of not sharing
o Knowledge sharing as a part of performance appraisal
• Documenting cross divisional processes including knowledge flows supporting

decision making steps
6.7 Ministry of Information and Communications Technology
• There are 50 employees in MoICT, centrally located
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AMIR Program 49
• 20 people were kept from a traditionally run department and the core team of the
Project Management Office (PMO) was imported from EDS in the United States
without looking at the rest of the Ministry
• There are certain privileges, such as recruitment, given to MoICT that have not
been replicated across other departments
• There is an expectation that only the think-tank part of the current department will
remain in the future, eGovernment will become a separate department
MoICT Vision Statement

"An Information and Communications Technology Sector in Jordan in which the market
is given the widest possible scope to contribute to improved services and to the economic
growth of the country." It is the policy of the Government of Jordan to give the
Information and Communications Technology (ICT) market incentive to contribute
significantly to economic and social development by creating the legal, institutional, and
commercial environment in which the ICT market is nurtured, grown, and sustained.

• It is clear to MoICT where their strengths and weaknesses are
• MoICT services:
o Set policies in information and communication technology
o Start initiatives and become a in initiative champions
o Improving education, stations in rural areas, setting up networks
o Produce policies, guidelines, standards and awareness/education in ICT
industry
o Advise on change management issues
o Identify project champions and establish cells in different departments
• Implementation of projects lies within other departments

• Core expertise
o project management,
o change management,
o policy making and strategy,
o ICT and security expertise,
o ICT promotion, communication and media
• Processes, procedures and roadmaps already established within MoICT

• Setting up a program management office
• Ministry can be looked upon as two parts – ministry as a whole and the PMO for
eGovernment
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AMIR Program 50
• eGovernment PMO perceives itself as a great success and as the best practice and
there is a view within the department that its success should spread better into the
rest of the ministry
• The department believes they can do better they can do more
• The top management sees MoICT as perfectionists by nature
• There is a lack of resources within the department
• There is a large repository of documents and processes and procedures on the
shared intranet
• There are many external consultants advising on policy issues
• There many initiatives, training programs and established centers to communicate
with rural areas
• MoICT conducts work for eight other departments, and the program covers many
other departments
• Many activities are happening within the department but not all are
institutionalized
• How to create more understanding, and how to create a better culture of sharing
• How to become a learning organization
• Human resources is the biggest problem in whole of public sector
• PMO provides :
o Project management (PM) methodology and set of tools for the
methodology,
o Setting up eGovernment project organization structures in other
departments
o Providing PM expertise throughout the eGovernment projects in other
departments
o a change plan and oversee that all appropriate teams and structures are in
place before the project starts
Future - Shifts to
• Effective succession planning – identify key people and key expertise and prepare
a formal plan to ensure succession
• Intention to have well-documented and well-communicated goals of the
department to the stakeholders
• Institutionalized meeting with external stakeholders
• A plan to engage external consultants to set up an IT system to capture experience
from the implementation of eGovernment projects
• Streamlined communication with other departments – cross organizational
processes
• Improving communication within the department and with other departments
• Roles and responsibility need be more refined
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AMIR Program 51
• Define business processes with activities, roles and responsibilities and

knowledge inflows and outflows for each of the steps and decision making points
• Define and document cross functional processes to break functional silos
Knowledge flows
Inputs:
• External consultants
• Research
• Internal experts
Outputs
• Policies
• Guidelines
• standards and
• awareness/education
External stakeholders:
• Citizens
• Other government agencies
• Rural areas
• Private sector
• Establish a platform, either electronic or physical meetings, for organizations
where MoICT is involved in supervising eGovernments to exchange experience
with the implementation of the projects
• Streamline and formalize knowledge exchange, collaboration and communicating
with other departments
• Break up silo culture by institutionalizing well documented and well
communicated cross-functional processes, which include activities, roles and
responsibilities, decision making points and knowledge inflows and outflows
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AMIR Program 52
Annex 1: COE Knowledge Management Criteria
Criterion 1: Leadership
Sub-Criterion 1: Strategic Planning Framework

Factor 1: Vision
Factor 2: Mission
Factor 3: Strategy
Sub-Criterion 2: Supportive Culture
Factor 1: Values
Factor 2: Learning Organization
Factor 3: Leading by Example
Factor 4: Staff Empowerment
Sub-Criterion 3: Relationship with Stakeholders
Factor 1: Key Stakeholder Identification

Factor 2: Maintaining Trust and Managing Expectations of Key Stakeholders
Factor 3: Coordination with other Organizations
Criterion 2: Human Resources
Sub-Criterion 1: Human Resources Management
Factor 1: Employment Policies

Factor 2: Reward and Compensation Policies
Factor 3: Salary Administration
Factor 4: Performance Appraisal
Sub-Criterion 2: Human Resources Planning

Factor 1: Forecasting
Factor 2: Succession Planning
Sub-Criterion 3: Human Resources Development

Factor 1: Employee Training and Development
Factor 2: Learning/Organizational Culture
Sub-Criterion 4: Employee Relations

Factor 1: Employee Retention
Factor 2: Employee Welfare
Criterion 3: Knowledge Management (KM)
Sub-Criterion 1: Understanding KM
Factor 1: Key Features, Roles and Benefits
Factor 2: Knowing and Valuing the Organization’s Knowledge Assets
Sub-Criterion 2: KM Operations
Factor 1: Creating/Capturing Knowledge
Factor 2: Sharing Knowledge Internally
Factor 3: Using Knowledge Internally
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AMIR Program 53
Factor 4: KM Performance Targets/Reviews

Factor 5: e-Government
Sub-Criterion 3: Learning Organization

Factor 1: Understanding What is a Learning Organization
Factor 2: Supportive Culture, Systems and Systems Architecture
Criterion 4: Processes
Sub-Criterion 1: Process Management and Streamlining

Factor 1: Process Design and Delivery
Factor 2: Process Review/Documentation
Factor 3: Streamlining of Procedures
Sub-Criterion 2: Resource Management

Factor 1: Financial Resources
Factor 2: Human Resources
Factor 3: Material Resources
Factor 4: Technological Resources
Sub-Criterion 3: Customer Relationship Management

Factor 1: Customer Needs and Requirements
Factor 2: Customer Satisfaction
Factor 3: Continuous Improvement and Value Added
Criterion 5: Outcomes
Sub-Criterion 1: How Organization Contributes to National Goals

Factor 1: Understanding National Goals
Factor 2: Understanding Impact of National Goals
Factor 3: Understanding and Coordinating Joint Impacts
Factor 4: Identifying and Managing Key Risks to Achieving Goals
Sub-Criterion 2: Actual Contribution to National Goals

Factor 1: Organization’s Achievement of Output Targets
Factor 2: Achievement of Related National Goals
Factor 3: Assessing Output’s Contribution to National Goals
Sub-Criterion 3: Culture of Enhancing Organization’s Contribution to National Goals
__________________________________________________________________________________
AMIR Program 54

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Achievement of Market-Friendly Initiatives and Results Program

(AMIR 2.0 Program)

Knowledge Management Strategy –

Name of Component: Private Sector Policy Initiative

Author: Andrew Ford and Lubomir Dvorsky

Practice Area: Democracy and Governance

Service Offering: N/A

List of Key Words

This report includes a presentation on knowledge management given on 7 September 2003 to

1 Why is Knowledge Management Needed? ....................................................................... 10

2 Definitions of Knowledge Management ........................................................................... 11

3 More Definitions of Knowledge Management.................................................................. 12

4 The Pyramid of knowledge ............................................................................................... 13

5 Knowledge Management and the Gartner Hype Cycle..................................................... 14

6 Knowledge Management and the COE Framework ......................................................... 15

7 A Knowledge Management Vision ................................................................................... 16

8 Knowledge Management Strategy .................................................................................... 18

9 Knowledge Management Strategy Framework................................................................. 20

10 Knowledge Management Vision and Strategy.................................................................. 21

13 Knowledge Management Technology .............................................................................. 25

14 Measurement of Knowledge Management Benefits ......................................................... 26

A formal presentation on Knowledge Management (KM) was given to COE participants

• Each agency complained of poor communication both vertically (from the

• Most agencies expressed concerned about poor delegation of authority,

• Inflexible Civil Service Bureau regulations limit the ability of organizations to

• No agency addressed the need to measure any of the recommended actions

1. Training partner institutions on the fundamentals of KM, including what KM is,

To this extent, a formal presentation on KM was given to COE participants on the 7

The consultants were asked to undertake the following work components:

3. Carry out follow-up workshop involving an interactive question and answer

4. Work with AMIR Program communication team to agree upon recommended

5. Advise consultants carrying out “knowledge sharing” portion of this scope of

6. Review KM assessment tool.

3. Knowledge Management Presentation

3.1 Why is Knowledge Management Necessary?

Evolution of wealth creation

Figure 1: Why is Knowledge Management Needed?

3.2 Definitions of Knowledge Management

Knowledge management is not well understood – it is an evolving and emerging

• What KM is and what it is not

What KM gurus say

Knowledge management is a formal, structured initiative to

Leveraging the processes and content of intellectual capital to

Knowledge Management is promoting ongoing business

Figure 2: Definitions of Knowledge Management

What KM gurus say

Knowledge Management is a set of practices that

Knowledge management is a set of processes for identifying,

Figure 3: More Definitions of Knowledge Management

• Blacksmith – does he practice KM?

3.3 The Pyramid of Knowledge

understanding and skills that is constructed by people. Knowledge is increased through

Knowledge has been discussed throughout history as an important branch of philosophy

Wisdom - Proven confidence in your

Knowledge - That which guides humans in their

Information - Data plus contextual references of meaning or

Data - Structured facts, values of parameters, and measures, usually

Figure 4: The Pyramid of Knowledge