Knowledge Management System

By Author: Henry Ford
Total Articles: 189
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A knowledge management system is an IT based system designed and implemented for managing knowledge in an organization. This management involves aspects of creating, capturing, storing and disseminating information. The intention of KM systems is to assist employees to easily access organizations database of facts. Knowledge management Systems creates a highway for sharing information and can in a great way help in improving creativity among employees. The intranets are the knowledge management systems used intrinsically within an organization by users who are insiders in such an organization. This report is a look at a Health based intranet i.e. the Hunter Health Intranet.

Background of Hunter Health Intranet
The management intranet considered in this report is a health care based intranet developed for Hunter Health, the healthcare Provider for public in the Hunter region of Australia located North of Sydney. Hunter Health manages community health centers, sixteen hospitals and other health facilities. A simple Intranet had already been developed for this organization by a single person and only two staff members ...
... are in charge of its management. The staff members had adopted a simple approach where they were using Dream weaver to publish and modify their pages. The intranet, though low cost had most of the necessary technical aspects that are necessary for an effective intranet. Despite the presence of the intranet, very few people were using it and this prompted the need to check if there could be some underlying weaknesses that could contribute to this. It is here that Step Two Designs stepped in to make an assessment and make probable improvements that could turn a new leaf on the intranet. An important note in this intranet is the population of workers it is supposed to serve; the health care provider has over 9000 employees. The need for a knowledge-based system in such an organization cannot be overestimated. With a workforce of such a magnitude, the challenge of transmitting and passing information is huge.

Objective of the report
This report is an analysis of the intranet developed for this Health Care Provider. As such, it will look at the objectives with which a new intranet was developed for the organization. This will be done by assessing the objectives laid out during the proposal to develop a new intranet for this organization. The report will also check the scope that this intranet was supposed to cover. It will also assess the management response to the idea of developing a new intranet. The report will also assess the rationale and importance of a KM to this organization. An assessment of whether this intranet will produce any benefit to this organization will be addressed. In addition, an attempt to look at the stages involved in developing this intranet will be addressed. Another objective of this report will be to identify the kinds of knowledge that are being captured for this intranet and the techniques used in capturing this knowledge. Using this intranet as a model, there will be an analysis of the existence of levels in the architecture of a knowledge management system. There will also be an analysis of the evaluative methods employed in the architecture of this KM. The manner in which knowledge is transferred in this intranet will be looked at as well as any post-implementation evaluation engaged in the development of this intranet.

Overview of Other Sections
In this report, a brief section is devoted to the intellectual and logical process that Step Two Property Limited employed in the actual processing and development of the intranet. As such, a section of the road map to creation of the intranet has been assessed.

Case Analysis
The knowledge management system for Hunter Health was designed with specific objectives. The most crucial role was the need to address management needs. These included supported processes for planning and decision making. These would help to improve the efficiency of the organization. The adoption of the intranet would reduce costs for running the organization by reducing the time required to effect communication within the organization. Another goal of the intranet was to enhance communication and sharing of knowledge among workers. This would be achieved by enhancing communication between staff members and also in supporting them in the practice of sharing knowledge. An improvement in communication by the organization would result to an improved involvement of community. This would enhance partnerships with other external organizations. Improvement of communication would in a great way support learning, encourage research work and support team work among members. Another fundamental goal in the development of this intranet was the necessity to improve internal practices and processes (Akscyn & Elise, 1988). The specific goals of this objective was to provide efficient and easier work practices, and also improve on the time involved in achieving tasks as well as improve consistency of processes. Improved processes would in turn develop transparency in consultation and decision-making. In addition, the consistency in information among staff would greatly be enhanced. It would also support a culture of patient care and follow up on cases. A culture of exchange among staff would greatly serve as a motivation to boost workers morale.
The scope for this organization’s intranet was the entire organization, covering all cadres of staff, starting from the management up to the subordinate workers. The content to be put in ranged from management decisions, articles that were deemed as important to the organization and suggestions by staff on different topics (Akscyn & Elise, 1988). Part of the intranet would also capture the policies and corporate information of the organization as well as links to other sites bearing similar information. A crucial inclusion in the intranet was the news section that would give staff up to date information of important events and issues taking place within the organization.

The experts in the Hunter Health intranet were well established intranet and management system consultants, Step 2 Designs Pty Ltd. Their expertise in the field of intranets is vast having developed other numerous intranets currently in use by other organizations. The intended user for this intranet was primarily the staffs of Hunter Health who are spread over a massive geographical region. The information available indicates that the management was supportive to the idea of refreshment to the existing intranet and gave staff assistance to the experts from Step 2 Designs in their attempts to assess the shortcomings of the intranet developed locally.

The development of this intranet was a step-oriented project whose first stage involved a review of experts’ opinion. In this stage, the existing corporate website was initially reviewed with the aim of evaluating usability and accessibility (Maier, 2007). The objective at this stage was to identify problems and shortcomings of the current intranet and devise a new design and plan on how a new one could be made. During this evaluation, experts were able to pinpoint that the intranet was not serving its purpose since very few staff were visiting it. This in itself was suggestive that probably, there could be an underlying problem that repulsed the staff anytime they attempt to use the intranet. The second step was the stakeholders’ interview stage where the current and potential users were given a chance to air their views and give their propositions. A great deal of time was spent on this stage since it formed the most crucial stage of the process. The interviewing process basically selected people who were deemed to be representatives of a bigger group of people. They were taken through an oral interview. Any intranet should be as representative as possible and this meant that all kinds of people expected to use the service should be interviewed so that their interests and desires could be met in the intranet (Maier, 2007). The next crucial step was acquisition of sound bites from the respondents. The sound bites were crucial in enriching the content of the intranet. The sound bites could capture decision makers within the organization describing the reasons why it had been hard to make decisions and communicate them first to stakeholders. These sound bites could then be pinned on the intranet and served a great deal in enriching the content of the intranet. The last step involved testing on usability, where the intranet was tested and evaluated to assess whether it represented the wishes and desires of the majority as well as meeting professional standards (Maier, 2007). The information and observation made during the testing period was then employed in developing a final product that to a great extent answered the wishes of the staff and all stakeholders. During the interviewing process, a lot of information was sought by the experts. The information collected helped organize and focus attention of the experts who were to develop the intranet. This information ranged from experiences of the users in their past attempt to use the intranet, a list of weaknesses that they can attribute to the intranet and possible inclusions which they thought could make the intranet more users friendly to them.

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