Topic 7: How do I assess the effectiveness of my knowledge service development initiatives?

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Knowledge services are assessed as a result of following the knowledge management maturity model (See Figure ): initial, repeatable, defined, managed and optimized.

<caption>Knowledge Management Maturity Model</captoin>

Initial

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In the initial phase, an organization has siloed operations and its enterprise architecture is not optimized to support unified planning and development. This is the phase where we feel the impact from lack of coordination, duplicated efforts, and lack of data, information, and knowledge to make informed decisions. Broadly speaking, state, local, tribal, and territorial governments are greatly in the initial phase.

Repeatable

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As we move to repeatable, government entities will have developed their civic business machines. They will have established enterprise architecture steering committees, and chartered knowledge-asset management programs that allow public asset managers and constituents to understand and co-manage government business processes and assets. It will also adopt a culture of continual process improvement backed by organizational learning and workforce development, and will be developing a framework of repeatable best management practices.

Defined

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In a defined state of operations, the business machine will be operational and we will be working within our new organizational governance structure to standardize processes and gain efficiencies. Shared services is often a result of this standardization. This is also the phase where we begin the knowledge service value chain to plan and develop technology that enables us to encode (into enabling information systems) our standardized business processes, data, and rules for oversight. In this phase, we will have defined practices that support business process mapping and analysis.

Managed

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The managed maturity level is also in alignment with the managed phase of knowledge services development. This is where our civic platform for service delivery is in operation, and knowledge services are being developed from the platform. At this point, dashboards allow us to monitor performance data, it is clear how the use of knowledge services (or digital services) are distributed across government entities for budgeting, cost benefit on our services is constantly monitored and reported on, and effective IT service management is in place to ensure services are managed according to customer or constituent needs.

Optimized

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Finally, the last six stages of the knowledge service value chain---use internally, transfer, enhance, use professionally, use personally, then evaluate---happen as we optimize our knowledge services and IT service management through participatory research and design, and continual process improvement.