Knowledge Management

1
Knowledge Management

• Ref Turban et al Chapter 10

2
History of Information Systems
3
Types of Information Systems
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Operations Support Systems

• Role is to efficiently process business
  transactions, control industrial processes,
  support enterprise communications and
  collaboration, and update corporate databases
• Examples
• Transaction Processing Systems record and
  process data from business transactions in one of
  two ways batch process and real-time process
• Process Control Systems monitor and control
  physical processes such petroleum refining
• Enterprise Collaboration Systems enhance team
  and workgroup communications and productivity

5
Management Support Systems

• Focus on providing information and support for
  effective decision making by management
• Examples
• Management Information Systems provide
  information in forms of reports and displays to
  managers and other professionals
• Decision Support Systems give direct computer
  support during the decision making process
• Executive Information Systems provide critical
  information from a wide variety of internal and
  external sources in an easy to use display

6
Other Classifications

• Expert Systems provide export advice for
  operational chores like equipment diagnostics
• Knowledge Management Systems support the
  creation, organisation, and distribution of
  business knowledge to employees and managers
• Functional Information Systems focus on
  operational and managerial applications in
  support of basic business functions such as
  accounting
• Strategic Information Systems apply information
  technology to a firms products, services, or
  business practices to gain a competitive advantage

7
Knowledge Management

• Knowledge is derived from problem solving
• The knowledge created in solving a particular
  problem should be retain for use when an
  organisation faces that problem again.
• A knowledge base is a database of an
  organisations know-how.
• A knowledge bases primary objective is to share
  an organisations know-how throughout the
  organisation.
• Enabling people to learn from others experience.
• This learning environment creates a competitive
  edge for the organisation.

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Knowledge Management (KM)

• Knowledge management is fast emerging as a core
  strategy, that organisations worldwide is
  adopting to manage and leverage organisational
  knowledge for sustainable business advantage.
• The purpose of KM is to gather, categorise, store
  and spread all knowledge that is needed to make
  the organisation both grow and prosper. It is not
  as much a technology change as it is a cultural
  change, but technology is a primary enabler of KM
  practices.

9
Knowledge management definitions

• A multi-disciplined approach to achieving
  organisational objectives by making the best use
  of knowledge
• Standards Australia HB275-2001
• The systematic processes by which knowledge
  needed for an organisation to succeed is created,
  captured, shared and leveraged
• Melissie Clemmons Rumizen
• The art of creating commercial value from
  intangible assets
• Karl-Erik Sveiby

10
Knowledge Management and Information Technology

• While technology can support KM, it is not the
  starting point of a KM program. Make KM decisions
  based on who (people), what (knowledge) and why
  (business objectives). Save the how (technology)
  for last.
• Organisations can attain maturity in KM only
  through healthy coexistence of technology,
  processes and people.

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Origins of Knowledge Based Systems (KBS)

• A branch of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.)
• Interest has grown due to improved hardware,
  software, Gov and defence funding.
• Applications include, forecasting and prediction
  systems.

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Components of KBS

• Knowledge base knowledge of human expert
• Inference Engine simulate experts problem
  solving process
• User Interface interaction with system (Input /
  Output)
• Explanation subsystem explanation or why it
  arrived at a conclusion

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Designing a Knowledge Base

• Who decides what to include in the knowledge
  base?
• Who will extract the knowledge from its source?
• How will managers be trained to make use of the
  knowledge?
• What if any of the knowledge will be open to
  other organisations?
• How can sensitive knowledge be secured?
• How will it be integrated into existing
  databases?
• How can the managers validate the quality of the
  knowledge?

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Knowledge Generation
Technology


Communication And Application
Sharing Enriching
Classification, Storage Retrieval
Creation Capture
Dissemination

• Publications
• Policy advice
• Institution
• building support
• Seminars/
• forums
• Websites
• Online services

• Research
• Studies
• Assessments
• Field Exp.
• Dialogue with
• Partners

• Documentation
• Databanks
• -Lessons Learned
• -Best Practices
• -Research Findings

• Teams
• Committees
• Networks

• Targets
• Reporting
• Incentives
• Systems
• Technology
• Skills
• Resources

Organization

Constraints/

Support

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Issues to be considered

• Cost
• Data Physical Storage
• Legal Issues
• Disaster Recovery
• Internal or External solution
• Data Security and ethics
• Ethics Paying for the use of data
• Data Purging
• The Legacy data problem
• Data Delivery
• Privacy

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Developing Information Systems

• Development Cycle

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What is the Foundation of any Information System?
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The Quality of the Information or Data !
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The Quality of Data is paramount

• Information Quality
• Information that is outdated, inaccurate, or hard
  to understand is not meaningful, useful, or
  valuable to end users
• Information products should have characteristics,
  attributes, and qualities that make the
  information more valuable to the end users
• Information has three dimensions of time, form,
  and content

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The Dimensions of Data

• Information Quality continued..

21
Knowledge Management

• If the knowledge that is entered into a knowledge
  management system is bad then it stands to reason
  that any output from the system will be bad !!
• If the information is dated then the output
  knowledge is dated !!
• Etc.