knowledge management

Crises like the recent earthquake in Haiti focus public and official attention toward the mechanisms of response efforts -- and toward information management in particular.  A major challenge in understanding the efficacy of crisis communications remains to ask the right questions about the nature of decentralized organizations, and even of information itself.  Assumptions about how to communicate most effectively must be measured against the real constraints and possibilities of institutions responding to a crisis.

The language of better communication has come to take on an almost dogmatic character.  Particularly within official circles the terms: coordinate, cooperate, collaborate, partnership, interagency, need to share, etc. are regularly invoked.  Where the limitations of rigid hierarchies have been exposed, the calls to engage horizontally across lines of authority have been raised.  Resources and expertise need not be consolidated in one place (a single agency or funding stream) if they can at least be made accessible to the range of participants in a common endeavor, yet this does not take into account a variety of sources of institutional inertia that make information sharing a much more challenging exercise in practice than theory.  Why is it that, despite considerable attention and effort, effective information management and information sharing remains elusive?

Looking at knowledge throughout history, we've seen radical changes overlaid by some enduring practices. The sheer volume of information generated in this age of the Web is a complete contrast to the time of solitary scribes artfully copying sacred texts. Yet, the instinct to manage knowledge by locking it away persists, whether in a monastery library or an isolated hard drive.

No matter the era, some aspects of knowledge remain constant.  Knowledge is context rich. It is part of a dynamic flow. Knowledge sources are people; in every age, we look to experts for useful information. Relationships and trust matter. (The town crier, not the town drunkard, was a reliable news source.)  As Aldous Huxley was wary of idealized scientific progress, we are skeptical of utopian technology solutions that claim to manage knowledge, yet forget that context is paramount, and do not consider human factors central to the knowledge architecture.

There has always been a dynamic relationship between the ways in which information is presented and the means by which knowledge is generated in social, cultural, and professional settings. In times when knowledge was reserved for the select few, its artifacts took on an artistic, even sacred, quality.  As our view of the world has become increasingly sophisticated, with our understanding traversing traditional boundaries, we often find ourselves faced with tensions between effective communication and keeping meaningful records of what we know.