REPORT: iKMS EVENING TALK ON 23 FEB 2004

Reported by Kan Siew Ning

The talks on the evening of 23 Feb 04 featured two KM practitioners, one sharing on KM in a private sector organization (Dragon Air), and the other on KM in a government statutory board (DSTA); the first from Hong Kong, and the second from Singapore. There was a turn-out of more than 40 members and walk-in visitors who were interested to talk KM with practitioners.

The Asst GM (Commercial) of DragonAir, Mr. Geoffrey Shim, was in town for Asian Aerospace 2004 and he graciously accepted iKMS’ invitation to share how DragonAir partnered with Hong Kong Polytechnic to leverage KM tools and techniques to implement the DragonAir KM strategy. The title of his topic was Knowledge Management in Fleet Management.

Geoffrey came across very clearly that the KM projects in DragonAir are very focused on the business imperatives of the company. After highlighting the driving forces in the airline industry in general, Geoffrey went on to explain DragonAir’s aircraft model profile and the challenges faced by his division in managing information and knowledge between in-house entities and four external partner companies.

He then described the three-phased KM Roadmap that his company used: (1) Pilot Study, (2) Knowledge Audit, and (3) Knowledge Audit Analysis. In Phase 3, the two-tier KM Culture Profile that consisted of a 60-question survey of the manager tier and the subordinate tier. The Profile was presented in a radar chart format that consisted of 20 factors, including mutual trust, collaboration, effectiveness, and challenge. Using an example process “dealing with deferred defect”, Geoffrey explained how DragonAir used Social Network Analysis and Knowledge Mapping as tools along the track of the KM Roadmap.

Geoffrey concluded the talk by highlighting that Knowledge Management is one out of 8 management levers used by DragonAir to integrate the fleet management service chain.

The second talk that evening featured the DSTA KM Journey. Now iKMS Vice President, Kan Siew Ning, whose full-time job is Deputy Director in charge of KM in the Defence Science & Technology Agency (DSTA), explained the DSTA KM Vision and the six-thrust KM Strategy.

Aligned to DSTA’s mission, vision, values, and its Balanced Scorecard KPI’s, the KM vision was a lofty one where the knowledge and collective wisdom of all the 2000-odd DSTA members can conceptually be brought to bear on any problem and to enhance value to DSTA’s customers.

The six thrusts consisted of:

(1) Reducing information overload – here, DSTA puts in place schemes to manage overload for three levels of staff – senior management, middle management, and junior staff.
(2) Making information visible – the Yellow Pages, Acronym & Glossary, and How Do I? were Intranet applications to bring information to the surface.
(3) Facilitate collaboration – Siew Ning described how both direct and indirect strategies were used to overcome ingrained mindsets and encourage people to construct their personal home pages; 950 such pages were constructed by as many individuals within a period of 11 months.
(4) Fostering a knowledge-sharing culture consists of a Directory of Expertise where people make available their areas of specializations as a means to help others in need. KM Awards were also given out to role-modeling entities and individuals.
(5) Under Creating a Learning Infrastructure and Environment, Siew Ning highlighted the Annual Learning Festival, and the DSTA e-Learning pilot project,
(6) The last and final lever was KM Advocacy that allowed junior knowledge managers to learn and get up to speed on KM theory quickly.

**Siew Ning's presentation is posted on the iKMS website resources page.

This talk provided the audience with an overview of how knowledge is managed in a Singapore government organization. Questions for both speakers focused on practical issues, including how KM performance might be measured.