Municipal Institute of Learning

Knowledge Management

Master Class

Facilitated by Kubeshni Govender Jones

Black Earth Consulting

eThekwini Municipality

28, 29 and 30 May 2014

Session 1 - introduction

Overview of content

The Master Class:

Is essentially an experiential action learning engagement lead by an ‘expert’ drawn from either the eThekwini municipality or one of its learning partners across the continent.

The MILE Master Class is a unique learning intervention in that it requires the active participation of its audience in the learning engagement.

In this workshop there is an expectation that participants have done some preparatory readings, and that the sessions will involve critical reflection, participant inputs, group work and the sharing of experiences throughout the learning and sharing session.

Overview, History and Evolution of KM Frameworks and Models in South African Cities

The Business Case for KM: Why KM in Municipalities

Identifying the key elements and Enablers of KM: Needs

and Drivers

UNDERSTANDING THE

FUNDAMENTALS OF KM AND ITS

BENEFITS FOR MUNICIPALITIES

The Business Case for KM: Why

KM in Municipalities

Benefits of Knowledge Management (page 5 Knowledge Management in South African Cities – 2013)

Are these benefits applicable to your

municipality?

Reduced costs

Increased efficiencies

Motivated staff

Better responsiveness

Enhanced decision making

Greater accountability

More democratic governance

Improved service delivery

Overview, History and Evolution

of KM Frameworks and Models in

South African Cities

Early Models and How they Developed

Institutional knowledge management

Critical success factors for knowledge

management & innovation

Systematic and Creative Problem Solving

Experimentation with New Processes

Learning from Own and Past Experiences

Learning from Experiences and Best Practices of Others

Transferring Knowledge Quickly and Efficiently

Adaptation of David A. Garvin’s five activities for learning organizations

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

KNOWLEDGE SHARING FACILITY

Case 1

Case study – City of Johannesburg

2002

Case study –

City of Johannesburg:

“Joburg Innovation and

Knowledge Exchange”

2002

Case study of the Joburg Innovation and

Knowledge Exchange

• Established in 2002

• Originally located in the Office of the City Manager … currently in the Office of the CIO

• 12 members of staff

• Lateral structure … professionals and support persons

• Innovative space

• Political support, leverage and lots of goodwill.

• To establish and sustain Knowledge Intensive Services that support the City’s vision to be a learning, knowledge driven, innovative organisation.

• To promote the City locally, nationally and internationally with the knowledge and innovation products generated in and about the City.

JIKE as a vehicle for KM & I

Knowledge Mng &

Innov.

Knowledge

Products

Knowledge

Services

CAPTURE

SHARE

MANAGE

The JIKE Model

Case study –

“Joburg Innovation and

Knowledge Exchange”

- From services to support

2007

Knowledge Gathering Knowledge Packaging

Knowledge Sharing

Individual / Institutional reflection and action

Establish new knowledge pools / gaps

Current JIKE Offering focusing

on delivering a service to the

COJ

Future JIKE role, to create

institutional impact

Case study –

“Innovation and Knowledge

Management Unit”

- Strategic value add

2014

Making the link between Knowledge

Management and Innovation in the City of

Johannesburg.

Context

•“ … a World Class African City of the Future – a vibrant, equitable African city, strengthened through its diversity; a city that provides real quality of life; a city that provides sustainability for all its citizens; a resilient and adaptive society.”

•Financial Sustainability and Resilience;

• Agriculture and Food Security;

• Sustainable Human Settlements;

• SMME and Entrepreneurial Support;

• Engaged Active Citizenry;

• Resource Sustainability;

• Smart City;

• Investment Attraction, Retention and Expansion;

• Green Economy; and

• Safer Cities.

•“ … enable the City of Johannesburg to become a world class African City through the effective harnessing and application of the intellectual capital and knowledge of its workforce and stakeholders”

IDP

•“ … a World Class African City of the Future – a vibrant, equitable African city, strengthened through its diversity; a city that provides real quality of life; a city that provides sustainability for all its citizens; a resilient and adaptive society.”

GDS

• Financial Sustainability and Resilience;

• Agriculture and Food Security;

• Sustainable Human Settlements;

• SMME and Entrepreneurial Support;

• Engaged Active Citizenry;

• Resource Sustainability;

• Smart City;

• Investment Attraction, Retention and Expansion;

• Green Economy; and

• Safer Cities.

IKM

•“ … enable the City of Johannesburg to become a world class African City through the effective harnessing and application of the intellectual capital and knowledge of its workforce and stakeholders”

Joburg model 2002 - 2014

Services • 2002

Support / Products

• 2007

Strategic Value

• 2014

Making the link between

knowledge management and

strategic objectives of a

municipality

Impact, Output, Outcome Value Chain

Impact, Output, Outcome Value Chain

•Community of Practice

•For example: COP to support strategic priorities

•Efficient communication across programmes and departments, better decision making

URBAN RENEWAL PROGRAMME

Case 2

In cognizance of the broad objectives of

the URP the URP Knowledge Enhancement

Programme seeks to:

Identify, profile and share better practice in urban renewal in South Africa

Creating platforms for learning and sharing to increase capacity amongst urban practitioners

Document the impact of urban renewal interventions

Expand the lessons learnt that are being generated through the Urban Renewal Programme.

Support urban practitioners through targeted training, coaching and mentoring activities

Grow and organise a pool of knowledge on urban development

Build platforms where urban practitioners are able to learn from the lessons of past practice

Support the design of ‘best fit’ solutions for urban development.

Influence policy on poverty alleviation and urban development.

What the URP Considered

Do we produce knowledge material as a by product or as a direct outcome of our work?

How much time does KM occupy?

Do we evaluate who uses our products, how and to what effect?

Is there a difference between a project outcome / communications product and a KM product? (how do we differentiate and define a URP Knowledge Product)

Are knowledge products the only output we have to share? What about expertise?

Overview, History and Evolution

of KM Frameworks and Models in

South African Cities

2013 Review of SA Cities – Knowledge Management Units /

Departments

SA Cities :

Knowledge Management

Overview Knowledge Management in South African Cities, 2013

(Produced by the South African Cities Network)

Making a case for institutional

knowledge management:

• Developing the KM Strategic Intent and Purpose • Looking at Barriers, Benefits and Metrics of KM • Aligning KM with the Municipality’s Strategy and Objectives

Buffalo City

Appointed political knowledge management champions

Conducted training for councilors, senior and middle management

Currently under Executive Support Services, will be moved to Research and Development

3 Staff members

Activities: 2 knowledge audits, KM projects in the IDP, KM strategy in 3rd year of implementation, has developed case studies, working on institutional memory, KM champions Forum in placed with departmental representation

City of Cape Town

Focus on information and knowledge management infrastructure

KM policy mandates custodianship of KM at a department level

KM Unit located in the Strategic Development Information and GIS Department.

Initial focus on data management and operational systems

Activities include: knowledge hub (Development Information Resource Centre), processes to guides KM Partnerships, Communities of Practice, Knowledge sharing and the use of common data platforms

City of Johannesburg

Located in the Group Strategy Policy Coordination and Relations Department

Looking to align with the GDS 2040 to this end the Group KM Strategy and roadmap looks to institutionalize KM across the City.

Function areas include: KM programmes, innovation programmes, knowledge exchange and learning programmes and the Smart City Programme.

Established KM Champions Forum, developed KM training manual, electronic knowledge repository.

City of Tshwane

In the process of developing a KM Framework to establish a knowledge value chain

KM falls under the Research and Innovation Department

located within the Strategy Development and

Implementation Cluster.

Plans to lever relationships with academic and research

institutions in and around Tshwane.

Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality

Has developed a concept and framework for Information and Knowledge Management.

KM Forums support I&KM processes.

I&KM is a shared responsibility across different

departments, there are plans to appoint a Chief

Knowledge Officer.

The plan is to establish an I&KM Office, approve an approach, standards, governance structures and policies

to support KM.

eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality

eThekwini created MILE to position the City as a learning organisation. Current focus is on people, plan to target the development of KM processes and technological systems.

Have recently completed a KM audit and are in the process of developing a citywide Knowledge Management Strategy and implementation plan.

MILE has four pillars: collaborating with academia, supporting learning networks, capacity enhancement and municipal technical support. MILE programmes have been funded by the EU and other partners

Activities have included: KM working group and KM steering committee, Communities of Practice, Master Classes, seminars peer to peer exchanges. MILE has strong local and international partnership base.

Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality

KM Unit is located in the Office of the City Manager, under Organisation Monitoring and Evaluation.

Responsibilities to generate, store and disseminate knowledge both inside and outside the municipality.

A draft KM strategy was developed but is under review due to the change in status of the municipality.

Department KM Champions have been inducted by the KM Unit.

Plans for packaging knowledge, forging partnerships, updating information, researching best practices and facilitating knowledge exchange programmes.

Msunduzi Local Municipality

No dedicated KM department or personnel.

Msunduzi participates in peer exchange with eThekwini

Municipality and is part of the SACN Knowledge

Management Reference Group.

Knowledge sharing takes place through email, intranet and corporate communication.

Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan

Municipality

Intention to mainstream knowledge management – supported by the Office of the City Manager.

KM function is located in Policy, Strategy and Research Sub Directorate. Assistant director of Policy and Research appointed as knowledge champion.

Functional areas include research, facilitating value networks, promoting change management, improved service delivery and service excellence.

Information sharing occurs through local and international partnerships with twinning cities. Municipality organizes inter-directorate and inter-municipal peer assists.

DAY 1 – SESSION 2 CONDUCTING A KM ASSESSMENT, SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS AND

BENCHMARKING EXERCISE

CONDUCTING A KM ASSESSMENT, SITUATIONAL

ANALYSIS AND BENCHMARKING EXERCISE

Undertaking a Knowledge Scan and Conducting an Audit

Identifying People, Systems and processes to meet KM

Needs.

Developing an Approach to Knowledge Capture and

Storage

Assessing Tools and Enablers of Effective Knowledge Management.

Audit 101

What do you want to know?

Institutional Perspective

Is the organisation ready for knowledge management

If yes were do I go from here,

If no what are the barriers to entry

Individual Perspective

Who is my audience?

What are their knowledge needs?

What do they know? And what do they have to share?

Capacity Building Through Knowledge

Management:

A toolkit for South African Municipalities

Strategic decision making in a municipality need to informed by useful knowledge, which results from

knowing what information is collected, how it is stored,

who uses it and for what purposes, how it is transferred or

disseminated, and how it is transformed into useful

knowledge.

Knowledge Assessment maps out what knowledge and

information exists, where gaps are, and where

knowledge flows need to be improved.

Components of a knowledge

assessment

1 Identify stakeholders

2 Build trust with stakeholders

3 Determine assessment outputs

4 Design data collection and collect data

eThekwini Case Study –

Knowledge Assessment

What is the difference between an audit and a benchmarking exercise?

Resources for an audit? What do you actually need in

the way of resources?

How do we make the most use of the experience of others ? … eThekwini reviewed the work done in

Stellenbosch

Balance between the qualitative and quantitative inputs

toward a strategy

Participant Input: eThekwini Municipality’s Basic KM

Assessment and Benchmarking Exercise –

Objectives, Methodology, and Outcomes.

Presentation by MILE: Mr. Fezile Njokweni

DAY 2 – SESSION 1

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TOOLS, PROCESSES AND SYSTEMS

Participant Input: eThekwini Municipality’s Knowledge

Model – 2007 to date

Presentation by MILE:

Ou

r story

so fa

r …

Why Knowledge Management as an intervention? (Benefits)

Making the link between Organizational goals and KM inputs and outcomes

Benchmarking – learning from the experience of others

Assessment / Audit – understanding the knowledge needs of your organization

Determining a ‘toolkit mix’ that will meet your knowledge needs over time.

Developing an implementation plan

Measuring / evaluating impact

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

TOOLS, PROCESSES AND SYSTEMS • How Knowledge Sharing Tools, Techniques and Processes can be Integrated

and Used in the Context of Municipalities • Establishing Communities of Practice (CoPs)

WBI focus on knowledge exchange

Effective knowledge exchange does three things:

Connects and convenes practitioners and/or key

stakeholders around shared development challenges

Facilitates timely and systematic sharing of knowledge in the

form of good practices, lessons learned, and insights

Catalyzes results

WB

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KM Tools … deciding on your mix

After action reviews

Brainstorming

Briefings

Communities of Practice

Conferences and Seminars

Directory of experts

Exit interviews

Case studies – good practice, lessons learnt, innovation

IT Based Tools –

Groupware systems

Intranet and Extranet

Content and Document Management Systems

Data warehousing and Mining

Knowledge Fairs

Mentoring

Partnerships

Peer Assist

Peer Coaching

Story telling

Study tours / Knowledge Exchange Visits.

Participant Input: Presentation on the INK Area Based

Programme

Nuthan Maharaj, eThekwini Municipality

DAY 2 – SESSION 2

CLOSER LOOK AT COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE

Focus on communities of

practice as a knowledge sharing

tool

“Communities of practice” provide

government leaders with a new tool for

managing in a fast-paced, fluid

environment where they need to reach

beyond traditional organizational

boundaries to solve problems, share

ideas, and develop peer and

stakeholder relationships.”

Snyder and Briggs, 2003

The Concept

Community of practice (CoP) refers a process of social learning that occurs when people who have a common

interest in some subject or problem, come together to

collaborate over an extended period of time to share

ideas, find solutions, and build innovations.

Benefits

Providing a valuable vehicle for developing, sharing and managing specialist knowledge

Avoiding ‘reinventing the wheel’

Cutting across departmental boundaries and formal reporting lines

Being more flexible than traditional organisational units

Generating new knowledge in response to problems and opportunities

Providing early warning of potential opportunities and threats

Being a vehicle for cultural change (creating a knowledge sharing culture).

Stages of Development

1. Discovery: identifying strategic issues to address—those that align with both strategic objectives and members’ interests

2. Coalescing: convening members to develop an action-learning agenda and building their collective commitment to pursue it together

3. Maturing: building on knowledge-sharing, clinics, and co-consulting activities—toward collaborations on innovation and application projects; growing beyond the initial group

4. Stewarding: establishing a prominent role in the field and taking stewardship for addressing leading-edge issues at scale

5. Legacy: beyond success, what’s next—institutionalization as a formal organization; letting the community dissolve once the issues lose salience; segmenting the community into sub areas as issues become more differentiated

(Synder and Briggs, 2003)

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Participant Input: Provincial Legislatures:

Knowledge Management Forum

Gauteng Provincial Legislature

DAY 3 – SESSION 1 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT STRATEGY – IMPLEMENTATION

CONSIDERATIONS

Shadowing GPL Case Study

Post script … how it has been used

What is Shadowing?

Shadowing refers to observing and

recording the various aspects of an

individual’s work tasks, activities, and

functions by asking probing questions,

capturing information, listening effectively,

diagramming processes, and using analytical

skills.

Why use shadowing?

How often are you asked “What do you do?”

How does one share the skill and knowledge that goes beyond the written job description, title, and mandated responsibilities?

What methods do you employ when simply providing written knowledge does not convey the actual picture of what’s involved in a job or task?

What use is a shadowing tool?

To identify implicit knowledge

To provide new opportunities

To integrate the newly obtained

knowledge into the organizational fabric

What Does It Take to Implement a

Shadowing Program?

Establish an organizational culture.

Use interns/ex-terns, peers, and teams.

Create mechanisms to analyze/evaluate

outcomes and results.

Benefits of a Shadowing Programme

Sharing of knowledge and intelligence

Processes and procedures

Technology

Dispersed work

Recruiting next generations

Improving efficiencies

Providing processes to address workplace strategies

Role of a Shadow?

To observe identified work programs

To document critical business processes

To identify core competencies of key managers and staff

To contribute in the decision making

To produce identified outcomes

Example –

Shadow Output Report

GPL, Manager House

Proceedings

Knowledge & Learning Exchange

– Action Learning

ACTION LEARNING

The method and the term of "action learning" was introduced by Professor Reg Revans in England in the

1940s, and it gradually became more mature and

popular. From the early beginnings, action learning

facilitated not only individual learning, but also team

maturity and organizational change, and therefore it became an important part of organizational learning

strategies in major corporations.

ACTION

What significant things happened? Describe

the events. Who was involved, what did they

do? What picture emerges? How did I/we

feel?

REFLECTION

Why did it happen, what caused it? What helped,

what hindered? What did we expect? What

assumptions did we make? What really struck

us? Do we know of any other experiences or

thinking that might help us look at this

experience differently?

LEARNING

What would we have done differently? What did

we learn, what new insights? What was

confirmed? What new questions have emerged?

What other theories help us to deepen these

learnings?

PLANNING

So what does this mean for practice? What

do we want? What do we want to do, to

happen? How? What are we going to do

differently? What do we have to let go of or

stop doing? How will we not repeat the same

mistake? What steps will we use to build

these new insights into our practice?

Project Khaedu

Service delivery remains one of the major challenges facing national, provincial and local governments. Following the introduction of the Whitepaper on Public Service Transformation, a study undertaken in 2003 found that the Batho Pele principles which are meant to put people first, are still viewed as something outside of a manager’s scope of responsibility. Cabinet therefore decided that all members of the Senior Management Service must, during every performance review cycle, visit the coalface of service delivery and participate in activities to find solutions to service delivery challenges at key government sites.

Project Khaedu has been designed to prepare managers for these visits to service delivery points. “Khaedu” means “challenge” in Tshi-Venda, and Project Khaedu has been designed as an action learning programme to empower managers, through various processes of learning reinforcement and practice, to bring about change within their own area of operational control.

Developing a KM Strategy

Source: Capacity Building Through Knowledge Management: A

toolkit for South African Municipalities

What is a KM Strategy?

A KM Strategy is simply a plan that describes how a municipality will manage its knowledge better.

It refers to the entire process of developing and

evaluating a KM implementation plan, including

continuous adapting and monitoring of the plan to improve municipal performance.

A KM plan should be closely aligned with a municipality’s

broader strategy

Components of a KM Strategy

Establish principles

Identify the strategic objectives

Identify KM Activities

Do a gap analysis

Outline core KM aspects (culture, institutional structure

and IT infrastructure)

Identify potential problems

Dra

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Stra

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wh

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Setting the Scene

Knowledge in the Public Sector

Knowledge Management and Local Government

eThekwini @ 20 years of democracy

Creating a learning City (Situational Analysis)

Knowledge, Innovation and Learning – Pre 2009

Reflections on the work of the Municipal Institute of Learning (MILE) – 2009 to date.

2013/14 Knowledge Management Benchmarking Survey

Contextual Analysis

How South African Metro Cities create knowledge driven local government.

A Knowledge Model for eThekwini

Vision, Mission, Value Proposition, Scope

Business Drivers, Critical knowledge Areas

Change and stakeholder management

Implementing a knowledge strategy for eThekwini

Pilot projects and programme overview

Programme outline year 1-3

Programme summary years 4-6 and 7-9

Implementation Considerations

Explain the context of planning in

government (Treasury Guidelines)

Explain the link between

inputs and impacts