Making It Happen: KM at the Working Level (and Up)
Breakout Session 2
Thursday, May 1 | 11:00 am
Presenters: Bruce Burton, senior advisor, Eric M. Johnson, knowledge management team lead, Office of eDiplomacy, U.S. Department of State, an Molly Moran, communities @ state project lead
Knowledge management programs at the U.S. Department of State encourage all members of the Department's 40,000+ work force, regardless of rank or specialty, to become KM leaders. Lightweight, easy-to-use technologies such as blogs and wikis allow anyone in the Department to share his or her knowledge and receive support from others, no matter where individual employees are stationed.
The Communities @ State blogging program and the Department-wide wiki, 
Diplopedia, enable people to respond quickly to urgent, critical issues ranging from the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings to the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan. State has seen that these programs encourage "distributed management" by pressing KM leadership down to the action levels of the Department. Diplopedia "gardeners, " Human Rights Reporting bloggers, and country desk officer mentors are all examples of people using new techniques to advance important foreign policy tasks and issues. State's KM experience has been that, whereas championship and support at the top are essential, leadership and continuity of effort at the action level make all the difference.
Bruce G. Burton is senior advisor with the U.S. State Department's Office of eDiplomacy. Since 2002, he has played a lead role in designing and implementing the State's Knowledge Leadership strategy. A former Senior Foreign Service Officer,
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I continue to be impressed with the thought and strategy behind State's approach--such a nice blend of central coordination and local knowledge. Carla
This was a super presentation. I am particularly intrigued with the Department's use of available tools, such as those provided by Intelink/Passport, and how they deployed them enterprise-wide.
Frankly, most federal agencies, including the agency I work for, could learn a multitude of things from eDiplomacy's work.
I posted a review of the content of this presentation at http://cgopc.cgblog.org/2008/05/live-km-blogging-department-of-state.html; okay, much of my post I lifted from their presentation, but I tried to put it in context for my Coastie readers.
It looks, to me, as if the Department of State is setting the standard for federal agencies deploying social network tools such as blogs and wikis.
This was a great session! The State Dept has done the homework for the rest of us on how to formalize CoPs. I particularly liked their internal consulting approach of reviewing user requirements first and THEN deciding on wiki, blog, and customizations.
Thanks for the generous comments. We are always glad to talk about the challenges and successes that we've faced. The main credit should go to the people who use our programs to further the Department's KM goals. They make our office look good -- without them, we'd look rather foolish.
I also wanted to add that Bruce's correct e-mail address is burtonbg@state.gov.
Even more importantly, this entry doesn't mention our third speaker: Molly Moran, the KM Action Team's assistant team lead. She is also the project lead for State's Communities @ State blogging program, and helped create the Diplopedia enterprise wiki. You can contact her at moranme@state.gov.
Eric, Thanks so much for adding the above information. I've fixed Bruce's e-mail address above.
I think I'd like to find myself visiting your offices... ever have visitors?
Peter -- If you'd like to bring some associates from the Coast Guard for a visit, we'd be pleased to see you.
All -- I'll echo Eric's appreciation for the comments. In addition, as usual for an APQC conference, the other presentations and networking gave us ideas for solving some of our emerging challenges.
Peter -- I submitted the following answer and comment this week but it evidently was not published, so here goes again: If you'd like to bring some associates from the Coast Guard for a visit, we'd be pleased to see you.
All -- I'll echo Eric's appreciation for the comments. In addition, as usual for an APQC conference, the other presentations and networking gave us ideas for solving some of our emerging challenges.