Knowledge Management in the Real World

Final Project: Knowledge Management in the Real World

By

A Final Research Project in fulfillment of the requirement for MGT 608

School of Business Management

27-October-2012

Executive Summary

Knowledge Management (KM) is a fairly new concept that arose within the consulting community in the 1990’s and then started to spread quickly to other disciplines. As organizations realized the potentials of the Intranet for linking together knowledge bases across geographically dispersed areas it was understood that this knowledge could be sold as a product to other organizations. The United States government was immediately attracted to this new concept and while sharing information between secret organizations was considered professional suicide before September 11, 2001, since then there have been calls from citizens and congress to link the various intelligence groups together to provide timely information to prevent future attacks. KM is basically a survival skill not only for businesses but in particular for the United States government and the many and various organizations that operate under the Federal umbrella. The organizations need to fast, agile and smart and able to make informed decisions in order to respond promptly and correctly. Organized and managed right, KM gives us correct and timely information. Done wrong, organizations will rush like lemmings into an unorganized and often dangerous future (Wheatly, 2001).

Project Goal

This paper is going to discuss how the United States government uses Knowledge Management to increase national security and ensures cooperation between agencies. September 11, 2001 was a major catalyst in de-compartmentalizing the branches of government when they finally realized the importance of and rewards of working together for a common goal. Each entity had a knowledge background that was kept within that agency and carefully guarded. Old-timers passed on information on a need-to-know basis...