CHAPTER 3

Future KM RNs

3.1 KM Research Roadmap Purpose

The general KM literature provides strong evidence that KM practices can help organizations preserve institutional knowledge, promote knowledge reuse, and foster innovation. However, KM implementation at transportation agencies is fairly limited and has not been extensively studied. While the application of KM in transportation has grown over the past decade and several useful research products are available, continued expansion and advancements in the application of KM practices will require:

• DOT leaders to understand what KM is and be convinced that it will add value,
• Managers in a position to sponsor and lead KM initiatives to have the information and guidance they need to develop an effective KM strategy that suits their agency’s situation, and
• Managers and staff responsible for implementing KM initiatives to have tools and resources that help them anticipate and overcome pitfalls and barriers to success.

With these requirements in mind, the KM research roadmap’s purpose is to advance the application of KM practices within transportation agencies to:

1. Minimize the impacts of knowledge loss associated with workforce transitions (e.g., retirements, job changes) on agency efficiency and effectiveness;
2. Improve the ability to share, discover, and reuse information and knowledge within and across agencies; and
3. Foster innovation through developing a strategic workforce and strengthening learning cultures.

3.2 Barriers to KM Adoption and Effectiveness

Several factors impede KM adoption or limit its effectiveness. These barriers can be grouped into different stages of KM implementation at an agency: (1) deciding whether to move forward with KM, (2) developing the overall KM strategy and approach, and (3) implementing specific KM initiatives. These barriers and implications for the research roadmap are described in the following stages.

Stage 1: Commitment to Act

1. An understanding of KM. KM is a multidisciplinary field—overlapping with workforce development and management, technology transfer, library science, organizational development, information technology, and cognitive science. A wide variety of definitions and

1. motivations exist for KM implementation, and KM encompasses a wide range of techniques. The inherent nature of KM makes it challenging to create a shared understanding of what it is.

   Implication: The roadmap should include research activities to disseminate information about the scope of KM, different models for implementation, and examples of KM applications in transportation agencies.

2. The value of KM. Transportation agency leaders do not have a clear understanding of the value of KM and the likely return-on-investment (ROI) from KM implementation. The lack of both a federal mandate and dedicated funding for KM activities makes it difficult to prioritize KM initiatives. Identifying and communicating the value of KM are essential for justifying and targeting investments for KM implementation.

   Implication: The roadmap should include research that builds understanding of the value of KM in a transportation agency and how it supports core business, agility, innovation, and organizational improvement initiatives. It should include research that helps agencies track the accomplishments and benefits of KM and communicate the value of KM to leadership.

Stage 2: Determining the Strategy and Approach to KM

3. KM Roles and Responsibilities. Ambiguity surrounds who should lead KM in a transportation agency and KM implementation or support roles and responsibilities of different functions (e.g., Human Resources/learning and development, data management, information technology, organizational development, innovation, project management).

   Implication: The roadmap should include research that helps transportation agencies identify KM roles and responsibilities that fit with their organizational structures, cultures, and management priorities.

4. Organizational Culture. Employee motivation is key to successful KM; yet a lack of understanding exists regarding what motivates employees to share their knowledge in different situations and to actively seek and support process improvements. In addition, organizational barriers to the successful introduction of new types of practices that disrupt the status quo within a transportation agency are not recognized.

   Implication: The roadmap should include research that helps transportation agencies better understand how to recognize and address cultural factors that impede knowledge sharing, reuse, and application.

5. Knowledge and Information Fragmentation. The siloed nature of transportation agencies, fragmentation of information storage and management practices, and lack of standardization are significant barriers to information retrieval and knowledge discovery, including the creation of effective support tools, such as chatbots, recommender systems, and intelligent agents.

   Implication: The roadmap should include research that helps transportation agencies pursue improvements that enable more efficient access to relevant knowledge and information when needed. This research should provide guidance on the applications of enterprise architecture, information governance and management, information delivery, and supporting techniques for knowledge mapping and representation (e.g., taxonomies, ontologies, knowledge graphs, knowledge bases).

Stage 3: Planning and Carrying Out KM Initiatives

6. Operationalizing KM. Easily digestible and practical guidance on how to operationalize KM within a transportation agency is lacking. It can be challenging to (1) select the right mix of KM techniques that align with an agency’s needs, (2) estimate resourcing requirements for

6. different techniques, (3) find staff with the right mix of skills and experience to implement KM techniques effectively, and (4) build the cross-functional collaboration and coordination needed to incorporate the consideration of people, process, technology, and content aspects of KM.

   Implication: The roadmap should include research that helps agencies apply KM techniques and provides practical models to follow. This research should cover people, process, technology, and content aspects of implementation. It should also provide tailored guidance for specific functional areas of a DOT to complement and supplement guidance for KM leads.

7. Resourcing KM Processes. Processes to capture, codify, and validate knowledge assets are time consuming, which makes them difficult to implement given limited employee bandwidth (and competing priorities) and lack of dedicated support resources.

   Implication: The roadmap should include research that helps transportation agencies prioritize where to focus their efforts on knowledge capture and how to select an appropriate level of detail to meet their objectives. It should also include research to advance techniques for automating processes for creation, categorization, and discovery of transportation agency knowledge assets (e.g., auto-categorization, natural language processing, auto-summarization, search, etc.).

3.3 Research to Address Barriers to KM Adoption

Table 1 lists each of the barriers to advancing KM practice discussed previously and identifies research that could help to overcome these barriers.

Table 1. RNs to address barriers to advancing KM practice.