Appendix A3: Interview Summaries

Appendix A3 contains the written summaries from the interviews conducted with the KM leads from twenty-seven state DOTs and the District of Columbia. The summaries are presented in alphabetical order by state.

1. Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities
2. Arizona Department of Transportation
3. Arkansas Department of Transportation
4. California Department of Transportation
5. Florida Department of Transportation
6. Georgia Department of Transportation
7. Illinois Department of Transportation
8. Iowa Department of Transportation
9. Kentucky Transportation Cabinet
10. Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development
11. Maine Department of Transportation
12. Maryland Department of Transportation
13. Michigan Department of Transportation
14. Mississippi Department of Transportation
15. Missouri Department of Transportation
16. Nevada Department of Transportation
17. New Hampshire Department of Transportation
18. New Jersey Department of Transportation
19. New York State Department of Transportation
20. North Carolina Department of Transportation
21. North Dakota Department of Transportation
22. Ohio Department of Transportation
23. Pennsylvania Department of Transportation
24. Texas Department of Transportation
25. Utah Department of Transportation
26. Vermont Agency of Transportation
27. Virginia Department of Transportation

    District of Columbia

A3.1 Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Summary

Jill stated that despite efforts in the past to establish KM at the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities (Alaska DOT&PF) no program has been established and none exists now. There is also no

KM champion. While there are KM activities taking place in different divisions, these are not coordinated at the agency level.

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Jill said that the Alaska DOT&PF just went through a reorganization and one in her division as well. There is no KM program at Alaska DOT&PF and no plan to start one. Jill explained that it would be a “huge effort” to build a KM program and she would need someone or a team to take on KM full time. Nor are there current initiatives to coordinate or standardize the KM activities that different business units are engaged in.

Jill acknowledged that she is mostly unaware of what other business units are doing and that KM is not visible. She does not think that much is happening.

Though a previous staff member had tried to tackle KM at an agency level about six or seven years ago, there is no KM champion now. Jill explained that a while ago retirement and vacancies were issues. There were discussions about onboarding materials, where files were located, and what SharePoint could help accomplish, but these conversations did not proceed to planning.

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

Jill said that no one at the Alaska DOT&PF knows who should organize and oversee KM. There is no current plan or broader vision. However, Jill noted efforts are happening to modernize data technology and standardize data collection and reporting.

Jill stated that the Commissioner’s office is aware of KM and knows what it is.

KM Metrics

There are no current metrics in place to measure KM. Jill observed that she “knows from experience” that such practices are valuable.

Business Value from KM

There is no business case for KM being made now at the Alaska DOT&PF. However, Jill mentioned a few possibilities where KM could provide value:

• Dealing with a workforce without many years of experience;
• Succession planning because staff are leaving;
• Revamping the document management system (Jill said that this had been planned, but she does not know what is happening);
• Ensuring that there are backup staff;
• Updating the 35-year-old data management system because it does not “share well;” and
• Enabling the agency to be as “resilient” as it needs to be.

Organizational Culture and KM

As far as embedding KM at the Alaska DOT&PF, the business units and regions operate relatively independently. Jill observed that new supervisors do not necessarily know and are not made aware of KM. Some develop their own procedures and practices on their own.

Jill agreed that were KM to be started that it would have to be visible and coordinated. The Commissioner’s office would have to support it and demonstrate that endorsement with a directive that everyone needs to participate in KM. “You need to have the deputy commissioner and the Commissioner saying we have this new program called KM, Administrative Services are leading it. You guys need to conform to it.”

Jill added that with the reorganization, employees are leaving.

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

Jill described Alaska DOT&PF as an agency with a lack of partnerships and coordination.

The Future

Jill said that in addition to having someone to champion KM at the Alaska DOT&PF, a possible “hot button” issue around which KM could be built could be emergency planning and response. She also noted that “our workforce is getting younger and younger. I thought I saw statistics somewhere. It’s like 30 or 40% have less than five years [of] experience … with the department.”

Details

Dom Pannone, the Alaska DOT&PF Director, Division of Program Management & Administration, is a voting member of the AASHTO KM Committee. Jill said that if KM were to be established at the Alaska DOT&PF, the best place would be under Dom in Administration because he touches “everything in the department.” “They support every division with funding, administrative services, and they even have HR.”

Were KM to be situated under “data or in the regions [of which there are three] it will never take off.” Lori observed that no other office would have “the authority to make it stick.”

A previous staff member had “tried to take it on,” Lori said, but this person left six or seven years ago. Lori added that a previous deputy commissioner had also held meetings for a couple of months, but nothing came of that.

Jill said that a KM guidebook should cover the following:

• A definition of KM that is not “too broad and general,” which would be difficult to implement.
• Advice about how to centralize KM.
• Tools for KM.
• Information about different KM “pain points.”
• How to start off “easy.”
• How to get quick KM wins.
• How to “roll it into their daily operations, but not in a way that it’s overwhelming.”

• How to make KM “double gentle” on supervisors.
• KM case studies from other states.
• Protecting KM from leadership changes.
• Suggested steps for KM programs:
  • - Step 1: What does KM mean to your DOT?
  • - Step 2: Where do you start and how to start off “easy” (because KM is so “broad”)?
  • - Step 3: “How do you sell KM?” Jill mentioned both selling up and selling down.

Jill gave examples of KM activities happening in the business units:

• For her unit, Jill has created desk manuals, training plans, and a collection of lessons learned. She is putting information from each of the sections in her office into a central server. Her office also conducts debriefings and cross-training. She also has less experienced staff shadow more experienced employees.
• The procurement office has documented best practices.
• Data and analytics teams are updating desk manuals.
• Rehiring of retirees, but Jill does not know how much of that goes on.

Background of Interviewee

Jill is a non-voting member of the AASHTO KM Committee, but she does not regularly attend AASHTO conferences (during which the committee meetings take place). She has no KM background. She has participated in one or two knowledge cafes at AASHTO.

Jill has been working for Alaska DOT&PF for 23 years. She is currently the Strategic Investment Chief.

Next Steps

This interview “got me excited” about KM, Jill said. She will “nudge Dom and find out what’s going on.”

In the next 12 to 18 months, Jill will be figuring out what the new director wants and determining what needs to be documented.

A3.2 Arizona Department of Transportation

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Jenni Hesselbein, Leadership and Professional Development Manager, and Jose Alarcon, Workforce Development and Knowledge Sharing Manager, also participated in this interview.

Summary

The KM program at the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) is being led by the Employee and Business Development Division with activities geared toward development and training of leaders and staff throughout the agency, as well as knowledge sharing programs. They will also be implementing

recent study recommendations for measuring learning results. Tina, Jenni and Jose are quite dedicated to fostering a KM mindset in leadership and effectively incorporating KM practices throughout ADOT.

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Tina described several KM activities at ADOT:

• A recent study on the “effectiveness and efficiency of the learning programs at ADOT,” being conducted by the research office, which should lead to improved results-based evaluation of learning programs;
• Planning for “results-based evaluations of learning;”
• Developing the workforce scope of work for the management plan;
• A “human capital plan that’s … evaluating the current state of the workforce at ADOT and then looking at the next five years; where do we need to be and how do we get there;”
• A knowledge-sharing program will be rolled out further (following a pilot program last summer) (for more information, see below and Details); and
• ADOT training about creating LinkedIn profiles and a subscription to LinkedIn for every ADOT employee, which provides access to LinkedIn learning courses.

Tima further described the knowledge-sharing program as having a few different components. The program has and will continue to:

• Focus “specifically on working with division leaders and then mid- to higher-level management;”
• “Identify critical positions within their group[s] and work with them to identify standard work … which is SOP or whatever the terminology;”
• Make available “career creations workshops where individuals go into these workshops to learn about how [they] can their build career;” and
• Utilize a “dashboard of … those critical positions. That may be available in the near future” to inform staff about eligibility and being competitive for those jobs.

Tina pointed out that the knowledge-sharing program mentioned above is proceeding. She said that it was piloted last summer in her division, the dashboard was tested, and the program will be rolled out next with the communications department. “It’s just staffing. I only have one person doing that for the entire agency, so it’s really hard …”

A limitation of the expansion of KM at ADOT is the number of employees that Tina is able to devote to it. It does not look like the budget will be growing. Tina noted one example: “There’s one individual that … conducts all the workshops he meets with all the leaders.” She said that there is no funding to add staff for KM.

Tina explained that succession planning did not work because it is “people-centric;” it focuses on whom one knows. In contrast, she prefers to be “position-centric,” which centers around “roles and responsibilities.” She added, “Because we have other rules when it comes to recruiting and opportunities for hiring, we need to be neutral through that. So, we’re focusing on the position.” Jenni reiterated the importance of being “position-centric.”

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

Tina observed that everything she does in her role as the Employee and Business Development Administrator relates to KM. She is responsible for employee training and external assistance (See Background of Interviewee for a full description.) This includes a significant technical component. Tina stated that “knowledge management touches everything in the organization.”

Tina shared her philosophy about KM: “Everything should be part of work under the umbrella of knowledge management in my opinion through the objectives that we have to provide learning opportunities, development, but then also evaluating the impact of the learning and development.” She further explained that KM means “having the right information where it’s supposed to be and updating it and keeping it up to date.” Plus, Tina said it means having that knowledge available so that and “the planning division knows what the construction division is doing, and you know all of them are kind of collaborating and cross-functionally…”

Tina believes that it is important for an agency that everyone has standard information gathering and sharing; “and then sharing of information across the board. I don’t know what that’s going to look like.”

Jenni envisions “succession planning [that] is about capturing all of the processes and having a sustainable business so that you never have to hire anybody external again except for the entry level position.”

KM Metrics

Tina described a “ladder” of KM metrics:

1. “Participation from leaders and engagement;”
2. Creation of a simple “dashboard” location where information may be shared and is accessible;
3. Collection of standard work per position and “making sure that we get the critical responsibilities within the job;” and
4. Availability of career development – “career creations” – workshops and information about how to get particular positions, to assist “individuals within the organization looking for opportunities to grow and develop.”

Tina also said that she is planning to do more “results-based” evaluations of learning that will examine more than how many people took a class to determine effectiveness.

Business Value from KM

While discussing metrics, Tina talked about the business value of KM: “There is an effort and some of the team is looking to get some more knowledge and certifications on our ROI and return on investment on the things that we do and evaluate. How does one of those programs connect to the outcome, which is retaining employees, retaining knowledge, and building our organization to success, right? But then? All the things that we put together, are they worth our investment in them?”

Jenni spoke about the value of employee development and having the capacity to hire internally.

Organizational Culture and KM

Tina explained that making KM more acceptable within state DOTs will require buy-in from leadership and communication of that message. Tina added that leadership needs to understand how critical KM is for reaching an agency’s goals. Tina thinks that culture is critical for KM success and longevity.

Jenni shared that ADOT is a phenomenal place to work where almost everyone “gives 100 percent” and “they care about their people.” … But she also stated that there are competing priorities for employees.

Tina explained that ADOT already has an organizational structure that would allow for a hub and spoke – both centralized and decentralized – KM program. In its Office of Continuous Improvement (OCI), ADOT has “embedded lean coaches who are the advocates, but then they’re also change agents when it comes to helping us with … the principles that we need to rely on to every our evaluate our processes.” She added that “they’re also able to kind of pick us up and then get us where we need to and assist us.”

Tina noted the flexibility and technological progress that telework during COVID enabled. “[W]e shifted to Google and October of 2019 and then in March of 2020 everybody went, you know, remote and it was the best thing that ever happened … I mean to the agency as I mean to the state as a whole, we were able to pick it up like that.”

As both an observation about how to affect cultural change at ADOT and a vision of how to move forward with KM, Jenni stated how important it is to proceed incrementally, basically “broken into little pieces.” This is an approach of asking for very little to ensure that KM tools are not “too cumbersome.” In the same vein, she added that information must be easy to find. “I don’t want to look at the whole video to find the piece. I want to be able to go where I need.”

Jenni emphasized that the only way that KM will succeed at a state department of transportation (DOT) is for it to become part of employees’ “day jobs.” Both Jenni and Jose explained that, similarly to compliance, KM tasks should not be perceived as optional and that for such a change to take place requires a direction “from the top.” They stressed that the prerequisite to embedding KM is for leadership to embrace KM as a “mindset.” “It’s the day job that gets in the way even if people wanted to talk to, cross train or capture. There’s not enough time in the day and that goes back to it’s the leadership mindset because leaders can be one of two things in their mindset. They could be firefighters or they can actually be proactive.”

Jenni used the example of the lean principles that ADOT adopted. Leadership made this a priority, and the principles became an impactful feature of ADOT’s work culture. She added that this demonstrates that change can occur. (For more information, see Details.)

Jose said that a big challenge for capturing knowledge is low employee morale because it affects turnover and long-term planning and work. He highlighted that it is important for leaders to think long-term. Jenni said that they are both working against the old culture of a short-term frame of mind by working on development, cross-training, and cross functionality at ADOT. These are important cultural changes for attracting and retaining talent.

Jenni explained that “We’re just not going to change how people lead. But what we can do is work with the people … we can influence.” She observed that some ADOT leaders are being proactive about KM,

but she would like to see KM be “instinctual.” Jenni uses the term “knowledge sharing. But Jenni noted that the examples of those who are proactive are not being utilized as seeds for change or as something like case studies for others. She believes that leaders generally do not care about what others are doing. However, she said that she does not have experience with using case studies to impact behavior.

Jenni explained how she is drawing on organizational culture in proceeding with the expansion of KM to more offices so that KM activities will take hold.

• Expand KM to active, willing ADOT units;
• Be honest that KM will take time;
• Be honest that KM might involve “struggle” because not everyone will want to participate; and
• Make it clear what to expect in terms of prioritization, commitment and “community effort.”

Jenni observed that staff are more likely to stick with a KM program if they were engaged in creating it. She also noted the importance of leaders who can inspire others to want to prioritize KM. Jenni has experience in the private sector and she explained that a problem with a state DOT is that the “business” will not fail if an experienced employee leaves. That person will be replaced.

Jenni also mentioned the importance of technology to knowledge sharing. “Five years ago, we wrote on paper at ADOT; you know we have QR codes. … I can use my phone click on the QR code and it’ll tell me what’s wrong or tell me the safety instructions before I even start it up.” (She was using the example of a snowplow operator.)

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

While partnerships were not explicitly addressed during the interviews, Tina, Jenni and Jose spoke about KM activities that reach leaders and employees throughout ADOT. (Tina’s training and technical assistance role also covers local transportation departments and other entities.) There is an active and multifaceted training program and leadership development.

Tina described work with OCI and the “lean coaches” from OCI. Jenni discussed knowledge sharing via technology that has altered field operations (specifically her snowplow example).

Tina talked about how the knowledge-sharing program is proceeding past the pilot phase and her staff is working with the communications department to introduce the program there.

ADOT is not currently utilizing communities of practice (CoPs) and influencing staff across offices through such knowledge sharing.

The Future

Jenni talked about how the way people consume information has changed significantly, which should mean transforming the strategies and methods for delivering information to and capturing information from employees. She pointed out that instead of using or filling out long documents, people go to YouTube, or record spoken answers, or fill out forms online in bite-size pieces. She also mentioned employees in the field using their phones and retrieving information via QR codes.

Jenni cautioned that those offering KM guidance or implementing KM should be considering technology, not in terms of what is needed now, but in terms of what will be needed and what employees will be using five years from now. “And then maybe get some really great brainstorming ideas of how you could leverage technology to access this information easily. And actually mimic, mirror how people in life do it because if we … want work learning and work knowledge and work information to be very similar to how we live, … the line is blurred now.”

Details

Tina offered several thoughts to explain her opinion about where she would place KM at a state department of transportation, and she pointed out that “I don’t know the exact set up or the perfect setup for it and I’m speaking for my agency.” She thinks that KM should be both connected to executive leadership and otherwise dispersed through ADOT. Tina envisions that central hub as the Office of Continuous Improvement. “A few years ago, the state of Arizona implemented this very, aggressive and intentional effort on implementing … continuous improvement, a strategy then eliminating waste and improving our processes, … The new governor is embracing it and we’re continuing that, which I think is a great thing. And it’s very structured I should say from just that role of that group going to making sure that we have lean coaches, which is lean principles that they’re brought into each of the areas, and we have that assistance and how can we use those principles to improve and you know, cut waste and improve processes.”

Tina is aware that retirements are a KM problem and that Human Resources (HR) is considering it, but she does not know what they are doing.

Jenni said that she prefers the term “knowledge sharing” to KM.

Jenni offered insight about the lean principles: “ADOT did an incredible job for five or seven years with making[a] priority … the lean management principles. … It changed the way and brought people to the table to where new ideas and helped our MVD (Motor Vehicle Division) run a little bit smoother.”

In both interviews, there were discussions about what the interviewees would want to be included in a KM guidebook. Tina offered several suggestions, asking for guidance on:

• “What is knowledge management and then getting it into like simple terms and applicable things to the transportation industry.;”
• Demystifying KM for leadership;
• Why KM is relevant;
• Tying KM to organizational culture to institutionalize KM;
• Guidance for CoPs;
• What KM means for the employee;
• KM technology;
• A centralized system accessible to everyone with a knowledge-sharing platform;
• A dashboard accessible to everyone; and
• AI and its potential role (though Tina commented that such a topic might be best explored in a future NHCRP project).

Jenni and Jose asked for a KM guidebook to be frank about the large commitment of time and effort that will be needed to work with leaders, as Jose expressed it, to “remove those systemic environmental challenges” that get in the way of “implement[ing] any processes to record knowledge and to share that knowledge.” Jenni offered a candid comment about where some KM materials fall short and what she would appreciate. “With some of those guidebooks … they don’t really call out the truth: This is going to take some effort. This is not going to be easy. There’s not a once and done, and I think that’s some of the experience we’re having that they go through it and then they drop the ball and it doesn’t do they go through the first part of it just to get the ball rolling and they never revisited again. So … maybe be honest up front don’t do this unless you want to and are willing to put in the effort and learn about mindset and prioritize it and maybe it’s the truth up front. This isn’t some magic book that’s going to suddenly capture all of your knowledge. It actually going to take your effort.”

Jenni elaborated on the topic of Workforce Development’s breaking down KM tasks into little pieces in relation to succession planning: “We’re saying, “Pick your top five.” Positions not people. That’s the other thing; they think about people and I need to capture people’s knowledge. No, you need to capture the process of the job, not the person. So, pick your top five positions that are crucial to the sustainability of your business? … And it doesn’t matter about the person’s knowledge in that role. No, the position and… pick your top five and start there.”

Background of Interviewee

Tina Samartinean is the Employee and Business Development Administrator. She has served ADOT in various capacities in the Employee and Business Development Division. Prior to joining ADOT, Tina worked for 10 years for the trial courts of Maricopa County in Arizona. Her first career was as an early childhood education teacher in Romania.

As the Employee and Business Development Administrator, Tina is responsible for:

• Employee development;
• Mandatory and regulatory training, which includes trainings covering such topics as nondiscrimination and computer security;
• Leadership and professional training;
• Technical training, covering such topics as construction inspection;
• ADOT’s learning system;
• Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP);
• Learning system for ADOT and its auxiliary systems;
• “Systems and performance management group which kind of supports the Employee development section with our learning and Development Center;”
• Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program (the external business development); and
• On-the-job training program.

Tina serves as the vice chair of the AASHTO Civil Rights Committee, and she is a member of the KM Committee and the Equity Committee. (There is an AASHTO Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Task Force.)

Jenni is the Leadership and Professional Development Manager. She has a background in organizational and workforce development and succession planning. Jose Alarcon is the Workforce Development and

Knowledge Sharing Manager. He has studied industrial and organizational psychology. Jose mainly works with ADOT’s leaders on leadership development and with those who might become leaders.

Next Steps

In the next 12-18 months, Tina would like to expand beyond the knowledge-sharing pilot program to “at least two other divisions of mid-size …, not more than 60 employees per division or … office.”

Tina has put together a team to “work on the implementations from the recommendations” of a recently completed study by a consultant “on the effectiveness and efficiency of the learning programs at ADOT.” This type of evaluation will explore behavior and results of learning.

A3.3 Arkansas Department of Transportation

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Summary

The Arkansas Department of Transportation (ARDOT)’s KM program will be expanding in the next few months with the hiring of a new KM program coordinator. In anticipation of this employee’s arrival, Alicia is creating a knowledge management project team from across ARDOT. Alicia expects that the new employee will enable ARDOT to expand its limited use of communities of practice (CoPs) and the library’s KM work.

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Alicia described ARDOT’s KM program as “in the infancy of knowledge management.” “It has not been a top priority simply because we have had many other priorities.” Alicia said that “lack of staff” has been another limitation during the five to six years of the KM program.

Beginning in 2020, ARDOT started conducting “knowledge exit interviews and high -risk position knowledge surveys. Knowledge exit interviews utilize a questionnaire, given to an employee beforehand, and these precede an employee’s departure; whereas a high-risk position knowledge survey “is done with those people who are still employed and aren’t necessarily leaving anytime soon.” Both the exit interviews and knowledge surveys are conducted using the same questionnaire.

Alicia explained that the Knowledge exit interviews were the first priority. “We triaged it to where, you know, as soon as we knew somebody [had] given their notice, then we immediately tried to schedule a knowledge interview with them.” Once the staff caught up with those, they began conducting knowledge surveys to capture knowledge from staff who perform critical tasks or possess significant pieces of knowledge that no one else knows about. These are staff in high-risk positions.

Alicia described how it is determined which staff qualify for a knowledge survey:

[W]e have a gentleman in our class and comp specialist. He’s a big-time data guy, so we tasked him with … being the lead person on knowledge interviews and developing a knowledge risk matrix. And so he developed what … we call our knowledge risk matrix that looks at various criteria like … how long a person has been in there title, whether or not the title is unique, like if there’s only just really one or two people who share that title across the department, the total years of service, how close are they to being eligible for full retirement.

This specialist “run[s] an analysis quarterly of every employee in the department” and he “turns around a risk matrix that scores employees like from 12 down to zero.”

The exit interviews and knowledge surveys are administered across ARDOT, not just in particular divisions. In addition, “the knowledge interview itself is designed to be shared with others, including the person who is in that position next.”

Alicia described ARDOT’s use of CoPs. She explained that these are “pretty large groups that meet like annually” at a conference. She gave examples of CoPs groups for maintenance supervisors and resident engineers in the construction group.

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

Alicia is planning to expand KM activities due to the imminent arrival of a new employee. His title will be “workforce development specialist, but we intend on giving him the unofficial title of knowledge management program coordinator.” She expects that the new “knowledge management coordinator that we’re trying to bring on board” will be onboarded “sometime in the next two months.” That employee will spend 30-50 percent of his time on KM activities.

To prepare for the arrival of this employee, Alicia has asked each division for volunteers for a new “knowledge management project team.” The first KM team “brainstorming session” was on the calendar (but postponed due to inclement weather). The purpose of this team will be to “get ideas from people … from all over the department …” Alicia noted that these team members will include staff from research, maintenance, construction, and design. The goal is to hold monthly meetings to discover the “unique needs” for each of the major disciplines.

The new employee will also “work with the library and to make sure the links are all working.”

Alicia explained why the new workforce development/KM employee will not have a title with KM in it.

[O]ur program isn’t necessarily mature enough to justify a full-time person. … [W]e’re so, so early in our knowledge management program that I expect it to grow. Now, that doesn’t mean that eventually, if he’s very successful in that role, that he might not grow it into a full-time position with his own staff.

She said, “I took a conservative approach and thought this would be a hybrid position until I see proof that I needed as a full-time position.”

Alicia views HR as having a broader role for KM than other divisions: “HR would come into the play for like the design manuals for example, is just helping ensure that they create a place to store these things and that we coordinate with the library.” She does envision other divisions as making relevant knowledge available for their staff. She envisions KM as work that requires periodic updating and not as being accomplished once for all time.

KM Metrics

Alicia stated, “I wouldn’t say that I have any formal metrics in place, but I can say that the positive feedback that we received from the division heads and the managers who received the information, it’s been overwhelmingly positive and they are very … happy about that.”

Alicia mentioned a metric being the numbers of exit and knowledge interviews conducted. In terms of the interviews, although “the knowledge interview itself is designed to be shared with others, including the person who’s succeeding,” it is not measured whether these are being read, distilled into usable formats or otherwise shared.

Alicia would like to use a metric for the knowledge library “to recognize the number of searches and the number of documents that are being accessed just to show that employees are seeking this knowledge and are interested in what we have out there.” She said that “I would love to be able to show a steady increase in access to information.”

Business Value from KM

Alicia sees the value in KM for HR and research divisions. Regarding HR, she observed that “we have access to all employees, … we provide the training and that type of thing and so it makes logical sense for me that HR is a big part of any knowledge management program.” About research, Alicia noted that for ARDOT “they’ve always been viewed, at least in our department, as the central repository for information.” She added, “They use that information to create reports and proposals and do analysis.”

Organizational Culture and KM

Alicia observed that she is comfortable using the term “knowledge management” with senior management and she is confident in their support for KM.

[O]ur senior management definitely understands what it is and supports you know the direction that we’re going and … if I can show … the progress and the need I’m sure I would get the support I needed for even more staff … as the program grows.

She noted that the director and executive staff are very active with AASHTO.

Alicia cautioned that while she is responsible for growing the KM program, she needs to do that conservatively. This is a matter of building up credibility. “I’m not going to ask you for five people for something that I’m not even sure yet how we’re going to manage or what’s going to be, you know, well received.”

What gives Alicia the leeway to slowly progress with KM is also attributable to the fact that ARDOT is “constitutionally independent from the rest of state government. The agency is governed by a Commission, and “our director has historically always been someone promoted from within rather than some randomly appointed business person.” Plus, she noted, “no one governor ever appoints all Commission members.” Alicia said that the ARDOT Commission is supportive of propelling the DOT forward.

Alicia observed that retirement timing is an issue and that the culture of retirement timing has changed. “Gen Xers and our baby boomers are all getting close to eligibility for retirement and the desire for that, you know, better work, life balance now. A lot of us are retiring earlier than we might have 5-10 years ago, and the pandemic … changed a lot of the attitudes toward that.”

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

Alicia mentioned good relationships with upper management and CoPs. She talked about the importance of HR, research, and the library for KM.

The Future

Alicia is the “driver of the program” and she acknowledged that the responsibility is hers to grow the program. Alicia would like to use the new KM employee to further develop the CoPs for staff with a “specialized skill set.” She gave the example of GIS staff from across the department. She envisions groups of “30 or so people who would get together and talk about best practices, make sure there’s no duplication of effort and … sharing.” She sees the CoPs as meeting more than once a year, “to be continuous.”

Alicia is also “in the very early stages of implementing … a centralized library for knowledge availability.” She intends to include “all department policies and procedures, standard operating procedures,” and to put these in “some kind of standardized format or reasonably standardized format.”

Alicia’s long-term goals are (1) to formalize KM by expanding the CoPs and the knowledge library and making these available to employees; (2) to develop “very targeted training for you know, positions all

over the department;” (3) and to do succession planning that would allow “a person to work with their predecessor for at least a period of time” that would match the complexity of a position.

She pointed out that “the combination of the workforce development specialist with the knowledge management coordinator is important for accomplishing these goals.”

Details

Alicia credits the AASHTO KM Committee as being very helpful in starting the ARDOT KM program.

Alicia explained that the knowledge surveys and exit interview questions are sent ahead of time to the person who will be interviewed “because some of it may … be very specific about like SOP’s that are available for their position, or … something unique they may want to plan to discuss.” Alicia added that those who will soon be retiring “enjoy having the opportunity to share some unique … knowledge about their position and talk about … the things I’ve accomplished over their career.” She observed that they “feel heard.” These interview summaries run anywhere from three to 20 pages.

Alicia pointed out that participation is voluntary in both the exit interviews and knowledge surveys. Alicia stated that the identification process for the interviews continues. Recently, “we had 23 people who had been identified as higher risk that had not been interviewed yet through it through the exit interviews who were still employed.”

Alicia described the library system being implemented as “utilizing an existing system,” which is library catalog software that is used for the research library.

Alicia would like a practical how-to KM guidebook because “what we’ve done, I’ve just really just gleaned from listening to others talk.”

In terms of where KM should be situated, Alicia discussed both HR and her research office, as “the central repository for information,” as having important roles in a KM program. She did think that the research office, at least for ARDOT, would be the best fit. However, her new partly KM employee will be housed in HR, though Alicia commented that the situation where he belongs might change in a couple of years because KM could possibly become its own division.

Alicia could not estimate the percentage of her time spent on KM as she is now in a leadership position. The new workforce development employee will be spending 30-50 percent of his time on KM. “He’s exiting from the military with a similar background to what we need for knowledge management.”

When discussing targeted training for employees across ARDOT that Alicia would like to see be developed, she offered the example of bookkeepers: ARDOT could develop “SOP’s for every bookkeeper and centralized training, so that any person who’s promoted to or in a new bookkeeper position would be able to take this bookkeeping training and then be able to, you know, hit the ground running.”

Alicia commented that “basically I’d love a how-to manual” KM guidebook with practical guidance about how to:

• Develop a culture of knowledge,

• Conduct knowledge interviews,
• Create and improve a knowledge risk matrix,
• Document KM activities,
• Create an “expertise locator,”
• Manage a library,
• Manage CoPs, and
• “Drive a program forward.”

She added that she would also want “success stories” from other state DOTs. Alicia elaborated on that idea, saying that case studies would be useful about:

• How DOTs have used KM tools;
• How and why DOTs have found success; and
• “[W]hat are the “long-term implications.”

If possible, she would like actual results of such practices involving knowledge capture, employee development and retention, and knowledge availability.

Background of Interviewee

Alicia was recently promoted to Division Head of HR. She previously served as Assistant Division Head.

She recounted that ARDOT immediately began participating on the AASHTO KM Committee when it was formed in 2018. “I was nominated to be the KM spokesperson in 2019 for Arkansas because I was already on the HR subcommittee along with my boss Crystal Woods, and … we split it up where she would be in HR and I would go to knowledge management.” She said that ARDOT has actively participated on the committee since its formation, such as taking part in quarterly, or sometimes monthly, knowledge cafes, and sharing with others.

Next Steps

Alicia said that ARDOT is “in the process right now of hiring a knowledge management team leader.”

Beyond the new employee, Alicia stated her goal for the next year: “I would hope that by the end of 2024 we will already have, you know, a decent library that includes our knowledge interviews and the standard operating procedures or manuals that already exist in the department, things like accounting manual and a personnel manual. … [T]hat stuff is available now, but not necessarily linked to any kind of centralized catalog; but to have things just readily available for anyone that could search.”

A3.4 California Department of Transportation

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Following the interview, Caleb McCallister, the Caltrans Enterprise Data & Geospatial Governance Program Manager, sent an email with information pertinent to this summary.

Summary

The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) KM program is in Human Resources (HR) and Organizational Development under the direction of Deputy Division Chief Tom Hicks. There are several KM services available upon request. Knowledge transfer workshops occur quarterly, and leadership training encompasses KM.

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

KM activities occur in Caltrans’ HR division. Tom said that he has one analyst devoted to KM and that employee provides guidance and information about workforce and succession planning.

Tom described KM as happening, if it is, within separate Caltrans offices and in its 12 districts. “We’re more of an information, a hub for, you know, providing resources, but not necessarily the capture of what the agency’s doing and totality for their knowledge management … platform.”

Tom mentioned several KM activities:

• Training within the leadership program about KM;
• “Leadership guides” about how KM can be employed in programs;
• “Knowledge transfer techniques and tool workshops;”
• “Boot camps” offered where Tom’s staff will “come in and study or share with them best practices, studies, communities of practice, critical incident reviews, lessons learned throughout the organization;” and
• Knowledge fairs available upon request.

Other KM activities that Caleb mentioned were:

• Desk manuals,
• Exit interviews,
• Mentoring, and
• Other 1:1 methods.

Tom meets quarterly with staff who are involved in KM, but he noted that attrition and staff transitioning into new roles is a problem for continuity. He is available for KM information and guidance if anyone reaches out.

Tom said that he receives the most KM-related requests for KM leadership training and, from those in a new role, for information about what they are required to do. He included in his KM activities workforce forecasting, especially concerning job categories for which recruiting is difficult.

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

There is no KM mission or vision at Caltrans and leadership support is weak. According to Tom, there are no resources available to expand KM or to explore what KM initiatives might exist in and among different offices throughout Caltrans.

KM Metrics

Tom has staff who keep track of the number and type of KM requests. However, Tom said that KM metrics are not used.

Business Value from KM

No business case for KM activities or for expanding KM has been presented.

Organizational Culture and KM

Tom said that the culture of Caltrans is to pay attention to whatever are the pressing operational priorities. “The wall that I run against a lot of times when I go out, even speaking on knowledge management with our workforce planning and all of that … kind of becomes the item at the end of the list for most of our leadership, if that makes sense. … Urgent versus the important, right, takes precedence.”

Tom believes that leadership has an awareness of KM, but it is not a priority. The high rate of attrition and the doubling of the number of retirements in the last few years are challenges.

Tom observed that virtual engagement has improved greatly with new technology at Caltrans. He credited the flexibility that COVID necessitated for the fast changes. He said that practices also change more quickly than they did previously.

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

Tom did not mention ongoing partnerships with other offices, divisions, or districts. He does fulfill KM requests for KM training, workshops, and knowledge fairs. No numbers or trends were discussed during the interview.

The Future

Tom said that with the new learning management system (LMS), he would like build “career pathways” and “learning pathways” because disseminating knowledge is now so much easier. “I would like to see using those tools and then being able to actually have the bodies to go work within these areas to help them get and have metrics and start to outline KPIs [(key performance indicators)] and whatnot for … getting knowledge management operating to a better level within their organization here.

Details

Tom mentioned that there are online repositories at Caltrans, but no agency-wide initiative around knowledge capture and management.

Tom believes that there are differences in the KM needs for “… something like engineering versus maybe … a smaller administration program … The tools and resources that they would need for their knowledge management practices might greatly differ, but as being the central hub, no, I don’t believe we have enough communication and or knowledge of all the things.”

Tom was not aware of whether there are librarians or research staff devoted to research dissemination and tracking what resources come into Caltrans and to whom and how they are shared. He did supply the name of another employee who might know. That employee is “part of that group was working on the repository” as part of an “enterprise data group and so they’re looking at making sure our systems are in place …”

Caleb added that Caltrans has “an intranet but it lacks more modern features and is extremely difficult to search. It often contains outdated information and static documents that are not indexed in our internal search engine.”

There is no KM budget in the central office or in the districts, Tom said, and he does not know whether any money in the district office budget is spent on KM.

Tom requested that a KM guidebook include the following topics:

• KM return on investment (ROI);
• KM tools and resources; and
• KM case studies from large organizations of whatever type that are transferable.

Tom observed that case studies from other, especially smaller, state DOTs are not always helpful because Caltrans – at 22,000 employees – is so much larger than most. Tom also pointed out that Caltrans shoulders substantial responsibilities beyond transportation. Tom offered the example of “overseeing the broadband initiative for California, putting in all the broadband pipeline and whatnot.”

Tom noted the lack of commitment from leadership to focus on KM because it is not considered urgent. He also mentioned siloed offices and districts, and the constraints imposed upon state agencies as obstacles for KM. He thinks that the public is only interested in transportation projects.

Caleb wrote that he has made attempts for Caltrans to invest in a “continually updated repository that employees can contribute to, effectively search, and allows SMEs to easily connect.” He listed the features that such a platform should have:

1. Google-like and AI enhanced search;
2. Roles and Permissions for editors, administrators, and general users;
3. Approval processes;
4. Modern What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor for content creation;
5. Support for embedding video from internal/external sources;
6. Advanced reporting metrics of article performance;
7. User feedback;
8. Archival capabilities; and
9. Notification/automation capabilities to help ensure content is up to date.

Tom stated that California state agencies are waiting for the governor to issue an anticipated artificial intelligence (AI) policy, which all agencies will be required to conform to.

Tom observed that centralizing KM and tying its communications to Caltrans’ priorities might be helpful, but even that approach would be challenging given the geographic scale of California and the many types of occupations represented at the agency.

Tom observed that he could use more funding for KM to pay for more positions because it would be too labor-intensive otherwise to increase KM activities. He explained that for him to add KM staff would require submission of a budget change proposal and then being granted permission from an agency outside of Caltrans, which would be the California Department of Finance.

Background of Interviewee

Tom is the Deputy Division Chief with HR. He has been with Caltrans for 17 years in “a multitude of roles, different programs, [and] divisions.” He has worked in HR for five to six years off and on during his tenure. He became responsible for KM at some point during the last three years.

Tom is responsible for:

• Talent acquisition, which is recruitment,
• Talent management,
• Workforce planning and succession planning management, which include KM; and
• Learning and development, which includes training, particularly leadership training.

Tom reports to the California Department of Human Resources regarding workforce and succession planning. He is a member of the AASHTO KM Committee.

Next Steps

Tom mentioned that Caltrans has a new LMS and that he would like to “do a lot more in the education space.”

A3.5 Florida Department of Transportation

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Also participating in the interview was Brigette Boisvert, Manager of the Organizational Development Team, who oversees the Policy and Process Management unit. Her e-mail address is brigette.boisvert@dot.state.fl.us.

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

The size of the KM function at the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) is one-half of a full-time employee (FTE), with time from Mr. Livingston and Ms. Boisvert. KM activities began on an agency-wide

basis with the establishment of, and FDOT participation on, the AASHTO KM Committee. Both have served on the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO) KM Committee since its inception in 2019.

FDOT’s KM staff are situated in Organizational Development.

KM is still in its infancy at FDOT and has not become embedded in its technology, procedures or culture.

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

The FDOT does not have a written KM mission, vision, or plan. A cohesive set of strategies has not been adopted or implemented.

Among those KM practices that are being used include optional interviews prior to retirements (which have “not taken off”), and KM staff following up to learn about KM practices used in any part of FDOT.

Mr. Livingston has also made the effort to reach out to the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT), which he cited as a model of a good KM program, to learn more about the KM program there after an AASHTO KM webinar.

NCDOT’s KM program is housed in its Center for Innovation, which, Mr. Livingston observed, gives it “more of an engineering bent.” He said that NCDOT also more effectively stores the knowledge of lessons learned so that they are usable.

It’s one of the things that we have put in our proposal to add in is to try to find a way to take lessons learned that are done in projects and aggregate those in a way that can come up so that so that you’re actually using your lessons learned because we’re all doing lessons learned at the end of projects, right.

KM Metrics

There is no KM performance measurement system in place at FDOT. Ms. Boisvert said that it would be useful to demonstrate savings and return on investment (ROI), particularly from technology, and to otherwise employ measures that are quantitative in nature.

Business Value from KM

Mr. Livingston acknowledges that he has not yet successfully pitched to leadership the business case for KM. To establish a business case for KM, Mr. Livingston would at this time “couch it as a workforce development initiative. That’s huge.” For upper-level staff, there is also a focus on savings, so it would help to demonstrate the savings possible with KM.

Organizational Culture and KM

Though KM is professed to be supported at FDOT, Mr. Livingston points out that the reality is “Our resources are not where they need to be to be able to do what needs to happen, so we try to do as much as we can with what we have.” Ms. Boisvert believes that the placement of KM at a higher level in the agency would result in more leadership support. The current site for KM in Organizational Development makes it difficult to “gain traction,” she observed.

Mr. Livingston noted that he is aware that KM activities are occurring at FDOT, but on a decentralized basis. He tries to find out more whenever he hears of anything, such as process mapping or archiving of lessons learned.

He cited several reasons that explain what has prevented FDOT from fully committing to KM, including changes in leadership; a lack of resources; representation from different generations in the workforce that have different attitudes about sharing information; competing priorities; and a needed shift in organizational culture away from decentralized silos.

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

The only KM partnership is with the Tech Transportation office and that is a strong relationship that Mr. Livingston has cultivated. Previously, Mr. Livingston had connected with program staff about process mapping, but there was resistance from people working with that.

The Future

Mr. Livingston described the KM program at the NCDOT as a model for FDOT. NCDOT, he said, has lessons learned that are “aggregated,” usable, and easy to access.

He said that he would like to make share vacancies and organizational charts, showing and communicating the value of KM, and effective retiree interview success to allow for easier onboarding.

Ms. Boisvert would like to expand the office spotlight presentations, which are now just done for limited offices in the central office, to cover all central offices. “[T]he idea is for whoever wants to attend what will be virtual and will record them and put them in a repository.” She wants staff at FDOT to have a better understanding of what happens throughout the agency and how their work is connected.

Background of Interviewee

The backgrounds of the interviewees were not discussed except that they have become more educated about KM during the past four years, since the establishment of the AASHTO KM Committee in 2019. They both represent FDOT on the AASHTO KM Committee and both have served on the committee since its inception.

Next Steps

During the next year, Mr. Livingston’s objectives are to make staff more aware of KM, to understand KM, and to instill KM as part of what staff thinks about. Mr. Livingston would appreciate a guidebook to provide:

• Talking points for what a successful KM program looks like, particularly across operations and administration.
• Tools for what KM success means for each DOT area.
• Position descriptions for KM.

Ms. Boisvert would like examples of true ROI for KM activities.

A3.6 Georgia Department of Transportation

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

The KM program is in its infancy, having started in mid-2022, but staff time is devoted to developing a program to serve offices across the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT). The department-wide responsibility for KM is housed within the office of Human Resources Talent Development.

The KM function receives approximately 5-10 percent of the hours of two full-time-employees (FTE) within the office of Human Resources Talent Development. These two staff members are a supervisor

and a subordinate who are together also responsible for organizational development and leadership training.

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

The KM strategy is to utilize leadership teams from across GDOT to establish goals, pathways, and participation to achieve KM improvements. Thus far, one such team has identified the aims of tacit knowledge capture, storage and maintenance. Goals for KM are to establish awareness of KM and the resource that KM staff represent, to create a KM team for each GDOT division, and to solidify a culture of knowledge sharing.

Despite the small amount of staff time allotted to KM, the staff is actively engaging with others at GDOT and taking opportunities to spread a culture of KM. For example, “one of the things that [a] project manager told me that he was working on was developing their web page and what content that he was going to be working on and sharing with them.” This theme of building on knowledge-sharing activities was a theme. Another example is the knowledge capture work done in the wake of the I-85 bridge collapse, Ms. Mungin said, “we interviewed some of our folks from the bridge office, from our construction office and just ask some kind of pointed questions about that experience and some things that they had gained.”

She is building upon opportunities for KM communication, knowledge capture, and availability for employees. “We have a site for our intranet called myGDOT and each office has a page.” Another example is an Experience Hub information center online for employees that houses tutorials, discussion boards, and forums. Ms. Mungin pointed out that even information about acronyms is important for new employees. She is considering how her office fits into the KM activities of GDOT offices and how she can be a KM resource for them.

Capturing tacit knowledge is a priority, but no firm decisions have been made about how to accomplish this. A “contractor suggested utilizing the tool for capturing knowledge from retirees. Currently there is a link to a form on our Employee Center page the tool could be in place of or supplement to the form. The project team (3 GDOT staff—myself and two others) considered requesting employees to enter information at the end of projects or on a periodic basis (quarterly or annually). We also discussed asking each office to require tacit knowledge capture as part of tasks/steps in SOPs, checklist, etc. or as part of an after-action review for each project.”

KM Metrics

No metrics have been identified yet; however, there is a stated need for guidance about performance measures for KM tasks and objectives. It is possible that KM will be added to the project management certification, which would itself be a measure of an increase in awareness and understanding of KM.

Business Value from KM

Ms. Mungin is aware of the business value of KM in terms of emergency management, knowledge retention and storage, and faster integration of new employees. Ms. Mungin suggested that embedding performance measures and measuring the business value of KM is easier for new offices to incorporate KM as they create their office cultures and practices. She cited intermodal projects as one such office.

Organizational Culture and KM

The organizational culture of GDOT is just beginning to appreciate the importance of KM. Connecting with others across GDOT is critical to building support and enthusiasm for KM as well as for ensuring that regulations and funding requirements are adhered to. Ms. Mungin would like to see a cultural shift toward sharing and retention of knowledge. She is using the leadership teams and otherwise reaching out to inspire additional voluntary participation and support for KM.

Ms. Mungin is looking forward to establishing a culture of KM being embedded in project management.

One factor that Ms. Mungin identified that affects all large government organizations such as GDOT is the regulations and policies that prevent quick adoption of practices. Ms. Mungin is quite comfortable with this situation as she is careful to be a good steward of the public’s resources. What she finds to be the greatest challenge of a large bureaucracy is “just making the connections with people who no longer were at GDOT or people who were involved who weren’t at GDOT, to begin with, like a consultant or something like consulting company, something like that will be kind of about those major hurdles.”

In terms of organizational culture across GDOT, the offices have autonomy in terms of whether they will participate in KM activities and practices. Leadership at GDOT does not seem to have identified KM as a matter of importance.

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

Ms. Mungin is responsible for leadership programs, and she is using this program as an opportunity to inculcate KM values and practices. One of the projects was about capturing tacit knowledge and knowledge management.

The limited staff time devoted to KM and the need for voluntary participation from GDOT offices restricts KM’s progress.

The Future

Within the next few years, Ms. Mungin would like to have engaged in successful KM projects and to grow a team of at least two or three additional KM staff, if not 10, with one staff member dedicated to each GDOT division.

Background of Interviewee

Employed at GDOT for over 18 years. Her previous role was Talent Development Manager. For years, she met all new employees in her job providing new employee orientation. Due to that previous responsibility and her longevity at the organization, she is very familiar with staff throughout GDOT. In her role as Organizational Development Manager, Ms. Mungin is currently creating and managing a large leadership program across the DOT. This accounts for 80-90 percent of her time.

Next Steps

A guidebook to offer different strategies and measures for building a solid KM program and KM practices throughout GDOT is enthusiastically supported. Building KM into such programs as Employee Learning

Week, for example. She will use the opportunity of certification programs to develop new hire guides and website information. Ms. Mungin also cited the bridge and intermodal offices as providing a favorable situation for embedding KM into their standard practices.

A3.7 Illinois Department of Transportation

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Summary

Disruptions over the past few years have greatly affected the building of a KM program at the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT), where KM has hinged on the commitment and effort of one employee. Karen Waters, the librarian, is only now working to catch up to where her KM initiative was a few years ago. Karen’s KM activities are related to (1) ensuring that the library has the resources to meet the needs of IDOT staff, and (2) keeping track of employee expertise and interests.

IDOT’s KM program is limited but will soon grow significantly due to the addition of approved new staff positions.

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Recently, Karen’s staff has grown with the addition of two full-time employees (FTEs). One position in the library is unfilled but will be filled soon. She also has authorization to add two more FTEs who will focus on KM. Because these will be newly created positions, she said that it will take time before anyone is hired. She expects that to happen within the year. Karen speculated that one possible cause for delay is the construction of IDOT’s new building because “we aren’t 100% sure where they’re gonna sit.”

Karen had been the sole librarian for years and she described her KM activities as “rudimentary knowledge management, … just keeping track of who’s here and who does what and establishing those connections.” This accounting of staff enabled Karen to become a resource for others related to retirements and employee replacements. Karen thus developed an “expertise locator.” Karen stated that a recurrent personal issue and the multiple office moves caused her to cease updating this resource, which is only now about to receive attention again. No backup staff were assigned to perform or assist with the KM tasks. She explained that matching resources with the staff who have specific interests is a full-time job, which she has been doing in addition to fulfilling her other responsibilities.

Karen has also kept track of reference questions that come into the library and the responsive literature reviews so that the same research does not have to be duplicated when the same or a similar question is asked. She tracks who asks for what, when, the resources, and whether the request for information was successfully answered.

The IDOT library also partners with a state library for government employees. Karen distributes information about its resources. “We have a lot of access and we’re just trying to match it up with the people who could use it and with our various promotional things that we do.”

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

Karen explained that IDOT does not have a formal KM program or plan. She included informal KM goals in emails to her chief, who recently retired. These centered around resuming the updating “keeping track of who’s here and who does what.”

Karen’s current two top KM goals are:

1. Returning to the task of updating the staff list. “That’s a … huge project” because it would involve the entire IDOT central office and the nine districts across Illinois. Karen wants to include staff memberships in organizations like AASHTO and ITE (Institute of Transportation Engineers).
2. Updating information and actively communicating what resources are accessible through or at the library. This would include library resources, journal subscriptions, memberships, and standards. Karen would also like to keep lists of staff interested in particular topics so that she or her staff could share, for example, tables of contents when a journal about a specific topic becomes available.

In advising her supervisor about why the library should spend money on certain resources and expensive subscriptions, Karen told her “If you want to justify the expense, we’re going to need to work on some knowledge management. … She bought into it … because she’s more of a user of that information herself and she gets the … technical side of things.”

Karen later stated that she would like to welcome all new employees with an offer of resources pertinent to their interests and roles at IDOT.

Karen said she would share a KM guidebook with other offices to explain what KM could do for them and what strategies could be used. “[L]look at this guidebook and tell us how we can help you.”

KM Metrics

Karen keeps track of what requests are made, the responsive research, and whether the requests for information have been answered successfully.

Business Value from KM

When the library was organizationally situated in the business services office, Karen had difficulty conveying the importance of expenditures for certain types of resources and subscriptions. However, her supervisor in the Bureau of Research, an engineer with different experience than her previous supervisor in business services, understands the importance of the resources Karen procures and makes available to staff. Karen said that there is an understanding of the value of library resources, of knowing the needs of particular staff, and of connecting pertinent resources to employees who could benefit from certain resources.

Organizational Culture and KM

Due to the placement of the library in the Bureau of Research, Karen feels her work is better understood than when the library was housed in the business services office. The Bureau of Research is connected to engineering and is supervised by an engineer.

IDOT does not collect standard operating procedures (SOPs), best practices, or lessons learned. Karen pointed out that there are offices that do keep track of such information themselves, and she mentioned the bridge office. The bridge office uses the library more than any other and it maintains its own list of resources. There are no groups formed under the KM umbrella for sharing information, such as a community of practice (CoP); however, the bridge office acts like a hub of information and sharing related to bridge work across the state. She said that this bridge office employee might have what could be considered a CoP.

Likewise, Karen thinks that exit interviews are conducted, but that information is not shared with her, whether this happens or what is done with any information. About information that could be gleaned from exit interviews, Karen observed, “Routinely we will hire new people, and they will … come to the library and you know say hello and I’ll sometimes chat with them and often they’re not given, or given very little, information from the person that they came to replace.” This would prevent those departing from “walking out the door with that knowledge.” Karen does not receive notice when employees leave unless they retire.

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

Karen has relationships across IDOT’s functions, but these do not include any work related to training, development, or succession planning. She did not mention a partnership with Human Resources or Workforce Development involving future KM activities. Karen is interested in forming groups similar to communities of practice (CoPs) across areas of staff expertise.

The Future

Discussion about the future mainly revolved around what Karen will be able to accomplish when the two additional FTEs arrive. She is still trying to get back to where she was with KM before years of relocations (due to the construction of a new building) and a personal matter that kept her from working at full capacity.

Details

Disruptions have and continue to slow down IDOT’s KM program. Karen described various office moves, which will, in two years, culminate in the consolidation of many IDOT office locations into one new building. This will not involve digitizing the library’s collection, although there are resources that are digitized. Karen has also been compelled to take leave for personal reasons so that a reduced staff was covering for her as well as completing their own tasks. These disruptions have affected Karen’s KM work over the past few years.

Karen was enthusiastic about the idea of “hitting the restart button and really taking a good look at what I’m sure are things I don’t know about.” Around the conversation that discussed creating a KM guidebook, Karen mentioned wanting information about or wanting to work on:

• CoPs across practice areas, such as engineers meeting with lawyers; or air quality meeting with environmental staff;
• Topical information meetings;
• Exit interviews and transferring that knowledge to new replacement employees, such as information about mandated reporting.

Karen commented, “I feel like the left hand and right hand don’t always get together.”

She does not need information about attracting leadership buy-in, but she is not aware about the executive level.

Background of Interviewee

Karen Waters is the Technical Reference Librarian, and her position is in the Bureau of Research. She has a master’s degree in library science and she has worked for IDOT since 2007. For most of her tenure, she has been the only librarian and the only employee working to build a KM program.

In 2007, Karen’s work as the librarian began in the business services office, where her supervisor was responsible for records management. When the Bureau of Research, which is in an engineering office, was created, Karen’s position was shifted there. This was about five years ago. While the business

services supervisor was indifferent to KM, she found that engineers are interested in research and access to information. Karen reports to someone who is trained as an engineer.

Next Steps

In the next year, Karen expects to fill the unfilled position in the library and to hire two FTEs for the newly created positions. When the new hires arrive, Karen will make sure to use the “honeymoon period where we probably are going to be saying, ‘hey, there’s these new positions and here is how they can help.’” She added that this could coincide with making the KM guidebook available to others at IDOT.

A3.8 Iowa Department of Transportation

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Summary

The Iowa Department of Transportation (Iowa DOT) does not have a KM program. There may be KM activities ongoing in some business units, but these are not monitored, kept track of, or coordinated at the agency level. The agency does conduct some KM activities, such as a leadership master class, a new program to educate new managers about everyday tools, and training and development.

The governor of Iowa is consolidating within a new agency, called the Department of Management (DOM), common functions that are traditionally housed within each agency, such as IT. It is possible that DOM will soon include Human Resources (HR) for the entire state government.

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Iowa DOT does not have a KM program. Lori mentioned and described some KM activities, which include:

• A leadership master class – This class is comparable to the White House Fellows program. Participants learn about executive leadership.
• A program in development for existing managers – This program, currently being planned, “will help give the tools to existing managers” to deal with “everyday fires and actual management, not just being a leader and servant leadership, but actual tactical tools.”
• Training for new supervisors and “emerging leaders” – This is an eight-month program with classes and mentoring.
• Lunch and learn “power hours” – “This might be a knowledge management piece where we invite a subject matter expert.” These include operational topics, such as eticketing and rest area design, or personal issues, such as wellness or financial well-being.
• After-action debriefings – These occur following emergency situations, such as floods and blizzards. Lori said, “I’m sure that gets documented somewhere.”
• “Supervisor success guides” – These are one- or two-page fact sheets with best practices and steps, with include quotes from managers and employees. A success guide “gives somebody a process to follow or something to a resource to lean on, but enough latitude to make it personal to them.”

Although Lori is involved in training and development, this is not related to knowledge capture from those retiring, succession planning, or preparing the agency for the future. She explained that it is “really kind of an ad hoc thing that happens within each business unit in whatever way that works for them.”

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

Iowa DOT does not have a KM program or staff designated to coordinating, planning or implementing such an initiative.

A training staff member has consulted Lori about training for all employees on such things as “soft skills,” which would require 10 hours training of their choice beyond compliance training or “the tactical pieces of training that help them do their job right.”

Lori spoke briefly of challenges that KM could address. She described these in the form of questions:

• What’s new and like what should we stop doing?
• What should we start doing and so that taking assessment in stock of what are we doing now?
• What do we see in the future and how can we prepare, prepare ourselves?
• Who needs to go get what knowledge?
• What education and training to be prepared for the future so little bit about I look back and a look ahead.

Her response about her role in addressing these challenges was “I cannot personally answer because that would be sort of ad hoc capturing that’s happening and … we have 250 managers, 250 plus managers. So, there’s about that many business units. So, I don’t know how you would harness all of that and capture it …”

Lori seemed skeptical about documenting practices due to a concern of rigidity and preventing needed evolution.

KM Metrics

There are no current metrics in place to measure KM at Iowa DOT.

Business Value from KM

Lori sees the value of KM in passing on legacy knowledge of experienced employees who will soon be retiring, but with “room for change.” She also noted that KM is valuable for enabling preparation for the future in terms of knowledge, education, and finding out about what is new. However, IOWA DOT is not running such a program.

Lori pointed out that Iowa DOT will be losing institutional knowledge with the coming wave of retirements, but she is not certain that everyone sees the urgency of this situation.

Organizational Culture and KM

Lori explained that Iowa DOT is not good at sharing because of the silos. However, she said that there is some collaboration. She teleworks and she is not part of a team.

She said, “nobody wants to use the word engagement, and they’re very allergic to the word gallop.” Gallop was a program that was used for years. (Details were not discussed during the interview.)

Lori also pointed out that no one uses the term KM even though there is a lot of training carried out at Iowa DOT.

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

Lori does not partner with other offices for KM activities or planning.

The Future

The governor of Iowa is consolidating within a new agency, called the DOM, units that are common to multiple agencies, but are traditionally housed within each agency, such as IT. Lori said that DOM might soon include Human Resources (HR) for the entire state government.

Lori is unaware of what the future of KM is at Iowa DOT. She suggested speaking with another staff member.

Details

Lori suggested that a KM guidebook should include advice and options for:

• KM definition (Lori said staff might be doing it and don’t realize it.)

• Where do we begin? (Alternatives and a “roadmap to how to even get started”)
• Who’s in charge? (With alternatives offered because this is not one size fits all)
• Ways to organize
• Where could KM sit?
• Best practices
• What does KM success look like?
• KM resources that already exist
• Documenting practices
• Examples of KM, such as power hours, knowledge cafes, supervisor success guides, mentoring and internship programs

Lori elaborated that examples are important so that KM does not seem “insurmountable.” She remarked that internship programs can be considered part of KM because interns share knowledge about new developments, particularly involving technological advances.

When discussing the consolidation of agency functions into DOM, Lori noted that Iowa DOT’s IT unit and the engagement program had already been moved to DOM. She raised the possibility that KM for all Iowa agencies could likewise be placed in DOM and that a KM guidebook could be written for such an agency.

Lori added that the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has already been moved out of Iowa DOT, although she did not say where the DMV is now situated. She noted that the agency once had somewhere in the range of 6 or 7000 employees and it is now down to about 2500.

Although business units are beginning to recognize the high rate of retirements, Lori said that some are “starting to ask those folks that they know retirement is on the horizon to document their work processes and … leave a blueprint.” Lori is aware that some business units create binders with information about processes and contacts.

In terms of retirements, Lori noted the example of a recent program she did where there was represented among the 28 participants “454 years of collective service.” “One of them has 50 years …, but many of them had 20, 25, 28.”

When asked where KM should be situated at Iowa DOT, Lori responded that it should be placed under the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in a business unit called Organizational Improvement. “Training and development do not reside there, so I feel like organizational improvement is [one of] those bigger picture performance management; that’s where all that lives. And so, it’s those higher-level agency-wide initiatives or concepts or strategic thinking that goes on.”

Lori explained that the training and development would not be a good fit because these are not currently centralized, though there is an effort happening to place these together.

Background of Interviewee

Lori works as the Chief Talent Officer in Administrative Services. She has been in Human Resources (HR) since 2011 before she was reassigned to Administrative Services (an office with authority over HR). She previously managed an internship program, which, over her tenure, hired more than 1000 students.

Lori plans, creates, and implements agency-wide training and development programs. This is distinct from safety training and certifications, which HR is responsible for. (Professional certifications are separate and handled personally by employees.)

Lori is currently a non-voting member of the AASHTO KM Committee. Jenny Veal is the voting member, but that distinction will soon switch back to Lori. She did not attend the last AASHTO conference. At conferences, she tends to gravitate toward HR topics.

Next Steps

No next steps are planned.

A3.9 Kentucky Transportation Cabinet

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Summary

The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) has developed a comprehensive information portal for knowledge articles. Soon there will be 100 articles. Resuscitating a lessons learned database is proposed as the next project. The KYTC KM program is run by Jarrod Stanley, who has a background in KYTC operations.

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

KYTC began its KM program about six years ago with leftover funding requested to be used for KM from a Federal Highways Administration (FHWA) project. There is currently no staff other than Jarrod assigned to KM. Approximately 10-15 percent of Jarrod’s time is spent on KM.

Jarrod described the pipeline from research projects to creation of “knowledge articles,” to posting in the repository of the “knowledge portal.” The about 60 completed knowledge articles cover many topics, including business processes, job functions, and technical matters. Another 40 or so articles are not yet finished. Jarrod has had to “rush” to put some of these together for knowledge capture. Jarrod explained, “We have a lot of articles just on job functions and what’s to be expected of you if you were in that particular function and then we have a lot of different technical things as well. We had to rush to put it together because we had a lot of folks that were all leaving at the same time.”

The knowledge portal is located at https://kp.uky.edu/directory/, which uses WordPress. During the interview, Jarrod gave a tour of KYTC’s KM web portal, which is housed at the University of Kentucky Transportation Center (KTC). The portal is available to everyone, not just KYTC or KTC staff. It can be viewed on different types of devices. (The KTC mostly performs work for KYTC.)

Jarrod showed how the web portal search feature functions and how articles are listed. He described the articles as comprehensive, and he noted that there is a wealth of articles listed on a broad range of topics.

Jarrod also discussed the preparation of lessons learned following disaster situations and he added “Right now we’re working on a disaster relief articles that outline the FEMA process and the FHWA, ER Emergency response relief to so that folks better understand that.”

Financial sustainability for KYTC’s KM activities is not a problem. Jarrod said that once the initial FHWA seed money was used, KYTC has “funded it the last two rounds with state money.”

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

Jarrod offered a vision of KM with the web portal as the focus.

Jarrod hopes to include topics covered in technical manuals in knowledge articles so that the web portal will ultimately replace those manuals. Some staff are not in favor of dividing up the manuals in this way; however, Jarrod is seeing how young people are accustomed to quickly finding information online and not in long manuals. He said that “the days of handing somebody 150-page manual and expecting them to read it are over,” and that younger staff need graphics, charts and other visual images. He predicts that 15 years from now, many topics will be covered in or embedded with videos and other “bite-size” pieces. He said, “I think … 15 years from now, it’s probably gonna look totally different.”

Jarrod also sees another purpose in KM: “Knowledge management allows you that opportunity to not only think about where you fit into an organization and how you can support it, but also the ability to learn what everybody else does and have that there for the next person that walks through the door.”

When asked about inhibitors that prevent the KM program from growing faster, Jarrod pointed out that money is always an issue.

KM Metrics

The hits to the web portal and the knowledge articles are kept track of. Jarrod mentioned both total hits and tracking of popular articles.

Jarrod said there are no other metrics in place, other than anecdotal, to measure the use or value of knowledge articles. He did note that he has received some anecdotal responses. “All the feedback that we’ve had is either folks just reading it and saying I really liked it, it really helped or hey, this is not exactly how this works and or we we’ve changed our policy and shifted this function here.”

Business Value from KM

Jarrod wishes that KYTC had begun its KM program 10 years earlier because many senior employees left, and their knowledge walked out the door. He noted that some retired employees return as paid consultants.

One instance stood out that demonstrates that KYTC staff see the value of KM, even if that value has not been quantified. “[W]e were capturing the core competencies of a particular division. After we were finished, the division director just started in that in that position and he said, you know what, I wish that I’d had this opportunity before I started a few months ago to have either this, this document or go through this process.”

Jarrod added that KM “allows you that opportunity to not only think about where you fit in organization and how you can support it, but also the ability to learn what everybody else does and have … that there for the next person that walks through the door.”

Organizational Culture and KM

Jarrod believes that KM is successful at KYTC because he is “part of the operation.” He added that “it’s much more palatable to them to have me ask or volunteer to work on something for them versus someone at human resources; that would I think that would be a huge roadblock for us.”

Jarrod observed that most staff volunteer to share information; information hoarding is not a problem.

Jarrod’s work with research, development, innovation, and implementation means that he gets to know about all the different aspects of KYTC’s work. He said that he is well known at KYTC if anyone needs anything.

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

Jarrod said that he has a relationship with the leadership that has helped KM. He also explained that he knows many people at KYTC from his 24 years as an employee and having served in operational roles. “I do know every, everybody. That’s what a lot of people say is, you know everybody. It’s well, I have to because … I have to know what’s going on in the Cabinet [KYTC] in order to have an effective research program.”

The Future

Jarrod would like to grow the number of knowledge articles. Jarrod said that KM metrics might be created in the future for the knowledge articles.

Work had stopped on a lessons-learned database for highway design and construction. A retired employee previously had responsibility for this, but they were followed by staff who cycled through, which caused this resource to languish. That is a project that Jarrod wants to resuscitate. He said that work has not started on this yet. (This is also included in “Next Steps.”)

Details

Jarrod found the question of where to place KM in a state department of transportation “tricky” because that depends on the organizational structure of an agency. He suggested that it could sit in HR for employee retention work. On the other hand, he is talking to staff about research, products, and policy creation, revamping, and revisiting. “I’m talking to all these people anyway, about different innovations and research projects and the, you know, products and policies and things that they might want to revamp or revise or create. So, I think I think it’s in a good position for us where it is of course the, the other thing that the other advantage that I have is that I’m in contact with a lot of our cabinet leadership.”

Jarrod stated that his relationship with KYTC leadership, which helps with prioritization, prevents KM from getting “buried.”

Jarrod noted that prior to the KM program, there were no formal KM activities, but he did know of at least one informal group that operated like a community of practice (CoP). “Fifteen years ago, up through you know up till I don’t know eight years ago or something like that there was a group that was in our highway design division, and they met with the district design folks, and they had a group called High Dug, which is Highway Users Group. And what they did is they just kind of had a conference call where they discussed you know issues with microstation or issues that were coming up with design. … I think those functions did exist. Were they part of our core mission? No. Were they part of somebody’s job description? No, but some of those were taking place. It just wasn’t very formal.”

Jarrod has a unique role among KM staff we have interviewed in that he also does work related to the legislature. He did not know of any use by legislators or their employees of the knowledge articles.

Jarrod expects that the next research projects will involve environmental documents, highway design, and maintenance, among others. “We’re trying to focus on helping our people and our maintenance facilities understand what they do versus what they have been told they’re supposed to do, and then … we have a field operations guide that basically outlines … all the different functions of a maintenance facility.”

However, Jarrod said that maintenance must prioritize because of their slim budget. One also cannot schedule such roadway maintenance activities as removing debris, clearing the road after a crash, or cleaning up fallen trees.

Jarrod would like to have a KM guidebook cover:

• KM and HR,
• Financial resources to grow KM,
• Importance of KM,
• Importance of taking the time to engage in KM,
• KM tools,
• KM metrics (because “engineers … love and value numbers”), and
• Case studies.

Talking about the creation and maintenance of the web portal, Jarrod explained that the KTC is not a government entity, which means that the portal was not developed with government IT. The portal is therefore not “boxed into one solution.” Jarrod did not want to be boxed in. University of Kentucky staff worked on the portal. But Jarrod pointed out that “all the technical writers are part of the staff over at the University of Kentucky and some of them used to work for us. [M]atter of fact, a lot of them used to work for us.” Jarrod observed that the wealth of experience of KTC staff with KYTC work was helpful.

Background of Interviewee

Jarrod has been with KYTC for 24 years. He has worked in roles related to construction, maintenance, and highway safety. About seven years ago, he said, “I was asked to … come up and be part of the state Highway engineer’s office.” Jarrod is currently serving in the state Highway Engineers office, and he works for a deputy state highway engineer.

Jarrod said that his “main function is really our research and implementation and innovation programs.” He transitioned into this role slowly because his management wanted research to lead to implementation. He was the initial project manager when the FHWA funding was used to seed KM.

Jarrod spends 10-15 percent of his time on KM projects. The largest portions of his time are devoted to research, development, and innovation. He also heads up the work on the operational plan and is involved with legislative work when the state legislature is in session.

Jarrod is a member of the AASHTO KM Committee.

Next Steps

A next step for KYTC will be resuscitating the highway construction database with “lessons learned.”

Jarrod is also working to complete 40 or so knowledge articles because there is interest in those. These involve disaster relief (discussed above in “Size and Scope of the KM Function”).

A3.10 Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (LaDOTD) does not have a KM staff, office, or any employee with a KM title. These functions mostly rest in Human Resources (HR), but others are located in the compliance unit, Mr. Johnson said. He added that there is also a Technology Transfer

and Education Center (TTECH) located on LSU’s campus and they do a lot of the training in terms of a structured training for the Engineering Directorate.

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

The KM work at LaDOTD has started and stopped, rather than being part of a continuous, sustained program. Mr. Johnson stated that retirements, with their ramifications for retaining knowledge of standard operating procedures (SOPs), and issues with continuity and compliance, have motivated KM efforts.

Mr. Johnson would like to break down silos for KM so that LaDOTD will be able to work across offices to centralize procedures for retirements, onboarding, and training. He would also like to utilize QCIP (Quality and Continuous Improvement Program) as a mediator among offices and as a repository for reports to improve coordination between HR and TTECH.

Mr. Johnson pointed out that he will need the support of leadership, and a new secretary will be appointed soon after the governor is sworn in in January 2024. Mr. Johnson believes that the best argument for KM will be to put it in terms of creating efficiencies, particularly with regard to filling vacancies and increasing employee retention. Employee retention, he said, is a “burning issue.”

Mr. Johnson described the successes already in the budget and finance office with reducing turnaround times on budget requests and employing a scorecard system with milestones.

KM Metrics

One metric that Mr. Johnson mentioned is the value of increasing employee retention from three to five years.

Mr. Johnson is very familiar with measures utilized for budget and finance, but he did not know what performance measures other offices are using. He very much supports the determining and utilizing of performance measures. He cited the example of significantly reducing turnaround times for budget requests with a budget request portal and a scorecard system with milestone targets.

Business Value from KM

The savings realized from increasing efficiency by filling vacancies and increasing employee retention may provide the business case to establish buy-in for KM efforts. He pointed to the value of the budget request portal, which has greatly reduced the time needed to resolve budget requests.

Mr. Johnson talked about staff loss as an important issue. For example, a financial system implemented at Louisiana state agencies. LaDOTD staff were the first to use and to become experienced with the new system; but their expertise was lost when many left to work at other agencies. Likewise, engineers are lost to the private sector.

Mr. Johnson said that under a previous governor, strategies employed to reduce deficits were the use of time-saving practices, innovative procurement tactics, and consolidating districts.

Organizational Culture and KM

Mr. Johnson observed that the language of KM is an obstacle because it is unfamiliar, and it sounds academic. He noted that simple terminology is more effective.

Uncertainty for the future of KM and the organizational culture of LaDOTD looms because a new governor is being sworn in during January 2024, which will also mean a new secretary for LaDOTD. It is unknown what the new secretary’s priorities will be. Mr. Johnson plans to raise the issue of KM.

In terms of the future incoming leadership after the new governor is sworn in, he said that efficiency is an issue that speaks to every administration. He mentioned that to increase employee retention training, respect and engagement are important. Mr. Johnson said that LaDOTD loses staff to other state agencies. Improving SOPs will not be enough; he believes that explaining the “why” with staff is critical.

He also said that there had been a team in place under a previous governor to reduce deficits at LaDOTD (employing strategies such as time-saving practices, innovative procurement tactics, and consolidating districts), and that this team still exists. He did not know how the team is currently being used.

LaDOTD has decentralized records management, but Mr. Johnson said that may be changing with FileNet, which staff are learning. There is a “taxonomy of documents” for looking up information.

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

Customer Advocates and Advisors (CAAs) work in different offices, enabling them to understand the business and technology needs across LaDODT and to instruct staff about standards, SOPs, and the rationales for them. Mr. Johnson would like to use the CAAs to improve KM and to reduce the silos.

The Future

Mr. Johnson would like to see a KM lead in each area, including engineering, planning, multimodal, commerce, and aviation. He thinks that it would be valuable as well to have scripts for particular tasks.

Regarding where KM should be housed at LaDOTD, Mr. Johnson would prefer to situate such a staff in the Office of the Secretary because there would be a direct relationship with the secretary.

KM, he observed, is “not very high on the totem pole in terms of if they have a specialized person or individual related to KM, they’re not necessarily high up in the hierarchy, but they could be if we if we related more to greater efficiencies.”

Background of Interviewee

Mr. Johnson’s career background and tenure at LaDOTD were not discussed. He was appointed by the Secretary to serve as Undersecretary. He was not knowledgeable about KM prior to serving on the AASHTO KM Committee.

Next Steps

Mr. Johnson expects to be informing new leadership soon about LaDOTD functions and operations. He would like to put together a plan for milestones for the next six months, with metrics for efficiencies, so that a track record beginning with “small wins” can be established. Mr. Johnson noted that cutting out duplication is one example.

A3.11 Maine Department of Transportation

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Summary

The Maine Department of Transportation (MaineDOT) does not have a KM program; rather it conducts some disparate KM activities that are not coordinated or planned together. If any other KM tasks or programs are being undertaken, it is not under a KM umbrella or done with the awareness of the Director of Human Resources (HR).

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Beth Getchell, the Director of HR, stated that MaineDOT does “not have a formal knowledge management anything. We are just starting to scratch the surface of this whole endeavor.” She bluntly answered a question about MaineDOT’s KM practices, policies and procedures saying that there are none.

Beth said that MaineDOT’s KM activities consist of informal mentoring that is not coordinated as a program and may or may not be happening throughout the department. Other activities that could be seen as KM, but are not considered in that light, include:

• A robust training program run by the HR division, which Beth did not describe as a KM initiative until she listed the programs that she oversees;
• The Commissioner’s weekly meetings with the “core team” (the core team consists of the heads of the department’s bureaus); and
• Records retention schedule and protocols.

Beth does not oversee these other activities; she only has responsibility for training. Beth indicated that there are no communities of practice (CoPs) at MaineDOT.

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

There is no KM mission or vision at MaineDOT. Beth seemed to lay out a vision with her question of how future leaders will capture the “historical knowledge of the current existing management teams.” She considers KM to be “difficult” due to a lack of “historical data.”

KM Metrics

No KM metrics were discussed during the interview. If metrics are being used for the training program, they are not tied to a broader KM initiative or thought of as KM.

Business Value from KM

Beth considered the lack of knowledge of KM’s value to MaineDOT to be an obstacle to a KM program. The value of capturing knowledge with many staff expected to retire in the next five years has not been quantified or been an inducement to create an initiative, to formalize KM practices, or to add new ones.

Organizational Culture and KM

Beth explained that MaineDOT leadership lacks knowledge of KM, of the definition of KM, of the goal of KM, or of KM objectives.

The culture of MaineDOT has not lent itself to KM, at least in terms of a program led by HR. Beth offered the example of a formal mentoring program that existed about 10 years ago, but which was not maintained. She described the current informal mentoring as “the leaders in the department, they are watching for shining stars and when they identify one, they kind of bring them into the fold for the informal mentorship.”

Upcoming retirements have not been recognized as a KM issue.

Beth said that the change in administration, coming in two years, could be a potential accelerator or inhibitor of KM.

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

Beth said the training program includes those that are mandatory, and others advised for anyone interested in certain types of promotions. She explained that maintenance is the primary training-focused field, and that she is trying to branch out beyond maintenance. No other partnerships were mentioned. Beth noted that consultants conduct safety training.

Beth did not consider the partnerships necessary for records retention, core team meetings, or informal mentorships – none of which are run by HR – as part of a KM program, though she recognized the mentorships as a type of KM activity.

The Future

Beth does not have any plans in place for adding KM activities or making KM a formal program. She is still trying to develop an idea of what exactly KM would look like at MaineDOT.

Details

Beth’s wish list of KM activities that she would like to see at MaineDOT are:

• Job sharing, or shadowing, as a type of training for spreading institutional knowledge; and
• A formal mentorship initiative.

In Beth’s opinion, a good KM structure would be a type of hub-and-spoke model with a centralized component and decentralized KM leads throughout a DOT, which she called a “hybrid.” However, she sees KM as requiring a presence in all statewide bureaus, not just in one KM leadership office. She does not believe that HR is the best home for KM.

Beth explained the MaineDOT organizational structure. “We have the Bureau of Planning, Bureau of Finance and Admin, Bureau of Project Development, and Bureau of Maintenance and Operations, which are hybrid. Decision-making comes out of headquarters, and then it goes out to our regions. … We have five geographic regions predominantly for maintenance and operations. However, in each of those five regions, there’s also project development staff who run the regional programs and contracting.”

Beth would like the following topics to be covered in a KM guidebook:

• KM definition;
• How to sell KM to leadership; and
• How to engage department staff in KM, particularly those who do not care.

She also indicated her agreement to include case studies, and information about return on investment (ROI), where to start with a KM program, and a KM resource list.

Beth explained that MaineDOT’s maintenance training requires the completion of a pass/fail test. Passing is necessary for ascending the career ladder and she would like to expand this system to career paths beyond maintenance.

Background of Interviewee

Beth is the Director of HR, a role she has held for four years. She also serves on the AASHTO KM Committee with her assistant, who is “brand new.”

As HR director, Beth has responsibility for:

• Recruitment,
• Labor relations,
• Payroll,
• Safety,
• Training, and
• Wellness.

She suggested that she has insufficient staff to add KM activities.

Next Steps

Beth said that there were no next steps planned for KM.

A3.12 Maryland Department of Transportation

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Also participating in the interview was Hua Xiang, Deputy Director Policy and Research, who oversees MDOT’s KM efforts and who supervises the Information and Knowledge Management Office.

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

The Information and Knowledge Management Office at the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) consists of an Information and Knowledge Management Officer (Mr. Lokey), two full-time employees and an intern. The Deputy Administrator of Administration & Director of Policy and Research (Ms. Hua Xiang) oversees the office and she is involved in its direction and activities. Interest in KM at MDOT dates back to 2006, with efforts becoming active again in 2019 with a sharing-essential-knowledge project.

A steering committee was formed in 2021 and participating on the committee are the Deputy Director (Ms. Xiang), the heads of MDOT administrations (such as the State Highway Administration), and experts from across the DOT, including staff from human resources, asset management, and IT.

The steering committee has identified KM priorities and it is collaborating with the Information and Knowledge Management staff to fulfill the needs of MDOT. These priorities are:

• Records management,
• Records disposal, and
• Transfer of records and storage.

KM staff are specific about goals to meet so that these critical concerns are addressed.

In terms of the history of KM initiatives at MDOT, Mr. Lokey stated that KM activities began in 2006 with small working groups and activity restarted in 2016, and gained in 2019 with SEEK, which is an acronym for something close to Sharing Essential Knowledge (he was uncertain about what the other “E” stands for). In 2009, a staff member was given responsibility for performance measurement; but be retired in 2016. Mr. Lokey became involved as the Public Information Act (PIA) representative for the entire organization in 2018. He and Ms. Xiag assumed their current positions approximately two years ago.

Currently, beyond the three staff positions - plus the intern - Mr. Lokey does not have a KM budget for increasing KM throughout MDOT’s offices. KM’s commitment and participation remain voluntary. Mr. Lokey’s office has nonetheless succeeded in engaging voluntary KM-related liaisons from different offices around such topics as records management and PIA adherence.

To introduce MDOT staff to KM, Mr. Lokey has written and distributed three introductory KM articles; he has engaged in marketing and outreach; and provides training and education about the organizational chart and directory because this is not easy to use. He is available for working groups that form within MDOT. These include the Northbound working group, which addresses challenges with which the agency is struggling, and the records management working group.

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

The KM vision is for a KM program that will be built upon successes from small projects to larger KM projects, demonstrating increasing success in terms of the value of KM to MDOT as well as increasing demand from within the department. Mr. Lokey envisions KM as a way to break down silos within MDOT. KM at MDOT is focused on information management, with initiatives relating to records retention,

maintenance of organizational charts, creation and maintenance of standard operating procedures (SOPs) and lists of acronyms, buzzwords and lingo.

Mr. Lokey would like to add staff who can take over some of the routine tasks that he is performing. He mentioned such tasks as maintaining the organizational charts to “continuously update at the Intranet site change when a person exits” and “having a central person in every office that could manage the Intranet site.” There are also informational silos at MDOT, with permissions required to access the information of other offices. Some staff have reached out to Mr. Lokey when working on their sites to change this situation.

Mr. Lokey would also like a guidebook that will offer advice on ways to move forward with KM.

KM Metrics

The KM effort at MDOT is still in its beginning stages. Although needs have been identified, there is not yet a high level of awareness of and commitment to KM across the department. He and Ms. Xiang pointed out the importance of achieving success with small projects in order to convince others to become involved with KM activities.

In response to the question of what success would look like and how to identify it, Mr. Lokey noted a few different ways that he would be satisfied that KM is progressing well at MDOT.

Tasks mentioned that could be measured were:

1. Increasing the number of offices performing records retention work,
2. Collaborating with different offices regarding standard operating procedures (SOPs), and
3. Determining how to express increases in flexibility and efficiency through tracking, showing cash flows, or otherwise specifically showing how KM benefits MDOT.

Expressing KM’s value through performance measures is of prime concern to the KM staff leaders. The first goal is to achieve small successes and then build upon those. The assumption is that success will attract demand and support for greater commitment to KM. Mr. Lokey would like to see continuous, rather than one-time, measurement and tracking of KM activities and results.

Business Value from KM

Mr. Lokey observed that establishing the business value of KM to MDOT’s different administration is particularly important. There have been some KM accomplishments involving:

• Reduced knowledge loss with retirements,
• Reformatting SOPs to make them more accessible,
• Breaking down silos among offices, and
• Increased access to information.

Organizational Culture and KM

The organizational culture of MDOT has not been one of sharing and information access. According to Mr. Lokey, “Some of those permissions are locked up tight, so when you try to go to another office’s documents, you don’t have access to what should be readily available.”

KM efforts are voluntary rather than mandated. Mr. Lokey is attempting to take opportunities as they arise to work with different offices to embed KM and advance it, such as the revamping of websites and managing records. He must be careful not to duplicate the work of another office. Instead of a mandated KM set of directives, Mr. Lokey is finding and looking for initiatives that relate to KM or new offices that are just establishing themselves as prime opportunities for KM projects and embedding KM practices at MDOT.

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

Mr. Lokey is careful to avoid duplicating or performing work assigned to other offices. For example, he has been directed not to duplicate functions of the HR office because “resources are available on the Office of Administration site and they have a large workforce that recruits and is responsible for onboarding”

Partnerships are voluntary and seven offices are refining their SOPs. Mr. Lokey is collaborating with SOP liaisons and liaisons for records management from different offices. It is Mr. Lokey’s responsibility to find opportunities and to make his availability for KM support known and available to offices as they embark on work with KM elements.

The Future

Mr. Lokey sees the new gubernatorial administration staff at MDOT to be supportive of advancing KM. (The new was sworn in on January 18, 2023.) The ports, motor vehicles, transit, and other modal administrations have hired staff to perform KM functions. The coming wave of 40 percent of the workforce becoming eligible for retirement within the next five years is a big incentive to focus on KM. Much still seems uncertain due to the relatively recent change in leadership with a new gubernatorial administration.

Mr. Lokey also thinks that the work on SOPs, reformatting them and making them easier to access, will require continuous effort.

Mr. Lokey would like every office to have a KM staff person. He believes that this would significantly advance KM efforts at MDOT.

Background of Interviewee

Mr. Lokey is the Information and Knowledge Management Officer. He joined the Information and Knowledge Management team at MDOT in 2022. He has been working in different roles at the state level in Maryland for a long time, including at the state legislature. He has experience with records management going back to 2018.

Mr. Lokey currently reports to the Deputy Administrator of Administration & Director of Policy and Research, who is Ms. Xiang, and she also participated in this interview. Ms. Xiang has been in her position for two years and she has been employed at MDOT for 18 years.

Next Steps

Mr. Lokey’s immediate plans are primarily focused on convening working groups and ensuring that MDOT has uniform access to KM-supportive technology. He plans to continue working with the records management working group. Mr. Lokey is available to provide support for additional working groups. Mr. Lokey would like to do some smaller projects that demonstrate KM’s value, such as “capturing new lingo’” and housing this resource on the KM site. He would like to maintain the organizational charts so that this accurately reflects the structure of each office and who is serving in each role.

Some offices have reached out to Mr. Lokey for help with updating their intranet sites. He would like to see a KM intranet site built and to see consistent internet sites for every office. IT, he said, has done a great job of migrating information into a new format, but he would like to see “consistency for access to what should be readily available.”

Mr. Lokey looks forward to working with those offices that have reached out to him.

A3.13 Michigan Department of Transportation

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Summary

• Aaron got involved in KM several years ago. He was “voluntold.”
• Spends maybe 10-20% of his time on KM (including his work as chair of AASHTO CKM).
• Workforce retirement was a significant driving factor behind the creation of the KM activities. The DOT crunched the numbers and found 40% eligible to walk out the door; another 40% were considered flight risks.
• He gives the effort so far a B-/C+.

• The biggest success is the Communities of Learning.
• Good support from executives.

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

The function was started in 2018/9, before COVID. Aaron’s department wanted to build a new workforce and succession planning system. The system had many different components, and one of them was knowledge management.

Aaron was asked to be on a “transition team” that would work with a consultant and lead the charge for the organization into knowledge management (currently still have KM person on retainer, although Aaron has not worked with her lately). To date, nothing has been formalized. Several other KM people (about 6) from across the organization and at different levels are involved in the KM effort—no real division of labor or organizing principles. The group would meet in person for some half-day or all-day sessions.

Regarding who was doing KM well (success stories), Aaron felt his department was doing well. There are also Alignment Teams, which are, in essence, de facto communities of learning that are active. They have representation from across the department geared toward meeting and sharing, helping, and disseminating key information for each other to provide alignment.

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

The initial goal of the KM “transition team” was to research what knowledge management was and then slowly educate the workforce and get out some basic tools so people could start developing good KM habits. The key was for them to see the value of KM at their work level.

The KM team created a video (using “kinda” cartoon characters) to start the process. They made it intentionally a bit corny, but it was an effective way of introducing knowledge management to the department. This was followed by a series of posters, pamphlets, and weekly releases. Then COVID hit.

The three pillars of KM:

• P2P knowledge sharing and capture (mini desk manual for the KM practitioners)
• Communities of Learning
• Processes and information

Products developed based on the three pillars included:

• Mini desk manual for the KM practitioners (in essence, a “how to” guide about good KM practices)
• Project status fillable form
• Conference attendance key takeaways form
• Establishment of a formal mentoring program that was rolled out in the last year, and some effort has been put into that to ensure it succeeds
• Development of an overlap program to ensure the new employee can “apprentice” for a period to ease the transition

The key lesson learned from these product/service developments was that people do not like to fill out forms, so these were not big successes.

Michigan DOT has five guiding pillars:

1. Leadership standards of excellence
2. Roll assessment model
3. Talent review process
4. Knowledge management system
5. Employee life cycle

KM Metrics

There are no current metrics in place to measure KM. Aaron recognizes, “That is a weak area for sure.” He sees the importance of having metrics in place.

Business Value from KM

Aaron feels that there have been some successes – knowledge management is a term that is now used all the time. The most significant success is the Communities of Practice, locally called Communities of Learning (CoL). Groups of people in different specialty areas across the department come together from around the state. They meet regularly, focusing on sharing training and lessons learned and having good conversations. Largely self-organized. There could be as many as 20 of these throughout the organization. Typically, the platform used is MS Teams.

There is one CoL that has really taken off and probably has over 100 people involved. They meet numerous times a week and generate significant products. They have discussions that are recorded and then available to members. [We are getting the name of this CoL leader from Aaron to interview her]

The biggest roadblock to success is that people are too busy doing their regular work to do KM.

Organizational Culture and KM

Aaron thinks the right place for KM will be in the newly formed Office of Organizational Development. But where it is right now is OK.

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

A future KM function will need to work closely with Enterprise Information management, as they control systems and databases for all the platforms. Aaron recently asked them to get involved with the KM team, and they agreed, so the groundwork has been laid.

The Future

Aaron describes the effort as barely active, but there are good intentions of getting things rolling again and introducing new initiatives. There was a major in-person conference last winter, and Aaron solicited opinions from people about the most common KM practices around the country. The issue was discussed, and then people were allowed to vote on what they thought MDOT should focus on. [Aaron is going to provide us with the list].

The newly formed Office of Organizational Development will play a significant role in KM in the future. Ultimately, it will be led by an executive-level person, and KM is an area they will focus on (will create a KM lead). This is where funding for KM efforts will come from. Previously, the money had just come from executives who established KM initiatives. Aaron’s transition team would go away, and a team would be built with resources dedicated to KM supplemented by volunteers/voluntolds. [It is clear a lot of the logistics of people and responsibilities need to be hashed out.]

Aaron would like to see:

1. More KM events that are MDOT-wide are designed to promote knowledge management and build on the existing momentum, principally in the CoL area.
2. Knowledge Cafes are one area (they are held monthly now).
3. Exit interviews to find better ways to support work areas when a key person leaves. Or short of an exit interview, even a nice packet to help the department transition to new staff.
4. Lessons learned are conducted similarly to how the Army does it, right down to having a CALL Center (Center for Army Lessons Learned). Aaron realizes this is a big ask.

Background of Interviewee

Aaron is an engineer for the Michigan Department of Transportation (he is one of seven across the DOT; his region is the Superior Region). Aaron was promoted to this role in 2016. His previous Michigan DOT posts include Superior Region operations engineer, TSC manager, TSC traffic and safety engineer, maintenance engineer with the Brighton TSC, and bridge design engineer in the agency’s design division.

Johnson is a graduate of Michigan Technological University and served as an officer in the US Army. He has more than 20 years with MDOT.

Next Steps

1. Reach out to the person who has the model CoL.
2. Get the identified ten priorities from Aaron.

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

This was the second interview with a staff member of the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT). An earlier interview was conducted with Aaron Johnson.

Summary

The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) Knowledge Management System (KMS) is one of the five “pillars” of the agency. Jan Karttunen, the Statewide Project Management Specialist, whose position is in the Office of Organizational Development, spends approximately one-third of her time on KM activities. The focus of KM at MDOT is the active fostering of Cools’ KM also includes webinars, an archive of recorded events, and hubs for resources and collaboration. The ethos of MDOT’s KM program is that it should be relevant and useful.

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Jan described the Office of Organizational Development (OOD) as the “champions” of KMS and its facilitators, but she also said that KMS “in our organization is everywhere.” MDOT adopted the five pillars in 2019 (see below in Details); KMS is one of the five.

When Jan began in 2018, “I started out on the group … [to] develop a manual, get some boot camp training out really kind of revamp our project management guidance, right. … [T]his concept of community learning came from at the time our Bureau director, who’s now our director, … and [he] kind of said, you know, ‘I’d like you to put together a group. We need a various level to bounce ideas off and you know, how could we collectively do this?’ My team, we have a group of six sponsors and myself as the chair. We have 13 core reps from various areas within those 19 that we represent.” The “19” that Jan referred to are “19 different areas throughout our department” that she supports. Jan further explained that KMS is housed within OOD, which is positioned under the Chief Cultural and Equity Inclusion Officer, who sits in an oversight branch connected to executive management.

The importance of KMS is shown by its inclusion in the five pillars and, as the above quote demonstrates, the leadership mandate to establish a KM program.

Jan spends approximately 30-35 percent of her time on KMS. She explained that she is not anyone’s supervisor and that she brings in KMS at any level that wants to take advantage of it. Jan said that KMS is both centralized and decentralized. She works in the central office and she “reach[es] out to the entire state,” to 530 employees, “plus their supervisors, all the way up to our director.” Jan said that she is “part of many teams.”

Jan mentioned the following activities as part of her KMS work:

• Communities of Learning (CoLs), which are the equivalent of communities of practice (CoPs);
• Meeting minutes from CoLs sent out “to their respective areas to keep them engaged as an opportunity for outreach;”
• Monitoring manuals and guidance documents for “on-demand self-supported learning” to make sure that they are current;
• Long-term growth of employees;
• Monthly peer-to-peer meetings on “wild card topics;”
• Archived recordings and slides from KMS meetings, all of which are virtual; and
• Internal webinars on a “jokers wild of topics.”

Jan observed that KMS internal MDOT-employee-only webinars are held “… whenever we need trained up on and facilitation toward a dust off of. Perhaps like for instance our contracting method; maybe that changed recently and we need to walk through from those experts on what changed, what do we watch for, what do we look for now kind of thing. So typically, the past couple years … I’ve organized 20 of those sessions, sometimes 3-4 a month depending on the need. … But for my case, usually cadence of two a month is pretty good. You know, so it’s all perspective balance with our conferences.”

Jan is a resource for her “core group” to facilitate regularly scheduled meetings and meetings to address issues as they arise. “I meet with our core and sponsor groups every other month and formulate agendas for all of these things on topics that are in my purview to hey, we need to sort this out or, you know, other times people do come to me to say, could you please help with this review or could we run this by the subset of the PMS of the core group, again, 13 to kind of get their intake on.”

However, for all that KMS reaches project management throughout MDOT, Jan said that HR is not involved. KMS does not extend explicitly to employee retention or knowledge capture relating to expected retirements or employee turnover.

Jan sees her KMS role as being a resource for others at MDOT throughout project management. “[I]t’s really just making sure that that volunteer representative can talk to their groups about the things that are on the horizon or they need to be aware of now, you know, kind of thing which I try to give advanced notice. But sometimes things fall from the sky. It is what it is. We take it as it comes and we adapt.”

Jan moderates all sessions as well as providing an introduction, recording them, and closing them.

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

Jan works with project managers throughout MDOT and she sees KMS as inclusive, broad, and useful. “I take it upon myself to try to cast a very wide net toward what they encounter, be it from our consultant contracting process to our estimating process, our scoping process. So, I get to partake in a lot of different groups and add PM [(project manager)] perspective for that and then take those topics, those gaps that might be like, oh, shoot. I don’t think they know about this. We better brush up on this or freshen up on that. Uh, you know to then through my platform with the PM Community of learning. So that maybe helps with the connection, but I was doing a rough count this morning and I think I am currently on 12 to 15 active committees.”

Jan said that KMS is “integral into our process and we do have somewhat of a global definition.” She did not define KM or KMS. Jan makes an effort to keep KMS activities relevant and lively because “if it is a ‘snoozefest,’ it will fizzle out no sooner than you get started.”

KM Metrics

Jan discussed what her team measures. “[W]e do track all of our engagements from … the core and sponsor teams all the way through to our webinars, peer-to-peer sessions, we track attendees … and that is definitely one of the metrics that really resonates with our groups. … [W]e are always three digits for sure. I mean, I think our highest to date might have been around 270.”

Business Value from KM

Jan noted the value of KMS in its tie to MDOT’s project managers because project management runs throughout the work of the department. Jan pointed out that there is no KMS budget.

Jan mentioned “I get a lot of positive feedback from the people that join my sessions and things like that to say ‘Oh, I needed that’ or’ this was great’ or whatever, … But there’s always that watchful eye on is it still relevant?”

Organizational Culture and KM

Jan observed that groups which she facilitates keep in touch between meetings. “[I]t always makes my heart squeeze moment because you will get discussion and it’s very organic, natural, free flowing to on those months where we don’t have the guests engage like I was describing. … They’ll bring up celebration items, pain points, things like that and have that interactivity beyond than just with me.”

She continued that engagement is “pretty active … and that always makes me happy that they not only trust me as a resource but also feel comfortable.”

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

Jan’s work is based on partnerships throughout MDOT with project managers and executive leadership. Her activities include staff throughout the agency who are on her email communications list, who attend webinars and meetings, and who are at the leadership level that guides the KMS program.

The Future

Jan did not outline a plan to expand KMS or to alter it. Rather she described KMS as an ongoing program with established leadership support. Jan sees KMS as continuing to flourish as long as she:

• Pays attention to and provides opportunities for interacting and staying informed;
• Keeps the KMS program organized;
• Continues her administrative support for CoLs and peer-to-peer groups;
• Provides substantive content – meeting minutes, webinars, and events on relevant topics; and
• Builds the technological foundation for file storage and access.

Details

The five pillars referred to above are:

1. Leadership Standards of Excellence,
2. Role Assessment Model,
3. Talent Review Process,
4. Knowledge Management System, and
5. Employee Life Cycle.

For more information about the five pillars of MDOT, please refer to an MDOT “House” presentation at https://transportation.org/human-resources/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2023/04/5.-Michigan-DOT-House-Michigan-DOTs-Workforce-Succession-and-Planning-System-James-Fults1.pdf.

Jan outlined the structure of MDOT’s offices, regions, and transportation service centers.

Discussing whether KM should be centralized or decentralized at an organization, Jan said “there is value to the awareness this group exists. And so more of a centralized, organized approach and structure to it I think could be supportive in the bigger reach elements if that makes sense.”

Jan gave examples of CoLs: The Women in Management CoL, the New Managers CoL, and the Job Net CoL. Jan also provides research dissemination within the CoLs. Jan said that groups within MDOT existed

prior to her work, but that her work can be distinguished due to how it was set up by upper management and its reach throughout MDOT.

Jan described the monthly peer-to-peer meetings. “I highlight various other teams throughout the organization that you know, PMS interact with, you know, be it in their programming functions, their day-to-day operations, they’re tracking what could they possibly need one-on-one time for live Q&A sessions, maybe they didn’t know what group oversaw this or whatever else.” Sometimes she chooses “the latest hot topics.”

Jan added, “I sit on a lot of different teams and committees, bring forward that PM [(Project Manager)] perspective, which then can you know, come back to various levels of the PM Community of learning as needed.” She said that sometimes there are “shovel-ready” projects or hot topics that staff need to become familiar with quickly.

Jan begins planning her meetings in September for the year ahead. She explained her process. “I start the outreach with those groups, but our sponsors, those six, help support and validate that direction. I run the topics list by them to say … this is what I’ve seen, but from your level especially, they sit higher to connect with those executive groups that have the communications with governor, legislature, so on, so forth. … Do you need any other topics woven in that we need to get to? Because you know something I don’t. So they help me a lot with that. … I meet quarterly with the sponsors. I organize all those and facilitate the agendas, the meeting minutes from IT, stuff like that.”

Meetings for the core and sponsor teams last 90 minutes. Jan said that they previously lasted two hours, but participants were not available for such a long meeting. Jan mentioned that recordings of meetings are available and listed in reverse chronological order when posted.

Jan recommends that a KM program like hers requires that it be led by someone who is organized and who has a passion for enabling collaborative and learning activities. She added that staff must be afforded the time to do this work. “Otherwise, I mean, you know, we’re all so busy and the half efforts aren’t going to cut it for something like this, especially to the level that we have executed it. … You need somebody that can dive in and keep track of things and the other aspect too.”

For a KM guidebook, Jan recommends showcasing structures for KM programs. She does not think that there is a one-size-fits-all KM model.

Background of Interviewee

Jan said that OOD is positioned under the Chief Cultural and Equity Inclusion Officer. She has been the Statewide Project Management Specialist since June of 2018. “I almost have 20 years with the department, so I consider myself, I like to dub it, a hatchery baby. I grew up in the department, so I started out as a coop, a coop for summers in construction and design, and then I have a heavy design and development background. And then that led to project management and then voilà, here we are.”

Jan observed that many teams are building SharePoint pages, and she intends that hers will be a “one-stop shop. … But we’re getting so many of them that it’s hard to hunt and peck for.”

Next Steps

Jan is currently “building a one-hub SharePoint that will help link a lot of our design manuals, our process and procedure documents.”

A3.14 Mississippi Department of Transportation

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Cindy Smith, the Transportation Engineering Supervisor, Research Division, also participated in the interview.

Summary

The Mississippi Department of Transportation does not have a formal KM department, function, or program. Cindy Smith initiated the agency’s KM activities with a champion and she now partners on KM planning with Madalyn McKnight. KM is conducted on a grassroots level with some leadership support, although there has just been another leadership reshuffling

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Cindy and Madalyn both estimated that KM takes about 5-10% of their time. No one at the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) has a formal KM title.

About 12 years ago, the seeds of MDOT’s KM efforts began with Cindy’s attendance at an AASHTO conference. She was serving on the AASHTO Research Advisory Committee at a conference when she sat in on some KM sessions with a colleague from the committee “and I was like, why aren’t we doing this?” Assistant Chief Engineer Billy Owens, who has since been transferred, was her KM champion. Madalyn stated that Cindy is now the KM champion at MDOT.

Cindy started to raise the issue of knowledge capture at MDOT. She described how she proceeded: “I’ve just been kind of the history, so to speak, was me sort of nagging as the research person. You know, we make our research work program and I kept telling people well, we can spend money on knowledge capture studies. It really just was me crying in the wilderness, doing the occasional thing. And with Madalyn and Terrance here, I think we can be more intentional about it. And that’s what I was trying to do with the research study because she can’t do it alone.”

Cindy “did a few exit interviews from time to time and I would try to just sell it in the research work program presentations or any help.” She said that MDOT then hired a consultant, who performed a KM research study, which provided a KM “roadmap.”

Both Cindy and Madalyn described KM at MDOT as a grassroots effort, and intentionally so, to protect KM from the reshuffling and political changes that occur in upper management every so often. (See more in Organizational Culture.)

Madalyn mentioned that Cindy developed a knowledge interview guide.

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

The Mississippi Department of Transportation does not have a formal KM department, function, or program. Cindy and Madalyn described their vision and what they have been doing to build a grassroots KM program that also has leadership support. From their perspective, the benefit of a grassroots effort is that it is insulated from leadership changes.

Exit interviews, research studies, and other types of knowledge capture are done at MDOT. Currently, the KM focus is on retirements.

KM is included now in the topics for research, but there was no discussion about whether this will be true when Cindy retires, as she has been with MDOT for 27 years.

In 2022, a consulting firm produced a report, which laid out a KM “roadmap.”

KM Metrics

There are no KM metrics in place at MDOT.

Cindy said that there are no goals in terms of number of exit interviews.

Business Value from KM

The collaborative work culture at MDOT enables sharing of practices that are working or that need to be implemented. One example is a succession planning initiative in one division that Cindy and Madalyn are well-informed about. Another example is the willingness to reestablish KM with senior leadership periodically by informing new staff about KM activities.

There is an understanding that KM is “more than just putting stuff on SharePoint” and that much more KM efforts need to be taken on. Cindy and Madalyn are essentially working on their own initiative and adding to their official workloads to promote and embed KM at MDOT.

Organizational Culture and KM

An important fact of MDOT culture for staff that Cindy and Madalyn pointed out is the occasional “reshuffling” of upper management. Cindy said, “I’ve broken in three bosses.” She described this situation with humor as a “chessboard shuffle.”

Because of a recent reshuffling, KM lost its champion in upper management to an MDOT district office. Madalyn said that Cindy is the KM champion now. Cindy added “It’s just, it’s just kind of chaotic right now, so organizationally speaking.” This means approaching new leadership. For Cindy, “Now I’m gonna have to approach my boss, and Madalyn, Terrance. Terrance, as the HR director.”

Cindy observed that “this culture is all about informal partnerships.” Madalyn made the same point: “It’s a collaborative effort or a collaborative agency; it really, really is all about relationships.”

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

Cindy and Madalyn themselves represent a significant KM partnership between Research and HR. They also described partnerships with IT and finance. The Chief Information Officer (CIO) was very interested in KM for succession planning.

Cindy said with pride that MDOT of the IT office: “I put them up against any other DOT. They’re wonderful. We’ve got … SharePoint before everybody else did.”

One initiative demonstrates the cross-agency reach of KM efforts. A manager in the financial division decided to interview everyone in her department and 42 interviews were conducted because, Madalyn explained, “one of her team leaders retired recently and so she wanted to make sure that she understood the way the department functions, make sure everyone who was number one had a #2. … She wanted to see what everyone knew and what they needed to know.”

Cindy believes that the current MDOT CIO understands the need for KM. He has a succession plan and “[h]e understands this [is] more than just putting stuff on SharePoint. They actually have a succession plan for their DBA’s and business analysts and such and bridge [division] has some success.”

The Future

Cindy observed that upper management “need[s] to be on board because … you know I’m only a division here and I can’t tell other divisions what to do, and neither can Madalyn.” They have lost their champion in upper management (“upstairs”) and they need that support.

What Cindy and Madalyn would like to see for KM is something like a hub-and-spoke arrangement where there would be a center for KM in one office, but the division heads would be knowledgeable about KM and, as Madalyn said, “keep it rolling … and we’re ready to garner what we need at any point on the drop of a dime.”

Cindy said she is grappling with how to integrate KM elements beyond IT.

Cindy also noted the importance of branding as part of establishing KM at MDOT. “[T]he roadmap, you know, kind of recommended that we start kind of branding it or you know finding a way to push it out to people.”

Madalyn stated that she and Cindy have flexibility in establishing KM: “Making it a big picture kind of thing. And then from there, you know, they’ll give us the freedom to kind of develop it. And as long as we keep them in the loop, then you know we’ll be able to proceed in pretty much any way we see fit.”

Other Comments

Cindy pointed out that KM is “sort of a passion project for me, so I don’t know officially have a role of that and I just kind of do it anyway.”

Cindy commented that there are no KM consultants in Mississippi. The KM roadmap report was produced by an engineering consulting firm.

Talking about establishing an embedded KM program, Cindy stated that “if it if it’s too formal and prescriptive, then I don’t feel like it’ll be vibrant or robust.” Madalyn added, “We don’t want it to feel like a chore.”

Details

A periodic responsibility for whoever champions or is assigned to KM is educating “upstairs” about KM, particularly when there are changes in leadership.

There are Communities of Practice (CoPs) at MDOT within divisions, such as engineering, financial, admin, and property custodians. Cindy can ask to get on a CoP agenda.

Madalyn explained that each district and the central office all have their own HR manager, but they do meet once a quarter, with the HR attorney participating.

In the guidebook, Cindy and Madalyn said that they would want:

• KM business case
• Matrix for succession planning after retirement

Background of Interviewees

Cindy Smith is the Transportation Engineering Supervisor-Research Division at MDOT and she is a civil engineer. She has been with MDOT for 27 years and “so the culture is very woven in me.”

Madalyn is relatively new at MDOT, but she has worked before for the state government. She has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and “my master’s and doctorate are in healthcare administration; so I have business degrees.”

Next Steps

Cindy and Madalyn said that with the recent leadership reshuffling, they now need to approach their supervisors about KM.

A3.15 Missouri Department of Transportation

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

The Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) does not have a KM program, office, or dedicated staff. There are KM activities, but these are not necessarily recognized as such. MoDOT is not focused on a department-wide basis on KM as a philosophy or as a set of practices and tools for knowledge retention and sharing. Nor is KM viewed as a source of as techniques and strategies for meeting agency goals.

To address knowledge retention, MoDOT has rehired retirees to perform work and train staff.

MoDOT uses SharePoint for collaboration. There are communities of practice (CoPs) and other types of working groups that staff convene, but these are not fostered at the department level. Ms. Larimore is unaware of whether and how KM practices are employed within different offices.

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

There are no KM initiatives, set of projects or overarching goals at MoDOT. While the agency is paying attention to critical needs that KM could play a part in addressing, this is not happening at either the level of MoDOT leadership or statewide offices within the agency. However, it is quite possible that KM strategies are being employed on projects or within offices at MoDOT without any staff at the state level being informed.

No one has primary responsibility for KM at MoDOT, Ms. Larimore stated.

MoDOT is focused on immediate pressing problems, such as filling basic positions.

KM Metrics

No KM metrics are in use.

Business Value from KM

MoDOT is addressing critical needs, such as road work crew safety, retirements, and staff turnover. However, KM is not being actively considered as providing strategies or potential value for meeting these needs.

Organizational Culture and KM

Ms. Larimore recognized that MoDOT staff and leadership are not well-informed about KM and its potential value. Ms. Larimore described MoDOT as a decentralized agency where divisions and initiatives are operated independently of one another. For example, each division has its own web pages and policies, learning management system (LMS), and so forth.

From a KM perspective, this decentralized structure does not actively encourage or establish a structure for collaboration across offices. For example, Ms. Larimore that there is a lack of awareness of whether resource librarians who work in different offices collaborate. Ms. Larimore said the librarians are a resource that other staff are uninformed about.

SharePoint is considered sufficient for collaboration, Ms. Larimore explained, and therefore, a team working on a showcase project (for example, I-70 work) would not think to consult HR about how to use KM strategies to support such a project.

Ms. Larimore believes KM should be in HR because it is a statewide office.

MoDOT staff do take advantage of the opportunity to reach out to other state departments of transportation for peer collaboration and guidance.

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

Ms. Larimore is unaware of collaboration or other partnerships. SharePoint is set up as a collaborative tool at MoDOT, but each division has its own administrator for managing SharePoint content. Information Systems (IS), she said, provided guidelines and templates, but she does not know whether the division administrators meet regularly or otherwise collaborate.

Within HR, there are about eight groups that use Microsoft Teams, but she does not know if other offices or divisions use it.

The Future

The prospects for KM at MoDOT are uncertain. The biggest issue for KM’s future at the agency is how to gain management commitment to KM. Ms. Larimore explained that MoDOT would need staff at the statewide level devoted to its success.

Details

Ms. Larimore’s position does not concentrate on KM.

Like many state departments of transportation, MoDOT has issues with retirements and staff turnover. MoDOT’s response has been to increase pay, rehire retirees, and expand recruiting and training, rather than, or in addition to, establishing KM programs or setting KM goals. Retirees who are rehired are not permitted to supervise other staff.

Ms. Larimore gave two examples of KM practices that are made use of within offices at MoDOT:

• An engineering design best practices group.
• An emergency management team was built and trained, using materials from NIMS (National Incident Management System).

Ms. Larimore stated that she believes that a KM guidebook would be useful to provide:

• KM checklists,
• KM milestones,
• KM templates,
• KM fact sheets,
• A definition of KM,
• An explanation of KM’s value and benefits,
• Advice about how to begin a KM program, and
• Strategies for enlisting management support.

It is important to consider that MoDOT, unlike other state departments of transportation, is not led by a secretary of transportation who is appointed by the governor. Instead, a Commission oversees MoDOT, and the director does not change with a new gubernatorial administration. The current director, Ms. Larimore said, has served for many years.

Background of Interviewee

Ms. Larimore began her employment at MoDOT after college as a compensation specialist and has been working at the agency for more than 25 years. For most of her time at the agency, Ms. Larimore has worked in HR.

While working in HR initially, Ms. Larimore gained experience with the HR information system (HRIS); she became involved with programming work; and she developed expertise with SAM II, the platform for talent management, and Cognos for reporting. Her knowledge and experience led to a promotion to lead the Information Division. She spent three years in that capacity before rejoining HR as an administrator.

MoDOT’s director has served on the AASHTO KM Committee and Ms. Larimore has been a member of the KM subcommittee for three years. She was unaware of KM before then.

Next Steps

There is no plan in place for the next phase of KM at MoDOT. Ms. Larimore would like to focus on training and updating job description documentation and career ladder procedures.

A3.16 Nevada Department of Transportation

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Summary

The Nevada Department of Transportation does not have a formal KM department, function, or program. Craig Crick self-initiated the agency’s KM activities. They are conducted on a grassroots level.

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Craig said, “Knowledge management is probably around 20% to 25% of my time. About 40 to 45% of my job is the more traditional employee development manager role. The remainder is more organizational, change management, and leadership development.”

Craig said, “KM is too new to know where KM should have its organizational home base. We’re just too early in the process, so we’re doing KM at a grassroots level.”

“There are very few DOTs that have a formal KM title.”

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

The Nevada Department of Transportation does not have a formal KM department, function, or program.

Craig self-initiated KM within the NDOT. No one approached him with a request to organize a KM group or team.

The KM activities currently underway include:

1. About ten communities of practice (COPs).
2. Repositories to collect and store knowledge and information, e.g., documentation, reference manuals, classic quote desk manual, etc. [purpose: to help new hires with onboarding]. SharePoint is used for these repositories.
3. Exit interviews of departing employees. One was described during the interview—an expert in wildlife protection. Craig took six pages of notes to capture the knowledge from her 30-year career. He posted the notes on a division-level SharePoint page. No metadata was used. Craig conducted this interview at the request of the division leader. Exit interviews are not standard practice.

The Nevada Department of Transportation’s most important KM program is Communities of Practice. Two COP examples are roadway design and construction. “We also have a COP of people pursuing their professional engineering licenses. They meet regularly and talk about preparing for the exam.” Craig estimated that there are about ten COPs in place today.

KM Metrics

Craig said, “I look at success for knowledge management like I do with other initiatives. There are always two parts to that equation. One is more on the technical side or the nuts and bolts of the KM structure being developed and implemented in a way to have some successful outcomes. For example, on the data collection or knowledge collection side, are we building repositories and places for information and knowledge to be stored properly? The other part is on the people side. Are people adopting and using KM to support their daily work and professional development?”

Craig did suggest measuring time to capability or time to competence. “If you have a new hire on day one, by what day of their tenure are they proficient? If we had some KM tools or practices that shorten

the learning curve or the time to competence, you could put a dollar amount on them being more productive in their role sooner.”

Business Value from KM

The Nevada Department of Transportation hasn’t defined a business case for KM. Craig said, “No one’s against it [KM], but that hasn’t translated into we like it so much that we’re going to invest X number of dollars into it, or establish a formal KM function, or change Craig’s job title to be Chief Knowledge Manager.”

NDOT doesn’t have any KM metrics. After a brief discussion about KM’s business case and quantitative metrics, Craig said, “Yes, we absolutely need to have some KM metrics that are aligned with the DOT metrics we care about.”

Organizational Culture and KM

Craig felt the best location for a KM function was to have it report to the director. “Putting KM function into the Director’s Office will do two things: It’ll show how important it is, and it’ll more likely get the support it needs to really serve the entire organization.” I think many DOTs are very siloed. KM needs visibility, support, and sponsorship from the executive level.”

“We don’t have an executive KM champion now.”

NDOT is experiencing employee turnover across the agency. “Our tenure average is ten years down in some positions, and in some divisions, down to two or three years on average, where it used to be 8 or 10 years. There’s a cost associated with that lack of tenure. We haven’t and don’t do a good job of measuring or identifying the root causes of that.”

“We’ve got about 400 vacancies right now. We’ve never had that many.”

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

Craig stated the importance of alignment of KM with other internal initiatives (e.g., strategic planning process, workforce management initiatives, recruitment and retention, and process improvement).

The Future

Craig defined success in a year as greater awareness of KM across the DOT, as demonstrated by employees’ behaviors and actions. He has no defined KM strategy or future-state vision.

Craig said he should form a COP of KM practitioners.

Other Comments

Craig said, “We have a central training function for the entire agency. A lot of the training that I support on the project delivery side is actually funded out of the main training budget, so I have a very small training budget for the programs that I support.”

AASHTO KM Committee does a survey every year and prepares a list of KM activities performed at the state DOTs. “There are so many different things that we could call an example of KM.”

Craig didn’t think an intranet search on “knowledge management” would surface any results.

Craig felt that over the last several years, “there’s been a little bit less collaboration and knowledge sharing” due to the pandemic.

The Nevada Department of Transportation does not have an expertise location system. They also don’t collect lessons learned.

Background of Interviewee

Craig Crick is an Employee Development Manager in the Nevada Department of Transportation. Craig’s primary role focuses on employee development, training, change management, and facilitation. He also supports other initiatives and functions within the DOT. He sees the KM role as being an offshoot of his current position.

Craig reports to the Deputy Director of Project Delivery, which includes DOT’s operations--engineering, construction, and environmental. There are about 400 people in this group. Craig is not organizationally part of HR or training.

Craig’s role is unique. He said, “I don’t know of any of the DOTs I’ve worked with that have embedded a training manager/employee development person within that part of the business.”

Craig serves on the AASHTO Committee on Knowledge Management. I’m the chair of the Research Subcommittee. “I’ve been with them for about three or four years, and the Committee on Knowledge Management is still fairly new.”

Craig has been in the employee training, learning, and development field for about 30 years.

Next Steps

Scott asked Craig for the most recent copy of the AASHTO survey results.

Craig may send us some contacts at Caltrans.

A3.17 New Hampshire Department of Transportation

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

The initial siting of KM at the New Hampshire Department of Transportation (NHDOT) in Workforce Development was intended to address issues with hiring and training of employees. Ms. Nash stated that “because 45 percent of employees were eligible for retirement - knowledge loss and retention” became significant. With Ms. Nash’s change of position from Workforce Development to Human Resources (HR), KM moved with her. The current KM focus is on developing standard operating systems (SOS) to retain and manage information.

There are no full-time employees (FTEs) dedicated to KM and there is no formal KM program. There are no job titles that feature KM. On the other hand, NHDOT early on embraced KM. Before the AASHTO KM Committee was formed, NHDOT had already developed a centralized HR KM workbook.

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

NHDOT does not have a purposeful approach to KM. Ms. Nash said that the current KM priority is on standard operating systems (SOS), specifically formatting manuals and procedures “in a library that is easily accessible and consistently available” to those who are subject matter experts. This is not soley a technology-based project and it predates NHDOT’s adoption of SharePoint.

The three KM priorities are:

1. Recruiting and retraining,
2. Empowering workforce, and
3. Morale boosting.

NHDOT has problems with attracting and retaining employees.

For a KM program to be most effective, Ms. Nash suggested that it be situated somewhere in the Commissioner’s Office in a central, collaborative role to support interaction with the different bureaus at NHDOT. She explained that in a siloed agency, KM should not be placed in HR.

Although KM is occurring at NHDOT, as explained below in the organizational culture section of this summary, the term is not embraced and, beyond Ms. Nash, there is not support for learning about and applying KM.

KM Metrics

No KM metrics are employed at this time. None were discussed during the interview.

Business Value from KM

Ms. Nash mentioned possible KM business value for NHDOT in improving efficiency, such as “developing best practices or systems … [S]o that we could quickly implement new plans and new technology.”

Organizational Culture and KM

Ms. Nash does not use the term “Knowledge Management” or other specialized verbiage. Indeed, the term itself and its reference as an umbrella term for a range of practices and technologies has not been adopted at NHDOT. Instead, Ms. Nash employs “easier” language to spread KM strategies and acquire tools.

To diminish the chance of significant pushback to new KM practices, Ms. Nash suggests that such changes come from the front office for establishing “enterprise-wide policies” in order to create “a cultural environment for knowledge sharing.”

Ms. Nash thinks it would be worthwhile for her to work with participants in the NHDOT Emerging Professionals in Transportation, a program for less senior employees “that we see taking on eventual leadership activities;” and “they naturally are talking about things that are knowledge management”

without knowing it’s KM.” She could envision working with these employees because they are “ears for the Commissioners” and they provide feedback on thoughts and processes.”

Without a formal program at NHDOT, Ms. Nash noted, some bureaus try to develop teams for sharing subject matter expertise, such as documenting tech, but the terminology of KM is not employed and these efforts are therefore not recognized as falling under the title of KM or shared as such. Another example is meetings with NHDOT’s bureau administrators to look at proposals for research, which is not thought of as KM.

Illustrative of the KM reality at NHDOT is an example that Ms. Nash mentioned from the Highway Bureau’s engineering training program, which does a bureau rotation so that staff learn about processes from different parts of DOT. However, this is not recognized as coming under the umbrella of KM. Likewise, some bureaus have teams for sharing subject matter expertise, but these are not related to any KM effort.

The KM program at NHDOT has reflected a culture where new initiatives are begun but are not necessarily implemented to a point where they produce results. Ms. Nash cited the example of the retiree interview program, which was intended to reduce knowledge loss. The “extensive preretirement form was so onerous no one wanted to touch it.” It was not incorporated into work flows or otherwise altered to become easy to fill out and usable for others. Instead, when the “numbers became less urgent because retirement eligibility percentage went down,” the program lapsed. The knowledge capture never occurred.

Challenges and opportunities arise, Ms. Nash said, with changes in leadership, which affect timelines and whether practices become embedded. Ms. Nash finds that leadership’s communication style is also important. Even if KM were a priority, it needs a commissioner who supports it and effectively communicates that support.

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

Ms. Nash sees potential for incorporating KM with the state’s change to standard occupational knowledge codes as this would be a natural progression. She also pointed out that there are possible KM connections with the Empowering the Workforce initiative, but that would depend on whether the current Commissioner remains for sufficient time at NHDOT.

A Governing Council that works across New Hampshire’s state agencies, but Ms. Nash did not know what KM work other agencies are doing.

The Future

Ms. Nash indicated that she would like more information and knowledge about KM tools that could assist her with solutions to these questions:

• How to incorporate KM into DOT culture?
• How to break KM down into bite-sized pieces, so it is not overwhelming.
• What are good assessment tools and frameworks?

Background of Interviewee

Former NHDOT Commissioner Victoria Sheehan was the chair of the AASHTO KM Committee when Ms. Nash was the workforce development manager at the agency. From that time, five years ago, Ms. Nash has been involved with KM and she is currently a voting member of the AASHTO Steering Committee for the Committee on Knowledge Management. She is also a member of the KM research subcommittee.

As the workforce development manager, Ms. Nash oversaw the hiring and training for all NHDOT employees, which was why, she said, she was invited to be involved with KM. Ms. Nash now holds the position of Administrator of Human Resources. KM has followed Ms. Nash’s movement within NHDOT.

Ms. Nash serves on the National Highway Cooperative Research Program (NHCRP) panel for the project for which this interview was conducted.

Next Steps

No concrete next steps were discussed.

A3.18 New Jersey Department of Transportation

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

At NJDOT, there are KM activities happening and technology being used. These include:

• Rehiring retirees to provide mentoring, knowledge transfer and fill non-supervisory positions;
• Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) documentation;
• Records retention;
• Organizing of electronic files during transition periods for employees departing or arriving;
• Commissioner newsletter;

• Tech talks (recorded, archived and searchable synopses); and
• Lunch and learns (also available as a video).

KM does not reside in a central place at NJDOT. No one office “owns” it. Instead, KM has developed in a collaborative environment.

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

Ms. Hutchinson wants to proceed to what she called KM Phase II of the KM portal (described in Next Steps) with videos and “dynamic KM.” IT would house such a system, but “the stewards of the information” would be the business units, she explained.

With changes in the workplace culture and with technology, Ms. Hutchinson stated that KM is needed to meet the demands of a department being forced to more quickly train and to do better even while job vacancy rates are high. The importance of having the capacity to pivot quickly was made especially clear during COVID.

The collaborative environment at NJDOT is and will be an important feature of KM as it moves forward. The expectation is that current KM activities will continue and evolve over time.

KM Metrics

There are no defined KM metrics in use at NJDOT. On the negative side, Ms. Hutchinson stated that success means that nothing catastrophic has occurred, that “You don’t hear or see us in the papers.” On the positive side, she added that success was demonstrated in the department’s ability to carry out billion-dollar projects during COVID, when there was an eight-month hiring freeze, and during periods of growth.

Ms. Hutchinson said KM success means evolving, building on and, especially, staff using KM tools and strategies to meet challenges. She mentioned such measures as checking whether staff learning and sharing resources or SOPs are being kept up to date. Are staff attending (or using archived) Tech Talks? Is information continuing to be shared? For example, she will look at dates of when materials are updated or covered again.

Business Value from KM

Ms. Hutchinson sees the business value of KM in NJDOT’s ability to upskill for new technologies, such as electric and automated vehicles, and new signal equipment and software. And she noted that significant costs are incurred with turnover and hiring.

Ms. Hutchinson said that KM begins with relationships to resources, coworkers and supervisors. Her measure of value is whether NJDOT can deliver the same amount of work with substantial challenges, such as COVID’s disruptions, higher turnover, or a smaller budget.

Organizational Culture and KM

Ms. Hutchinson mentioned something distinct about the culture at a state department of transportation: “There’s just something in you, right when you work for a DOT… [Y]ou’re just family forever.”

KM at NJDOT is not situated in one person or office, Ms. Hutchinson explained. It is not “owned,” but rather “shared and embedded.” Senior leadership at NJDOT engages in substantial collaboration.

At various points during the interview, Ms. Hutchinson repeated in different words her observation that KM does not reside in a central place at NJDOT, but that this situation has advantages and disadvantages. Here are a few quotes:

• KM is so hard because it is this giant umbrella and it doesn’t fit nicely anywhere.
• [O]ver the last two years, what we’ve been doing is sort of sharing the KM, the knowledge management responsibility … across leadership; there’s no real house yet for it.
• I’m just none of that mindset where I feel like we all share as leadership responsibility for succession planning, for knowledge management … but everyone always seems to come to HR for the magic bullet.

Ms. Hutchinson noted that KM “develops organically over a long period.”

Ms. Hutchinson pointed out that smaller KM one- or two-page briefs are preferable to long, detailed documents. She called this method of communication a “quick snapshot of a knowledge transfer.”

In terms of organizational culture, Ms. Hutchinson thinks that KM does not get traction when there is one KM officer, but instead she would prefer a council or committee that represents different divisions and categories of jobs.

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

Partnerships across divisions are the tradition at NJDOT. Ms. Hutchinson stated that “All the assistant commissioners, deputy commissioner, commissioner, deputy chief of staff, chief of staff, … we talk about the different things that we can do and just we have meetings about what it is, how to help the current workforce, how do we retain knowledge, how do we retain people.”

After such collaboration, choices are made at the division level rather than decisions reached for the entire department.

NJDOT enables KM in the form of knowledge sharing with Tech Talks and Lunch and Learns. These are recorded, and archived, with searchable synopses. An example of this type of knowledge sharing was a 10-minute knowledge transfer symposium by one of the commissioners after attending a conference.

The Future

For NJDOT, Ms. Hutchinson would recommend a council or committee that represents different divisions and categories of jobs. She added that such a council would report to leadership, and it could develop a KM mission statement and a plan for focused attention to KM. Ms. Hutchinson would also like to have KM formalized with a strategic plan.

What will possibly hold Ms. Hutchinson back are immediately pressing needs, which presently involve recruitment.

Details

Due to her participation with the AASHTO KM Committee, Ms. Hutchinson is well versed about the possible locations for KM within a state department of transportation (DOT). She noted that some place KM in research, others in IT or in “enterprise management.” She also said that some state DOTs give KM responsibility to one person. NJDOT situated KM in the “HR realm” because of its historical knowledge and the department’s pressing issues with numerous retirements, and training and development. However, as noted above, there is “no real house for it.”

Limits on the retiree rehiring program include:

• Retires must wait at least six months following retirement before being rehired;
• Retirees are not permitted to perform the same exact job as they held before retirement; and
• Retirees are not allowed to supervise others.

Approximately 50 retirees have been rehired and they stay for about three years. Ms. Hutchinson listed various divisions that have participated in the rehiring program, such as engineering, procurement, employee relations, administration, and the Commissioner’s office (support staff).

Ms. Hutchinson discussed how to effectively convey knowledge. The example that she provided was the sudden departure of an employee and contrasting the effectiveness of giving the replacement a long, detailed document of the departing employee’s responsibilities and advice to the use of a brief “snapshot” document. Ms. Hutchinson’s experience is that the short document would be easier to read and absorb and therefore it would prove more effective. She said that she is a “Cliff notes” person.

The example of enabling an employee to step into the position of someone who has suddenly departed is not outlandish at an agency with a current job vacancy rate of approximately 10 percent.

When explaining the librarian’s role, Ms. Hutchinson suggested that KM might reside in such a position. The librarian works in the research bureau, which is in the statewide planning division. Librarians are also available to perform searches for staff and to explain how to retrieve information.

HR analytics are being utilized to study vacancy rates at NJDOT. Ms. Hutchinson mentioned that vacancies are an issue for trade positions (due to low pay), but that a few years ago there were numerous openings for engineers.

In terms of a KM guidebook, Ms. Hutchinson would be looking for advice about how to get staff in different roles excited about KM and how to define KM in simple terms (without sounding academic). Ms. Hutchinson thinks that KM is somewhat protected at NJDOT because New Jersey is a state with a unionized civil service. She is aware of what KM developments in other states through the AASHTO KM Committee and she appreciates the committee for the sharing of information among states and especially the knowledge cafes. For example, the Florida Department of Transportation shared information about its knowledge directory.

Background of Interviewee

Ms. Hutchinson is the Assistant Commissioner of Administration at NJDOT. She has responsibility for human resources (HR) and facilities. KM comprises roughly 5 percent of her time in her current position. She is a voting member of the AASHTO KM Committee and two other NJDOT employees also attend the committee meetings.

Previously Ms. Hutchinson served as the head of HR for two years. She has been with NJDOT for nine years. Ms. Hutchinson worked for the same person for two decades and followed them to a different agency. She explained that this supervisor was a mentor and that this professional relationship enabled knowledge transfer to occur “organically.”

Next Steps

Ms. Hutchinson’s KM project for the near team is developing an easily searchable active portal directory with such resources as dynamic organizational charts and a skills locator.

A3.19 New York State Department of Transportation

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Summary

Ken Bibbins, Regional Director for District 7, explained that a strategy of communication and coordination across the New York State Department of Transportation’s (NYSDOT) executive staff, both in the central office and in the regions, has eliminated the silos of each district operating independently of each other. KM is one of 13 areas currently being studied as part of a large business process project called Planning Forward. At this point, before the completion of Planning Forward, Ken wants to expand

on at least one good example of KM at NYSDOT (which relates to communications) and to connect with the agency’s Commissioner to formalize a KM program. He also sees the expansion of a communications team across the agency as a model for CoPs. There are also some KM practices in use at NYSDOT, however all but one of these efforts are decentralized and not measured.

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Ken estimated that he spends approximately 3 percent of his time on KM. There is no KM budget or staff titles associated with that term.

Ken explained that about 10 years ago, the governor “forced the department to refine how we operate as one DOT.” NYSDOT responded and instituted meetings with set agendas twice a month of executive staff from the central office and the regions. This coordination provided consistency across the 11 regional districts and a method for communicating about strategies and guidance. Ken said that it “forced constant communication.”

Ken said that this first began on the operations side because the then governor did not want any political fallout from any incidents, so that there is now better coordination beyond regional lines, for example in emergency management. This has allowed for quick pivoting and redistribution of personnel, for example during storms. Ken noted that this has expanded beyond operations into other areas, such as engineering. Ken noted that this coordination is being employed for the six or seven $2 billion projects that individual regions do not have the capacity to carry out without assistance from staff in other regions.

A new mentorship program has recently been established, Ken said, to promote knowledge transfer. Ken explained, “It’s very broad in you know; we’re not targeting specific titles or jobs where we’re targeting people with a minimum amount of time and experience and the capability of connecting with people … Let’s say we use 10 years as a threshold to become a mentor. … We’re starting with that, that particular mode of passing information down there is still within the separate work groups there is still that you know even if it’s just the on-the-job training there is still that sharing of knowledge but it’s … more by necessity than it is by purpose.”

Ken said that the mentorship program is a first step, but he did not offer details. He believes that tacit, on-the-job, knowledge has been lost due to understaffing, which the mentorships should help with. He added that some retirees return to their positions on a part-time basis.

Ken pointed out that NYSDOT is in the third year of a project being carried out by a consultant. Entitled “Planning Forward,” this project is examining 13 areas of the department’s business processes, including KM.

Ken noted that NYSDOT uses SharePoint and that communities of practice (CoPs) within the agency and teams that exist across geographic regions use it and at headquarters. He described SharePoint as already embedded at NYSDOT.

Ken added that some practices may be utilized in some offices and districts but are decided upon independently in each office at headquarters and in each region.

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

Ken discussed Planning Forward, which is a three-year, consultant-led study of 13 business processes, including KM. Ken is not involved with that project. He believes that executive leadership would agree on the need for KM, but that a demanding task or tool imposed or agreed upon would likely not result in sufficient utilization.

Ken said that he is “a big proponent of crawl, walk, run logic on just about anything,” and he included KM. He referred to the COPs in the operating and engineering divisions at the NYSDOT, which makes such a KM strategy familiar and ripe for expansion. He would want a “discrete, distinct, and deliverable … easy win.”

KM Metrics

Ken did not identify any KM metrics, but he sees value in lower stress levels for staff, and in increased capacity and productivity. He mentioned that dashboards are already in place – with indicators in red, yellow, and green – which would be a familiar way to measure a KM program.

Business Value from KM

There is no business case for KM currently being made or measured at NYSDOT. Ken said that Planning Forward will not be addressing this “granular level.” Ken pointed out that retirements are the burning issue for NYSDOT that would make KM valuable.

Organizational Culture and KM

Ken explained that regional offices and the central offices make their own decisions about practices such as exit interviews, COPs, or documentation of how jobs are performed. There is no institutional support or encouragement for them. “The regional directors are essentially responsible for all aspects of the department’s mission within their geographic region.” This includes both operations and administration.

As an example, Ken described asset management, where “there’ll be some core guiding principles that the regions all work by to try to make sure everybody’s focused on the same asset classes in the same manners.”

Ken pointed out that within the last 10 years, the “main office has, I’ll say, emerged as a very, you know central executive type force within the department to make sure that, ah, the regional boundaries really don’t contribute to 11 different ways of doing business.” He added that “what gets watched by management gets watched by everybody.” He said that if leadership, particularly the Commissioner, identifies KM as a priority, it will receive attention.

Ken thinks that the most effective way to embed KM, given NYSDOT’s culture, is to begin with achieving small wins.

He said that with a smaller staff at NYSDOT, including in his region, it is easier to spread a communications message than it was previously. “[I]t really is just a quick dissemination through communication, whether it’s email, posters on a wall and in a maintenance shop, you name it, that

we’ve gotten pretty good at figuring out the best mode of communication depending on which group has the need.”

Reduction in staff and heavier workloads have become the norm, mainly due to retirements. Ken described a culture that has therefore evolved. “We have everybody busier than they’ve traditionally been and that’s one of the first things to go is the stuff that’s not immediately mission delivery.” He commented that this means that every division and region is doing KM.

In terms of capturing knowledge in advance of retirements, Ken said there are decentralized efforts, but there are no initiatives on a department-wide or coordinated basis addressing this issue. He added that, for instance, there are soon-to-be retirees whom offices videotape explaining their jobs, or staff who have compiled three ring binders to describe their tasks. This differs from bureau to bureau and from one region to another.

Ken suggested that KM does not have to become a familiar term at NYSDOT to become engrained if the executive level supports the idea and strategies. He observed that a good way to attract leadership attention to KM is to explain to them that other states are engaging in KM and how. “[G]ot to keep up with the Joneses.”

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

Ken said there has been a central office effort to coordinate across the regions and that communications is a prime example. He did not offer information about bureaus that are partnering.

The Future

Ken would like to get started on an easy win for KM with a statewide initiative, for example commercial vehicle inspection because “it doesn’t take a huge organization to cover that that task statewide, you know, but the people are geographically separated because they’ve got to cover the whole state.” He would focus on a KM initiative to transfer the knowledge of “a 30-year employee in Buffalo who’s going to retire … to someone doing that task on Long Island.” He emphasized the qualities of being distinct and deliverable.

Ken said he wants to copy KM initiatives from other states that have demonstrated success. Ken thinks that CoPs would be prime idea KM at NYSDOT because this is a familiar, accepted practice with executive support. “We have a communications group in our main office that’s grown leaps and bounds in the last five years that’s been fantastic at making sure all of the regions are on the same page from a messaging and communication standpoint. So, I think that would be a very easy model to pitch to our executive management saying, ‘OK, now we’re gonna do this on knowledge management,’ and you know I think that would work.”

Details

Ken discussed the wave of retirements and what is occurring as a result in terms of staffing. “We have a significant portion of our human resources are within three to five years of retirement eligibility and by and large the vast majority of them will retire and either go to work in the private sector because they can earn more while they’re … drawing a pension. Or they loved their job, but didn’t necessarily want

the pace that they had preretirement. So, they retire and come back on a part-time basis, doing essentially the same job they did when they left.”

Ken believes that the best structure for KM at the NYSDOT would be a hybrid, hub-and-spoke model because that type of model is already commonly used. This would involve the central office and all the regions.

Ken would like to attend some AASHTO KM meetings to find out about different KM examples at state DOTs. He thinks he could then speak to the Commissioner about ways to establish or begin KM efforts.

Regarding what Ken thought would be useful in a KM guidebook, he agreed with the following suggestions:

• How to sell KM to leadership;
• How best to engage KM with the entire department;
• Recommended ways to demonstrate the return on investment (ROI) from KM;
• What first steps to take for KM;
• A road map of basic KM activities;
• Case studies and examples;
• Best practices or lessons learned; and
• Recommended KM resources.

Ken further suggested including in the guidebook an explanation of “why KM is a good tool for you and not just another task that you’re going to be asked to do.” He also stressed that advice on quantifying the ROI would be valuable. He said that this is important because staff are already overloaded and that consultants are needed to do tasks that employees performed in the past. He said that examples where ROI could be demonstrated or seen quickly would be helpful. Ken mentioned that consultants only work when there are funds available to pay them, so ROI is significant.

Ken does not have a KM wish list that he would implement were he to be given more staff or funds. He said that he would be open to IT solutions or to artificial intelligence (AI) were he to be convinced of its trustworthiness.

Background of Interviewees

Ken is the Regional Director One in the region headquartered in Watertown, NY. He is a member of the AASHTO KM Committee, but he has not yet participated in the meetings. He is an engineer by training.

Next Steps

Ken expressed a desire to participate in the AASHTO KM Committee meetings. He did not identify any specific actions he will take at NYSDOT relating to KM in the next 12-18 months.

A3.20 North Carolina Department of Transportation

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Janaki Patel, the CLEAR Program Manager, also participated in the interview.

Summary

Alyson has worked to create a KM program at the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) that is insulated from leadership changes. Despite only being introduced to KM about five years ago, NCDOT staff have developed several avenues for knowledge exchange, encouragement for innovation, and assessing whether staff are aware of KM activities and resources.

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Alyson first heard of the tern KM in 2018 or 2019 and she talked with DOT staff in other states who were working on KM. She realized that “as we were working through this research and interviewing other state DOT and figuring out what other people have and we realized you know, we really wanted this to be something bigger than just best construction and maintenance feeding back to preconstruction.”

Alyson explained that the seed of the idea behind the research and planning for a KM program within the Construction division, where Alyson has been situated, was mainly “because of the lesson learned piece and the best practice piece that we really built into it, it was more about making sure that we’re having good quality projects and then we’re learning from each other and that this information from maintenance and construction is crossing the gap.”

The origin of NCDOT’s KM initiative within the work of its construction unit meant that KM was developed to serve operational needs. Alyson said lessons were gathered from construction and maintenance and shared to influence “preconstruction and planning so that better decisions can be made.”

CLEAR (Communicate Lessons, Exchange Advice. Record) was rolled out in 2020, and the marketing presentation for the program stated that CLEAR is NCDOT’s KM program. CLEAR has no funding stream. Alyson explained that “we didn’t want … a governor or a new secretary or someone to come in and say well we don’t believe in that we’re not funding it any longer.”

CLEAR acts as a “hub for innovation,” knowledge sharing and transfer, and a “risk management register.” Out of the Alyson’s research came several components of CLEAR:

• TAGs (Technical Advisory Groups) – These are the equivalent of Communities of Practice (CoPs).
• Lunch and learns – These generally take place twice a month. “Anybody can come to our lunch and learns and we provide PDF’s.”
• Annual Innovation Challenge – This challenge is intended to encourage innovation and to implement “as many good ideas as possible.”
• Innovation Coordinators – Janaki meets with all of them at least three times a year.
• Innovation Culture Index (ICI) Survey – This annual survey shows whether staff are aware of CLEAR, innovation coordinators, and other KM activities.
• IT developments.

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

Janaki stated that the definition of KM that CLEAR uses is “the collection of information, … organizing of information and then sharing it back out. And that’s essentially the different components of CLEAR.”

Alyson said that the main priority of CLEAR is open communication. CLEAR is set up to encompass technological supports, staff assistance, sharing of expertise, processes for review and improvement, a strategy for encouraging innovation, and evaluation of how well CLEAR is working for staff.

KM Metrics

Alyson and Janaki analyze responses to the annual CLEAR innovation survey, and whether staff are aware of the innovation coordinators. Alyson said that survey is looking for information about “how much do people understand about what our CLEAR program is, what our goals are? … Do you know that you have an innovation coordinator?”

Survey results are analyzed to determine trends, “which direction to go and change and grow, [and] where we need to focus our efforts in the coming year.”

Business Value from KM

There is no business case for KM explicitly being made at NCDOT, however, upper management has been informed that innovation is being recognized and encouraged, that information and expertise are being shared, and that KM awareness is being monitored in an annual survey. They are enabling Alyson and Janaki to expand their efforts with IT involvement and to find a different place at NCDOT in which to house CLEAR.

Organizational Culture and KM

Alyson describes NCDOT’s culture as “We have 14 divisions and the joke is I guess that there’s 14 little kingdoms.” She said that while there “probably is some degree of knowledge sharing across” divisions, which include the regional districts, KM is not a “focus area” of NCDOT.

CLEAR enables a flow of information for improvement of practices, procedures, and, ultimately, results. Alyson explained that:

“[A]ll those lessons learned, the best practices are submitted into CLEAR and then … the workflow kicks off to subject matter experts in whatever discipline needs to hear those, see those reviews, those know about them, hydraulics, roadway, whoever … [T]hen those groups take that information and they’re able to make changes or whatever, and we can form little communities based on that information because we have what we call TAGs, which are technical advisory groups, and the TAGs for one, our longest standing one is a hydraulic geotech construction, structures, and roadway TAG.”

“And it’s made up of experts from each of those groups because as they’re going to make changes to each of their guidelines, it may affect the other. Or if there’s an issue that comes in from a post construction assessment where they all need to figure out, like, what does this look like, what’s the new standard … What do we need to change so they work through those issues together, which has been great.”

In terms of where KM should be placed at the NCDOT, a topic that Alyson is currently exploring, she said that she does not want it situated in the Secretary’s office because she wants KM insulated from their ownership. She prefers KM to be employee-driven.

Alyson observed that KM can be done in different ways and that open communication is the bottom line.

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

Alyson and Janaki have met with the NCDOT Secretary and the Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Alyson said they received “great feedback from them” about implementing changes to the website, database, and “a collective instead of a separate lessons learned, best practice.” They also discussed “updating marketing materials.”

Janaki added that they shared the results of their ICI survey “to show … where our gaps were and what we needed and the support we needed to help … continue … and grow.”

Alyson noted that the IT staff is good to work with. She has conferred with IT about data management and artificial intelligence (AI), but there has been difficulty with implementing “searchable AI.”

CLEAR is also intended to support the different transportation modes that NCDOT oversees, such as highways, rail, aviation, and ferries.

Alyson is also building “relationships with as many people as possible and … one of the biggest things that I tell my team is … we’re asking people to work for us who don’t work for us.”

The Future

Alyson mentioned several items on her wish list for future KM projects:

• Post-construction assessment with all parties – lessons learned;
• A CLEAR database;
• Funded positions to be “out in the state;”
• Educating people of the importance of CLEAR and KM;
• Continuing the ICI survey; and
• Providing rewards for the innovation challenge.

Details

Alyson listed the topics that she would like to see in a KM guidebook.

• How to define KM;
• How to get started;
• KM “tips and tricks” from other states;
• How to sell KM to upper management;
• How to get staff on board and how to get them excited;
• The benefits of showing up and participating; and
• “[H]ow [KM] can be more things than I think what people wanna put it in a box.”

Alyson also mentioned several topics related to IT that she would like included in a guidebook:

• KM and IT;
• Searchable AI examples;
• How to speak to IT to convey what is wanted without “know[ing] what the names of things are;”
• “[A]n interpreting guide of how to speak to IT);”
• Communicating with IT about setting up a database;

• A checklist of topics or questions to ask of IT that would be useful even as tools and technology evolve;
• KM interactive tools; and
• Platforms for media and videos, particularly “[i]f you’re needing external pieces versus internal pieces.”

NCDOT does not rehire retirees as regular employees, but sometimes they return to the agency as temporary employees. Retirees usually go to work for consulting firms.

Background of Interviewee(s)

Alyson Tamer has been with NCDOT for 20 years. She has served as the State Value Management Engineer since 2019. Her position is housed in Value Management – Construction.

Prior to serving in her current position, Alyson worked in Value Management – Construction as the “value engineering program manager for value engineering studies as well as risk management.” The Value Management office was moved to Construction four years ago, but, Alyson pointed out, “We have always been part of division of highways, which is great, and we do a lot of work with highways and … some of our other programs are very project focused.”

Alyson is a member of the AASHTO KM Committee. She noted that AASHTO KM discussions are often about workforce issues, which are different than her concerns in Value Management, which encompasses risk analysis, project improvement, and innovation.

Janaki is the CLEAR Program Manager. Her background was not discussed during the interview.

Next Steps

Currently Alyson is exploring which office at NCDOT should house CLEAR so that KM will serve the whole department and will encompass all modes, even though CLEAR started in a highway construction division.

“[W]e are currently under the construction unit, but we are actually going to be moving under the Office of Strategic Initiatives and so within that office, they’re in process of building a data management team and we are gonna be part of or with that group. I don’t know that it’s gonna be part of us, but we’re gonna work very closely.”

“I know that’s another part of knowledge management that we have not technically been doing, except for I will say we have our Hydraulics group who did hydraulics guidelines and they’ve been utilizing our CLEAR workflow for people to be able to make suggestions or feedback on the guidelines or changes.”

Where to situate KM is “the million-dollar question,” Alyson said.

One issue that Alyson is working on is knowledge capture before retirements occur. The idea is to draft “job guides.” She said they are “trying to figure out what that’s going to look like.”

A3.21 North Dakota Department of Transportation

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Stephanie Magnuson also participated in the interview.

Summary

The KM program at the North Dakota Department of Transportation (NDDOT) has primarily focused on the Leadership Development Journey (LDJ), a program of the Human Resources (HR) division. The switch to telework and then hybrid work during COVID-19 added collaboration tools that have helped with knowledge capture and sharing. A recently hired HR employee is educating herself about KM and she is involved in discussions with the HR Division Director to plan an expansion of NDDOT’s KM activities that

will probably not be solely focused on HR. They both see the frequently changing priorities of NDDOT as a possible threat to KM despite leadership support.

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Nikki said that KM at NDDOT was an informal component of the LDJ. She mentioned that “about 20 plus percent of our agency” has participated in LDJ. “We were kind of informally using that leadership group as … where all learning happens, how knowledge transfer happens. You know those opportunities to connect people, to let them know about what’s happening in the different divisions and really just like break down silos and open up those communication channels within our agency into more of a kind of a free-flowing format that we never really had before.”

Nikki also pointed out that “currently knowledge sharing is where … we have been spending the bulk of our time right and … trying to capture knowledge because I don’t think it’s all well documented.”

Nikki explained that when COVID-19 happened, work to enable connections increased with “more collaboration tools.” Nikki, as the head of HR, led efforts around telework and then hybrid schedules. HR “dabbled in KM, but we’ve never had a formal strategy around it, right, like we just see the benefits in the workflows and we try to tell people we’re working on the project and this is what we’ve accomplished and it also facilitates knowledge capture, knowledge sharing, you know, availability of information.”

With hybrid work, HR emphasizes tagging and naming of information “so it’s easy to find, or it’s important to make sure all your teams know where this thing is that you want everyone working in, so they’re all going to like a single source for their information and make it easily accessible.” Nikki said that this means encouraging managers to use the tools at their disposal.

Nikki explained that HR divisions at all North Dakota government agencies are “working on leadership training and competencies and developing some statewide programs,” which NDDOT has incorporated and made available. While Nikki said that there is not an initiative to unify all state government HR divisions into one operation. Note: North Dakota has a statewide office of Human Resource Management Services. “We’ve all been working together to do more consistent processes and projects and that has morphed over the years into a variety of communities of practices (CoPs).”

This initiative includes “centers of excellence around talent acquisition, total rewards, leadership and learning, … digital and operations” and performance. These CoPs “help develop policies and procedures and share knowledge as a state together with other agencies.” There is also statewide government HR CoP, which Stephanie participates in. Nikki has been educating the Chief People Officer at Human Resource Management Services about KM, which led to the CoP term being used.

With Stephanie joining NDDOT eight months ago, there will be staff time devoted to KM, which accounts for 50 percent of Stephanie’s time, with the remaining 50 percent devoted to training. Thus far, Stephanie is learning about KM as she begins.

Nikki estimated that she spends 10 percent of her time on KM activities. While some of that time is spent researching, Nikki also discusses with Stephanie ideas about:

• Rebranding LDJ;
• Launching a rebranded LDJ; and
• Launching “other HR processes with more of a knowledge focus so that we’re really elevating and sharing knowledge and sharing the right knowledge.”

Nikki described other KM activities that have included:

• Categorization of available training: This activity has stalled. NDDOT leadership learning trainings were being categorized into tiers of basic, beginning, middle, and “higher level,” which would relate to division leadership or “lead[ing] outside of your organization and collaborate more with other people.”
• Presentations on the Teams platform: “Different divisions and districts would present on what their group does. And so then they would get experience because they were presenting to the group and then people would learn about the DOT … and they could ask questions.” There was participation from NDDOT staff from all over North Dakota.
• “Watch parties”: “[N]ow that COVID’s here, a lot of people do them, but at the time when we started them, it was kind of a new concept for our people. But we would watch a training together and then if it was a recorded training, we’d pause it and have a meeting mediation in between their mediate moderator, umm, talk and ask questions and discuss things in the group chat.”
• Emerging leader sponsorship: “If there was a job need or a project within the DOT, they would fill out like a sponsorship … form, like here’s what I want this role to do. And here’s the project. And here’s who’s going to check in with that person on a regular basis. So then that person did that in addition to their other work … and we through the executive team and LDJ Group, would help make sure that the supervisor of that employee was allowing that person time to do those learning activities and kind of those stretch assignment type of things.”

Although NDDOT does not have a formal mentoring program, Nikki mentioned the following opportunities:

1. Informal pairing of staff with mentors within the agency. This has happened “from time to time.”
2. A mentoring program for North Dakota state employees across agencies.
3. A Western States Coalition Leadership Academy. This is a two-week program “with a gap between the two weeks where they work on project-based things together as a group.”

Exit interviews are not regularly conducted, but there have been occasions when long-term employees have voluntarily done this, for example when a 49-year employee was ready to leave the agency. NDDOT also double fills some of its higher-level positions.

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

Nikki’s vision for KM is to make known and available what is already housed at NDDOT: “So I think our plan is to try to like, whether we build a repository or whatever it becomes, but to make sure that those people know that the stuff they’re looking for is in-house and someone else knows that and has already researched it and found that training for their group and just connect people better.”

Nikki envisions that “as we rebrand and refresh that LDJ into a new concept, I think will have some sort of organizational knowledge piece as a component of that.” Later in the interview, Nikki added that the goal with the revamp is “to make sure everyone’s doing something within that LDJ whether LDJ becomes learning instead of leadership specific.”

Nikki also seeks to have training come under the HR umbrella. Currently, training occurs within the different divisions, but the training burden is growing as NDDOT hires more staff. She thinks that moving that function to HR will relieve this burden.

Stephanie looks to change management as a model for how to embed KM at NDDOT and she asks the important question of how to embed KM responsibilities without burdening employees. “One thing we really focus on … in North Dakota State government is like change management. So how do we initiate the change of KM? … I would love more strategies on how to implement KM without uprooting and over expecting from our managers and our employees. I think we all know that we’re spread too thin. And so if we’re going to initiate KM strategies and implement them, how do we make sure that it’s not over inundating our employees to the point where it’s a full-on task? So, if we’re asking managers to do anything with KM, how do we make it natural … something that we don’t have to feel like is forced upon our employees?”

Stephanie also would like to find out what different offices are already doing that constitutes KM. She and Nikki mentioned the NDDOT Environmental Transportation Services group, which, Stephanie recounted, has “… this amazing document where they identify all of the proponents of that department and they actually list out who’s in charge of what, which of those components. So, if I go in and I can say I really need to know who’s in charge of this, I look and I can just line it up and I can contact the right person. That is the only division in our DOT that has that, but it’s something that … we need to get everybody doing this just so that when we’re trying to communicate with another area, we know who to reach out to instead of reaching out to the whole department, reaching out to the wrong person, having five days of who should I be talking to.”

Stephanie is concerned about retirees with decades of experience leaving without a mechanism for adequately transferring their abundant knowledge. Stephanie asked, “So how do we implement strategies to make sure that no matter what role they’re in, we are retaining that information and so whether that’s documentation we have to I know for us every year we do like our job description and we try to update that. But that doesn’t necessarily tell us here is the knowledge we have, but it gives us a starting point of if we notice in that job description, there’s something that’s really specific to them. How do we make sure they are retaining that information? … [I]f we were talking KM, how do we make it manageable?”

Stephanie warned against an HR-specific view of KM. She envisions a chart that explains what KM looks like for the different functions housed at a state DOT and defining KM “in a way that actually applies to a full DOT, so that somebody in finance also sees value in it as the same as somebody who’s driving a plow as somebody you know, it is a very broad spectrum, so you have to be careful on keeping it broad enough, but also letting it click for people to see that value.”

KM Metrics

The NDDOT’s KM metrics track numbers of participants in LDJ. Nikki also tracks attendance for events and completion of a leadership certification program, the AASHTO leadership program, and LinkedIn learning courses.

Nikki has not established metrics for results, such as tracking “promotions within that group of people that are participating. … [T]here’s a lot of those, but some of that’s because the people that join the program are people that wanted to learn and better themselves anyway.”

Business Value from KM

Nikki spoke about the value of saved time when information is readily available and when tasks are not duplicated due to ignorance that training, for example, already exists. Stephanie stated that employees in each NDDOT division need to see what KM is and what its value is in terms of their work.

Organizational Culture and KM

Nikki described NDDOT as being “very project based and very siloed, kind of like a lot of DDOT’s are.” Early in her tenure at the agency, she used the LDJ program “to get people to connect, to talk with people from other areas and kind of learn more about what they were doing.” Now there is an awareness that managers need encouragement and training to use the KM tools available.

Nikki described Stephanie’s introduction to NDDOT division directors and district engineers as shedding light on how KM could reduce the ill effects of being siloed. Nikki continued that, in her conversations with staff, Stephanie found leaders interested in or doing similar training or having a problem that another group has addressed, but that these high-level staff members did not necessarily know what was happening, or needed, or was available elsewhere.

Nikki has leadership support for KM. She added that she is fortunate that the “deputy director of engineering came from the research side of things. … He was in our materials and research division before he promoted up, so he has been active in NCHRP and TRB and he knows about knowledge management.”

Nikki mentioned her “new boss as Deputy Director for Administration. And I’ve also been just letting him know I’m part of part of this knowledge management community.” She said that this deputy had previously headed a “red tape reduction project for the governor’s office for our DOT” and she tied the efficiency that KM can bring to saving time, and therefore money.

Nikki said that HR is the logical place for KM to sit at NDDOT. “We don’t have IT staff in-house anymore. They unified into a centralized agency.” She noted that the IT agency is doing KM work because “they’re trying to learn the agency information and specifics and then have that available for their other team members as they jump on and grab you from the queue basically to assist you.” The interview did not cover what this IT agency is doing with the data it collects.”

Nikki pointed to related obstacles to embedding initiatives:

1. Someone else is always driving the NDDOT agenda; and
2. “Fizzling out” when there is “a new flavor of the day and something else that people get easily distracted by.”

Nikki then posed the question of how to make KM stick, given this reality. She added the problem of maintaining skill sets. The core of Nikki’s concern, which she and Stephanie repeated, was avoiding a one-and-done mindset and instead building maintenance and updating into a KM program. Nikki said that the latter is the toughest part.

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

While there are no formal KM partnerships at NDDOT, approximately 20 percent of the staff has been involved with the LDJ program. In addition, Stephanie has been engaging in discussions with division directors and district engineers. She has discovered that these high-level staff members did not necessarily know what was happening or were available elsewhere at NDDOT.

The Future

Nikki would like KM to be branded. “We haven’t really advertised it as such, but we’ve made the business case because of the other things that it helps us with because we struggle with recruiting and retention, we struggle with … engagement. You know, we have workforce planning happening and so I think KM is part of that and I have to make it part of that.”

Nikki will very soon request two more positions, with each doing some KM-related work. “One maybe dedicated more toward KM and training side of things” and the other to “formalize some of our HR practices,” such as gathering and updating job descriptions or doing performance evaluation work.

Details

Nikki criticized exit interviews as not being beneficial because departing employees would use the interviews to “complain about every single thing that happened to me for 20 years while I worked here.” She uses “engagement surveys” instead.

Responding to the question of what resources are helpful for someone new to KM, Stephanie said that there must be a definition of KM, and she mentioned integrating KM into the evaluation process.

Stephanie observed that when she began to explore KM materials that “it was really a smorgasbord of what is KM and what can it look like. … I come from a field of public education and so for me it’s really about learning and teaching, and one thing I noticed with KM is there are a lot of definitions of it.”

Nikki said that she could use:

• KM definition;
• KM metrics that are easy to track and that help drive other initiatives; and
• KM case studies that are “plug and play” or “templated.”

Background of Interviewees

Nikki joined NDDOT about six years ago, about the same time as AASHTO created the KM Committee. “When I came on to the DOT, they were looking to ramp up their leadership development programming” to expand beyond mentoring to do “some emerging leader work.” Nikki learned about KM from the time

she started at NDDOT. Prior to joining NDDOT, Nikki had worked for 19 years in state government at different agencies. Most of that time she was in HR and training. She had previously been employed for a few years at a law enforcement agency.

At NDDOT, Nikki became involved with the LDJ program, which is now due for a fresh look. Stephanie joined NDDOT eight months ago and she is now leading LDJ. She is responsible for additional manager training that will be implemented more broadly. She came from public education.

Next Steps

Later in the week of the interview, Nikki plans to request one or two more positions that would be responsible for KM tasks. The job tasks have not been decided upon. Nikki believes that with the growing number of NDDOT employees, she has a good chance for such a request to be approved.

A3.22 Ohio Department of Transportation

Contact Information

DOT Metrics

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Maria Johnson also participated in the interview. Maria is the executive assistant to the Assistant Director of the Leadership Office.

Summary

Maria and Victoria spend under 10 percent of their time on KM activities and are looking for guidance on how to explain KM in a way that will resonate with leadership and offices across the agency. At this point, there are a few KM activities that are being performed at ODOT, and these are mainly within the context of the work of Victoria and Maria. The activities taking place are limited knowledge sharing and

one agency-wide community of practice (CoP) for executive assistants of high-level staff. There is no current plan to expand KM or to put metrics in place. A project management program is being planned.

Key Themes

Size and Scope of the KM Function

Victoria and Maria estimated that they each spend about 5 percent of their time on KM. Victoria said that she goes up to 10 percent.

Maria said that for new hires and employees who have been with the agency less than five years, there is an ODOT 101 class that introduces staff to the divisions and departments within ODOT.

Victoria uses a color-coded organizational table that shows how close to retirement eligibility are the employees in each position. This does not mean that anyone is planning to retire at a particular date. She said that management can use this chart as a visual aid to determine whether retirements are a concern that needs to be addressed.

Victoria recounted how Maria “had all of the executive assistants from our districts in for a conference that she did this fall, and I did a piece for them on what knowledge management is … for executive assistants.” Following the conference, monthly “knowledge cafes” are scheduled to inform the executive assistants about “everything from … getting familiar with legislative affairs … or the what the different departments do around ODOT and everything.” Such regularly scheduled knowledge cafes function as a CoP for the executive assistants.

Victoria issues a quarterly newsletter that goes out to 2300 local public agencies that receive ODOT training. She includes “articles to explain what knowledge management is and why it’s important.”

KM Mission, Vision, Charter, and Strategy

In a November 2023 PowerPoint presentation, Victoria outlined a vision of KM embedded into the normal work of ODOT employees in:

• Sharing tacit knowledge,
• Capturing lessons learned,
• Using IT and other tools to support KM,
• Identifying who needs what information, and
• Sharing information or making information available to those who need it.

Victoria also considers that KM should be part of the routine of a state DOT so that structures and tasks set up for capturing and sharing knowledge are maintained over time.

Victoria and Maria discussed ODOT’s KM needs. Maria observed that bringing back retirees is helpful, but it demonstrates that ODOT is “failing” at KM. “[T]here’s not mechanisms in place to pass the knowledge on, … and just everyday life happens, … so you can’t depend on one person or a small group of people … knowing something critical.” Victoria emphasized that ODOT needs basic KM. One example she offered was a lack of backup training, “even just like a guidance document or a job aid to help them figure out how to complete a task.”

Victoria talked about KM expansively: “DOTs not only need to do their own knowledge management, but they need to really look at, you know, crossing those state boundaries and collaborating and communities of practice more actively to make certain that, you know when they do lose … people that the knowledge that they feel they have is still the correct and current knowledge.”

Maria explained that unlike AASHTO, which can only issue recommendations and resources, the US DOT or the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) can “get on board” with KM by issuing mandates to “marry it more into the overall organization” of state departments of transportation (DOTs). Maria suggested that at AASHTO and other conferences for state DOTs’ executive leadership “knowledge management needs to be poured into these agendas.”

KM Metrics

Victoria said that KM activities and implementation are not being measured. She said that for now “the measurement of success for my goal and this is lumped in with participating in TRB and other national initiatives is that I participated.” Maria did not mention any metrics.

Business Value from KM

Victoria and Maria alluded to the business value of KM in not allowing knowledge to leave when employees vacate their positions and of a lack of training and knowledge backup even for critical functions.

Organizational Culture and KM

ODOT has “12 districts that … divide up Ohio’s 88 counties” and Maria described the agency as “siloed in a lot of ways.”

Victoria and Maria described themselves as the two KM advocates. Victoria commented that they are “trying to pull the DOT kicking and screaming forward.” Maria pointed out that ODOT is losing employees with retirements and “knowledge [is] walking out the door.”

Victoria described ODOT’s attitude toward KM as not “wholeheartedly embracing this concept or any of the pieces that build the concept. I think it’s still very abstract to them and that they struggle with it now.”

Regarding where KM should be housed at a state DOT, Maria and Victoria held different opinions. Maria thought that Human Resources (HR) needed to have a presence because it would be responsible for mentoring and shadowing initiatives. Victoria, who spent seven or eight years working in HR, disagreed. “I feel now having had the experience outside of HR that the rest of the DOT, I mean they understand the HR is a function that we need, but they see HR as, and maybe this is just our DOT, but they see them as a roadblock.” She added that “there’s just a lot of pieces because of being in government, the HR is not able to be agile and responsive to things.”

Victoria would place KM at the executive level, at least in the beginning. Maria said that this would be similar to the establishment of change management. She explained, “that’s a very important place because you have to have them on board to, you know, to make decisions, set goals and … set the tone for the rest of the organization.”

To get buy-in, Victoria stressed that “if I’m going to talk to executive management, I need an elevator pitch because that’s about all the time they have. … I need to put it in easily understood language. It needs to be like at an eighth-grade reading level because they don’t have the time to learn a bunch of new terminology and try to think through new concepts.” Maria said this would need to communicate how KM would benefit them. Likewise, Victoria noted the need to show staff what is in it for them and for “turnkey” KM pieces.

Maria stated that “we need to come up with things that will be applicable across the board,” that will speak to staff in operations such as engineering and construction.

Partnerships with Other Internal Functions

Maria said that she and Victoria are slowly connecting with staff in HR, IT, and data governance to “put mechanisms in place” for capturing and storing knowledge.

The Future

Victoria plans to incorporate KM “into the project management program once I’ve got hard and fast examples that I can point to, then yes, we can educate people more whether it’s through a microlearning.” She contrasted microlearning with full courses.

Maria listed “free” KM tools that ODOT could be utilizing, such as mentoring, manuals, and process maps (“instead of these vague position descriptions”). Victoria continued by saying that thus far KM lacks executive support. She and Maria also discussed using KM to communicate with new employees to reduce the amount of time necessary for them to learn. Maria emphasized the usefulness of process mapping for outlining “the different duties that that job does.”

Victoria mentioned the importance of “get[ting] every single position description updated because we have position descriptions out there that haven’t been updated in 30 years.”

Victoria would like to use CoPs to increase collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Details

Maria is looking forward to the knowledge capture toolkit (for which she sits on the NHCRP panel) because it will make available “tangible tools that people can use across … the DOTs and then they can say, ‘OK well this is how I do it’ because … people need hard tangible things to grab ahold of and use.”

Maria talked about the value of mentoring or shadowing for a new employee while the predecessor is still doing the job, but she explained that ODOT does not, even temporarily, double fill positions. This translates into a loss of tacit knowledge.

Victoria provides “job aids in the LTAP area and we developed these really in response to questions that our locals have had on different topics and I see that as a knowledge management tool because we’re helping to give them you know those right sized pieces.”

Victoria compared KM to the structure that the rules of civil procedure provide for litigation.

In terms of speaking to executives about what would benefit them, Victoria brought up the examples of lessons learned from the blizzard of 1978 (“they still talk about that here in Ohio”) and the blackout of 2003 (“all communications were down, so that was something where we captured lessons learned and that’s part was knowledge management in action”).

On the other hand, Victoria observed, “you need to have that marketing team work on how to communicate it to the new hires too, though, because they need different communication and different learning than a what the executive staff is going to need.”

For the KM guidebook, Victoria and Maria asked to include information about:

• Selling and communicating KM internally;
• Communicating with executive leadership about KM in a way that aligns with their strategic goals; and
• Graphics that “sell” KM for transportation (“You need to sell the knowledge management to them from their context.”).

Victoria is concerned that artificial intelligence (AI) will be put forth as “THE” KM solution.

Background of Interviewees

Maria is the executive assistant to the assistant director of the leadership office. She has been at ODOT for six years. Maria said that her experience in the director’s office has shown her “how strategies and policies … are put together from the top.” Maria is serving on an NHCRP panel overseeing the creation of a “knowledge capture toolkit.”

Victoria has worked at ODOT for 22 years. She spent seven or eight years working in HR before moving to the Division of Planning. She is currently the assistant director of ODOT’s Office of Local Programs and she directs the Local Technical Assistance Program (LTAP), which works with local transportation agencies across Ohio. The local programs are responsible for more than 80 percent of Ohio’s roads.

Victoria is the Chair of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Standing Committee on Workforce Development and Organizational Excellence. The committee describes its work as exploring, analyzing, synthesizing, and disseminating “leading management and organizational concepts that relate to improved performance.” According to the TRB directory information, she also serves on a number of TRB and AASHTO committees, as well as currently participating as a member of three NHCRP panels. At the 2024 Annual TRB Conference, Victoria was a speaker or moderator of four sessions relating to workforce development. Victoria is also a lawyer.

Victoria is leading the planning for a May 2025 conference for the TRB Standing Committee on Workforce Development and Organizational Excellence. She is active with AASHTO KM knowledge cafes and she is a member of the AASHTO KM Committee.

Next Steps

In the next year, Victoria expects to move forward with a “new project management training program” that will be “electronically available. I’m trying to incorporate knowledge cafes in and I would like to build a community of practice (CoP) around our project managers.”