Bookmarks for June 9th through June 17th No comments yet

These are my links for June 9th through June 17th:

• data.ox.ac.uk | Open data from the University of Oxford – Linked data for the University of Oxford
• Welcome : Warwickshire Open Data – Warwickshire County Council is taking open and linked data seriously. They’re opening up data and supporting the developer community to do something useful with it through a Hack Warwickshire competition (open til 25 June). And they’re open to suggestions of what data should be open next.
• Letter to Government departments on opening up data | Number10.gov.uk – A letter from Prime Minister David Cameron to Government departments on plans to open up Government data.
  * Historic COINS spending data to be published online in June 2010.
  * All new central government ICT contracts to be published online from July 2010.
  * All new central government lender documents for contracts over £10,000 to be published on a single website from September 2010, with this information to be made available to the public free of charge.
  * New items of central government spending over £25,000 to be published online from November 2010.
  * All new central government contracts to be published in full from January 2011.
  * Full information on all DFID international development projects over £500 to be published online from January 2011, including financial information and project documentation.
• Open Local Data – Welcome to the wiki on winning the argument for localgov data.
• Arguments for open local data « Local Data – Having trouble persuading your managers of the benefits of open data? Or just need persuading yourself? Well here we try convincing all of you. What follows is a Q&A compiled initially by Dan Slee of Walsall Council and Stuart Harrison of Lichfield District Council. The first part is a bit of background information, the second part comprises some responses to common arguments. This work is ongoing, and this page will occasionally be updated accordingly. You can watch and contribute on the Open Local Data wiki

Knowledge Management – Return on Investment 4 comments

A common and recurrent theme that I keep coming across is how to measure the value of knowledge management, e.g. the return on investment (ROI) of implementing a knowledge management strategy. This may cross over into having a social media strategy where the goal is to support knowledge sharing, so I’ll use these terms – KM Strategy and social media strategy interchangeably in this particular context.

I don’t doubt the importance of being able to measure results and it’s the job of managers to ensure they get value out of any investment in training, technology, organisational development or whatever.  However, these things are notoriously difficult to measure – for example – how do you put a price on a conversation? This led to me thinking about turning all of this on its head and considering how we should measure the cost of NOT having a knowledge management or social media strategy, or NOT making any change.

Using this approach we can at least examine the current status quo and determine whether business processes, capacity, staff knowledge etc. are fit for purpose.  So, rather than spending time and effort creating a business case for a KM or SM strategy, ask managers to justify why things should stay as they are.

Some pertinent questions for managers might be:

Is your staff currently motivated and inspired?

Do your staff have all the relevant information to do their jobs effectively?

Do your staff have the right tools for the work they are being asked to do?

Do your staff understand their place in the wider organisation and their input and output dependencies for the business processes they contribute to?

Do your staff have adequate opportunities to share knowledge and information with other parts of the organisation? Are they encouraged to do so?

Are you confident that you can react to rapidly changing demands on your staff?

Do you have sufficient knowledge and information to consider the impact of external events on you and your staff and to plan accordingly?

Do you know what your customers are saying about you (within and external to your organisation)?

Do current policies and guidelines support or hinder you and your staff in their work?

Does your manager fully understand what you and your staff do?

There are probably other questions that could be asked, but the key point is that any question which triggers a negative response is potentially a catalyst for change.  This also means it could become a performance indicator if change is agreed, i.e. using qualitative or quantitative techniques.

So, we have the beginnings of a measurable approach to change; we know where we are now and we should know what the desired outcomes are. The difference is what we need to measure.

Of course, the problem remains that not all changes can be measured in strictly cash value terms, which is what many people consider to be the true meaning of ROI. I go back to the point I made earlier – how do you measure the value of a conversation or some information shared?  The answer is, you don’t, and the sooner that everyone recognises this the better. Measuring impact can be just as important as measuring value.  The impact might be things like improved customer satisfaction (measured using surveys), or less time to complete a task, or improved staff morale (measured using surveys). Any of these can – and potentially will – have an effect in terms of cash value to the organisation, but I firmly believe that converting impact to cash value is an exercise in futility, since more often than not, the formulae and algorithms have too many variables.

So, in terms of ‘ROI’, think ‘Return on Impact’ rather than Return on Investment when considering Knowledge management strategies, and develop the strategy from the starting point of getting staff to justify the present  status quo.  After all, change is part of life, and as Darwin once said:

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

Bookmarks for June 5th through June 8th No comments yet

These are my links for June 5th through June 8th:

• Reviving Community Indicators – Learning | Full Circle Associates –
• Eric Pickles – New era of transparency will bring about a revolution in town hall openness and accountability – Corporate – Communities and Local Government – Communities Secretary Eric Pickles and Local Government Association Chair Baroness Eaton joined forces today to urge all councils to publish details of all spending over £500 in full and online as part of wider action to bring about a revolution in town hall openness and accountability.
• OpenPSI – Open PSI is a collaboration between the University of Southampton and the UK government, lead by the National Archive, to trial a new form of community provisioned information service. This is a new form of "community provisioned" Information Service where we hope to stimulate interaction between the following communities: public sector information publishers, the research community, mashup creators
• http://coins.guardian.co.uk/coins-explorer/search – This is our first attempt at producing a way to navigate around the 3.2m data items released by the UK government as part of Coins. Scroll down the page to choose which chunk of data you'd like to explore – and let us know what you find.<br />
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  Find out what the acronyms mean with our glossary.
• Publishing itemised local authority expenditure – advice for comment | data.gov.uk – The Prime Minister and CLG Ministers wish to see local authorities publish granular local spending data. The Public Sector Transparency Board has been set up to drive an open data agenda. The Prime Minister has made a specific commitment that new items of local government spending over £500 be published on a council-by-council basis from January 2011. http://www.number10.gov.uk/news/statements-and-articles/2010/05/letter-t… Many local authorities also wish to publish such data. Camden Council asked the Panel for advice on publishing information about payments to suppliers greater than £500 in value.