KM Principles at the US Army

The US Army has a set of Knowledge Management Principles and an accompanying paper (pdf) that describes the details (date stamped June 2008).  Their principles are

People / Culture Dimension
1. Train and educate leaders, managers and champions.
2. Reward knowledge sharing and make knowledge management a career-enhancing activity.
3. Establish a doctrine of collaboration.

Core Principles of Collaboration

4. Use every interaction, whether face-to-face or virtual, as an opportunity to acquire and share knowledge.
5. Prevent knowledge loss.

Process Dimension

6. Protect and secure information and knowledge assets.
7. Embed knowledge assets (links, podcasts, videos, simulations, wikis, etc.) in standard business processes and provide access to those who need it.
8. Use standard legal and business rules and processes enterprisewide.

Technology Dimension

9. Use standardized, collaborative toolsets.
10. Use open architectures to permit access and searching across boundaries.
11. Incorporate a robust search capability to access contextual knowledge.
12. Use portals that permit single sign-on authentication for all users, including partners.

They offer a fairly standard definition of knowledge management for the Army, but I really like what they describe as the "end state" if these principles are implemented well:

Implementing these principles will create a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing in the Army where key information and knowledge is "pushed and pulled" within the global enterprise to meet mission objectives -- an Army where good ideas are valued regardless of the source, knowledge sharing is recognized and rewarded and the knowledge base is accessible without technological or structural barriers.

In the details of the paper, each principle is described with a brief rationale and the implications of the principle.  I particularly honed in on the idea described under the "core principles of collaboration," where they suggest that there needs to be a shift from the idea of "need to share" to a "responsibility to provide."  This is coming from an organization that I stereotypically believe operates in a "need to know" environment.  Interesting shift!

The second half of the paper is devoted to a story of how the principles might apply in the army of the future (the year 2012).

Throughout this paper, I was reminded of the item last year from Patrick Lambe on What would a knowledge sharing policy look like?

[found via LawyerKM]