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USGS Workshop     Woods Hole, Mass.        February 6-8, 2001

Making USGS Information Effective in the Electronic Age

Description | Agenda | Porter | Frodeman | McDermott/Wendt | Hutchinson | Accomodations

DAY 3: THE CHALLENGE OF STRATEGY - Building a CMGP Knowledge Bank

As the world enters the 21st century in a transition from an "industrial" economy to a "knowledge" economy, one of the biggest challenges, especially for government researchers, is to leverage knowledge output to be more relevant, useful, and cost effective. One of the most painful signs that we, as government scientists, have not been leveraging our knowledge output is the goal of the original Contract with Americal to abolish the USGS. The aging of the scientific staff also poses the realization that there will be large gaps in corporate knowledge in the next decade if we don't find a way to capture and derive long-lasting benefits from the knowledge base of the retiring staff. With the background of the workshop in understanding the role of a federal scientist (day 1) and the critical audiences (day 2), the focus of day 3 will be to apply this understanding to develop the principal goals and objectives of a long-range plan for Knowledge Management (KM) in CMGP. The development of a robust KM strategic plan should serve to improve the quality, delivery, and impact of CMGP science.

A series of questions will be posed at the start of the workshop and again at the start of Day 3 to focus the discussion:

    What Knowledge do we need to share?
    With whom do we need to share it?
    Why are we sharing it?
    How are we currently sharing it?
    How can we share it better and smarter in the future?
    How can we tell that our knowledge is being used effectively?
Day 3 will comprise a mixture of the entire group discussing issues, and smaller break-out brainstorming sessions. The break-out groups will be tasked with developing goals, objectives, and actions required for CMGP to handle and communicate its knowledge more effectively. The main focus of the break-out sessions will be on the principal knowledge products of the Program (projects and assessments) and on identifying the critical components of a Knowledge Bank. These categories may change depending on the discussions of days 1 and 2 of the workshop and the consensus of participants.

Debbie Hutchinson