U.S. Air Force Gen. William M. Fraser III, Commander, U.S. Transportation Command, recently signed the USTRANSCOM Knowledge Management Strategy starting our commands journey into the world of KM.
“This document provides USTRANSCOM personnel the structure to establish a formal program to build a shared repository of knowledge to support our decision making at all levels,” said Fraser.
KM is managing the process of creating or capturing, organizing, applying, and transferring knowledge to facilitate situational understanding and decision making.
The KM strategy is an all-encompassing document covering the commands vision, mission, and goals/approach. KM promotes improving organizational learning, innovation, and performance.
KM processes ensure that knowledge products and services are relevant, accurate, timely, and useable to the commander and key decision makers. KM has three major components; people, processes, and tools.
With the signing of the KM strategy, the next stage involved selecting a Knowledge Management Officer and Knowledge Management Representatives from each directorate. In early April, the Joint Enabling Capabilities Command, Joint Planning Support Element provided initial training to the KMR team.
Col Mike Day, J3 Deployment and Distribution Operations Center Chief, was tapped as the USTRANSCOM acting KMO. The KMO is critical to the effort. Col Day, with the assistance of a team of expert consultants working on the third deck, is guiding and synchronizing KMR efforts to implement the strategy to effectively support the commanders decision cycle and staff processes that lead to accomplishing the commands mission. In his capacity as the KMO, he reports directly to Maj. Gen. David G. Clarkson, USTRANSCOM Chief of Staff, providing regular progress updates.
“KMRs are the lynch-pin to the KM process and are vital to the successful execution,” said Day.
Every directorate has at least one KMR that has received training and reports to the KMO and respective directors on all things KM related. The goal of the KMR is to provide local expertise into all work centers and synchronize efforts into one predetermined process map.
“KM is a culture change, there is no end state, as we progress we will all use KM as second nature,” said Day.
USTRANSCOM will be using Swim Lane process mapping, which is a simplistic visual method to capture and convey a shared understanding of the information flow and decision points for across the command. This approach will give all users the ability to easily input and find information with minimal delay.
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