Whether knowledge is explicit or implicit, to easily access it, we must be able to identify where it is located. To effectively organize their internal knowledge, institutions are increasingly relying on meta data, that is, information that describes knowledge. Meta data helps organizations classify and understand their knowledge, so they can make better decisions.
Meta data spans many types, of which we will explore three in this posting.
Organizational Meta Data
This meta data captures the function or part of an organization under which knowledge is created. For example, if for Cook County School District defines a new operating procedure, the applicable organizational meta data might describe the relevant function as Human Resources, the sub-function as Hiring, and the relevant locations as High Schools. This meta data defines the relationship of the knowledge to the organization, enabling easier searching and retrieving based on the organizational function. We inherently do this with organizational charts, enabling easier identification of people and implicitly, their tacit knowledge.
Knowledge Accountability Meta Data
The people associated with knowledge creation and revision are captured with this type of meta data. For the same example of a hiring procedure, a Knowledge Owner would perhaps be the HR Director, since she would be accountable for any changes. The Knowledge Approver could be an HR manager who has to review the procedure before it is distributed. Finally, the Knowledge Creator and Updater may be an HR analyst who both originates and maintains the procedure. Additionally, dates associated with each person may also describe the procedure. For example, a hiring procedure may have dates recording its creation, its last review, and its last update. Knowing all the people who 'touch' a piece of knowledge and the associated dates helps organizations relate their explicit and implicit knowledge to each other, to easily find one using another, and keep track of the recency of their knowledge.
Knowledge Characteristics Meta Data
Every piece of knowledge can be qualitatively described by its unique characteristics. For example, the hiring knowledge from above would have a name, Hiring College Guidance Counselors. It also represents a type of knowledge, in this case, a Procedure. Other knowledge types might include Forms, Lesson Plans, or Programs. The format (e.g., Word Document), purpose, audience and key words would be additional possible knowledge characterics to be used as meta data. This meta data is perhaps one of the most commonly used, because the qualitative characteristics of knowledge often serve as the base for online searches typically yielding poor results. Without specific relationships tied to the organization's people and functions or processes, knowledge is more easily lost within the organization.
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