Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management Communities of Practice and Expertise Location Capabilities

Project Description

The Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) Criminal Investigation Division (CI) is developing knowledge management (KM) capabilities to support its special agents workforce.  The CI effort is part of a larger IRS plan to focus on KM within the enterprise as a means of increasing compliance and performance.

The Commissioner of the IRS identified CI as a potential KM pilot opportunity because of its unique environment and the challenges it faces with regard to the retirement of its workforce.  A number of environmental factors, both external and internal, drive CI to seek KM capabilities—

• CI seeks to ensure that it can continue to accomplish its mission effectively, while simultaneously responding to an increased mandate to "do more with less." 

• CI recognizes the need to create a KM capability to facilitate knowledge capture, aggregation, and reuse, and to enhance collaboration across the organization.

• CI needs to capture lessons learned and best practices and to incorporate disparate data.

For the KM division, Booz Allen developed and implemented a full-scale KM plan resulting in the development and deployment of a comprehensive, web-based tool called Communities Accessing and Sharing Expertise (CASE) system.  To achieve this, Booz Allen executed a three-phased approach.

In Phase I, we conducted an organizational and cultural assessment and a process analysis and assessment of the current CI environment and the special agent investigative process. For this phase, we—

• Assessed the organizational culture and readiness of end users to determine how knowledge sharing is viewed and rewarded

• Identified change agents and assessed CI structure to determine the feasibility and efficiency in which KM teams can operate

• Identified and validated subject matter experts (SME).

In Phase II, we developed the KM pilot program.  For phase II, we—

• Developed a comprehensive KM strategy to direct actions and help ensure accurate execution of the client’s primary objectives

• Documented the entire investigative process, determining the information needs of CI’s agents and identifying crucial information gaps, and documented and assessed knowledge sharing activities as they relate to current business processes

• Developed a knowledge map and taxonomy to assess the types of knowledge and information that are most valuable to the organization

• Conducted an assessment of CI’s current IT infrastructure and IT roadmap

• Designed a CASE pilot and deployed it to 600 users in six field offices across the country.

Phase III entailed a full-scale KM rollout and implementation. We—

• Implemented a blended approach to CASE training by conducting instructor-led sessions for more than 2,000 agents in the remaining 29 field offices and developed a multimedia training CD

• Developed a deployment plan to train more than 2,000 nonagents and conducted pilot visits in five field offices to gauge the effectiveness of the multimedia training CD

• Identified new communities of practice (CoP) and designed system and data taxonomies to meet the needs of the newly developed communities

• Tracked usage statistics to identify trends within the CoP

• Conducted follow-on organizational study and process analysis as part of the original KM tasking to validate previous KM findings and assess current information sharing practices, motivational programs, and rewards and recognition programs to determine acceptance of KM in CI.

Ongoing KM system support includes strategic planning and developing additional CoP, implementing targeted marketing and KM tools to encourage user participation, and deploying additional training mechanisms.

Intended or Achieved Results

CI is pursuing KM capabilities to improve performance, reduce agent and management burden, and capture the tacit and explicit knowledge of its entire workforce. The KM program is aligned with and supports the Annual Business Plan and the Strategy and Program Plan, FY 2003 through 2006.  Capturing and formalizing new and existing knowledge, best practices, investigative techniques, and lessons learned into a structured solution that can be shared throughout CI will help facilitate the investigation of legal source tax crimes, illegal source financial crimes, narcotics-related financial crimes, terrorism, and money laundering crimes.

Implementation of the CASE system enabled the vital cross-agency/nationwide sharing of information, enhanced existing information gathering processes and captured CI’s collective expertise.  It also provided an IT-enabled KM system that serves as a collaborative forum for CI employees searching for expertise. Based on results from the follow-on organization study conducted in May 2004, 81 percent of respondents found the KM program to be “Good,” “Very Good,” or “Excellent” in meeting their needs.  Overall, 64 percent of respondents noted that information sharing was better now than it was in 2002.

Capabilities and AROC Management System

Project Description

The Army’s capability submission and staffing process was paper-based and manual.  The lack of a central repository affected the Army Requirements Oversight Council’s (AROC) ability to respond to warfighter needs by inhibiting real-time collaboration, status tracking, version control, and document management.  The AROC wanted a collaborative environment to enable Joint interoperability, collaboration, document management, and historical trending to influence senior decision making.

Booz Allen assessed AROC processes and stakeholder needs during Joint Application Development (JAD) sessions.  We facilitated these JAD sessions with key stakeholders and translated the stakeholder needs into functional requirements for the Capabilities and AROC Management System (CAMS). 

We designed, developed, and delivered a database-driven, web-based knowledge management application based on requirements collected during the JAD sessions.  Our software development effort included problem analysis, design and implementation, testing, and documentation updates using the waterfall software development methodology. The resulting CAMS application provides a collaborative environment for the Army to coordinate capabilities documents through the approval process from beginning to end and to support decision making within a central repository. 

Our onsite system administrator provides robust support for managing the AROC business processes within the CAMS application.  Our onsite analyst works with the user community to capture and manage capabilities-related documentation within the CAMS application.  The system administrator is responsible for data loading, user-account creation and administration, legacy document population, and user training.  This support ensures the consistency and accuracy of system configurable data sets within the application and maximizes user comprehension of system functionality. 

A critical aspect of the success of the CAMS application is ensuring that individuals can properly use and understand the tool.  To this end, we developed and conducted formal classroom training sessions and provide continued training from the onsite system administrator as needed. User guides and job aids are also available through the application.

Booz Allen provides version upgrades to improve on the current system. These upgrades are based on collected user feedback and our recommendations.  We use a carefully structured approach to collect and prioritize potential requirements and then design, develop, and implement the version upgrades based on prioritization of requirements through a Configuration Control Board (CCB). 

Intended or Achieved Results

The CAMS system has achieved formal approval to operate in the Army Knowledge Online—Secret (AKO-S) environment.  It automates the submission, commenting, and approval processes for Army capability and other Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) Knowledge Management/Decision Support (KM/DS) service documents that require coordination through the Army’s Future Warfighting Capabilities Division. 

The system provides the Army with an electronic repository of requirements, issues, results, and historical data for traceability to facilitate decision making.  It allows coordination of AROC documents and comments, from numerous users and organizations within the Army, into a central repository.  The system’s robust search and visualization capability ensures that all information related to capabilities linkages, performance, schedule, and cost are available in real time for decision makers with need to know.  System users can view document information, schedule meetings, and monitor document progress in a central location until submission to JROC.  The system meets stringent security standards for storing and manipulating critical classified information and provides role-based access to limit disclosure to those who do not have a need to know. 

Booz Allen’s full-time onsite system administrator support facilitates efficient system use and minimizes document processing time.  With this hands-on support, users receive quick answers to questions, helping to alleviate process bottlenecks and confusion during system use.  The system administrator gathers and collects user feedback and enhancement requests to be used for prioritization of future releases and reports great user acceptance with the tool.  He is frequently asked questions on system functionality, which indicates high system usage.  The benefit of the CAMS application and onsite support provided is also fully recognized by our client.  This is evidenced in the client’s continued funding support for an additional year along with the client’s expressed desire for additional system functionality.

In an attempt for continued application improvement, CAMS also tracks statistical information such as the number of users accessing the system, the number of documents entered into the system, and the number of days documents are within each stage of the process.  This information will be used to identify shortfalls within the client’s organizational process or system functionality to continue to improve client decision making capability.