Organizational learning in public organizations

A recent post to the KM4Dev community drew attention to the new World Public Sector Report, published by the UN Public Administration Programme, which includes a chapter on organizational learning. The chapter talks of the important of knowledge sharing, networking and innovation:

Effective networking and teamwork may not only facilitate the timely completion of tasks but also improve the quality of work. For instance, in cases when a long time may be spent in trying to solve a particular problem, effective networking, collaboration and knowledge-sharing with peers may reduce this time considerably and thereby contribute to organizational learning.

It also talks about organizations characterized by compliance rather than commitment:

...the downside of strict adherence to hierarchical authority is that it tends to evoke compliance in government bureaucracies rather than commitment to the work at hand. The more strongly hierarchical power is exerted, the more results are generally focused on compliance. Yet the genuine commitment of staff is usually an essential factor in fostering meaningful change in any organization.

E-collaboration workshop

I was at an 'e-collaboation' workshop in The Hague today (2nd November). There were demonstrations of the use of Skype, MSN and Dgroups for keeping in touch with partners. Although I'm familiar with Dgroups and use them a lot, the potential of Skype and MSN for work was pretty new to me.

One of the nice things you can do with MSN is having a telephone conversation, while keeping notes in the chat facility - notes that all parties (up to 5 can take part) can see. This is probably really useful if you want to make 'afspraken' with the colleagues with whom you are in contact. In addition, you can make drawings on the whiteboard and send documents at the same time.

One participant was also using MSN to help partners install new software. With the 'print page' facility - copied into Word and then forwarded - she was able to monitor what screen they we seeing and thus help them with problems.