Cultivating capability: The socio-technical challenges of integrating approaches to records and knowledge management

This paper aims to advocate that significant human and systems-based capabilities (termed “socio-technical capabilities”) need to be developed in government departments and other public sector organisations to support more effective description of information resources, collections and their context in online environments.

The ideas in this paper draw upon the findings of several action research interventions undertaken within a government department in Victoria in Australia since 2011 as part of a knowledge management initiative. Specific focus is given to the design and development of a new record-centric knowledge curation tool (KCT).

Effective functioning of KCT relies upon the input of well-structured, standards-based metadata used to describe collections, information resources and their context. The central claim is that the move towards standards-based descriptions will fundamentally change the capabilities required to manage, search for and disseminate knowledge and records.

In addition to the capabilities discussed, management of records and knowledge through time requires commitments to stable repository, workflow and administrative systems, and working with contemporary systems involves technical knowledge such as the use of application programming interfaces. These aspects are not discussed here.

The capabilities discussed in this paper are socio-technical in nature. This means there is a requirement to shift current perspectives about who is responsible for managing organisational information as collections.

While some of the concepts discussed will be familiar to information professionals, the paper provides a unique description of how existing archival and recordkeeping practices are being integrated in innovative ways within organisations outside the information management professions.