Institutional Memory

In the "News from Lake Wobegon" today, Garrison Keillor tells the story of Fred, an 80 year old who plows people's gardens for them in the spring. He is laid up with a broken ankle and worries about his son charging the wrong people and charging people the wrong price. He has his price list in his head and has never transmitted it to anyone or written it down.

Fred is talking about institutional memory, even though he doesn't say it in those terms. Institutional memory is a huge issue for companies today. When people leave, very few companies make much of an effort to document the knowledge that person has in their head. It is important for managers and executives to evaluate the people who are leaving and what they k now about the company, or better yet, to document as they go along.

Wikis are a great way to document knowledge on the department level, because they are easy to use, easy to access and participants are notified automatically when there is a change. There are lots of different wikis, many of which are free and publicly available. There are also versions that can be loaded on a server for internal use only.

*You can download the podcast from the front page of the the Prairie Home Companion site or from Audible.com.

Call us if you need help documenting institutional memory or working with wikis.

GAO faults EPA bcs public has lost access to information as a result of library closures

Shortsightedly responding to dept budget cuts by slashing library budgets and curtailing access to library holdings can land you in government hearings as the EPA has recently discovered.

Congressional investigators reported March 13th that the EPA's library closures did not fully account for the impact on government staffers and the public, who rely on the libraries for hard-to-find environmental data.

With more focus on its acitivites than ever due to increased press and public concern over global warming the EPA should have known better than to close its libraries and deny staff and the public access to vital information that is not easily accessible elsewhere. The Washington Post reports on the closures and the bloody aftermath in the article headlined above reporting that:

Recently the GAO has found that the EPA acted irresponsibly in weeding its holdings, closing its branches and curtailing services in cost cutting measures started in 2006.

GAO findings relative to the closures:

The GAO report faults the EPA for not consulting agency staff, outside experts or stakeholders before undertaking the reorganization, and failing to do a cost-benefit analysis or name a national manager to oversee the effort. Investigators noted that users of the Chemical Library -- which served EPA scientists who review industry requests to sell new chemicals -- did not learn of the facility's closure until after it occurred.

"The agency's modernization effort is characterized by poor planning, failure to communicate with its employees, the public or Congress and failure to protect unique government assets," Gordon said in a statement. "As a result, EPA library services are impaired, employees will have a harder time doing their jobs and the public has lost access to government information."

GAO also found that, because of copyright issues, only 51,000 of the system's more than 500,000 hard copies of books, reports, journals and maps are expected to be transferred to digital format. That means users in areas where libraries have closed must obtain materials through interlibrary loans, delaying access for as long as 20 days.

Public employees already weighed in on this issue in Summer 2006 when 10,000 researchers protested the cuts. Maybe the right people are finally listening to their protests about how curtailing library services can be tantamount to censorship?