Knowledge sharing using codification and collaboration technologies to improve health care: lessons from the public sector

Abstract

Knowledge management (KM) enables the public sector to support knowledge transfer across organizations and communities. This case study tells the story of how one U.S. Government agency has been able to support change within the health-care industry to adopt and use information and communication technologies. The study focuses on the role and use of codification and collaboration technologies in KM practice. The study also describes the agency's emphasis on evaluation of these techniques in support of continuous quality improvement of KM practice. Building on previous work in KM, the study extends the traditional dialectic on codification and collaboration, blurring the lines between formal and informal forms and suggesting that both approaches may be necessary to achieve desired impacts on government and societal challenges.