Analisi - knowledge management case studies - Aetnanet

Progetto : 

Edizione finale: 

4 - La Piazza di Ninive 

del 22-5-99 

Knowledge management case 

studies 

Erik Huisman 

Timo Kouwenhoven 

Eelco Kruizinga 

Kenniscentrum CIBIT 

Utrecht, the Netherlands 

INFORMAZIONI SULLA DIFFUSIONE DEL DOCUMENTO 

Le informazioni contenute nel presente documento sono strettamente confidenziali; le organizzazioni 

citate hanno fornito le informazioni solo agli scopi del Progetto Picto; nessuna informazione contenuta 

in questo documento può essere pertanto utilizzata o diffusa al di fuori del progetto PICTO. 

CLEARANCE INFORMATION 

Information contained in this document is strictly confidential; information provided by the 

organizations to which the case studies refer have provided information only for PICTO project 

purposes; no information contained in this document can be used or diffused out of the PICTO project. 

Le informazioni contenute in questo documento sono di esclusiva proprietà del Ministero della 

Pubblica Istruzione. L’uso personale è consentito a condizione che non danneggi l’autore. Se ne vieta 

altresì l’utilizzo commerciale in ogni sua forma per la pubblicazione a mezzo stampa.

Management summary 

This report describes 10 knowledge management case studies, 4 in the private sector 

domain (British Telecom, Shell, Volkswagen and Microsoft) and 6 in the public sector domain 

(Educational systems of Sweden, Holland, UK and Canada, the US Army and the American 

Memory). 

The case studies were examined to act as inspiration material for the development of the 

Piazza di Ninive and on the same hand serve as content for the best practice library on 

knowledge management within the Piazza di Ninive itself. 

The case studies are described in a uniform format and are summarised in a case study grid. 

The key learnings for developing the Piazza di Ninive that can be taken from the case 

studies are: 

1. Consider connecting the Piazza di Ninive with economy and employment: 

1.1. View education as an industry 

1.2. Attract and involve business 

1.3. Consider starting the initiative in economically weak regions 

2. Consider using an economical model for teachers as well: facilitate a growth model from 

teacher to enterpreneurial teacher, be a chamber of ‘commerce’ and service provider 

through the Piazza di Ninive. 

3. It is important to identify driving forces in community by imagine a person in your 

audience that gives you the benefit of the doubt. What triggers this person to go along? 

The case studies show that understanding the needs and the mental models of the target 

user groups are of paramount importance. 

4. Adopt a programme of change that mingles: 

4.1. Preaching (to those that favour your initiative and will act as disciples and 

evangelists or local champions) 

4.2. Teaching, let people discover the benefits and the techniques (to those that give the 

benefit of the doubt) 

4.3. Reward (to those that have been taught and need to internalise the new behaviours) 

4.4. Warn (to those that are negative to your initiative, despite teaching) 

5. Start bottom up, create movement, then steer 

6. Work with local champions that do content management for you 

7. Start small in many places, but don’t start empty 

8. Create a core team to initiate and facilitate 

9. Listen to your audiences, provide tools and techniques 

10. Create a good infrastructure that can be used by a workforce that is computer literate 

11. In terms of web functionality: 

11.1. Elicit mental models of audience and use these as input for your information 

design and metadata 

11.2. Consider augmenting reality with collaborative spaces that map onto mental 

models 

11.3. Create a repository that meets the triggers of your audience 

11.4. Create community ware around repository 

11.5. Consider positioning the Piazza di Ninive as a service provider to 

communities to build their own collaborative spaces, give subcommunities 

their own identity 

12. And, if you want to create a large repository, tap into the experiences of the digital library 

community. And, look for ways to outsource content management to your users, but start 

with content management by your own (see 7). 

CIBIT 2 

analisi-KM case studies.doc - 25/5/99

Introduction 

This report covers the execution of work for the PICTO project. The PICTO project aims to 

advise the Italian ministry of education on (a.o.t.) how to create more autonomy for schools 

throughout Italy, to advise on professional development of school staff and to advise on 

reorganisation of the ministry itself. 

To create external focus in this advisory process, a task has been identified within the PICTO 

project to develop a case study grid with cases relevant to the knowledge management 

processes in large governmental bodies. Through this external focus, the PICTO project can 

learn from successes and failures elsewhere and can be helped in designing knowledge 

management solutions for the Italian situation. 

This report presents the results of selecting and analysing 10 case studies on knowledge 

management. 

CIBIT 3 


Case studies collection approach 

Case study requirements 

The case studies described in this report were selected on the basis of the following 

requirements: 

1. The case studies described should be relevant for large organisations. As the Italian 

education system is large body (with hundreds of thousands of employees), the case 

studies should be comparable to the Italian ministry of education in terms of problems and 

opportunities. 

2. The case studies described include both governmental agencies as well as multinationals. 

Within the PICTO project, there is an interest to learn from the good practices in 

knowledge management of large organisations in both the profit and non-profit sector. 

3. The case studies should reflect the fact that within the PICTO project, there is a particular 

interest in the UK situation. The case studies sought for in this work should cover cases 

that have been developed in the UK. 

Long list 

Kenniscentrum CIBIT produced a long list of case studies that was used as a starting point 

for selecting the case studies that are presented in this report. The long list can be found in 

the annex of this report. 

Short list 

The short list eventually consisted of the following case studies: 

Private sector case studies: 

1. British Telecom 

2. Shell 

3. Volkswagen 

4. Nokia 

5. Microsoft 

Public sector case studies: 

1. Swedish Ministry of Education 

2. Canadian Ministry of Education 

3. UK Ministry of Education 

4. Dutch Ministry of Education 

5. US Army 

6. American Memory 

Because Nokia was not able to convey any information on their knowledge management 

efforts, it was decided to drop this case study from the short list. 

CIBIT 4 


Case study structure 

Introduction 

In order to organise the case studies and to enable the user of the case studies to navigate 

through them without going into detail first, a case study grid will be used. This grid should 

function as a guide for the case studies themselves. 

Case study grid 

The following set-up of the grid was chosen for this report: 

1. Organisational goals that were sought for in the case study. 

2. Knowledge management goals that were seen as instrumental for reaching those 

organisational goals (e.g. knowledge sharing or knowledge development in a particular 

domain). 

3. Instrumentation of the knowledge management system (i.e. knowledge infrastructure) that 

was put in place for reaching the knowledge management goals. The following instrument 

categories will be discerned: leadership & management (including e.g management style, 

reward schemes, etc), organisational structure (including e.g. teams and roles), processes 

(including e.g. lessons learned sharing processes, professional development processes, 

etc) and ICT (including e.g. corporate memories, distance learning, etc). 

4. Support structure for the knowledge infrastructure (e.g. knowledge managers, moderators, 

knowledge stewards, facilitators, etc). 

Structure of each case study in the grid 

The following structure was adopted to present the case studies: 

1. Abstract gives a short description of the main aspects of the case study. 

2. Situation scanning for the description of the general background of the case, like the 

competitive situation, the products involved, the history of the organisation, the cultural 

settings, in short: all relevant information to understand the subsequent case study. All 

country specific aspects should be described and made clear in this block. 

3. Needs for change (goal and problem setting) for the presentation of the motivation for 

change, concrete problem setting and diagnosis of causes, the goals of stakeholders and 

the agreed project goals by the organisation (business, organisational, technology, social 

aspects) and the constraints for the organisation. 

4. Design and implementation describes solution alternatives investigated by the 

organisation, the concrete solution design and implementation, including activities of 

training and diffusion of the solution in the organisation. 

5. Change management describes aspects of the change trajectory, such as the involvement 

of different stakeholders and external experts, the training activities carried out for the 

involved personnel, the industrial relations and the implementation strategy. 

6. Applied methods presents the methods and tools which were applied during the process of 

building a knowledge management system and the evaluation of the advantages and 

disadvantages of these tools. 

7. Evaluation documents the implemented solution with the variation introduced during the 

implementation phases, the achieved results in economic and social terms as well as a 

final evaluation and discussion of the case study. 

8. References describe links to persons and information sources (e.g., literature, weblinks, 

etc.). 

CIBIT 5 


Case study grid 

The case study grid, compliant with the description in the previous chapter, is presented below: 

Private Sector 

Organisational goals Knowledge management goals Knowledge infrastructure Support structure 

British Telecom British Telecom’s goals for its 

organisational learning activities are: 

• To enhance BT’s Intellectual 

Capital 

• To facilitate BT’s strategy to 

become a global player; 

• To strengthen relations with 

customers and alliance 

partners; 

• To improve the quality of work 

and satisfaction of BT 

employees. 

Instrumental in reaching those organisational 

goals are that BT is capable of: 

• Making its existing knowledge 

work harder, 

• Generating and quickly recycling 

learning across the business, and 

• (Re)connecting people. 

Leadership and management 

Work within existing strategy (no mandate 

from the top for separate KM strategy) 

Drive cultural change: create a knowledge 

market within BT 

Facilitate cross-company activities through 

a small central team 

Use Learning Histories to recycle 

knowledge 

Organisational structure 

Processes 

Coaching networks 

Communities of Interest 

Smart work planning 

Appraisal for collaboration across 

organisational boundaries 

Knowledge management processes 

Evaluation 

Knowledge sharing by connecting or 

codifying 

CIBIT 6 

analisi-KM case studies.doc - 25/5/99 

ICT 

Standardised platform for IT 

Intranet Survey 

The support structure put in place for the 

knowledge infrastructure includes: 

Organisational learning 

campaign team (4 people) 

Business Unit Knowledge 

Managers (~12 people) 

Knowledge Activists (~100 ) 

Intranet Development / 

Collaborative Working 

Technologies Team (~6 people) 

Knowledge Management 

Research Team (~6 people)


The BT Intranet and knowledge 

management 

Workstyle 2000 

Work planning 

Development and training courses on-line 

Shell The goals of Shell 1 that were sought 

for with the organisational learning 

project are: 

I. Find solutions faster 

II. Find better solutions 

III. Innovate faster 

IV. Disseminate innovations 

faster 

V. Make more profits 

Volkswagen The goals of Volkswagen Group that 

were sought for with the 

organisational learning project are: 

• Flexible production – ‘any 

product in any factory’ 

• Develop cars based on 

the same platform for 

different brands – Audi 

A3, Volkswagen Beetle 

and Skoda Octavia 

• Recreate brands e.g. 

Bugatti 

• Ensure high quality for 

e.g. Skoda and Seat – 

teach their engineers 

Goals that where seen by Shell as 

instrumental for reaching those 

organisational goals: 

VI. Improve knowledge sharing 

VII. Increase knowledge sharing 

Goals that where seen by Volkswagen Group 

as instrumental for reaching those 


• Disseminate local innovative 

solutions world-wide 

• Make knowledge accessible when 

it is needed 

• Share knowledge systematically 

• Share failures systematically 

• Prevent reinvention of knowledge 

• Prevent erosion of knowledge 

when people leave 

1 With Shell is meant Shell International Exploration and Production (SIEP), the upstream part of Shell. 


VIII. No mandate from the top 

IX. Bottom-up 

X. Cultural Change 

XI. Avoiding local sub-networks 


XII. Common Interest Networks (60 worldwide) 

A. Moderator 

B. Global Coordinator 

C. Subject Focal Point 

D. Local Coordinator 

XIII. Appraisal system 

Processes 

XIV. Best Practice Transfer 

XV. Moderation 

ICT 

XVI. Knowledge bases 

XVII. Alta Vista Forum 


• Support from top 

o At the moment WW.DECK is 

financially supported by the top 

o They can get any tool they like 

from their IT-department 

o In the future they must become 

self-supportive 

• Working bottom-up – generating critical 

mass, behavioral change of people must be 

intrinsic 


• LINE project (lernen in netzen) – education 

via intranet for the whole Volkswagen 

Group 

The supportive structure put in place for 

the knowledge infrastructure includes: 

XVIII. Technology consultants 

XIX. New Ways of Working 

consultants 



• Central WW.DECK team of 9 

consultants (and still growing) 

o Give advise to 

Volkswagen Group 

members 

o Help local project 

teams with knowledge 


initiatives 

o Do the project 


(coordination) of the 

WW.DECK projects 

CIBIT 7 



• Offer a range of cars from 

low budget economy-class 

to very exclusive 

• Get component quality of 

all group members at the 

same level (as Germany) 

• Use customer information 

(complaints) more 

systematically – send it to 

the right experts 

• Local WW.DECK Coordinators – to 

• 

overcome cultural problems 

Events for top managers about knowledge 

sharing 

Processes 

• Making cooperation within informal expert 

networks systematic and if possible 

improve it– give corrosion (part of 

• 

Laboratory Network) experts whatever they 

need to improve their knowledge sharing 

Finally results in a Corrossion Knowledge 

Market of 200 corrossion experts 

(European expert learns from Brazilian 

expert) 

ICT 

• Yellow-pages for Laboratory Network (600 

employees) 

• Documentum (document management 

system) – to let the Laboratory Network 

build their knowledge warehouse 

Microsoft To be completed To be completed To be completed To be completed 

o Their customers are 

Volkswagen Group 

factories and experts 

o The customers give 

their requirements to 

WW.DECK 

o WW.DECK learns 

from its customers 

too! 

• Decentral WW.DECK teams at 

Audi, Seat, Skoda, et cetera 

CIBIT 8 


Public Sector 

Swedish Ministry 

of Education 


• To create a more 

knowledgeable workforce (a 

national objective) 

• Subgoal: Give scope to schools 

to develop 

• Give scope to schools to develop by 

using ICT as a new set of tools. 

(objective of the project ITIS : ‘National 

Programme for ICT in Schools’). 


Regularly 

• Schools are financed through the municipalities 

• Ministry manages by setting the learning 

objectives only (not the learning methods) 

• The National Agency for Education manages all 

operational responsibilities for the Ministry 

for ITIS 

• An especially assigned delegation for ITIS 

including representation from the Ministry of 

Education, The National Agency for Education, 

the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and 

the Foundation for Knowledge and Competence. 

The delegation is chaired by the Ministry. This 

delegation is supported by a special secretariat. 


• Small Ministry of Education (100 estimate) 

• Larger National Agency for Education (~2000 

estimate) 

• Regular Educational budgets are established 

and distributed by Municipalities 

• Extra subsidies by a specially assigned 

delegation for ITIS. 

Processes 

• Jury grant applications 

ICT 

• Website ‘Schoolnet’ serves as a portal to other 

websites. 

• a part of Schoolnet is ‘The Multimedia Bureau’ it 

comprises: 

• The Café, a meeting place and presentation area 

for various projects 

• The Archive, contains images and sounds for 

Schoolnet and The Multimedia Bureau are 

run by the National Agency for Education. 

The ‘Foundation for Knowledge and 

Competence Development’ (Ministry in the 

Board) promotes the production of ICT 

based teaching aids through approving 

grants to about 70 projects, investing 

120m SEK (~150.000 Euro) 

There are not many formal top down 

initiatives to support the ongoing sharing 

of knowledge by the teaching community. 

Of course teachers can meet on 

seminars. There are several associations 

for teachers mostly defined through the 

subject matters, for instance an 

association for history teachers. 

A successful bottom up initiatives is 

Music Net, an innovative project with many 

useful services for teachers and pupils in 

the sphere of music. There are some 

other examples of successful bottom up 

initiatives such as Sputnik (journalistic 

writing) and Planet (for younger pupils). 

These good examples of ‘living websites’ 

are linked to Schoolnet that serves as a 

portal. 

CIBIT 9 


Canadian 

Ministry of 

Education 

Organisational goals Knowledge management goals Knowledge infrastructure 

use in school work 

Support structure 

• The Idea Bank, where pupils and teachers give 

courses and compare notes on educational 

methods and software 

• To create an industry for Teleeducation 

in the province. 

• To provide for many new jobs in 

the province. 

• To create an infrastructure that 

appeals to the industry of IT 

and Tele-education. 

• To stimulate economic 

development bottom up in this 

area. 

• To revise the educational 

system from knowledge about 

new possibilities for supply as 

well as from knowledge about 

new demands. 

• Create ICT awareness for the 

population of the province. 

• Learning from each other within the 

industry. 

• To be a model for the rest of Canada, 

serve as a best practice in several 

areas. 

• To create a knowledgeable workforce 

from the population of the province. 

• To attract a knowledgeable workforce 

by attracting existing businesses from 

elsewhere. 

• To retrain teachers given the new 

possibilities for education. 


• Small central team of strategic thinkers, 

stimulating initiatives, guiding towards the goal. 

• Money injections by the Ministry of economic 

development from the province. 

• Management by facilitating and guiding change 

bottom up in the province. 


• Small central team assembled from the 

government of New Brunswick. 

• Many liaisons within the business/industry worldwide. 

• Many liaisons within the government of New 

Brunswick 

• Much like a business structure including PR, 

Marketing, Finance, etc. 

Processes 

• Subsidising the development of community 

access centres in municipalities. 

• Subsidising or financing new business 

development. 

• Subsidising knowledge sharing by teachers. 

• Retraining the teachers in the province . 

• Using subsidised projects to develop a balanced 

infrastructure. 

• Retraining the workforce of the province for a job 

in the rising industry. 

ICT 

• Many initiatives to share knowledge through the 

use of ICT 

• World Wide Web : “schoolnet”, “tele-education”, 

“community access centres”, etc. 

• Development of Computer Based Training 

(developed as commercial products for the 

industry, also suitable for knowledge sharing 

within the province) 

The core of the structure for support is 

really in the individual civilians of the 

Province of New Brunswick. It lies in their 

desire to regain their status as one of the 

richest provinces of Canada. The people 

of New Brunswick take great pride in the 

rise of this new industry. 

At the beginning of the idea formation is a 

group of six original strategic thinkers. 

These six people are still very active to 

create the industry, and hence provide for 

new jobs in the province. The industry is 

now third and on the edge of outgrowing 

the second biggest industry of Tourism in 

the province. 

CIBIT 10 


UK Ministry of 

Education 


• because ICT is also the subject of the industry it 

is sometimes not clear what was meant as a 

knowledge management initiative and what just 

accidentally turned out to be one. 

• Fibre optic network. The entire province, all of 

the small municipalities are connected with 

bandwidth using 2Mbit fibre connections. 

DfEE has revised its Departmental 

aim as follows: “to give everyone the 

chance through education, training 

and work, to realise their full 

potential, and thus build an inclusive 

and fair society and a competitive 

economy” 

To support this general aim the 

DfEE has set three specific 

objectives for the upcoming three 

years (1999-2002): 

1. To ensure all young people 

reach 16 with the skills, 

attitudes, and personal qualities 

that will give them a secure 

foundation for lifelong learning, 

work and citizenship in a rapidly 

changing world; 

2. To develop in everyone a 

commitment to lifelong learning, 

so as to enchance their lives, 

improve their employability in a 

changing labour market and 

create the skills that our 

economy and employers need; 

3. To help people without a job 

into work. 

In the end the National Grid for Learning 

should be available for all learners at all ages. 

The initial focus for the upcoming three years 

(1999-2002) is focussed on schools in 

England. By doing so the NGfL serves as a 

means to reach the following knowledge 

management goals: 

• Providing an infrastructure for people to 

exchange knowledge by communicating 

and collaborating with one another; 

• A programme for developing the means 

to access valuable content in schools, 

libraries, colleges, universities, 

workplaces, homes and elsewhere 

• A way of finding and (re-)using online 

learning, and teaching materials; 

• Schools, colleges, libraries and others 

build and re-use from existing good 

content and practice; 

• Identifying and building on best practice 

(education, libraries and museums, 

broadcasting); 

• Development of teachers' and librarians' 

knowledge skills and confidence with 

ICT; 

• Enabling school leavers to have a good 


• DfEE is being internally reorganised to cope with 

the new way of government; 

• The nation-wide change in education is seen as 

a bottom-up process whereby the public is 

continuously involved in the policy-making, 

design and implementation process of the NGfL 

initiative; 

• Until 2002 the British Government is actively 

funding (over £1bn/1.5bn Euro) the National Grid 

for Learning initiative; 

• The Government's NGfL fundings are only 

available for local educational authorities and 

schools in the UK when they develop a thorough 

plan of approval of the use of these fundings, 

e.g. buying or using ICT. During the upcoming 

years they are obliged to evaluate how these 

fundings have been used. Funding and 

judgement is done by DfEE. 


CIBIT 11 


DfEE 

DfEE is primarily responsible for the level of education 

in the UK by policy-making, setting the proper 

educational strategy, forming the goals and objectives. 

Becta 

• DfEE and Becta are developing 

ground rules and a code of conduct 

for content providers who want to 

become part of the National Grid for 

Learning. 

• The underlying sites from the 

National Grid for Learning are being 

supported by the responsible 

educational organisations 

themselves. 

• All sites within the NGfL have 

Webkeepers who are responsible for 

the quality and currency of material 

and resources available on their 

sites. Sites must have a designated 

Webkeeper who is contactable via email 

in order to be included on the 

Grid; 

• Becta regulates the overall content 

management of the National Grid for 

Learning. Becta regulates the entry 

of content to the NGfL by accrediting 

the sites who want to be connected 

to the NGfL. 

• The quality of Grid content is also 

maintained through GridWatch, a 

facility set up by Becta which allows 

users to report inaccurate or 

inappropriate material and which


understanding of ICT with measures in 

place for assessing their competence in 

it. 

• Making Britain a centre of excellence in 

the development of networked software 

content, and a world leader in the export 

of learning services. 

The NGfL is a National Government initiative 

launched by the Prime Minister. Becta's is the lead 

agency for the Grid and responsible to ensure that 

technology supports the DfEE's drive to raise 

educational standards, and in particular to provide the 

professional expertise the DfEE requires to support 

the future development of the National Grid for 

Learning. Becta and has particular responsibilities for: 

• the administration and policing of the ground 

rules for content registration for the Grid; 

• the establishment and operation of the technical 

system architecture for the Grid, including the 

running of those sites (such as the VTC) which 

are hosted by Becta; 

• technical evaluation and certification of managed 

services offered to schools and institutions to 

enable them to access the Grid; 

• In addition, Becta has a role in the further 

education sector's developing use of ICT and in 

the evaluation of new technologies as they come 

on stream. 

Processes 

• Not every process has been specified within the 

NGfL project. General outlines, concrete 

objectives are more important and give schools 

and other institutions the freedom to develop 

their own plans, based on their own specific 

situation.Sharing best practises in ICT planning, 

purchasing and guidance among schools in the 

UK (see report Connecting Schools, Networking 

People); 

• Collect and share best practises in classroom 

activities by electronic communication, 

includes both provisions for 

excluding content where necessary 

and safeguards against copyright 

infringements. 

• Specifically for the Virtual Teacher 

Centre Becta builds, maintains and 

provides the content for this Internet 

site. 

• Becta is developing the managed 

services for the National Grid for 

Learning. These competing managed 

ICT services are aimed at schools, 

and offering curricular, training, and 

administrative facilities and by doing 

so freeing schools so they can 

concentrate on their 'core business' 

of teaching and learning. 

CIBIT 12 


Dutch Ministry of 

Education 


discussion forums with teachers, and best 

practise databases (currently in development) 

which are all accessible by everyone interested 

via the Internet (Virtual Teacher Centre); 

• To create ICT awareness in the 

sector of vocational training and 

adult education. 

• To stimulate action bottom up 

in this area. 

• Developing, storing and transferring 

knowledge about best practices on 

uses of ICT in education. 

• Learning from each other within the 

sector. 

• Within the DfEE the Standards and 

Effectiveness Unit is responsible for identifying 

well-accepted best practices and embedding 

them into (new) pedagogical approaches and 

distribute them to interested people. 

CIBIT 13 


ICT 

• The British Government is modernising itself to 

ensure the Government uses new technology to 

deliver better, more convenient, services. 

• DfEE uses their public Internet site to 

communicate with interested people and other 

bodies. Consultation papers, public responses, 

project plans, circulars, press releases can be 

found on this site. 

• Since November 1998 NGfL has a website 

available which acts as a starting portal for all 

educational initiatives in the UK. This site also 

connects to the various involved organisations, 

e.g. DfEE, Becta. 

• Both Becta and DfEE have their own Intranet 

which they use to store and retrieve projectbased 

documentation, which cannot be 

published to the general public. 


• Small central team 

• No interference from Ministry 

• Management by delegation of client-system 


• Small central team of one managing director, 

consultants and editorial staff 

• Work is centred around projects 

At this moment the foundation BVE net 

has one directing executive (1 FTE), 

educational consultants (3.6 FTE), editors 

(3.6 FTE) including PR, information, 

newsletters en newspaper, one secretary 

(1FTE) and a management-assistant (0.5 

FTE).


• External foundation to jury subsidy applications The consultants from BVEnet are situated 

Processes 

• Simple procedures for small subsidies. 

• Visits to institutional client sites twice a year 

• Knowledge distribution using website, electronic 

newsletters and printed newspapers. 

mostly at an office in Nijmegen, the 

Netherlands. Their tasks are stimulating, 

monitoring and providing. The 60 clientinstitutions 

are divided among the 

consultants. The consultant will visit their 

institutions at least twice a year. 

US Army The goals of the United States Army 2 

that are sought for with the 

knowledge management project are: 

• Digitizing the institutional 

army i.e. transforming the 

institutional army into an 

information-age, 

networked organisation 

that leverages its 

intellectual capital to better 

organise, train, equip and 

maintain a strategic land 

combat army force; 

• Modernise the army and 

reduce costs; 

• Connect active and 

reserve army components 

and institutional army 

through one environment; 

• Provide actice, reserve 

and institutional army and 

civilians with the tools 

required to: 

o increase 

information 

access; 

o focus 

collaboration; 

o improve and 

The goal that was seen by the United States 

Army as instrumental for reaching those 

organisational goals is: 

leveraging the army’s intellectual capital 

to better organise, train, equip and 

sustain the force. 

ICT 

• Central website with many facilities for 

knowledge distribution 


• Relatively small central team 

• Mandate from the very top 

• Top down approach 


• Executive Steering Committee (ESC) 

• Paperless Career Field Designation process 

(CFD) 

Processes 

• After Action Reviews (AAR) 

• Lesson Learned Collection (CALL) 

• Early Bird – News Service 

ICT 

• HDQA Data Sharing Initiative 

• One Web Portal 

• Army Websites 

• Integration of the baseline infrastructure 



• Business Development Group for 

Army Knowledge Office – part of the 

Strategic Army Computing Center 

(SACC) (12 people) 

• Executive Steering Committee 

• Daily Working Committee 

2 When refered to United States Army in this case study the instituational part of the united states army is meant. These people are not reservists nor people who engage in combat (tactical army), but are 

the ones who take care of all the supportive processes (e.g. logistics, HRM, administration, et cetera) necessary to be able to have an actice army. 

CIBIT 14 


American 

Memory 


streamline 

programmes; 

o overcome 

geographic, 

time and 

organisational 

boundaries; 

o spend more 

time on 

analysing 

information, 

instead of 

collecting 

information. 

the Library of Congress's mission is 

to make its resources available and 

useful to the Congress and the 

American people and to sustain and 

preserve a universal collection of 

knowledge and creativity for future 

generations 

to provide an electronic repository for 

providing access to the american memory as 

contained by the Library of Congress 

an internet-accessible electronic repository and a well 

described set of procedures for creating content for 

the electronic repository 

four groups of staff responsible for 

collection handling, supervision, 

infrastructure and communication with the 

educational community 

CIBIT 15 


Part I: private sector case studies 

British Telecom 

Organisational goals 

Based on an interview with Steve Lakin (Organisational Development - Learning) during site 

visit on April 12, 1999, London, United Kingdom. 

British Telecom’s goals for its organisational learning activities are: 

• To enhance BT’s Intellectual Capital 

• To facilitate BT’s strategy to become a global player; 

• To strengthen relations with customers and alliance partners; 

• To improve the quality of work and satisfaction of BT employees. 

Knowledge management goals 

Instrumental in reaching those organisational goals are that BT is capable of: 

• Making its existing knowledge work harder, 

• Generating and quickly recycling learning across the business, and 


CIBIT 16 


Knowledge infrastructure 

The knowledge management system (i.e. knowledge infrastructure) that BT’s has put in place 

for reaching the organisational goals addresses leadership & management, organisational 

structure & HRM, processes and Information & communication technology. 


• Work within existing strategy (no mandate from the top for separate KM strategy) 

• Drive cultural change: create a knowledge market within BT 

• Facilitate cross-company activities through a small central team 

• Use Learning Histories to recycle knowledge 

Organisational structure and human resource management 

• Coaching networks 

• Communities of Interest 

• Smart work planning 

• Appraisal for collaboration across organisational boundaries 

Processes 

ICT 

• Knowledge management processes 

• Evaluation 

• Knowledge sharing by connecting or codifying 

• Standardised platform for IT 

• Intranet Survey 

• The BT Intranet and knowledge management 

• Workstyle 2000 

• Work planning 

• Development and training courses on-line 


The support structure put in place for the knowledge infrastructure includes: 

• Organisational learning campaign team (4 people) 

• Business Unit Knowledge Managers (~12 people) 

• Knowledge Activists (~100 ) 

• Intranet Development / Collaborative Working Technologies Team (~6 people) 

• Knowledge Management Research Team (~6 people) 

CIBIT 17 


Detailed description 

Abstract 

Multinational British Telecom plc is one of the world's leading suppliers of fixed and mobile 

communications services. Currently British Telecom has three target geographies - North 

America, Europe and Asia-Pacific - and their strategy is to work with local partners. They 

already have a number of key partnerships around the world and significant investment in 

international services. To be able to grow as a global player, they constantly need to improve 

their relations with customers and alliances and to improve the quality of work for its 

employees. To do so requires connecting people and implementing effective structures for 

the consolidation and distribution of knowledge. The latter are the anchors of their knowledge 

management programme, in which BT favours establishing effective connections between 

people above trying to codify knowledge into systems. Their corporate intranet has proven 

itself and has become the backbone of new collaborative way of working. A lot of knowledge 

management initiatives are based on the exploitation of the capability this intranet provides. 

For example, their corporate intranet-based directory is one of the most important parts of 

the knowledge management programme and BT is gradually increasing its functionality, 

staying closely in touch with the wishes of its users. At the moment British Telecom is 

evaluating its knowledge management activities, having been active in this area since 1996. 

Situation scanning 

History of BT 

BT was a government-owned company until its privatisation in1984. At its peak, the company 

employed more than 245,000 employees focused mainly on the provision of fixed telephony 

services in the UK market. Over 10 years ago BT implemented a major transformation 

programme, focusing on TQM (total quality management). Since this time, the company was 

seen successive waves of change, and which have become more frequent over the years. 

Currently it employs 125,000 people, of which 20,000 are service engineers, and has 

expanded its operations into mobile telephony, consultancy and outsourcing. BT offers more 

than 3000 separate products and services for single customers to multi-nationals. Turnover 

in 1998 was £15.64 billion and a total of £3.657 billion in profits. BT has been actively 

pursuing Knowledge Management since 1996 – 1997, with a significant focus organisational 

learning. BT currently operates a functional organisation structure with 40 interdependent 

business units. 

About British Telecom 3 

British Telecom is one of the world's leading suppliers of fixed and mobile communications 

services. In the UK, they support around 27 million fixed customer lines and three million 

mobile connections, through a 60 per cent stake in Cellnet. Their main services are local, 

national and international calls (with direct dialling to over 230 countries worldwide); and 

supplying telephone lines, equipment and private circuits for homes and businesses. 

3 Data of 1998 (Steve Lakin, BT) 

CIBIT 18 


Outside the UK, BT’s strategy is to expand in chosen markets by developing a series of 

alliances and joint venture partnerships. They have put in place one of the most 

comprehensive global networks of any operator. In Concert Communications Services, they 

have the world's leading supplier of global network solutions to multinational customers. 

BT's major European alliances 

France Cegetel 

Germany Viag Interkom 

Italy Albacom 

Netherlands Telfort 

Spain Airtel 

Sweden Telenordia 

Switzerland Sunrise 

British Telecom is also at the forefront of the development and marketing of a 

comprehensive range of advanced data and interactive multimedia solutions and 

technologies of the future. As businesses increasingly operate internationally, and as more 

and more people are travelling and working abroad, so the demand for international 

communications grows. In the past ten years, international communications - phone, fax, 

video, data - have more than doubled from 33 billion minutes a year to 68 billion minutes. 

This growth in demand has been complemented by the liberalisation of telecommunications 

markets around the world. At the beginning of the 1990s, only about 20 per cent of the 

world's total telecommunications market was open to competition; by the end of the decade, 

only about ten per cent will not be. 

British Telecom currently has three target geographies - North America, Europe and Asia- 

Pacific - where their strategy is to work with local partners. They now have a number of key 

partnerships around the world and significant investment in international services. 

Needs for change 

British Telecom’s need for change was stated in the following organisational goals: 

• Expanding into newly liberalising world wide markets, breaking the dependent on the 

U.K; 

• BT strategy is to defend it position against new entrants to the U.K. market, 

which is larger and growing but 

• also to enter the huge world-wide market of mobile communication, datacommunication 

(voice also as data, i.e. fully digital) and internet, since 

• with liberalisation, now is the once in a lifetime opportunity to become an 

established global player in voice telephony, Internet and mobile telephony. 

• Being able to understand what knowledge management is all about to be able to 

guide and offer solutions to customers, since: 

• BT products fit within the knowledge management programmes of their 

customers, 

• BT is increasingly selling knowledge as a product (wrap around a solution e.g. 

consultancy, along with a tangible product) and, 

• BT is seen to use what it sells and practices what it preaches. 

• Building, creating, increasing capabilities, responsiveness and flexibility in order to 

deliver…(wider strategic goals) e.g.: 

• Becoming a more credible supplier of communication tools, by 

o Improving customer relations; 

• Being able to start and maintain overseas alliances; 

CIBIT 19 


• Enhance the value proposition 4 of BT products and services by: 

o Reducing time to market and 

o Increasing innovation; 

• Improving the quality of work for BT employees by: 

• Avoiding mistakes being repeated; 

• Avoiding work being duplicated; 

• Share good ideas and 

• Eliminating the dependence on a few key individuals. 


• Making existing knowledge work harder, 

• Generating and quickly recycling learning across the business, and 


Design and implementation 

The knowledge management system (i.e. knowledge infrastructure) that BT’s has put in place 

for reaching the organisational goals addresses leadership & management, organisational 

structure & HRM, processes and Information & communication technology. 


Small central team 

BT’s knowledge management activities are facilitated by a small central team. This is 

different to the old way of doing projects, which typically have involved large, centrally 

controlled project embracing lots of people in the project group. The new approach reflects 

the culture BT is trying to promote, with small, fast and flexible teams working collaboratively 

across the business to achieve goals. Therefore, very few people at the centre are employed 

on knowledge management (4), working primarily as catalysts to encourage local initiatives 

and accelerate cross-functional learning. Most of BT’s business units have people working on 

knowledge management, through only a few (~12 people) have this as their specialist role. 

BT also maintains a knowledge management research group, looking at future tools and 

technologies. 

No separate mandate for knowledge management 

BT sees knowledge management as central, and not separate to its business strategy. 

There’s no mandate from the top of BT for a separate, company-wide knowledge 

management programme. Therefore, part of the work of the central team is to sell the 

benefits of knowledge management into the business units. Also to provide some internal 

consulting to help get initiatives going. No separate mandate means that its harder to 

implement standard company-wide approaches e.g. if a business unit decides to develop a 

lessons learned repository and publish the lessons on their web site they are free to do so. 

4 Added knowledge equals added value, so there is an alternative for competing on price. 

CIBIT 20 


This doesn’t mean that other units will do the same. The challenge is to establish and sell the 

benefits. 

Cultural change 

One of the most important aspects of the knowledge management programme is creating an 

internal market: where knowledge is freely exchanged and people help each other to know 

things. The intranet provides people with a place of exchange and increasingly, the 

opportunity to meet and discuss daily work. In such a virtual environment, people probably 

didn’t even know each other before. 

Learning Histories 

Currently Steve’s team is working on an approach to reduce the start-up time a novice team 

member needs when joining a team. The idea is to let the teams keep log books i.e. learning 

histories 5 (see below: Processes - Evaluation), of their activities. Doing so, a new team 

member can go through the history of the project to the point of it’s current state, get in 

contact with key members and thereby accelerate their learning curve. 


Coaching networks 

Coaching is an increasingly integral part of current practice within BT. A number of coaching 

networks exist within the organisation. 

Communities of Interest 

There are various communities within BT who have common interests and who meet virtually 

using community web sites. The themes of such communities include knowledge 

management, business excellence and benchmarking (see below: Processes - Evaluation). 

Work planning 

Interest profile based work allocation (see below: ICT – Work planning). 

Appraisal for collaboration across organisational boundaries 

British Telecom has an appraisal system in place, but it’s not specifically knowledge friendly, 

meaning it’s not aimed at rewarding knowledge sharing. The rewards are on a higher level 

namely collaboration across organisational boundaries. They run a company-wide scheme 

which allows people to recognise colleagues for their working collaboratively across 

organisational boundaries. 

Processes 


The knowledge management processes identified by BT include: 

• creating knowledge: pool data from internal sources and acquire it from external 

sources; 

• enhancing knowledge: turn data into information, filter and sort it; 

• disseminating knowledge: collaboration is key, shared learning is valuable; 

• applying knowledge: lock knowledge into daily decision making processes and 

enable people to do their jobs quicker and easier. 

5 According to Steve Lakin of BT, they’ll not use learning histories as elaborately as described by Art Kleiner (Kleiner, 

1996) 

CIBIT 21 


Evaluation 

Evaluation is part of the BT way of working (imperative since TQM project and attaining at 

ISO 9001 standard) post project and after action reviews are part of the normal way of 

working. Results are typically published on the intranet. 

BT have no structured method in place for the identification and sharing of lessons learned / 

best practices, such as a central best practice repository. Though they have Business 

Excellence Interest Communities and Benchmarking Interest Communities who publish their 

findings on the benchmarking web site part of the BT intranet. A ny employee who’s 

interested in this information can browse to this web site, they’re not notified as part of a 

formal procedure. 

Currently, Steve’s team is working on the enhancement of post project reviews, by the usage 

of learning history techniques they try to enrich the review data. 

Knowledge sharing by connecting or codifying 

Connecting people 6 is regarded more efficient than codifying knowledge as a means to 

control knowledge erosion and to enable knowledge sharing. The overall strategy 

emphasises making connections between knowledgeable people above attempts to codify 

their knowledge. The BT connection-making machine is their intranet, which enables people 

to find each other through tools such as search engines and directory facilities. These 

connections grow organically, people aren’t pushed to become a member of a certain 

community, though the are offered the facilities and the benefits of the communities are clear 

within BT. This doesn’t imply that BT doesn’t codify any knowledge, they are experimenting 

with templates for knowledge transfer and thereby analysing how much has to be written 

down (literally) to enable transfer. 

ICT 

Standardised platform for IT 

BT started the standardising process of it’s desktops in 1993, the main reason was that 

they’ve been hampered to share information due to the multiplicity of e.g. word processors, 

spread sheets and presentation graphics. At the same time BT made significant investments 

in e-mail. 

After a while it seemed that e-mail solved part of the information management problem, 

people could easily get in touch with each other. But simply pushing information out to 

people did not work. The ability to find information was still dependant on individuals 

managing the information. 

In 1994, believing that technology could serve many other purposes, such as directory 

services as well as facilitating group working, BT began experimenting its own intranet. It was 

based on core information that was needed, rather than the mass of information in general 

circulation. 

The intranet 7 was extended across the whole of BT in early 1995 and now has over 80,000 

dedicated users, with other employees enjoying access via shared terminals and multi media 

kiosks. 

BT also has set up a number of extranets to provide major customers, suppliers and partners 

with access to specific areas within BT’s intranet in order to improve communications and 

joint working practices. Extranets are, in fact, an increasingly important element of BT’s 

overall strategic use of Internet technologies and provide substantial business benefits, 

particularly in the ever-expanding field of e-commerce. 

6 Among these people are not the service engineers (20,000 people). BT has connected 80,000 employees by its intranet, 

but didn’t connect their service workforce yet, since they haven’t got devices equipped with browser facilities. These 

people get in touch by mobile telephony. 

7 Its main news page server receives more than 2 million hits each month, making it one of the largest servers in Europe. 

CIBIT 22 


Future 

Now considered by many to be the organisation’s central nervous system, BT’s intranet is core to its 

operations and has yielded phenomenal business benefits both in terms of cost savings and cultural 

change. This is forecast to continue with extra value likely to come from three main areas: 

• Fast, comprehensive corporate and operational communications; 

• The provision of a single interface to major applications; 

• The growth in use of extended intranets and/or extranets. 

Collaborative Working Survey 

At the start of its knowledge management activities, BT used a questionnaire 8 to investigate 

how ready individual business units were for effective collaborative working. The 

questionnaire reviewed four dimensions: 

• Economics: is there a clear defined business case for collaborative working; 

• Technology: are there enough technological enablers in place? Are people 

comfortable with the technology ? (critical mass is necessary to build a 

standardised IT platform) 

• Culture: attitude surveys, are people alien or familiar with knowledge 

management? 

• Politics: who’s threatened, what are the existing power bases, how are decisions 

made at the moment. 

The end goal of the questionnaire was to test the state of readiness of BT for effective 

knowledge sharing. The questionnaire approach has been used with 25% of BT’s UK 

Business Units. 

The BT Intranet and knowledge management 

The BT Intranet has significantly improved the workforce’s ability to share information across 

the company. Apart from e-mail 9 functionality and discussion facilities it incorporates: 

• an introduction (and web site dedicated) to knowledge management; 

• information about knowledge management initiatives of other large and well 

known companies; 

• dates of knowledge management conferences coming up and 

• a network (Yellow Pages) of people interested in, or working on knowledge 

mangement. 

In developing this network, the following strategy was followed: 

• Identify the community of people interested in the knowledge management theme: 

this was done by means of a ‘come in and drop your business card’-facility on the 

intranet; 

• Let people who drop their card fill-out a simple and short list of data (not much 

more than a phone directory): name, coordinates 10 , e-mail address, current project; 

• Let the members of the community discuss freely, no moderation 11 ; 

This simple strategy has proven to be successful. Steve states that you should not start 

providing all kinds of fancy technology to a community that is not really active. They start 

providing more elaborate facilities after the community becomes active. First it was like a 

telephony directory with a few lines of free text for some personal notes. The free text section 

is starting to become a more structurally designed interest profile. At this moment BT is 

enhancing the facilities available to such communities by using a.o. agent technology (see 

8 

David Coleman a groupware consultant was hired to develop this questionnaire. 

9 

There were 9.2 million messages sent within BT in January 1998. 60% of the benefits of the BT intranet applications can 

directly be related to e-mail. E-mail saves between £470,000 and £530,000 each year. 

10 

Based on the coordinates of an employee you can browse to higher and lower levels in the organization chart, this in 

order to determine the place of the employee in BT. 

11 

BT discussion forums aren’t moderated, moderation hasn’t proven its value yet, is currently experimented with. 

CIBIT 23 


also below: ICT – Work planning). With these technologies it’s possible so automatically 

connect people and target useful information to an employee based on his interest profile. 

Workstyle 2000 

BT is experimenting collaborative team rooms and advanced intranet tools for knowledge 

management through a number of pilot projects – which are not available company-wide. 

They also have a virtual team-working programme, under the banner of Workstyle 2000. 

This initiative has enabled thousands of employees to work from home and use ‘hot desks’ 

available at offices throughout the country. An interactive web site support communications 

of acquired knowledge between remote workers and offers a forum for teleworkers to share 

their experiences. 

Work planning 

Knowledge management within BT does not solely rely on the intranet as a technology. As a 

provider of communication services, BT’s reputation is inextricably linked to the availability 

and reliability of its network, which covers 28 million customer connections distributed 

geographically throughout the U.K. BT manages a field workforce of more than 20,000 multiskilled 

technicians who complete 150,000 tasks every day. BT’s Work Manager, a worldclass 

task management system, seeks to minimise customer delays and the number of 

wasted journeys made daily by service engineers. Managing the work schedules of such a 

large field force is an unglamorous but vitally important aspect of BT’s business. 

Sophisticated work allocation algorithms were developed to match work arising with the 

available resources – taking account of the location of each job, estimated travel time and 

job duration, skill requirement and priority. 

Each service engineer is provided with a hand-held field terminal capable of accessing a 

central computer using BT’s telephony network. This allows access to details about the next 

job, as well as the facility to send back job closure details. By automating the work allocation 

and the dispatch systems, BT was able to offer customers a better service. 

Through shared learning, BT’s knowledge and expertise has developed significantly since 

Work Manager was launched and the system is now capable of serving a field workforce of 

40,000 engineers. In its latest guise, the system incorporates a dynamic scheduler, which 

uses artificial intelligence techniques to make the software even a more effective tool. It 

saves £70 million each year. 

The latest development will couple an individual’s interest profile (part of the intranet yellow 

pages to the Work Manager system. This will allow jobs to be allocated in alignment with an 

employee’s interest and learning ambitions. Furthermore the field engineers will be provided 

with more facilities on their device, as soon as mobile web browsing is stable, they’ll be able 

to send information to other field engineers and retrieve solutions to problems from a 

knowledge base. 

Development and training courses on-line 

Within BT, people can choose their training courses on-line. The Development Options 

database was issued annually on floppy disk before it was put on-line. Amendments are now 

done on-line at negligible cost and with minimal delay. 

The focus of current knowledge management activities at BT can be descibed as: 

• Identify: finding and connecting community by the intranet in ways that encourage 

learning, knowledge sharing and collaborative working; 

• Analyse: diagnosing knowledge management needs and priorities of individual 

business units (see above: ICT – Intranet survey); 

• Shift from thinking about it, to doing it: kicking-off knowledge management 

initiatives around the whole organisation and raise awareness of knowledge 

management; 

• Consolidate, making better knowledge management a part of the normal way of 

working 

CIBIT 24 


• Evaluate knowledge management: learning from the initiatives conducted; 

At the moment BT is doing the first large evaluation stage of its knowledge management 

activities. The outcome will lead to small or larger changes in both new ways of working and 

the use of technology. 


The supportive structure put in place for the knowledge infrastructure includes: 

• A central organisational learning team (4 people) 

• Initiate and facilitate knowledge management projects, such as knowledge 

reengineering of processes 

• Coordinate communities and activities 

• Catalyst for company-wide infrastructure developments 

• Developing cultural awareness campaigns 

• KM Research & Development team (~6 people) 

• Working on cutting edge web technologies to develop and test new knowledge 

management tools and technologies, e.g. agents for information publishing 

• Conducting technology scans (Do people like the tools?) 

• Researches questions such as: 

o How to encourage people to use new technology? 

• Knowledge Managers (within Business Units) 

• Initiate and manage knowledge management projects, such as knowledge 

reengineering of processes 

• Provide information (new research data and other content) 

• Facilitate information exchange 

• Organise and run events 

Change management 

Bottom-up approach and alignment with accepted methods 

Working from the grass roots on (i.e. bottom up approach). Aligning with presently active 

projects, like the BT TQM projects. Key to success is to align knowledge management 

initiatives with projects that are already running. 

Positioning Knowledge Management: TQM as an anchor 

Bt has positioned knowledge management as complimentary to its extensive TQM activity. 

TQM was already accepted and embedded across the BT business. It has a clear value 

proposition (better quality for a lower price). Knowledge management is more complex and 

less easy to communicate. Also, everyone is doing knowledge management already – the 

benefits come from doing it more systematically. Therefore you do not need permission to 

start knowledge management. 

CIBIT 25 


Catalytic effects 

Knowledge management initiatives have started in many places throughout the organisation. 

After being accepted, critical mass starts to grow and works as a catalyst for others around 

them. Doing so, knowledge management grows and grows. 

Integration 

The key is to ensure Knowledge management does not become a goal in itself, nor is it a 

project on its own. Knowledge management has to become an integral part of the BT way of 

working. The message is that everybody does knowledge management as a part of his or her 

daily activities; no specific knowledge management roles were defined (except for a 

negligibly small group of 12 – 15 people (see above: support structure)). 

Evaluation of knowledge management approach 

BT are now coming to the point of evaluating the interventions made during the last period. 

One of the activities of the organisational learning group of Steve Lakin is evaluating the way 

of knowledge management in the light of the strategic goals of BT. One approach used is to 

establish the extent of any gap between what current tools and approaches are delivering 

and the Business Unit’s needs. 

This raises the question do they understand the gap and can they fill it by enhancing the 

deployment of new and better knowledge management tools and approaches. 

Applied methods 

• Balanced Score Card as a framework for knowledge management 

• EFQM Business Excellence Model 

Balanced Scorecard as a framework 

The balanced score card provides an effective framework for examining the crucial role knowledge 

management can play. 

Process perspective: the learning organisation. Learning best practice from one another and from 

external resources is the central idea behind benchmarking. After a business has caught up with the 

best it must innovate and improve further. A key enabler in the innovation process is the ability for 

people to connect with one another and with information to stimulate their creativity. 

Customer perspective: the knowledge intensive business. Businesses are becoming intensive users of 

knowledge and their products contain an increasing amount of intellectual or knowledge component. 

Knowledge is vital for innovation and for organizations to win their particular races to develop new 

products and get them to the market first. Equally important is the ability to be very responsive to 

trends in the marketplace and to do that best organizations need their people to be very knowledgable 

about their markets, customers and competitors. 

Shareholder perspective: intellectual capital. The management of intangible assets has received very 

little attention in the traditional business world but as the value of knowledge becomes more widely 

accepted organizations start to benchmark themselves against companies such as software and music 

publishers which excel at managing their intangible assets. 

People perspective: knowledge culture. In the vast majority of organizations current incentive and 

reward systems tend to stress personal objectives and accountability and can lead to a mentality in 

which people see themselves competing with others in the same organizations for recognition and 

reward (knowledge is power/win-lose is good mentality). Businesses need to refocus the competitive 

instincts of their staff on winning for the team or company (knowledge sharing is power/win-win 

mentality). 

CIBIT 26 


Evaluation 

Results 

At the moment British Telecom is conducting a survey to be better able to evaluate the 

impact of knowledge management initiatives described in this case study, therefore no 

results can be given at this point in time. 

However, they do have results from the impact of their intranet. In 1996 it saved £305 

million. In 1997. £747 million. The results for 1998 showed a similar further increase 12 . 

Surveys showed that its introduction across the business had led to a maximum 

improvement in productivity in one area of 48% with an average of 35%. 

Key learnings 

• Knowledge management should be integrated in normal ways of working, not developed 

as add-ons. 

• You have to sell the benefits of knowledge management and therefore you need to be 

able to state a clear value proposition 

• Build Yellow pages organically, don’t expect people to fill-out large templates at once, 

start small. 

• People use Yellow pages the same as a telephone directory to look for contacts. Don’t be 

surprised when the discussion facility that goes along with the Yellow pages isn’t used. 

People rather use e-mail instead of discussion forums. 

• Most of BT’s published knowledge management successes relate to its intranet, looking at 

this case study one can easily notice this looking at the amount of information at the ICT 

part. This shows that it is easier to measure the impact of technology projects. 

References 

• Media briefing pack, BT and Knowledge Management 

• Copeland, Mick, (BT - Organisational Development), Using the intranet to develop a 

knowledge sharing culture, presentation slides of: Intranets as a knowledge management 

tool conference, 27 th and 28 th October 1998, London, U.K. 

• McGregor, Seona, (BTNet) Live demonstration: The BT Intranet, presentation slides of: 

Intranets as a knowledge management tool conference, 27 th and 28 th October 1998, 

London, U.K. 

• McGrath, Andrew, (BTLabs), The Forum, in: SIGGROUP Bulletin, volume 19, No 3, 

December 1998. 

• Kleiner, Art, Roth, George, Field Manual for a Learning Historian (version 4.0), MIT-COL 

(Center for Organisational Learning), October 28, 1996. 

• www.bt.com 

• www.btwide.com 

• www.oftel.gov.uk 

Contact information 

British Telecom 

12 exact figures not available 

CIBIT 27 


Steve Lakin 

Manager Organisational Learning 

tel: +44 14 42 29 68 49 

cell: +44 410 187 948 

Email: steve.lakin@bt.com 

CIBIT 28 


Shell 


Based on an interview with Arjan van Unnik (Senior consultant New Ways of Working, Shell 

International, Exploration and Production) during site visit on April 20, 1999, Rijswijk, the 

Netherlands. 

The goals of Shell 13 that were sought for with the organisational learning project are: 

• Find solutions faster 

• Find better solutions 

• Innovate faster 

• Disseminate innovations faster 

• Make more profits 


Goals that where seen by Shell as instrumental for reaching those organisational goals: 

• Improve knowledge sharing 

• Increase knowledge sharing 


Instrumentation of the knowledge management system (i.e. knowledge infrastructure) that 

was put in place for reaching the organisational goals. The following categories will be 

discerned: leadership & management, organisational structure & HRM, processes and 

Information & communication technology. 


• No mandate from the top 

• Bottom-up 

• Cultural Change 

• Avoiding local sub-networks 


• Common Interest Networks (60 worldwide) 

13 With Shell is meant Shell International Exploration and Production (SIEP), the upstream part of Shell. 

CIBIT 29 


• Moderator 

• Global Coordinator 

• Subject Focal Point 

• Local Coordinator 

• Appraisal system 

Processes 

• Best Practice Transfer 

• Moderation 

ICT 

• Knowledge bases 

• Alta Vista Forum 



• Technology consultants 

• New Ways of Working consultants 

CIBIT 30 



Abstract 

The multinational Royal Dutch/Shell group of Companies operates in 130 places around the 

world. 

Larger oil companies, like Shell, can be sub-divided into upstream and downstream parts. 

This case study is about the upstream part, the operating companies that explore oilfields 

and produce crude oil for the market. The world of upstream operating companies is a world 

of taking high risks and gaining high rewards, they work opportunity driven. Shell Exploration 

& Production saw knowledge management initiatives generate successes in enterprises 

around them and started piloting with knowledge management themselves. A group of 

consultants, of the Exploration & Production service company, called New Ways of Working 

took the initiative for starting common interest networks within individual exploration and 

production disciplines like engineering, corrosion and petrophysics across the globe. This 

lead to 60 common interest networks within Shell worldwide. The members of a community 

help eachother by sharing insights and experiences. Shell has indications that for every 

dollar it invests in a community, it gains 10 dollars and for every hour invested it gains 7 

hours in return. 


History of Shell 

The Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies has grown out of an alliance made in 1907 

between Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and the ‘Shell’ Transport and Trading Company 

p.l.c., by which the two companies agreed to merge their interests on a 60:40 

(Netherlands:United Kingdom) basis while keeping their separate identities. 

About Shell 

Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies operates in more than 130 countries around the 

world, the companies of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group are engaged in the core businesses of 

Exploration & Production, Oil Products, Chemicals, Downstream gas and power generation 

and Renewables. 

This case study is situated at Shell International Exploration and Production. The 

organisational chart depicted below shows its two major departments: Research and 

Technical Services (a service company) and Operating Units (an operating company). 

CIBIT 31 


Exploration and Production 

Research and Technical 

Services 

+/- 1,000 employees 

Royal Dutch/Shell 

Group of 

Companies 

Shell International 



Operating Units 

+/- 30,000 employees 

Figure 1 Relation of Shell International Exploration and Production to Royal Dutch/Shell Group of 

Companies 

Research and Technical Services 

Research and Technical Services is a service company which provides advice and services 

to the operating companies. It’s sub-divided into two parts: Research & Development and 

Consultancy. One of these consultancy groups is New Ways of Working (NWW), which 

consists of +/- 10-14 people including 5 Information Technology consultants. 

Operating Units 

These units search for oil and gas fields by means of seismic surveys and exploration wells; 

develop economically viable fields by drilling additional wells and build the infrastructure of 

pipelines and treatment facilities necessary for delivering the hydrocarbons to the market. 

Shell is either shareholder or shareholder and operator of these units, in the last case all staff 

is Shell staff. 

Shells operating units are (from large to small) 14 : 

• NAM (The Netherlands, 50% Shell:50% Exxon) 

• Shell Expro (United Kingdom, 50% Shell:50% Exxon) 

• SPDC (Nigeria, 30% Shell:70% Local Government) 

• PDO (Oman, 30% Shell:70% Local Government) 

• BSP (Brunei) 

• Shell Petroleum Inc. (United States) 

• Norske Shell 

• SSB (Sarawak) 

• Venezuela 

• SPEX (Philipines) 

• Syria 

• New ventures 

• Angola 

• Kazachstan 

Exploration and Production and the market 

Crude oil prices are volatile. In December the crude oil price sank below $10 a barrel for the 

first time since 1986. Currently the prices are in the range of $15 a barrel. Over the next five 

years, oil production and gas sales are planned to grow – at an average annual rate of 4% for 

oil and 6% for gas. The strategy is maximising long-term value with increased emphasis on 

short-term profitability, cost leadership and production growth. Implement strategy through 

selective investments and active portfolio management. Take advantage of the global 

14 List might be incomplete, but gives a good enough overview (Arjan van Unnik). 

CIBIT 32 


leverage of technology, research, skills and practices to support group companies, thus 

becoming the preferred partner of both resource holders and other companies in the industry. 

About Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies’ upstream and downstream 

departments 

It’s important to know that the larger oil companies are sub-divided into (at least) an 

upstream and a downstream sector; frequently complemented by a chemicals sector. The 

upstream sector (Exploration and Production) searches for oil and gas fields by means of 

seismic surveys and exploration wells; developing economically viable fields by drilling 

additional wells and building the infrastructure of pipelines and treatment facilities necessary 

for delivering the hydrocarbons to the market. The downstream sector (at Shell called: Oil 

Products) refines and processes crude oil and feedstocks into transportation fuels, lubricants, 

heating and fuel oils, liquefied petroleum gas and bitumen; distributing and marketing them – 

together with complementary services – to meet customer needs. 

At Shell the upstream department’s R&D is always trying to find new opportunities to e.g. 

explore oil faster by drilling ‘ultra slim’ holes. They are fully customer (Operating Units) 

driven, while searching for ways to innovate processes, taking risks and gaining high 

rewards. The downstream R&D has relatively a higher emphasis on improving processes to 

be more cost-effective and extremely efficient in e.g. refining crude oil. 

To give an idea about Shell production figures: 2,354,000 barrels 15 (1% higher than 1997) of 

crude oil are produced each day worldwide (in Europe alone: 590,000 barrels each day). In 

1998 refinery processing intake was 3,371,000 barrels daily and a total of 8,964,000 barrels 

of refined and crude oil products were sold daily (3% more than 1997). 


At Shell International Exploration and Production they didn’t speak of a need for change, they 

found the knowledge management success stories in the world intrigueing and therfore 

wanted to explore this opportunity for themselves. Knowledge management was seen as an 

opportunity to improve their exploration and production process. For instance, one day offshore 

drilling costs about $100,000, if one day can be saved based on shared knowledge, the 

revenues are large. 

Shell’s opportunities can be stated in the following organisational goals: 

• Find solutions faster 

• Find better solutions 

• Innovate faster 

• Disseminate innovations faster 

• Make more profits 

From these organisational goals the following knowledge management are applicable: 

• Improve knowledge sharing 

• Increase knowledge sharing 

15 A barrel contains 159 liters and is priced between $10 - $18 on the market. Average price in 1998 was $12.75 (in 1997 

it was $19.10). 

CIBIT 33 



In order to reach the organisational goals the following instrumentation of the knowledge 

management system (i.e. knowledge infrastructure) was designed and implemented. The 

following categories will be discerned: leadership & management, organisational structure & 

HRM, processes and Information & communication technology. 

Leadership and Management 

No mandate from the top 

At the moment the New Ways of Working group doesn’t get any funding from the top, they 

have to market their services like any other consultant and find sponsoring Operating Units 

for their R&D efforts. In the beginning New Ways of Working received a limited amount of 

seed money from the top to develop and present their ideas on knowledge management and 

the potential it might have for Shell. Following this initial stage they got R&D funds, coming 

from a variety of Operating Units who were willing to invest in this new initiative in order to 

enable more and better knowledge sharing. With respect to consultancy activities, New Ways 

of Working get paid their hourly rates by customers in Operating Units asking services from 

this team, e.g. all the Production Chemists in the Exploration and Production Operating Units 

who want New Ways of Working to help them build a common interest network on 

Production Chemistry for them. 

Bottom-up 

New Ways of Working started (see also: Organisational structure and HRM 

Common Interest Networks 

Shell has around 60 common interest networks worldwide and is in the process of combining 

them into less, but larger communities with a broader scope. Each network covers a certain 

related set of topics, part of their discipline. For example, the drilling engineers part of the 

wells network are discussing about drilling ‘ultra slim’ holes and the people who purchase 

drilling related equipment discuss their topics in their part within the same network. The 

people joining a network are sometimes part of the core network and sometimes in the 

periphery of the network and jump in whenever something that draws their attention comes 

by. In order to ensure that the community remains active a moderator provides support. In 

many cases a moderator moderates between 1 – 3 days each week. The most successful 

larger networks have a fulltime moderator, funded by the Operating Units with a major 

interest in the business processes discussed in the network. The moderator is: 

• the ambassador and marketeer of the community; 

• the community builder; 

• responsible for creating and maintaining momentum in the community; 

• managing, sometimes even editing the content; 

• ensures questions get answered; 

• and requests (and chases) for contributions. 

The best expert is usually not the best moderator: other people may stop contributing if a 

moderator keeps adding comments to contributions from others. 

In larger, globally operating, networks three other roles are identified to support the 

community: a Subject Focal Point, moderating a part of the network, Local Coordinator 

energising all the members in his/her Operating Unit and a Global Coordinator acting as 

chairman and energiser for the total community. For an explanation of their necessity and 

their tasks is refered to the section called: Errore. L'autoriferimento non è valido per un 

segnalibro. - Implementing new organisational structure slowly. 

Appraisal system 

People do get recognised in a community by their contributions and by exposing their 

knowledge. This can occasionally contribute to financial rewards: a promotion can be 

CIBIT 34 


triggered by the reputation contributors have built up in their community. It is obvious that if 

people are able to see these tangible benefits of sharing their knowledge, they will become 

more inclined to change their behaviour accordingly. 

By observations it was discovered that there is a culture arising within Shell, where people 

are saying ‘I didn’t invent this myself, I took ideas from him.’ Using ideas from others starts 

being encouraged and is popping up in some appraisal systems within individual operating 

companies. In these companies it is more beneficial for an individual to search for solutions 

already available, solicit suggestions and to admit that you have used someone else’s idea 

instead of developing your own solution. In some parts of the company the appraisal systems 

contain elements related to publishing information and to assisting others. 

Comparing individual Shell companies or business units merely on their own bottom line 

performance can be a hindering factor in knowledge sharing – sharing information reduces 

the competive advantage of an individual company in comparison to their peers within the 

Shell Group. This is to be compensated by including elements in the comparison as “total 

contribution to the Shell Group”, “implemented innovations by and from other companies”. 

Processes 

Best Practice Transfer 

In 1997 they tried a classical Business Process Benchmarking approach (some other oil 

companies work this way). Which means taking business processes of exploration and 

production, then step by step defining performance indicators for the various process parts, 

analysing the process parts of the various Shell operating companies and comparing them. 

Trying to explain the differences between good and bad performing operating companies, 

then describing the ways of work of the best performing operating companies and transfer 

this information to mediocre performing operating companies. This didn’t work at a global 

scale for several reasons; the formal taste of it all was not accepted by the operating 

companies. 

Later, in January 1998, they tried to follow a very simple approach to best practice transfer, 

learned from a network in the downstream sector of Shell. This network originated from the 

reorganisation of an Amsterdam based central office group of 10 people (engineers, former 

experts in the field themselves) which gave advise to colleagues working at Shell’s refineries 

around the world. The main reason for the need of such an office is that many colleagues in 

the Operating Units work remotely and may be one of the few skilled persons in the discipline 

on that place. In some cases there is no other colleague present in the vicinity of hundreds of 

kilometers. Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies decided to downsize its central offices 

and due to this decision the Amsterdam based group of experts had to do the same work with 

4 employees (40%) less. Therfor they came up with the idea to let the total community of 

engineers in the field help themselves. This was enabled by letting them send a question to 

the central office by E-mail or sometimes by a fax. The former expert at the central office 

became the moderator who ensured that the question was formulated in such a way that the 

engineers who were expected to answer it would interpret it correctly. The rephrased 

questions were sent by E-mail to all engineers in the field. If it took the engineers to long to 

answer the question, the moderator would start chasing for an answer, by calling people they 

expected to be knowledgable to answer it. Doing so, the problem-owner got his problem 

solved by his peers. Since all the questions and answers are collected in a worldwide 

accessible database, the next time the same problem occurs an engineer first looks for a 

solution in the database and therfor only needs to contact his peers via the moderator when 

the solution is not available yet. The achievement of this network is $5+ Million benefits 

/annum at $300k costs/annum. Based on the succes of such a simple concept New Ways of 

Working decided to copy this concept and implement it into Exploration and Production 

operating units. At the moment there are 60 communities. 

CIBIT 35 


Moderation 

For the task of the moderator is refered to the previous section called: Best 

Practice Transfer and the section called: Leadership and Management 













Bottom-up 






































CIBIT 36 










Processes 










companies. 

























Moderation 











CIBIT 37 






Bottom-up 














































CIBIT 38 


Processes 










companies. 

























Moderation 

For the task of the moderator is refered to the previous section called: Best Practice Transfer 

and the section called: Leadership and Management 













Bottom-up 





CIBIT 39 


elated set of topics, part of their discipline. For example, the drilling engineers part of the 









the ambassador and marketeer of the community; 

the community builder; 

responsible for creating and maintaining momentum in the community; 

managing, sometimes even editing the content; 

ensures questions get answered; 

and requests (and chases) for contributions. 















• By observations it was discovered that there is a culture arising within Shell, where 

people are saying ‘I didn’t invent this myself, I took ideas from him.’ Using ideas from 

others starts being encouraged and is popping up in some appraisal systems within 

individual operating companies. In these companies it is more beneficial for an 

individual to search for solutions already available, solicit suggestions and to admit 

that you have used someone else’s idea instead of developing your own solution. In 

some parts of the company the appraisal systems contain elements related to 

publishing information and to assisting others. 

• 

• Comparing individual Shell companies or business units merely on their own bottom 

line performance can be a hindering factor in knowledge sharing – sharing 

information reduces the competive advantage of an individual company in 

comparison to their peers within the Shell Group. This is to be compensated by 

including elements in the comparison as “total contribution to the Shell Group”, 

“implemented innovations by and from other companies”. 

Processes 










companies. 

CIBIT 40 


























Moderation 

For the task of the moderator is refered to the previous section called: Best Practice Transfer and the section 

called: Leadership and Management 


At the moment the New Ways of Working group doesn’t get any funding from the top, they have to market their 

services like any other consultant and find sponsoring Operating Units for their R&D efforts. In the beginning New 

Ways of Working received a limited amount of seed money from the top to develop and present their ideas on 

knowledge management and the potential it might have for Shell. Following this initial stage they got R&D funds, 

coming from a variety of Operating Units who were willing to invest in this new initiative in order to enable more 

and better knowledge sharing. With respect to consultancy activities, New Ways of Working get paid their hourly 

rates by customers in Operating Units asking services from this team, e.g. all the Production Chemists in the 

Exploration and Production Operating Units who want New Ways of Working to help them build a common 

interest network on Production Chemistry for them. 

Bottom-up 




















CIBIT 41 











People do get recognised in a community by their contributions and by exposing their knowledge. This can 

occasionally contribute to financial rewards: a promotion can be triggered by the reputation contributors have built 

up in their community. It is obvious that if people are able to see these tangible benefits of sharing their 

knowledge, they will become more inclined to change their behaviour accordingly. 













Processes 










companies. 





















CIBIT 42 






Moderation 















Bottom-up 


































CIBIT 43 














Processes 










companies. 

























Moderation 










CIBIT 44 







Bottom-up 














































Processes 





CIBIT 45 







companies. 

























Moderation 















Bottom-up 












CIBIT 46 




































Processes 










companies. 












CIBIT 47 















Moderation 















Bottom-up 




























CIBIT 48 




















Processes 










companies. 

























Moderation 


and the section called: Organisational structure and HRM - Common Interest Networks. 

ICT 

CIBIT 49 


Different technologies are used in the Shell Upstream and Downstream sectors. Within the 

Upstream sector both questions and answers and knowledge objects are stored in a simple 

Web based tool, called AltaVista Forum. This tool provides a threaded discussion area for 

the questions and answer component, and something like "shared folders on the Intranet", 

which is used as a simple knowledge base. This tool also provides a full text search engine 

on the total content. The tool is relatively simple to use, but has limited functionality. The 

ease of use enables all participants in the network to add information, which is regarded to be 

very important at the early stages of a new community. In the Downstream sector a more 

advanced Electronic Document Management (EDM) system is used. This system is less 

easy to use, therefore the central organisation populates the tool with the questions and 

answers and knowledge objects, while the participants are using the tool in read-only mode. 

Questions are sent out by E-mail (and stored in the EDM system), participants reply by Email 

to the central coordinator (who than also stores the replies in the EDM system). 

It should be remarked, that when networks grow and mature the need for more advanced 

technologies also increases. Shell expects that at later stages community members will also 

accept technologies that are less easy to use, provided these do offer the functionality 

required at these later stages. In that respect: mature networks in the Upstream sector are 

increasingly looking for Electronic Document Management functionality on top of their easyto-use 

AltaVista Forum tool. 



Technology consultants (5+ part of NWW consultants) 

New Ways of Working consultants (10+) 

The word ‘support’ could be a bit misleading in the case of Shell. Since the New Ways of 

Working-consultantcy services are not mandatory, this consultancy can only be of support for 

operating units if the units explicitly hire them. The New Ways of Working-consultants have 

to market their own products, otherwise they will be out of work. 

- Generating critical mass) with building small networks in order to let them get used to the 

way of working. After some time there was a growing number of small networks working well. 

They started with already existing informal communities to build momentum. They 

introduced the new way of working to these existing informal communities because within 

existing groups the risk of failure was lower. When it seemed to work it was used as an 

example for a more risky groups, and so step by step New Ways of Working got to core 

business groups. When a number of related parts of the exploration and production business 

process have their formal networks in place, New Ways of Working merge them into larger 

communities, for instance “Wells”, which relates to anything on well delivery around the 

globe and as such combines a number of smaller communities that were initiated in earlier 

stages. 


During each common interest network kick-off session people appear who seem to be 

potential blockers (“Why should I help somebody else, I already have enough work on my 

plate!”). The way to overcome these barriers is convincing a reasonable amount of people 

within the community of the (personal) benefits that can be gained (getting work done faster 

and better by cooperating within the community on a give and take basis). Experience has 

indicated that during a kick-off workshop the vast majority of the attendees (80-100%) buy in 

to the concept. This core group can subsequently deliver sufficiently convincing results to 

bring the others on board, including those who used to be blockers. 

Avoiding local sub-networks 

Sometimes local sub-networks arise, focussing on specific local problems. Such groups are 

bound to loose connection with the global network. To them it seems that their case is not 

interesting to the global network, this could be the case, but doesn’t have to be true, 

therefore the New Ways of Working team is looking for solutions to prevent these kind of 

sub-optimal group formations. 

- Common Interest Networks. 

ICT 



CIBIT 50 





















• Technology consultants (5+ part of NWW consultants) 

• New Ways of Working consultants (10+) 















stages. 

















CIBIT 51 


ICT 






































stages. 

















CIBIT 52 


ICT 






































stages. 

















CIBIT 53 


ICT 






































stages. 

















CIBIT 54 


ICT 






































stages. 

















CIBIT 55 


ICT 






































stages. 

















CIBIT 56 


ICT 






































stages. 

















CIBIT 57 


ICT 






































stages. 
















CIBIT 58 


Organisational structure and HRM 













































Processes 


In 1997 they tried a classical Business Process Benchmarking approach 16 (some other oil 






16 For example described by Robert Camp [Camp, 1995] 

CIBIT 59 




companies. 

























Moderation 















Bottom-up 












CIBIT 60 




































Processes 










companies. 










CIBIT 61 

















Moderation 















Bottom-up 






















CIBIT 62 


























Processes 










companies. 





















CIBIT 63 






Moderation 















Bottom-up 
































CIBIT 64 
















Processes 










companies. 

























Moderation 






CIBIT 65 











Bottom-up 


































• By observations it was discovered that there is a culture arising within Shell, where 

people are saying ‘I didn’t invent this myself, I took ideas from him.’ Using ideas from 

others starts being encouraged and is popping up in some appraisal systems within 

individual operating companies. In these companies it is more beneficial for an 

individual to search for solutions already available, solicit suggestions and to admit 

that you have used someone else’s idea instead of developing your own solution. In 

some parts of the company the appraisal systems contain elements related to 

publishing information and to assisting others. 

• 

CIBIT 66 


• Comparing individual Shell companies or business units merely on their own bottom 

line performance can be a hindering factor in knowledge sharing – sharing 

information reduces the competive advantage of an individual company in 

comparison to their peers within the Shell Group. This is to be compensated by 

including elements in the comparison as “total contribution to the Shell Group”, 

“implemented innovations by and from other companies”. 

Processes 










companies. 

























Moderation 

For the task of the moderator is refered to the previous section called: Best Practice Transfer and the section 

called: Leadership and Management 


At the moment the New Ways of Working group doesn’t get any funding from the top, they have to market their 

services like any other consultant and find sponsoring Operating Units for their R&D efforts. In the beginning New 

Ways of Working received a limited amount of seed money from the top to develop and present their ideas on 

knowledge management and the potential it might have for Shell. Following this initial stage they got R&D funds, 

coming from a variety of Operating Units who were willing to invest in this new initiative in order to enable more 

and better knowledge sharing. With respect to consultancy activities, New Ways of Working get paid their hourly 

rates by customers in Operating Units asking services from this team, e.g. all the Production Chemists in the 

Exploration and Production Operating Units who want New Ways of Working to help them build a common 

interest network on Production Chemistry for them. 

Bottom-up 


CIBIT 67 





























People do get recognised in a community by their contributions and by exposing their knowledge. This can 

occasionally contribute to financial rewards: a promotion can be triggered by the reputation contributors have built 

up in their community. It is obvious that if people are able to see these tangible benefits of sharing their 

knowledge, they will become more inclined to change their behaviour accordingly. 













Processes 










companies. 



CIBIT 68 


eorganisation of an Amsterdam based central office group of 10 people (engineers, former 






















Moderation 















Bottom-up 




















CIBIT 69 




























Processes 










companies. 




















CIBIT 70 







Moderation 















Bottom-up 




































CIBIT 71 


eing encouraged and is popping up in some appraisal systems within individual operating 










Processes 










companies. 

























Moderation 












CIBIT 72 





Bottom-up 














































Processes 







CIBIT 73 





companies. 

























Moderation 















Bottom-up 














CIBIT 74 


































Processes 










companies. 














CIBIT 75 













Moderation 


and the section called: Organisational structure and HRM - Common Interest Networks. 

ICT 






















Technology consultants (5+ part of NWW consultants) 

New Ways of Working consultants (10+) 















stages. 





CIBIT 76 














ICT 






































stages. 





CIBIT 77 














ICT 






































stages. 




CIBIT 78 















ICT 






































stages. 

CIBIT 79 


















ICT 





































CIBIT 80 



stages. 

















ICT 




































CIBIT 81 




stages. 

















ICT 



































CIBIT 82 





stages. 

















ICT 


































CIBIT 83 


usiness groups. When a number of related parts of the exploration and production business 




stages. 

















ICT 

































CIBIT 84 







stages. 

















ICT 




























CIBIT 85 



Generating critical mass 

At the outset of implementing a succesful initiative within Shell, New Ways of Working 

initially focussed on building and developing existing informal networks which they then tried 

to formalise at a global scale. These networks were regarded ‘low hanging fruits’, indicating 

their lower risk. If these networks would lead to a success, then they could be used as 

examples for convincing other networks to do the same. These examples gave New Ways of 

Working a value proposition which was useful to market their service. 

Implementing new organisational structure slowly 

When New Ways of Working began with building communities the only organisational 

structure they gave to a community was the addition of a moderator as a different role than 

the community member role itself. After some time when the amount of community members 

grew and along with that the amount of topics subject area focal points were necessary, for 

the community wasn’t managable anymore. A focal point is someone who is responsible for 

solving problems around one specific topic. When necessary a focal point chases for 

answers and structures the answers in the knowledge base. Along with the focal point 

another role became necessary because of the global dispersion of the Shell communities: 

the local coordinator. A local coordinator takes care of the local community, helps them to 

get and to stay connected to the network and is a local helping hand for the global 

coordinator of the network. Specifically when cultural differences are a topic a local 

coordinator bridges between the global network and the local community. 

Convince a network that it needs a moderator 

Although the history of common interest networks at Shell teached the New Ways of Working 

consultants that the best communities had a moderator working for them full-time, they still 

have a hard time convincing new communities of the importance of the moderator. The main 

reason for this is that a moderator has to be funded by the community. Due to the fact that 

people strongly believe that the web technology will build the community for them, they want 

to invest in technology and preferably not in a moderator. Usually these communities start 

asking for a moderator at a later stage, after they experienced that the network doesn’t 

generate the benefits they expected from it. 


Several consultancy companies have assisted Shell in the early stages. Methods and 

consultancy advice have been useful in early stages, but in order to come to a roll-out Shell 

had to build upon practical experiences gained, instead of external advice or described 

methodologies. 

CIBIT 86 


Evaluation 

Shell did not attach a certain value to the knowledge that resides with its exploration and 

production networks. However from research in areas of communities of practice some 

quantifiable benefits were identified, although still rough figures it shows the order of 

magnitude. 

Company benefits 

• 1 hour spent = 7 hours saved 

• $1 spent = $10 saved 

Individual benefits 

• spend minutes instead of hours on searching information 

• spend minutes instead of hours on providing information 

• save weeks to months by having information 

Benefits have actually been measured in 2 existing networks:.An existing informal network was measured to 

generate $5 - $15 Million benefits per annum at a cost of $300,000 per annum. Another existing network, which 

is more focussed and target-driven, generates $8 Million benefits per annum at $200,000 costs per annum plus 

$1,2 Million initiation costs. 

Key learnings 

• Local communities aren’t usefull e.g. it’s no use to give people who work in the same 

office or who see eachother very often an intranet discussion facility. 

• Technology is an important enabler, but be sure to prevent common interest 

networks from thinking that technology is the most important enabler. Common 

interest networks who fully and only rely on technology are ‘doomed to die’, the 

experience of the New Ways of Working team tells that the importance of the 

moderator is highly underestimated. Do not believe in DIY (Do it yourself – just give 

me the technology approaches). 

• At the moment the structure of a global common interest network is based on 2 

orthogonal variables: subject and location. Each subject has a focal point, this role is 

responsible for the development of solutions, innovations regarding this subject 

(actively chasing, providing content et cetera.). Each location has a local coordinator, 

this role actively promotes the work of the common interest network locally i.e. at the 

operating company’s location. Finally there’s a global coordinator of the network. 

This structure was not communicated at the very start of the common interest 

network kick-offs, since more roles seem to lead to more complexity, higher barriers, 

and these are blocking acceptance. 

• Keeping technology simple is taken very literally at Shell. The technology used in the 

first network in the downstream sector was extremely basic: E-mail communication, 

complemented by a Web based Electronic Document System, populated centrally 

and world-wide accessible in read-only mode. The Upstraem sector gave preference 

to Intranet based technology that was very easy to use for the end-user, over and 

above technology that could provide more of the required functionality at the costs of 

reduced user friendliness. 

• Avoid complicated things and academic or formal approaches, don’t talk about 

knowledge management theories, keep concepts simple. 

CIBIT 87 


• Don’t use force to push people into new ways of working, if they refuse they refuse, 

maybe they will be convinced by the results of colleagues, which is probably the best 

way to get them with the programme. Give them the time to recognise there is 

something in it for them, don’t forget you’re expecting a behavioral change! Let them 

identify personal and business benefits themselves. 

References 

• Summary Annual Report 1998, Royal Dutch Petroleum Company / N.V. Koninklijke 

Nederlandsche Petroleum Maatschappij, 1998. 

• Van Unnik, Arjan, (EPT - NWW), CoPs in Shell – New Ways of Working, presentation 

slides of: CoP Workshop 30 November 1998, San Ramon CA. 

• Camp, Robert C., Business process benchmarking: finding and implemeting best 

practices, ASQC Quality Press, 1995. 

• www.shell.com 


Shell International Exploration and Production B.V. 

Research and Technical Services 

Ir. Arjan A. van Unnik 

New Ways of Working 

EPT-NWW 

Volmerlaan 8 

PO Box 60 

2280 AB Rijswijk 

The Netherlands 

tel: +31 70 311 2206 

fax: +31 70 311 2001 

Email: a.vanunnik@siep.shell.com 

CIBIT 88 


Volkswagen AG 

Based on interview with Dr. Ferdinand Schultz and Dr. Marcus Schutz (respectively Project 

manager and project member of WW.DECK) during site visit on April 15, 1999, Wolfsburg, 

Germany. 


The goals of Volkswagen Group that were sought for with the organisational learning project 

are: 

• Enable flexible production; 

• Enhance the development of cars based on the same platform for different brands 

– Golf A 4, Audi A3, Volkswagen Beetle and Skoda Octavia; 

• Ensure high quality for each brand and factory; 

• Offer a range of cars from low budget economy class to very exclusive; 

• Get component quality of all group members at the same level; 

• Use customer information systematically. 

Knowledge Management Goals 

Goals that where seen by Volkswagen Group as instrumental for reaching those 


• Disseminate local innovative solutions world-wide; 

• Make knowledge accessible when it is needed; 

• Share knowledge systematically; 

• Share failures systematically; 

• Prevent reinvention of knowledge; 

• Prevent erosion of knowledge when people leave the company. 






CIBIT 89 



• Support from top: 

o At the moment WW.DECK is financially supported by the top; 

o There is a strong cooperation with the IT-department; 

o In the future they must become self-supportive; 

• Working bottom-up – generating critical mass, behavioral change of people must be 

intrinsic. 


• LINE project (Learning in Networks): education via intranet for Volkswagen; 

• Local WW.DECK coordinators to overcome cultural problems; 

• Events for top managers about knowledge sharing. 

Processes 

ICT 

• Making cooperation within informal and formal expert networks systematic and if 

possible improve it– give the network experts support to improve their knowledge 

sharing. 

• Yellow-pages for expert network (job family orientatet); 

• Documentum (document management system) – to let the network build its 

knowledge warehouse. 



• Central WW.DECK team of 9 consultants (and still growing), its role: 

o Giving advise to Volkswagen Group members, 

o Helping local project teams with knowledge management initiatives, 

o Doing the project management (coordination) of the WW.DECK projects, 

� Their customers are Volkswagen Group departments, factories and experts 

networks, 

o The customers give their requirements to WW.DECK, 

o WW.DECK learns from its customers too! 

• Decentral WW.DECK coordinator at Volkwagen truck division, Audi, Seat, Skoda, 

and the other regional Volkswagen Group sites world wide. 

CIBIT 90 



Abstract 

Volkswagen Group is a worldwide operating company headquartered in Wolsburg, Germany 

with factories in e.g. Germany, USA, South-Africa, South-America, China, Australia. They 

own a large range of brands i.e. Volkswagen, Volkswagen truck division, Audi, Skoda, Seat, 

Lamborghini, Benteley, Rolls-Royce and Bugatti. In 1997 they produced 1.5 Million 

Volkswagens, 0.5 Million Audi’s, 0.5 Million Seats and 0.4 Million Skoda’s with a workforce of 

279,872 people and a generated sales amount of DM Million 113,245. 

In October 1998, on the initiative of board member Dr. Hartz, Volkswagen started with its 

knowledge management programme called WW.DECK (World Wide Development and 

Exchange of Corporate Knowledge). Since Spring 1997 the programm was prepared in a 

crossfuntional team of differnet departments of Volkswagen. In the beginning there were just 

two fulltime consultants part of WW.DECK, today they are already with 9 people piloting 

various knowledge management projects in Volkswagen Group. WW.DECK has a very clear, 

almost blueprint, of their knowledge management programme and are working on a large 

range of possible places across Volkswagen Group and on various levels, e.g. HRM, ICT and 

change management. They continuously keep listening to their customers, the Volkswagen 

Group employees, to get new requirements for the knowledge management methods, tools 

and techniques. Although they are backed and fully sponsored by the board of Volkswagen 

Group, they still have to convice the Volkswagen Group factories of the benefits of 

knowledge management, so the implementation is done in a bottom-up way. At the moment 

WW.DECK is evaluating their first knowledge management projects. 


History of Volkswagen 

Most people are aware of the genesis of the Volkswagen Beetle as "The People's Car" prior 

to the Second World War, designed by Dr. Ferdinand Porsche to put the German people 

behind the wheel of an affordable car. What most people do not realise is that production did 

not start until after the Second World War and that it was the British Army that started what is 

the modern day Volkswagen Group! 

After the war, the British Army found itself as the manager of what was left of the 

Volkswagen factory. More than 60 percent of it had been destroyed during the war. All the 

prototype cars had also been destroyed. They offered the company first to the Rootes Group 

in the UK and then to Ford. Both companies turned down the car and company saying that 

the Volkswagen had no future. 

So the British Army appointed Major Ivan Hirst, a bank manager from Yorkshire, to run the 

plant. Remarkably he lead the Volkswagen workers to produce 1785 Beetles by the end of 

1945. The following year the figure was up to 10,020. The Beetle was well and truly on its 

way. Exports began, to the Netherlands, in 1947 and to the USA in 1949 and in the same 

year the British Army relinquished control of the plant and Volkswagenwerk GmbH was 

formed, under the control of the German Government. 

CIBIT 91 


From then on, the history is one of Production milestones and new importers opening their 

doors. 

The million mark is passed in 1955; production in Australia starts in 1957; the five million 

mark is passed in 1961; ten million in 1965 and 20 million in 1971. 

The 1970s saw the birth of a new Volkswagen and whole new range of successful cars. The 

first of the new generation was the Passat, like all that were to follow it, front wheel drive and 

watercooled, arrived in 1973. The Scirocco, a stylish Coupe debuted in 1974. 

The Passat also saw the launch of what is arguably the most successful family of engines of 

all time, the EA827 family. 

This unit has been the basis of four, five, straight six and V6 and V8 engines, running on 

petrol, diesel and ethanol, with two, four and five valves per cylinder, normally aspirated, 

turbo and supercharged. 

They have sold in millions, won world championships and set records for speed, endurance 

and economy. 

But it was the Golf, launched in the same year, that lead the company to new levels of 

success. Sales were outstanding, a million in just 31 months, and the Golf opened up whole 

new sectors of the market. 

The Golf GTi invented the 'hot hatchback'; the Golf Diesel refined diesel cars; the Golf 

Convertible brought open top motoring back to the forefront of production and the Golf 

Syncro brought four wheel drive to small cars. 

Volkswagen brought the Detroit Motor Show to a standstill in January 1994 with the unveiling 

of Concept One, a modern interpretation of the most famous Volkswagen of all, the Beetle. 

Three months later Concept One appeared again at the Geneva Motor Show, but this time 

with a new partner, a convertible. The welcome for the car was amazing with crowds 50 deep 

around the display. So great was the welcome that the decision was made to put Concept 

One into production. 

By the middle of 1995, Volkswagen has produced 66 million cars, including 21 million 

Beetles, 16 million Golfs, six million Passats and more than seven million Transporters. 1995 

saw the European launch of the Volkswagen Polo and its instant acclaim as the new 

benchmark for the supermini class. It has been applauded for its class leading refinement, 

safety, styling and 'big-car' in a small package. 

Initially available as a four and three door hatch, it has been joined by a sedan version and a 

'bubble back' commercial model called the Caddy. Power comes from a range of petrol and 

diesel engines with the option of manual or automatic gearboxes. 

The major launch in 1995 was that of the Sharan, the fruit of a joint venture between Ford 

and Volkswagen, with the German company providing the vehicle and Ford setting up the 

factory in Portugal under the AutoEuropa banner. 

Like Polo, Sharan has been lauded as a new benchmark, offering new standards in the 

people mover class. It is not been described as car-like on the road: It is better than most 

normal cars! Yet it has room for seven people in a compact outside package. It is available 

with a choice of two petrol - 2.0 and 2.8 litre - and a 1.9 direct injection diesel engine, 

matched to manual and automatic gearboxes with a four wheel drive Syncro option to come. 

The arrival of the Sharan means that Volkswagen has set the benchmark in both the large 

people mover and medium people mover classes with the Caravelle and Sharan, 

respectively. 

Volkswagen's scene stealer at the Frankfurt Motor Show was Noah. Although another people 

mover, this vehicle showed Volkswagen's advanced thinking with its aluminium frame, 

wooden floor and styling than can only be described as aggressive! 

Volkswagen, once again, stole the limelight at the 1996 Tokyo Motor Show, with the 

revelation that Concept One will go into production in Mexico and on display was the 

productionised car. Still with the Beetle character, the new car now sported all the legal and 

safety requirements of a new car and it was made on the platform of a production car, the 

CIBIT 92 


Group's new A-class platform. With the announcement that right hand drive will be available, 

the car is set for launch in Australia before then end of the decade. 

1996's star launch was the all-new Volkswagen Passat, with a range of technology that has 

sent it straight to the top of the class, while revisions to the Transporter and Caravelle have 

helped them extend their class leads. 

About Volkswagen 

Volkswagen Group is a worldwide operating company headquartered in Germany with 

factories in e.g. Germany, USA, South-Africa, South-America, China. They own a large 

range of brands i.e. Volkswagen, Volkswagen truck division, Audi, Skoda, Seat Lamborghini, 

Benteley, Rolls-Royce, and Bugatti. In 1997 they produced 1.5 Million Volkswagens, 0.5 

Million Audi’s, 0.5 Million Seats and 0.4 Million Skoda’s with a workforce of 279,872 people 

and a generated sales amount of Million DM 113,245. 

In October 1998, on the initiative of board member Dr. Hartz, Volkswagen started with its 

knowledge management programme called WW.DECK (World Wide Development and 

Exchange of Corporate Knowledge). Since Spring 1997 the programm was prepared in a 

crossfuntional team of differnet departments of Volkswagen. In the beginning there were just 

two fulltime consultants part of WW.DECK, today they are already with 9 people piloting 

various knowledge management projects in Volkswagen Group. 


The main knowledge management problem of Volkswagen is the multicultural and global 

working organisation. Since they are operating world wide, their company is multicultural and 

since they own various brands, from economy class to exclusive sportscars, they are a multi 

brand company too. This of course is a enourmous advantage regarding financial advantage, 

but on the other hand it’s a huge barrier to knowledge sharing too. 

The main reason for the existence of barriers for sharing knowledge are the differences 

between the brands, to be more specific: someone who builds Volkswagens is Volkswagen 

and is different from someone who builds Audi’s who is Audi. 

This difference is good on the level of design and marketing, the various brands of the 

Volkswagen Group should be competing on these levels. On the level of manufacturing and 

engineering, the competition is not always useful and therfore not always wanted. Due to the 

fact that the automobiles of Volkswagen Group are build platform-based (Golf A4, Audi A3, 

Volkswagen Beetle and Skoda Octavia have the same platform), a large collection of parts in 

these cars is the same. 

This means that if an engineer of Volkswagen finds an improvement to a certain part, he 

should communicate this to the other brands’ engineers so they can benefit from this 

improvement. Most of the engineers know that this is the best way to work and therefore 

various networks between these engineers already started to exist in an informal way. 

The WW.DECK team is focussing projects in different parts of the company. One good 

example is the laboratory network (counting 600 spezialist) with around 600 members 

worldwide. Since this is the place to start formalising, systematising and if possible improving 

these networks and making them a knowledge management example for other Volkswagen 

Group. 

Volkswagen Group’s need for change was stated in the following organisational goals: 

• Enable flexible production; 

CIBIT 93 


• Enhance the development of cars based on the same platform for different brands 

– Golf A 4, Audi A3, Volkswagen Beetle and Skoda Octavia; 

• Ensure high quality for each brand and factory; 

• Offer a range of cars from low budget economy class to very exclusive; 

• Get component quality of all group members at the same level; 

• Use customer information systematically . 

From these organisational goals the following knowledge management goals were derived: 

• Disseminate local innovative solutions world-wide; 

• Make knowledge accessible when it is needed; 

• Share knowledge systematically; 

• Share failures systematically; 

• Prevent reinvention of knowledge; 

• Prevent erosion of knowledge when people leave the company. 



management system (i.e. knowledge infrastructure) was designed and is now improved and 

in parts implemented. The following categories will be discerned: leadership & management, 

organisational structure & HRM, processes and Information & communication technology. 


Support from top 

At the moment WW.DECK is still financially supported by the top of Volkswagen Group. The 

initiator Dr. Hartz and two other boardmembers fully support the initiative. This means that 

for the WW.DECK team the focus can be totally on the problems itself. They can for instance 

get strong support from their IT-department. The objective for the future is that they must 

become self-supportive. 

Working bottom-up 

Although the board of Volkswagen is backing the WW.DECK knowledge management 

programme, this doesn’t mean that everybody in the enterprise immediately starts doing it. 

People have to see the real advantages of the programme, otherwise they won’t put the 

effort needed into it. Knowledge management is a behavioral change and the motivation for 

such a change must be intrinsic. 


Education via intranet 

WW.DECK cooparates with a project called LINE (Learning in Networks). The aim of the 

project is to provide education via intranet for Volkswagen. 

Local Coordinators 

To overcome cultural problems WW.DECK has deployed local coordinators in the various 

Volkswagen Group sites. 

CIBIT 94 


Events for top managers 

In the first phase of WW.DECK they had Theseus Institute (Sofia Antipolis, France) organise 

an event about the importance of knowledge sharing for Volkswagen’s top managers. This 

was a vehicle to energise and motivate the managers of the Volkswagen plants to start 

shifting their employee’s minds to sharing knowledge and moreover facilitating their 

employees with the mainly time and other means to be able to share. It seemed that e.g. 

engineers were already sharing, but weren’t supported by their local management to do so, 

so they did it without support. 

Processes 

Systematizing laboratory networks 

As mentioned before, in the section called 

Needs for change, the WW.DECK team in one project is focussing on the Laboratory 

Network of the Volkswagen Group. These network consist specialist which in example 

controll quality of parts of Volkswagen Group’s automobiles for instance they work on the 

durability aspects of cars and its components. These experts who are working on durability 

were already collaborating on a world-wide scale, since they knew they could learn from 

each other. Given this fact, WW.DECK took this network as a point to start from 

(the mood of these people was already good). WW.DECK asks the network what would 

make their knowledge sharing tasks easier and based on these requirements they provide 

the network with the means to improve, systematise and formalise their knowledge sharing. 

The end goals for corrosion is to become a world-wide Corrossion Knowledge Market of 200 

corrossion experts (expert learn from each other). 

Finally the objective of WW.DECK is to use this Corrosion laboratory network project as an 

example for other networks, to demonstrate the benefits of knowledge sharing, trying to 

‘seduce’ them do adopt the same methods and in the end have a knowledge market of 

experts. 

ICT 

Network Directory 

One of the tools provided to networks is the so-called Yellow-pages. For example the 600 

specialists of the network can use this web-enabled directory to publish themselves including 

their competencies. Doing so they can find knowledgable experts for problems at hand. 

Knowledge warehouse for example Documentum (document management system) is used to 

let the networks build its knowledge warehouse. 



• Central WW.DECK team of 9 consultants (and still growing), its role: 

o Give advise to Volkswagen Group members, 

o Help local project teams with knowledge management initiatives, 

o Do the project management (coordination) of the WW.DECK projects, 

o Their customers are Volkswagen Group factories and experts, 

o The customers give their requirements to WW.DECK, 

o WW.DECK learns from its customers too! 

CIBIT 95 


• Decentral WW.DECK teams at Audi, Seat, Skoda, and the other Volkswagen Group 

sites. 


At the moment WW.DECK is still financially supported by the top of Volkswagen Group. The 

initiator Dr. Hartz and the other board members fully support the initiative. This means that 

for the WW.DECK team the focus can be totally on the problems itself. The objective for the 

future is that they must become self-supportive. 

Although the board of Volkswagen is backing the WW.DECK knowledge management 

programme, this doesn’t mean that everybody in the enterprise immediately starts doing it. 

People have to see the real advantages of the programme, otherwise they won’t put the 

effort needed into it. Knowledge management is a behavioral change and the motivation for 

such a change must be intrinsic. 

Some key points 

• Reason for change must be intrinsic – WW.DECK works on IT, HRM, Change 

Management, et cetera; 

• Evaluate knowledge management initiatives continuously– outcome is analysed by 

WW.DECK and leads to new implementations, slowly leading to a standard solution; 

• Bottom-up - knowledge management is not mandatory, WW.DECK has to convince 

local managers by demonstrated competence. 

Evaluation 

No results available yet, at the moment WW.DECK is conducting its first evaluation 

interviews throughout Volkswagen Group. 

Higher level results aimed for 

• Recrute junior engineers more easy – the good knowledge infrastructure should 

make Volkswagen a nice place to, 

• WW.DECK becomes VW.DECK; 

• In the future knowledge sharing between brands and factories is strongly focussed on 

bussiness processes and it should become a push and pull function in the 

organisation. 

Key learnings 

• Identify existing informal networks and build upon them; 

• Middle management can block knowledge sharing, even if experts are willing to - 

competition on branding (design and marketing) is good, not on level of experts; 

• A very structured and comprehensive approach. 

CIBIT 96 


References 

• Presentation material WW.DECK 

• Annual report of Volkswagen Group 

• www.volkswagen.com.au/briefhis.htm 

Contact Information 

Volkswagen Coaching Gesellschaft mbH 

Dr. Ferdinand Schultz 

Project manager “World Wide Development and Exchange of Corporate Knowledge” 

WW.DECK 

PO Box 1057/9 

D-38436 Wolfsburg 

Germany 

tel: +49 5361 97 1358 

fax: +49 5361 97 1563 

Email: ww.deck@volkswagen.de 

CIBIT 97 


Microsoft 

Based on interviews with Allan Dornan and Nigel Richards of Microsoft UK and Elisabeth 

Boonin of Microsoft USA. 


Microsoft UK 

Allan Dornan 

tel: +44 870 60 10 100 

AllanD@Microsoft.com 

Nigel Richards 

NigelR@Microsoft.com 

Microsoft USA 

Elisabeth Boonin 

Redmond, Washington 

tel: +1 425 703 6397 

ElisabethB@Microsoft.com 

CIBIT 98 


Part II: public sector case studies 

CIBIT 99 


Swedish Ministery of Education 


• To create a more knowledgeable workforce (a national objective) 

• Subgoal: Give scope to schools to develop. 


• Give scope to schools to develop by using ICT as a new set of tools. (objective of the 

project ITIS : ‘National Programme for ICT in Schools’). 



regularly 

• Schools are financed through the municipalities 

• Ministry manages by setting the learning objectives only (not the learning methods) 

• The National Agency for Education manages all operational responsibilities for the 

Ministry 

for ITIS 

• An especially assigned delegation for ITIS including representation from the Ministry of 

Education, The National Agency for Education, the Swedish Association of Local 

Authorities and the Foundation for Knowledge and Competence. The delegation is 

chaired by the Ministry. This delegation is supported by a special secretariat. 


• Small Ministry of Education (100 estimate) 

• Larger National Agency for Education (~2000 estimate) 

• Regular Educational budgets are established and distributed by Municipalities 

• Extra subsidies by a specially assigned delegation for ITIS. 

Processes 

• jury grant applications 

CIBIT 100 


ICT 

• Website ‘Schoolnet’ serves as a portal to other websites. 

• a part of Schoolnet is ‘The Multimedia Bureau’ it comprises: 

• The Café, a meeting place and presentation area for various projects 

• The Archive, contains images and sounds for use in school work 

• The Idea Bank, where pupils and teachers give courses and compare notes on 

educational methods and software 


Schoolnet and The Multimedia Bureau are run by the National Agency for Education. The 

‘Foundation for Knowledge and Competence Development’ (Ministry in the Board) promotes 

the production of ICT based teaching aids through approving grants to about 70 projects, 

investing 120m SEK (~150.000 Euro) 

There are not many formal top down initiatives to support the ongoing sharing of knowledge 

by the teaching community. Of course teachers can meet on seminars. There are several 

associations for teachers mostly defined through the subject matters, for instance an 

association for history teachers. 

A successful bottom up initiatives is Music Net, an innovative project with many useful 

services for teachers and pupils in the sphere of music. There are some other examples of 

successful bottom up initiatives such as Sputnik (journalistic writing) and Planet (for younger 

pupils). These good examples of ‘living websites’ are linked to Schoolnet that serves as a 

portal. 

CIBIT 101 




The Swedish Governmental system has undergone a serious reorganisation. It went form 

being quite centrally organised to a situation where now there are small Ministries that are 

politically responsible and National Agencies that are operationally responsible. The heart of 

the operational power is now at the level of the municipalities. Financial responsibilities to 

establish and distribute budgets are in the hands of the municipalities. This also means that 

there is no budget size set beforehand for schools in the municipalities. A municipality 

establishes the size of budget for the schools out of one general budget for all needs, also 

the non-educational, within the municipality. 

Though through some European surveys (e.g. ILSS, International Life Skills Survey) it has 

been shown that Sweden has the best knowledgeable workforce in Europe. Yet much is done 

to improve the situation even further. 

One of the sub goals for this improvement is ‘Give scope to schools to develop by using ICT 

as a new set of tools. These are now the objectives of the project ITIS : ‘National Programme 

for ICT in Schools’ 


The Swedish government wishes not to stand still but to keep improving the level of 

knowledge in the Swedish workforce. The specific needs for change is that it has been 

recognised that much can be gained by giving schools the scope to develop by using ICT as 

a new set of tools. 

Another need for change is that the structural delayering and autonomisation within the 

governmental system has lead to a situation where there is too little dialogue between the 

Ministry, the National Agencies and the Municipalities about the education system. Just 

recently it has been decided that an outside inspection committee will be brought to life as a 

committee that is independent from the National Agency and the Ministry, and thus ‘relayer’ 

for the necessary dialogue within the system a bit. This also explains why the initiative ITIS is 

being managed by a special delegation from all parties already involved, but as a more 

centrally lead programme. 

Yet another need for change is that the change of governmental system has put more 

responsibilities on the school level where not everybody involved in managing the school can 

cope with these responsibilities. Especially the Schools’ principles who used to be much 

more of a pedagogical manager now also has the responsibility to run the school as a 

business. 

The teachers seem to undergo some difficulty to adjust to the new situation as well. In the 

former system, teachers had a teaching duty of 20 hours a week. The practical consequence 

of which was that teachers were used to prepare their lectures at home. 

Now that the Ministry only prescribes the learning objectives and not any longer prescribes 

any learning methods, schools gained the freedom to organise their teaching process. 

CIBIT 102 


Eventually this lead to the situation that teachers no longer have a teaching duty for lecturing 

but are supposed to be ‘knowledge workers’ that are up to date on the subject and more a 

facilitator of learning than a lecturer. This had practical consequences for the housing of 

teachers. In the former situation there was no need for offices for teachers, now there is. This 

change is being felt as getting extra responsibilities while there was no raise in salary. 


Introduction 

The whole reorganisation of the educational system was designed by government. Now the 

responsibilities lay mostly in the hands of the municipalities. The recognition of a lack of 

dialogue between the Ministry of education, the National Agency for Education and the 

Municipalities has recently (May, 1999) lead to the conclusion that new elements should be 

implemented in the system. One example of this is an inspection committee assembled as 

an independent element. 

The National Programme for ICT in schools is of limited duration but has a long term purpose 

to support self-sustaining development. 

The schools are being seen as future (and current) community centres. As many people lack 

access to computers and the Internet grows in importance as a communication medium, the 

schools can serve as a means to create equal access for all Swedish citizens. When schools 

have the facilities it would be desirable to utilise the schools for longer hours than the actual 

school day. 


A special Delegation is running the project ITIS. The members of this committee are 

representatives of the Ministry, the National Agency, the foundation for Knowledge and 

Competence Development and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities. The committee 

is chaired by the under secretary from the Ministry. The ITIS project is now being run by the 

newly introduced committee. The Ministry has financed the project with 1.5b SEK (~190.000 

Euro) until 2002. An estimate of the contribution by the municipalities is 30b SEK (~3.75b 

Euro) through entire Sweden spent in various ways with various purposes. 


For ITIS the operational responsibility lies with a special secretariat. In this secretariat 9 

persons are working with the following roles : 

1 information secretary 

2 responsible for the curriculum for teachers and school leaders 

2 editorials writing content for this curriculum 

1 responsible for a pilot test of the curriculum 

1 responsible for matters concerning infrastructure 

1 assistant secretary dealing with formalities and the related documents (contracts etc.) 

1 responsible for the arrangements to provide 60.000 computers to the schools 

For various research assignment consultancy services are being bought. 

CIBIT 103 


Also, there are many liaisons within the municipalities are involved. Their services are 

bought through municipal officials. 

1 or 2 extra would have been nice according to the chair of this secretariat: 

1 for pedagogical matters. 

1 for various administrative matters 

Processes 

Most of the processes are project based. 

ICT 

Schoolnet serves as a portal to connect good practices and good content from elsewhere. 

For instance Music Net. Here the community of teachers and pupils in the sphere of music 

have succeeded in finding a way to share knowledge through the use of Internet. 

(attempts to contact this project have failed so far). 


No specific existing methods were applied. 

Evaluation 

According to all involved all is going as planned with the ITIS project. This is only possible by 

organising it through delegations supported by secretariats. 

The lack of dialogue within the power system : Ministry, National Agencies and Municipalities 

has now lead to the introduction of these delegations. The recently introduced school 

inspection team on a national level also shows the limited return of national control into the 

political and power system. 

References 

Interviewees 

Ulla Carlsson, 

Ministry of Education , Sweden. (Also former principal) 

Johan Groth, 

CIBIT 104 


National Agency for Education, Involved in many ICT projects 

Sven Salin, 

National Union of Teachers, 

before that : 

National Board for Education, 

Ministry of Education, 

(now retired citizen) 

Anders Franzén 

ITIS project manager 

Information sources 

Tools for Learning, A National Programme for ICT in Schools. Brochure published by the 

Ministry of Education and Science in Sweden. 1997 

ILSS, International Life skills survey. Prospectus by ILSS, april 1999. 

See also http://www.nces.ed.gov/surveys/ILSS.html 

1994 curriculum for the non-compulsory school system (Lpf 94), published by the Swedish 

Ministry of Education and Science, 1994 

1994 curriculum for the compulsory schools (Lpo 94), published by the Swedish Ministry of 

Education and Science, 1994 

Syllabi for the compulsory school (Lpo 94), published by the Swedish Ministry of Education 

and Science, 1994 

The Swedish school system, (Skolan I Sverige), published by the National Agency for 

Education, Skolverket, see also : http://www.skolverket.se 

The national curriculum for high school www.skolverket.se/pdf/lpfe.pdf 

An agency report about the use of IT in school 

www.skolverket.se/c/it/cbcb1.html 

A quantitative report from the agency on IT in school 

www.skolverket.se/c/it/skol_dator97/cbcc1.html 

General information about the Swedish schoolsystem from the agency 

www.skolverket.se/b/faktablad/english/bbc1_b.html 

Information about the Foundation for Knowledge and Competence Development 

www.kks.se/english/ 

Information about the Foundations work within IT and education 

www.kks.se/english/itutbildning/ (not very recently updated) 

CIBIT 105 


Canadian Ministery of Education (Province of New 

Brunswick) 


• To create an industry for Tele-education in the province. 

• To provide for many new jobs in the province. 

• To create an infrastructure that appeals to the industry of IT and Tele-education. 

• To stimulate economic development bottom up in this area. 

• To revise the educational system from knowledge about new possibilities for supply as 

well as from knowledge about new demands. 


• Create ICT awareness for the population of the province. 

• Learning from each other within the industry. 

• To be a model for the rest of Canada, serve as a best practice in several areas. 

• To create a knowledgeable workforce from the population of the province. 

• To attract a knowledgeable workforce by attracting existing businesses from elsewhere. 

• To retrain teachers given the new possibilities for education. 


Leadership & management 

• Small central team of strategic thinkers, stimulating initiatives, guiding towards the goal. 

• Money injections by the Ministry of economic development from the province. 

• Management by facilitating and guiding change bottom up in the province. 


• Small central team assembled from the government of New Brunswick. 

• Many liaisons within the business/industry world-wide. 

• Many liaisons within the government of New Brunswick 

• Much like a business structure including PR, Marketing, Finance, etc. 

Processes 

• Subsidising the development of community access centres in municipalities. 

• Subsidising or financing new business development. 

CIBIT 106 


• Subsidising knowledge sharing by teachers. 

• Retraining the teachers in the province . 

• Using subsidised projects to develop a balanced infrastructure. 

• Retraining the workforce of the province for a job in the rising industry. 

ICT 

• Many initiatives to share knowledge through the use of ICT 

• World Wide Web : “schoolnet”, “tele-education”, “community access centres”, etc. 

• Development of Computer Based Training (developed as commercial products for the 

industry, also suitable for knowledge sharing within the province) 

• because ICT is also the subject of the industry it is sometimes not clear what was meant 

as a knowledge management initiative and what just accidentally turned out to be one. 

• Fibre optic network. The entire province, all of the small municipalities are connected 

with bandwidth using 2Mbit fibre connections. 


Introduction 

The whole of the development should be seen change management to create a new industry 

and hence new jobs in the province. When in the early ’90s it became clear that the province 

was heading for bankruptcy, the initiatives for creating the new industry were placed under 

the governmental department of economic development. Ever since about 60 Million 

Canadian dollars were spent as an injection to create this industry. As a consequence the 

educational practice in the province underwent dramatic changes not guided by the Ministry 

of education. The provincial government as a whole guided the changes a an economic 

development. The support structure is somewhat freeform but well arranged for the creation 

of this industry. 

The reform of the educational situation came about as a bottom up process with involvement 

of the municipalities (especially the local champions) to create community access centres. 

Many networks are in place right now to support the creation, distribution, and combination of 

knowledge. Also new schools are in place to teach for jobs in the industry. 

The educational system itself is undergoing dramatic changes as a consequence of all new 

pedagogical possibilities. Teachers exchange knowledge to help each other to adjust to the 

rapid change. 

There was no real guidance by the federal government of Canada. Now that the industry is 

almost in place and the social impact of all the changes seem to crystallise, the federation 

sees the Province of New Brunswick as a model province. This model can be expected to be 

rolled out for entire Canada. 


CIBIT 107 


The core of the structure for support is really in the individual civilians of the Province of New 

Brunswick. It lies in their desire to regain their status as one of the richest provinces of 

Canada. The people of New Brunswick take great pride in the rise of this new industry. 

At the beginning of the idea formation is a group of six original strategic thinkers. These six 

people are still very active to create the industry, and hence provide for new jobs in the 

province. The industry is now third and on the edge of outgrowing the second biggest 

industry of Tourism in the province. 

CIBIT 108 



Abstract 


The Province of New Brunswick used to be the richest in the federation of Canada. The main 

economic industries were lumber and fish. In the late ‘80s both of the industries faced serious 

competition from abroad and the province headed for bankruptcy. 

New Brunswick also houses the first University of Canada still doing well as a knowledge 

producer and a knowledge distributor in Canada and the world. 

Seeking a way out of the disaster a group of six original thinkers created a vision of a new 

industry that could save the province from going further downhill. They came up with the idea 

that a world wide knowledge economy would rise and that education should be seen as an 

industry. Especially for the English speaking audience the market for educational products 

making use of ICT would be a serious marketplace. 

It then was decided that plans would be presented to the government of New Brunswick to 

start developing this industry. The program resulting was placed under budgets for 

developing the “information highway” and thus placed under economical programs, not under 

educational programs. 

Structure of the Canadian Education System 

The Canadian education system is governed by the provinces. There is no federal 

department to govern education for entire Canada. The structure of the curriculum is Anglo- 

Saxon and looks like the curriculum of the UK countries and of the USA. 


The needs for change are obviously based on the economic situation in New Brunswick. The 

needs for change in the educational system are strongly interconnected with the endeavour 

at hand. The possibilities for the use of ICT for education were researched for purposes of 

development of the industry itself. The connection with the needs for changing the 

educational system of New Brunswick is described below. 

New topics, new skills 

The workforce of New Brunswick should be trained for jobs in the industry. The must become 

skilled at producing educational products using ICT. 

Practice what you preach 

The use of ICT in education must be practised in New Brunswick on a state of the art level. 

This establishes the necessary credibility of the industry to be created. 

CIBIT 109 


ICT awareness for a widely spread population 

To have a large enough potential to participate in the workforce of the industry a broad base 

must be established in the entire population. The province has a widely spread population 

with few cities and many small communities. Distance learning facilities must be used to 

reach the entire audience. 



The design is rather an ongoing process than a top down strategy. The goal of change is 

carefully set. Stimulating the population and guiding the development towards the goal takes 

the form of a core of focused people closely working together from the government of New 

Brunswick. Management is done by closely working together, high frequency communication, 

collaboration as much as possible, brokering opportunities and facilitating development of 

sound initiatives. Back up from the federal government striving for the position of world wide 

leadership concerning the information highway. 


Many liaisons within the business/industry world-wide. 

There is a strong belief that only through partnerships in the industry or with related industries 

the goal can be reached. 

Many liaisons within the government of New Brunswick 

Now that the endeavour seems to be fruitful a widely spread support also from within the 

entire government of New Brunswick as well as from federal government is being 

established. 

Much like a business structure including PR, Marketing, Finance, etc. 

The organisation behind this operates like a business would. Be it somewhat freeform there 

is much attention for PR, Marketing, Finance, etc. 

Processes 


To reach the goal much knowledge management is going on even though it is not seen that 

way explicitly. 

(1)Acquiring knowledge 

By stimulating new corporation to get into the business, much new knowledge is created. 

Some of it is done through product development, some of it is done at the University of New 

Brunswick. 

(2)Storing knowledge 

Through development of Educational products much knowledge is stored in a highly 

transferable way. Be it mostly done for the clients and customers the internal use of the 

products must not be underestimated. For instance there are CD-ROMs providing teachers 

with training on how to use ICT within the educational context. 

CIBIT 110 


(3)Transferring knowledge 

Many initiatives are being realised to transfer knowledge. It is of course the core business of 

the industry. 

Apart from that the entire population (780.000) of the province is being made ICT aware. 

This is done through many channels. Among which are the so called “community access 

centres”. These are physical buildings in all of the small communities, mostly situated in the 

schools (!). These access centres are becoming more and more a social function. They are 

all equipped with computers connected to the Internet. Every citizen of New Brunswick thus 

has access to the information highway form less than 15 minutes driving form their homes. 

Another channel for knowledge transfer is through teacher visiting programmes. Many 

schools are now equipped with computers connected to the Internet. The teachers with 

experience using ICT in new pedagogy are bought free with province money to go visit other 

schools and teachers that are less experienced. 

Through training programmes and knowledge exchange programmes it is now the case that 

100% of the schools are connected to the Internet and 80% of the teachers are computer 

literate. In the next years the training of teachers should result in 100% awareness and skill 

to integrate ICT as a useful tool into their curriculum. 

Because the core business of the industry has to do with knowledge transfer much is known 

about educational strategies to do so. By keeping involved in the industry this will 

continuously and increasingly be the case. 

ICT 

To keep from being to confusing this paragraph only focuses on the use of ICT as a means 

for knowledge exchange to support the educational system. 

CBT 

Computer based training applications are used to train: 

• professionals in the educational field. 

• teachers 

• system developers 

• students and pupils at universities and schools 

Websites 

There are several websites designed for knowledge exchange. Below are the ones connected 

to specific initiatives: 

schoolnet : www.schoolnet.ca 

Federal website to facilitate knowledge exchange for k-12 education. Many subsites available 

for specific needs 

tele-education NB: http://teleeducation.nb.ca 

New Brunswick website containing many electronic courses. This website is connected to the 

community access centres initiative. 

Tele-campus : http://telecampus.com 

The first world wide education portal for online courses. Only completely finishable online 

courses are registered. Any course that needs the learner to go to a physical site is excluded. 

CIBIT 111 



This case description is in fact entirely dedicated to the way the change is being brought 

about. 



Evaluation 

Success 

The bottom up strategy involving all of the 780.000 citizens has been well worked out, 

especially the community access centres look like an important initiative. The strategy used 

to get these inside the schools is quite successful: All of the communities can get subsidy to 

create a community access centre. The first layer of 10.000 can$ (6000 Euro) is for every 

instance provided by the industry, through a fund. The second 6000 Euro is available from 

subsidies by the province of New Brunswick. The third 6000 Euro will be issued by the 

province only if the centre will be established inside an existing school. 

To get more computers inside the schools, donation programmes have been started to get 

used computers from business and government. For government donations the law had to be 

changed because used computers by government are supposed to be destroyed. 

The placement of the endeavour under the flag of the economic department in stead of the 

educational department is said to have been crucial in New Brunswick. 

The best way to explain the success is the drive by the citizens of New Brunswick to regain 

their former pride as one of the richest provinces of the federation of Canada. 

Perspective on the future 

The province has now established the desired economic situation that all that is necessary 

for the development of the industry is now in place. In the next few years they will start world 

wide marketing of the province to grow even further into the leading industry of New 

Brunswick. Harvesting time is yet to come. 

CIBIT 112 


References 

Interviewees 

government 

Leonard G. Weeks, M.C., Inst.M. 

Department of Economic Development, Province of New Brunswick 

Project Executive Advanced Training Technology 

Rory McGreal, Ph.D. 

Department of Advanced Education and Labour, Province of New Brunswick 

TeleEducation NB, Executive Director 

Gary Wood 

ConnectNB, Community Access Centers 

Paul Patterson 

Federal department of Industry, 

Coordination officer 

Kevin McClusky 

Department of Education, province of New Brunswick, 

Technology in the schools, assistant Director 

education 

Alan Edwards 

Digital Communications Instructor 

business 

Ken Reimer 

Learnstream, custom courseware designers 

President 

Patricia M. Sullivan 

Learnstream, custom courseware designers, 

Director Strategic Business Development 

Thomas Mitchell 

Learnstream, custom courseware designers, 

Industry Specialist 

Beth Webster Bsc, MBA 

Performex inc., Vice President & General Manager 

Alan B. MacAulay, M.Eng, P.Eng 

Performex inc., Director of Marketing 

Trevor Sawler 

Crescent studios, 

President 

CIBIT 113 



Books: 

McGreal, Rory, Ph.D. A Systems Analysis of TeleEduccation NB- A province wide Distributed 

Distance learning Network. Dissertation, school of Computer and information Sciences, Nova 

Southeastern University, 1999 

Websites: 

Schoolnet : www.schoolnet.ca 

Federal website to facilitate knowledge exchange for k-12 education. Many subsites available 

for specific needs 

Tele-education NB: http://teleeducation.nb.ca 

New Brunswick website containing many electronic courses. This website is connected to the 

community access centres initiative. 

Tele-campus : http://telecampus.com 

The first world wide education portal for online courses. Only completely finishable online 

courses are registered. Any course that needs the learner to go to a physical site is excluded. 

Vital Knowledge Software : www.vitalknowledge.com 

The company that sells a CDROM for teachers to learn how to use ICT for their educational 

purposes. 

CIBIT 114 


UK Ministery of Education 

Organisational goals DfEE 

DfEE has revised its Departmental aim as follows: “to give everyone the chance through 

education, training and work, to realise their full potential, and thus build an inclusive and fair 

society and a competitive economy” 

To support this general aim the DfEE has set three specific objectives for the upcoming three 

years (1999-2002): 

4. To ensure all young people reach 16 with the skills, attitudes, and personal qualities that 

will give them a secure foundation for lifelong learning, work and citizenship in a rapidly 


5. To develop in everyone a commitment to lifelong learning, so as to enchance their lives, 

improve their employability in a changing labour market and create the skills that our 


6. To help people without a job into work. 

Knowledge management goals NGfL 

In the end the National Grid for Learning should be available for all learners at all ages. The 

initial focus for the upcoming three years (1999-2002) is focussed on schools in England. By 

doing so the NGfL serves as a means to reach the following knowledge management goals: 

• Providing an infrastructure for people to exchange knowledge by communicating and 

collaborating with one another; 

• A programme for developing the means to access valuable content in schools, libraries, 

colleges, universities, workplaces, homes and elsewhere 

• A way of finding and (re-)using online learning, and teaching materials; 

• Schools, colleges, libraries and others build and re-use from existing good content and 

practice; 

• Identifying and building on best practice (education, libraries and museums, 


• Development of teachers' and librarians' knowledge skills and confidence with ICT; 

• Enabling school leavers to have a good understanding of ICT with measures in place for 

assessing their competence in it. 

CIBIT 115 


• Making Britain a centre of excellence in the development of networked software content, 

and a world leader in the export of learning services. 



• DfEE is being internally reorganised to cope with the new way of government; 

• The nation-wide change in education is seen as a bottom-up process whereby the public 

is continuously involved in the policy-making, design and implementation process of the 

NGfL initiative; 

• Until 2002 the British Government is actively funding (over £1bn/1.5bn Euro) the 

National Grid for Learning initiative; 

• The Government's NGfL fundings are only available for local educational authorities and 

schools in the UK when they develop a thorough plan of approval of the use of these 

fundings, e.g. buying or using ICT. During the upcoming years they are obliged to 

evaluate how these fundings have been used. Funding and judgement is done by DfEE. 


DfEE 

DfEE is primarily responsible for the level of education in the UK by policy-making, setting 

the proper educational strategy, forming the goals and objectives. 

Becta 

The NGfL is a National Government initiative launched by the Prime Minister. Becta's is the 

lead agency for the Grid and responsible to ensure that technology supports the DfEE's drive 

to raise educational standards, and in particular to provide the professional expertise the 

DfEE requires to support the future development of the National Grid for Learning. Becta and 

has particular responsibilities for: 

• the administration and policing of the ground rules for content registration for the Grid; 

• the establishment and operation of the technical system architecture for the Grid, 

including the running of those sites (such as the VTC) which are hosted by Becta; 

• technical evaluation and certification of managed services offered to schools and 

institutions to enable them to access the Grid; 

• In addition, Becta has a role in the further education sector's developing use of ICT and 

in the evaluation of new technologies as they come on stream. 

CIBIT 116 


Processes 

• Not every process has been specified within the NGfL project. General outlines, concrete 

objectives are more important and give schools and other institutions the freedom to 

develop their own plans, based on their own specific situation.Sharing best practises in 

ICT planning, purchasing and guidance among schools in the UK (see report Connecting 

Schools, Networking People); 

• Collect and share best practises in classroom activities by electronic communication, 

discussion forums with teachers, and best practise databases (currently in development) 

which are all accessible by everyone interested via the Internet (Virtual Teacher Centre); 

• Within the DfEE the Standards and Effectiveness Unit is responsible for identifying wellaccepted 

best practices and embedding them into (new) pedagogical approaches and 

distribute them to interested people. 

ICT 

• The British Government is modernising itself to ensure the Government uses new 

technology to deliver better, more convenient, services. 

• DfEE uses their public Internet site to communicate with interested people and other 

bodies. Consultation papers, public responses, project plans, circulars, press releases 

can be found on this site. 

• Since November 1998 NGfL has a website available which acts as a starting portal for all 

educational initiatives in the UK. This site also connects to the various involved 

organisations, e.g. DfEE, Becta. 

• Both Becta and DfEE have their own Intranet which they use to store and retrieve 

project-based documentation, which cannot be published to the general public. 


• DfEE and Becta are developing ground rules and a code of conduct for content providers 

who want to become part of the National Grid for Learning. 

• The underlying sites from the National Grid for Learning are being supported by the 

responsible educational organisations themselves. 

• All sites within the NGfL have Webkeepers who are responsible for the quality and 

currency of material and resources available on their sites. Sites must have a designated 

Webkeeper who is contactable via e-mail in order to be included on the Grid; 

• Becta regulates the overall content management of the National Grid for Learning. Becta 

regulates the entry of content to the NGfL by accrediting the sites who want to be 

connected to the NGfL. 

• The quality of Grid content is also maintained through GridWatch, a facility set up by 

Becta which allows users to report inaccurate or inappropriate material and which 

includes both provisions for excluding content where necessary and safeguards against 

copyright infringements. 

CIBIT 117 


• Specifically for the Virtual Teacher Centre Becta builds, maintains and provides the 

content for this Internet site. 

• Becta is developing the managed services for the National Grid for Learning. These 

competing managed ICT services are aimed at schools, and offering curricular, training, 

and administrative facilities and by doing so freeing schools so they can concentrate on 

their 'core business' of teaching and learning. 

CIBIT 118 



Abstract 

On 6 November 1998 the UK Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) and the 

British Prime Minister Tony Blair launched a national programme, called the National Grid for 

Learning. This case study describes the National Grid for Learning (NGfL) project. 

The NGfL is a fundamental part of the Government's commitment to lifelong learning and the 

creation of a learning society. It will help to create the 'connected society', improving the 

quality and availability of educational materials, and increasing and widening access to 

learning for everyone. 

NGfL will support teaching, learning, training, and administration in schools, colleges, 

universities, libraries, the workplace and homes by providing a mosaic of inter-connecting 

networks and education services based on the Internet. 


The world in which people learn and work is changing rapidly. The DfEE’s policies and 

priorities must take that into account. Key forces at work are: 

• Globalising and interconnected economies 

• Information revolution 

• Continuing rapid change in economy, technology, and nature of work 

• Major social and cultural changes 

• Threat of growing inequality 

• Increasing concern with values 

• Enduring limits on public expenditure 

Together these trends pose two major challenges and that is to transform Britain into a 

society which is: 

• Inclusive (giving everyone the chance to fulfil their potential and in particular offering a 

future to those who have suffered disadvantage) 

• Prosperous (where individuals continuously develop skills they need to remain 

employable and help businesses to be internationally competitive) 

In the light of these two challenges, DfEE has revised its Departmental aim as follows: 

CIBIT 119 


“To give everyone the chance through education, training and work, to realise their full 

potential, and thus build an inclusive and fair society and a competitive economy” 

To support this aim the DfEE has also set three specific objectives for the upcoming 

three years (1999-2002): 

1. To ensure all young people reach 16 with the skills, attitudes, and personal qualities that 



2. To develop in everyone a commitment to lifelong learning, so as to enhance their lives, 

improve their employability in a changing labour market and create the skills that our 


3. To help people without a job into work. 


The learning society in the information age 

As technology advances, links are becoming faster. This offers enormous potential for 

education, just as it does for business and other sectors of society. These links must also 

extend in an effective way to homes, the workplace, hospitals, the high street, and the street 

in the same way that public utilities like the telephone are now universally available. For the 

first time people have the opportunity to link all learning institutions and training providers 

purposefully to an agenda for developing the learning society. 

Connecting the learning society 

In order to ensure that all young people have the skills, attitude, and personal qualities that 


changing world DfEE is developing a mosaic of inter-connecting networks and education 

services based on the Internet which will support teaching, learning, training, and 

administration in schools, colleges, universities, libraries, the workplace, homes and 

elsewhere. 

This mosaic is also called the 'National Grid for Learning'. The Grid is a way of finding, 

developing and using online learning and teaching materials and will become the national 

focal point for learning on the Internet 2002. 

There are three elements to the NGfL: 

• An architecture (or structure) of educationally valuable content on the Internet; 

• A programme for developing the means to access that content in schools, libraries, 

colleges, universities, workplaces, homes and elsewhere; 

• A programme of ICT training for teachers and librarians. 

The NGfL is a fundamental part of the Government's commitment to lifelong learning and the 

creation of a learning society. It will help to create the 'connected society', improving the 

quality and availability of educational materials, and increasing and widening access to 

learning for everyone. 

CIBIT 120 


National Grid for Learning challenges 

With commerce and industry seizing the advantages which ICT has to offer, it is vital to 

ensure that the education sector is not left behind. In its consultation paper, Connecting the 

Learning Society, the British Government stresses the urgent need to accelerate schools' use 

of ICT as a national priority, and sets out targets for the educational service to attain. 

The National Grid for Learning challenge is underpinned by a programme of over £1bn 

(1.5bn Euro) to support the delivery of the Government's targets for ICT in education and 

lifelong learning for 2002, including: 

1. Connecting all schools, colleges, universities, public libraries and as many community 

centres as possible to the grid, enabling perhaps 75 percent of teachers and 50 percent 

of pupils and students to use their own e-mail address by then; 

2. By 1999 all Newly Qualified Teachers would need to become ICT literate to mandatory 

standards to receive the award of Qualified Teacher Status. 

3. By 2002 serving teachers should generally feel confident and be competent to teach 

using ICT within the curriculum; and that librarians are similarly trained; 

4. By 2002 most school leavers should have a good understanding of ICT with measures in 

place for assessing their competence in it; 

5. From 2002 general administrative communications between education bodies and the 

Government and its agencies cease to be largely paper-based; 

6. By 2002 Britain should be a centre of Excellence in the development of networked 

software content for education and lifelong learning, and a world leader in the export of 

learning services. 

Attainment of these targets is a staged process which requires the participation not only of 

schools but also education authorities, the Departments of Education, examining bodies, and 

many others. As a result, we can expect to see: 

• Schools formulating plans for their use of ICT across the curriculum, for staff 

development and administration; 

• These plans being made available for school inspections, along with an audit of levels of 

resources, computer network use and teacher training undertaken; 

• The collection of statistics by the UK Education Departments focused on assessing 

progress towards achieving the new targets for ICT and the implementation of the Grid; 

• The relevant national bodies reassessing the place of ICT within the curricula in various 

parts of the UK and in the assessment and examination system; and developing new 

arrangements for the use of ICT in assessment and examinations -particularly those 

leading to vocational qualifications. 

• All public funded bodies including museums, galleries, libraries, universities, research 

institutions and public service broadcasters, reporting progress in making available 

information and content for the Grid. 

As an architecture of content the NGfL provides links to information, advice and learning 

resources. NGfL will support teaching, learning, training, and administration in schools, 

colleges, universities, libraries, the workplace and homes by providing a mosaic of interconnecting 

networks and education services based on the Internet. An early version of the 

National Grid for Learning is available now for everyone through the Internet. 

CIBIT 121 


In developing the Grid, it will be essential for schools, colleges, libraries and others to build 

from existing good content and practice. Developing a nucleus of good quality content will be 

DfEE's prime concern. In particular the Grid offers the potential to create specialist resources 

for professionals involved in education and lifelong learning, as well as for learners 

themselves. 

When examining the organisational goals the following instrumental knowledge management 

goals can be derived: 

• The Grid will become a way of finding and (re-)using online learning, and teaching 

materials; 

• Schools, colleges, libraries and others build and re-use from existing good content and 

practice; 

• Development of teachers' and librarians' knowledge skills and confidence with ICT; 

• Identifying and building on best practice (education, libraries and museums, 


• Enabling school leavers to have a good understanding of ICT with measures in place for 

assessing their competence in it; 

• Providing an infrastructure for people to exchange knowledge by communicating and 

collaborate with one another. 


Design and implementation describes solution alternatives investigated by DfEE and Becta, 

the concrete solution design and implementation of the NGfL. 

Solution alternatives 

Before designing and implementing the National Grid for Learning environment, Becta and 

DfEE took into consideration the following important remarks. 

Public involvement 

In October 1997 the Government's consultation paper Connecting the Learning Society: the 

National Grid for Learning was published which set out the targets for information and 

communication technology in education and lifelong learning. This paper outlined the 

proposals for developing the Grid. Over 900 organisations welcomed the proposed measures 

and gave valuable remarks on the paper (also see the Grid - your views: consultation 

response). By doing so involved organisations and individuals could respond to the general 

vision, approach and objectives of NGfL. 

Responsibility for the content 

The Internet can be seen as a jungle where information is not organised, potentially 

'dangerous' data, and where the location of content changes with the minute. This can be 

exciting, but not for educational institutions. They are seeking for a 'supermarket' where high 

quality knowledge is always available at one's fingertips. 

Having a one-stop buyer for learners in this so-called super market could also be interesting. 

As stated in DfEE's goals learners need to learn to learn an become conciousness for their 

CIBIT 122 


own employability this is not wanted. Learners need to make their own judgements and 

decisions and need to explore themselves. 

Infrastructural standards 

If the NGfL is intended for all learners from all ages, does the DfEE want to use Intranet or 

Internet-based technology to deliver valuable content and collaboration support? 

Internet will become the primary information medium within the upcoming years. Together 

with Becta DfEE decided to actively use the Internet as the primary medium for information 

exchange and collaboration support. 

Overall functional architecture 

Does DfEE want to start with a complete, fully articulated functional and technology 

architecture so when can easily slot things into place? This presupposes that DfEE knows 

what the NGfL (infrastructure and content) will look like in the upcoming ten years. When 

exploring the fast developments in ICT this is not an option. 

The NGfL should be a dynamic architecture that will equipped to change by the demands of 

both information and infrastructural suppliers, and the users (learners). 

Concrete solution design 


• The underlying sites from the National Grid for Learning are being supported by the 

responsible educational organisations themselves. 

• Becta regulates the overall content management of the National Grid for Learning. Becta 

regulates the entry of content to the NGfL by accrediting the sites who want to be 

connected to the NGfL. 


Different parties are active in the NGfL project: 

• Department of Education and Employment (DfEE) 

• Britisch Education and Communications Technology Agency (Becta) 

• Teacher Training Agency (TTA) 

• Local educational authorities 

• Universities, colleges, and schools 

• Professional bodies 

• Several trade associations 

• Various suppliers of content and infrastructure 

Processes 

• In order to collect and share best practises within educational institutions, four levels of 

communication can be discerned: 

1. Teachers informally communicate with each other by using e-mail; 

CIBIT 123 


2. Possible valuable lessons-learned are discussed with other teachers in the various 

NGfL discussion forums, e.g. the Virtual Teacher Centre (VTC); 

3. Valuable lessons-learned will eventually be placed in the contributary database, 

which contains all identified best practises (this database is still in development). 

This database will be accessed via the Internet by everyone interested; 

4. Within the DfEE the Standards and Effectiveness Unit is responsible for identifying 

well-accepted best practices and embedding them into (new) pedagogical 

approaches and distribute them to interested people. 

• At the request of the DfEE BECTA prepared a publication which offers practical, 

objective advice on planning, purchasing and good practice in using ICT, drawn from the 

experience of over 2,000 teachers, lecturers and administrators from the UK. It provides 

guidance and support for educational institutions as they prepare for the National Grid for 

Learning (see report Connecting Schools, Networking People). 

ICT 

ICT offers a means of carrying out tasks to a higher standard, more easily and more 

efficiently. This is why some £40b (60b Euro) was spent of ICT equipment in 1996 in the UK. 

Governments and industry are providing schools with opportunities to make the most of ICT 

benefits, on a substantial scale. Examples for concrete initiatives are: 

• The national Grid for Learning (NGfL) - a framework for a learning community designed 

to raise standards and improve Britain's competitiveness, and which embraces schools, 

colleges, universities, libraries, the home and the workplace; 

• An additional £100m (~150m Euro) for schools to spend on ICT in 1998/99; 

• National Lottery funding for the training of all teachers and librarians; 

• Lower telecommunication costs through liberalisation of the market and agreement 

between OFTEL, BT, and the cable companies on special pricing for schools' access to 

networked services. 

Requirements for the NGfL 

The Grid must lead to the improvement of the skills and confidence of teachers, librarians 

and other key intermediaries; and to the motivation of pupils and other learners. It must 

produce learning gains. The Grid must provide: 

• A valuable resource for teachers, librarians, and trainers in their daily work, and for their 

own continuing professional development in ICT (e.g. remote tutorials, helpline facilities) 

• A resource to help deliver improved performance by pupils and other learners, 

particularly in literacy and numeracy; 

• A facility which offers timely access to expertise and resources; 

• A structure which stimulates the development and dissemination and use of high-quality 

educational content, including software, online services, and subsequently perhaps, 

interactive digital TV-based programming; 

• Equality of access for learners, whether at school, at home or in libraries; those in rural 

and urban areas; the employed and those seeking work; those for whom English is not 

the first language; and those with special needs; 

CIBIT 124 


• A means of supporting and streamlining the administration and management of schools, 

colleges, libraries, and other institutions, in conjunction with developments in local and 

national government; 

• A framework for equipping local networking and external connection of schools, colleges 

and other points of lifelong learning provision, including the involvement of off-site 

education centres and youth organisations and agencies; 

• Interconnectivity between networks and a means of ensuring that existing equipment and 

networks are put to as effective use as is possible; 

• A stimulus to a wide range of industries to participate and invest; 

• A link between many diverse spheres of life including commerce, culture, and sport, 

education and lifelong learning, health, charitable endeavour and politics; 

• Affordable access through lowering the cost of connection, equipping and use 

• A mechanism for the renewal of its services, equipment and systems as technology 

develops 

Elements of NGfL 

The elements of the NGfL portal consist of Internet references to schools, Further Education, 

Higher Education, Lifelong Learning and the University for Industry (UfI), Career 

Development, Libraries, Museums and Galleries, Community Grids for Learning, 

International Learning Networks, Government Departments and Agencies, The Learning 

Resource Index (LRI). 

These elements provides a structured way of navigating through the content. When more 

content is added to the NGfL navigation through the content will become a serious problem. 

Becta is thinking of using search engines which can handle meta-tagging so documents can 

easily and consistently be tagged. Problem with this solution is that all organisations 

connected through the NGfL need to follow these strict rules to make it a success. Currently 

this is not wanted. Another solution is to provida a content-related index, such as Yahoo. 

Problems which arise here are the amount of people who continuously need to manage the 

content of the Grid index. Because of the early stage of NGfL they are currently using freetext 

search facilities which are satisfying and good-enough. 

Tailored facilities 

Tailored facilities exist for schools in each of the home countries. For schools in England, the 

Grid contains the Standards Site, the Virtual Teacher Centre, Governor Centre, and Parent 

Centre. It will also link to the University of Industry, the Learning Direct Helpline, Public 

Library Network and to a growing number of Community Grids for learning with information 

about services in specific areas in Britain. 

GridClub 

Over the next year the Government will be encouraging the development of further exciting, 

dynamic facilities including the GridClub, an interactive facility for young learners combining 

broadcasting, the Internet and other powerful learning resources which will be fun to use and 

help young people to succeed in homework, examinations or simply discovering more about 

the world. The target group for the GridClub is focussed on children not in the context of the 

classroom and teachers. 

Managed Services 

In industry and commerce, ICT services are often contracted out to a company specialising 

in ICT. Each company gains by being able to develop its core business and keep costs down. 

CIBIT 125 


The worry of ICT procurement, software management, ICT training, and support are taken off 

schools, freeing them to concentrate on their 'core business' of teaching and learning. 

The National Grid for Learning project is currently developing a range of competing managed 

ICT services aimed initially at schools, and offering curricular, training, and administrative 

facilities. These services will be kite-marked or franchised by Government to 

industry/education consortia in order to ensure quality of service. 

Critical success factors NGfL 

In order to make the NGfL project a succes the following critical succes factors can be 

chronologically identified: 

• One of the key issues the interviewees mentioned when preparing a similar project as 

the NGfL is that you need to properly state and communicate a very strong and clear 

vision of what you want as educational institution and make sure that this vision is 

flexible so you can easily adapt to changing situations. 

• Teachers and pupils need to have the necessary ICT equipment in place; 

• Teachers and pupils need to have operational ICT skills to use available information and 

communication technology; 

• Teachers need to further develop their pedagogical skills in relation to the 

(im)possibilities of modern ICT; 

• The National Grid for Learning should have sufficient and above all high-quality content 

available for teachers and pupils; 

• Because of technological innovations and teachers' growing awareness of what is 

possible the National Grid for Learning should be an ongoing development. 


Involved parties 

The management of change involves the follow parties and initiatives: 

• UK Government (initiative an 

• DfEE (responsible for education and employment) 

• NGfL team (infrastructure, content -> strategy and policy-making) 

• BECTA (consultancy and technical implementation) 

• Teacher Training Agency (TTA) 

• Project-based subgroups (FE, HE, Teachers, see homepage) 

• Various providers of content and infrastructure 

• Community-based initiatives 

CIBIT 126 


• School, college-based projects 

Policy Programme DfEE 

To achieve DfEE's objectives, the Government has put in place a wide-ranging policy 

programme for the remainder of this Parliament, and set a number of specific targets for 

2002. Underpinning the programme are six cross-cutting themes: 

• Raising standards and attainment 

• Encouraging innovation, diversity, and new ways of working 

• Promoting inclusion, and equality of opportunity 

• Increasing access and participation; 

• Enhancing employability and skills; 

• Developing a community focus 

Since the election, the Department (DfEE) has received substantial additional resources to 

deliver this programme: 

• £ 16 billion (24bn Euro) extra for education in England from the Comprehensive 

Spending Review, which will increase the share of national income spent on education to 

5% in 2001-02; 

• £ 3.9 billion (~6bn Euro) over the Parliament to support the Welfare to Work programme; 

• £ 2 billion (3bn Euro) extra for schools announced in July 1997; 

• By 2001-02 an additional £ 600 million (900bn Euro) a year will be available for young 

children and their families, primarily through cross-Departmental Sure Start programme. 

In return for these additional resources the Department (DfEE) has signed a Public Service 

Agreement which commits them to deliver a set of specific output and outcome based 

targets. 

Modernising DfEE 

Success does not simply depend on well-designed policies. DfEE needs to modernise the 

ways it works if they want to deliver the above mentioned Government's new policies 

successfully. In particular DfEE wants to focus on the outcomes and not just on the 

programmes they put in place. They want to be prepared to adapt their approach if it is not 

producing results. 

The main ways in which DfEE is trying to modernise their approach are set out in the above 

mentioned statement of aim and objectives. Examples for what DfEE is doing to achieve 

these goals are: 

• Work in partnership across Government, with organisations outside Government and with 

the public, to design and implement effective policies 

• Learn from and work with other countries, particular DfEE's partners in Europe (e.g. 

together with Sweden and Italy DfEE is developing new ways of tackling unemployment) 

CIBIT 127 


• DfEE is using ministerial meetings and supporting conferences to exchange 

experience and good practice; 

• DfEE has worked with Italy and Sweden to develop demonstration projects of new 

ways to tackling unemployment; 

• DfEE is playing a major role in two OECD initiatives 'School to Working Life' (tracking 

study), and in the 'Learning Cities' global project 

• Modernising DfEE policy making by exploiting the potential of technology, such as: 

• Virtual Teacher Centre which becomes a key place for teachers to go to for 

inspirations and help in raising standards; 

• setting up Standards and Effectiveness Databases, to help disseminate good practice 

and provide information on target-setting, literacy, numeracy, and bench marking; 

• increasingly use Internet for consultation and to gather information for policy making, 

making sure that the DfEE and Employment Service Internet sites provide up to date 

information on their work; 

• piloting large screen terminals in job centres to enable unemployed people to conduct 

their own search for available jobs; 

• developing the DfEE Intranet as one of the key ways of helping DfEE to produce 

joined-up policies; 

• provide a mosaic of interconnecting networks and education services based on the 

Internet which support teaching, learning, training and administration in schools, 

colleges, universities, libraries, the workplace and homes (National Grid for Learning, 

NGfL) 

• Be outward looking, innovative and willing to learn, enabling all DfEE staff to develop 

their full potential, working efficiently and getting the most from our resources 

• development of human resource strategy which sets out the skills and approach DfEE 

staff will need if they are to deliver the Department's policies effectively; 

• DfEE is implementing their Equal Opportunities strategy, which includes commitments 

to mainstream equal opportunities in the design and delivery of all our policies and to 

ensure that all our staff are enabled to give of their best; 

• DfEE is working to remove structural and behavioural barriers to effective team 

working; 

• DfEE is working towards the Department being an Investor in People thus joining the 

Employment Service; 

Teacher resistance 

As the NGfL goals mention everybody should become ICT literate and apply ICT in their own 

educational situation. The government intends to raise the educational standards and 

requires that teachers become ICT literate by funding £218m (340m Euro) for professional 

development of existing teachers. In September 1999 teachers in the UK will start with their 

first training sessions. 

CIBIT 128 


Not everybody is satisfied with this Departmental objective. Until now the use of ICT has 

been on a voluntary basis where appropriate within the UK. Between and within schools there 

are big differences in applying ICT in education. 


In the spirit of the NGfL initiative where no complete architecture has been defined, and 

where no long-term decisions have been made regarding objectives, architecture, methods 

and tools no specific prescribed methods are used within the National Grid for Learning 

project. 

Evaluation 

General 

The NGfL just started in November 1998. According to DfEE's stated objectives currently 

schools in the UK are being provided with ICT in order to be connected to the NGfL. In 

september 1999 all teachers will start with their ICT training. Because of this it is too early to 

come up with a thorough evaluation of success and failure factors. However, when properly 

set up and used the NGfL will be thorougly evaluated on the added value for its learners. The 

methods used for evaluating the NGfL project are : 

• Setting in hand arrangements for the independent evaluation of the development of the 

Grid in schools through a programme of school inspections and annual statistical surveys 

by which schools, and other users will be assessed in relationship with the national 

targets for ICT and the NGfL project goals. 

• The real test will be whether users find the Grid valuable. DfEE intends to monitor and 

record on the Grid itself the number of registered and the extent of its use. The Grid will 

also provide arrangements for feedback. 

Coupled with a programme of public/private partnership projects piloting emerging 

technologies, this will help to ensure that the Grid provides online-facilities for learners as 

good as those anywhere in the world. 

The evaluation presented below has a focus on the lessons learned from former initiatives in 

the UK. The information has been derived from an extensive report on best practises in 

education, called Connecting schools, networking people. 

Former lessons learned 

Research into the benefits to education of communications technology has been carried out 

for some time within the UK. In January 1995 the then Secretary of State for Education 

invited the telecommunications, cable, broadcasting, information technology and multimedia 

CIBIT 129 


industries to work with the education community to develop a commonly accessible national - 

and ultimately international- education superhighway. This marked the beginning of the 

Education Departments' Superhighways Initiative (EDSI), in which the Government funded 

an independent evaluation of 25 pilots and related initiatives involving more than 1000 

schools, of all types, phases and representing the full range of attitudes towards ICT. The 

schools involved were using ICT for the following purposes: 

• To communicate electronically with other people (by fax, e-mail, text-based 

conferencing, video conferencing) to enable contact with a range of individuals, their 

skills, resources and opinions; 

• To access resources on the Internet, remote CD-ROMs, video conferencing or 

interactive TV to enhance the curriculum and human resources available to schools; 

• To create resources for access by others on the Internet, CD-ROM or interactive TV, to 

encourage students and teachers to develop a range of ICT and publishing skills. 

Benefits to teaching and learning 

These findings show that ICT brings about considerable benefits to teaching and learning: 

• Improved subject learning and vocational training across a broad range of subjects and 

the full age range from infants to adults; 

• Increased differentiation and a shift towards project work and a more integrated 

curriculum; 

• The development of network literacy -the capacity to use electronic networks to access 

resources, to create resources, and to communicate with others, complex extensions of 

the traditional skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening; 

• Improved motivation and attitudes to learning, particularly for pupils with special 

educational needs, who gained proportionately more than others from increased 

opportunities for social interaction -whether by e-mail, fax or video conferencing- and 

improved their self-esteem; 

• The development of independent learning and research skills, creative thinking, and 

problem solving. 

• Social development, including peer tutoring. 

Benefits to management and administration 

Benefits are not restricted to teaching and learning alone. The EDSI projects also found four 

key benefits of using ICT in management and administration: 

• Teachers are able to access the school electronically from home for record keeping, 

school reports, and exam administration (especially if they are using portable 

computers); 

• Schools are able to reduce the cost of administrative communications with each other, 

examination boards and local and central Government departments, sending, for 

example, statistical and financial data, examination entries via electronic data 

interchange; 

• Communications are easier in such matters as pupil transfer and liaison on pupils with 

special needs, and in supporting curriculum continuity within transfer between phases; 

CIBIT 130 


• Training in education management and administration is enhanced and made more cost 

effective by saving on travel and supply cover costs and by linking governors 

electronically. 

The culture of success 

Common factors in the schools which make effective use of ICT include the following: 

• There is an extensive delegation of responsibility; 

• Wide participation is evident in decision-making 

• A shared understanding of aims exists; 

• A culture of information exchange exists in which a readiness to share professional and 

organisational knowledge is both expressed and routinely practised; 

• School decision-making processes are pupil-oriented; 

• The school is outward looking with an ethos focused on future achievement and to the 

exigencies of external demands as they are likely to bear on the individual learners' 

needs; 

• Staff development is seen as a priority; 

Success measures 

There should be three indicators of success, which should be defined at the outset: 

1. performance (defined by educational outcomes) 

2. deadline (defined by a schedule) 

3. cost limits (defined by a budget) 

Factors for successful implementation 

ICT is most effectively implemented in institutions where: 

• ICT in general has been integrated with schemes of work 

• Teachers show a clear understanding of the potential of the technology 

• Teachers are confident in assessing progress 

• Teachers have worked actively to structure the use of ICT in the classroom and 

curriculum 

• Time has been taking to consult, staff, pupils, parents and governors to ensure that the 

aims match the needs and priorities 

There is a realistic plan for upgrading and replacing equipment 

When developing an environment such as the NGfL please take into consideration the 

following aspects: 

• Don't go for perfection (100%), go for good-enough (80%) when developing applications 

such as the NGfL; 

CIBIT 131 


• Continuously demonstrate and visualise what you are doing so people know what the 

applications will look like in an early stadium and feel the momentum; 

• Be cautious with new leading-edge technologies, only use proven standard technology; 

• Wait for people to ask for functionality and content when the applications are launched 

so you know what the needs of the target group are; 

• Always focus on the needs of the target group instead of technological possibilities; 

• Continuously assure the quality and availability of content; 

References 

Interviewees 

Department of Education and Employment (DfEE) 

• National Grid for Learning project 

• Keith Holder (head of content NGfL) 

• Telephone: +44 171 273 4988 

• E-mail: Keith.Holder@dfee.gov.uk 

• Andrew Partridge (head of infrastructure NGfL) 

• Telephone: +44 171 273 4979 

• E-mail: Andrew.Partridge@dfee.gov.uk 

British Educational Communications Technology Agency (BECTA) 

• National Grid for Learning Directorate 

• André Wagstaff (head of NGfL Liaison) 

• Telephone: +44 1203 416994 

• E-mail: andrew_wagstaff@becta.org.uk 


Involved organisations 

• British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, http://www.becta.org.uk/ 

CIBIT 132 


• Department of Education and Employment, http://www.dfee.gov.uk 

• National Grid for Learning, http://www.ngfl.gov.uk 

• Virtual Teacher Centre, http://www.vtc.ngfl.gov.uk/ 

Information references 

• Connecting the learning society: National Grid for Learning - the Government's 

consultation paper, DfEE, 1997. ISBN: 0855226455, 

http://www.open.gov.uk/dfee/grid/index.htm 

• The Grid - your views: consultation response, http://vtc.ngfl.gov.uk/vtc/library/pub.html 

• Connecting schools, networking people: ICT planning, purchasing and good practice 

guidance for the National Grid for Learning, Becta, 1998. ISBN: 1853794120, 

http://vtc.ngfl.gov.uk/reference/publications/connecting/ 

• Open for learning, open for business: the Government's NGfL challenge, DfEE, 

November 1998, http://www.dfee.gov.uk/grid/challenge/ngflchal.htm 

• Open for learning, open for business: summary of the Government's NGfL challenge, 

DfEE, November 1998, http://www.dfee.gov.uk/grid/challenge/summary.htm 

• Our Information Age: the Government's vision, Central Office of Information (COI), April 

1998, http://www.number-10.gov.uk/public/info/releases/publications/infoagefeat.html 

• Teachers, meeting the challenge of change, http://www.dfee.gov.uk/teachers/index.htm 

• University for Industry: engaging people in learning for life: pathfinder prospectus DfEE, 

1998. ISBN: 0855227478, http://www.open.gov.uk/dfee/ufi/index.htm 

• Lifelong Learning Green paper - (Cm3790), 

http://www.lifelonglearning.co.uk/greenpaper/index.htm 

• Stevenson report on Information and communications technology in UK schools: an 

independent inquiry Independent ICT Commission, 1997, http://rubbleultralab.anglia.ac.uk/stevenson/ 

• The Standards and Effectiveness Unit, the Standards Site. 

http://www.standards.dfee.gov.uk/ 

• Teacher Training Agency (TTA), http://www.teach-tta.gov.uk/ 

CIBIT 133 


Dutch Ministery of Education (bve net) 


• To create ICT awareness in the sector of vocational training and adult education. 

• To stimulate action bottom up in this area. 


• Developing, storing and transferring knowledge about best practices on uses of ICT in 

education. 

• Learning from each other within the sector. 



• Small central team 

• No interference from Ministry 

• Management by delegation of client-system 


• Small central team of one managing director, consultants and editorial staff 

• Work is centred around projects 

• External foundation to jury subsidy applications 

Processes 

• Simple procedures for small subsidies. 

• Visits to institutional client sites twice a year 

• Knowledge distribution using website, electronic newsletters and printed newspapers. 

ICT 

• Central website with many facilities for knowledge distribution 

CIBIT 134 



At this moment the foundation BVE net has one directing executive (1 FTE), educational 

consultants (3.6 FTE), editors (3.6 FTE) including PR, information, newsletters en 

newspaper, one secretary (1FTE) and a management-assistant (0.5 FTE). 

The consultants from BVEnet are situated mostly at an office in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. 

Their tasks are stimulating, monitoring and providing. The 60 client-institutions are divided 

among the consultants. The consultant will visit their institutions at least twice a year. 

CIBIT 135 



Abstract 

To create awareness of the potential added value of ICT in education the Dutch Ministry of 

education initiated BVEnet. 

Since 1995 BVE-net is an excellent example of how Internet can effectively be used as a 

means for information sharing and communication. It did so by stimulating development of 

(best) practices and providing knowledge distribution channels for distribution of knowledge 

about these best practices. Among these channels there is a website. 

The strategy of BVEnet is best described as a practical development strategy. By limited 

subsidising of demonstration projects, the BVE-field is encouraged to experiment with 

Internet. Besides financial support, BVEnet also delivers technical support and server space 

on the BVEnet website server. 

Governmental interference is minimal to none. Government only provides financial support 

of 5 million DFL each year, but has no direct control on how the money is spent. 

Management is done by a small central team that is a delegation from the institutions 

BVEnet works for. Any work that can be outsourced will be. Core business is done by 

consultants and editorial staff. 

By visiting project sites and publishing results from the projects the desired awareness is 

indeed created. Due to lack of real knowledge sharing among the users no profound 

understanding of what is the added value of ICT in the BVE field has been established. To 

create this more profound understanding BVEnet will continue to exist in the future, be it in a 

different form and with new goals. After 2003 BVEnet is supposed to have become self 

supporting. 


Structure of the Dutch Education System 

In the Netherlands, as in most other countries, the education system is divided into three 

levels: primary (4-12 years), secondary and tertiary (higher professional education (HBO) 

and university education (WO). Secondary education includes: 

1. pre-vocational education (VBO) and individualised pre-vocational education (IVBO), 12 - 

16 years 

2. secondary vocational education (previously divided into senior secondary vocational 

education (MBO) and apprenticeship training), 16 to 20 years, 

3. adult education for the over-18s. The purpose of adult education, unlike vocational 

education, is not to train students for a particular occupation but to provide a solid 

foundation for vocational and secondary education courses and to enable adults to 

participate in society (social and life skills). 

CIBIT 136 


Together, the secondary vocational education and the adult education are called: Vocational 

and Adult Education (BVE 17), the educational sector in which hundreds of thousands of young 

people and adults receive training. The sector offers hundreds of instances of vocational 

training, and also training and courses which are not directly vocation-oriented, such as 

Dutch as a second language. 

Vocational and Adult Education (BVE) in the Netherlands 

More than a third of the working population of the Netherlands hold senior secondary 

vocational (MBO) qualifications or have completed an apprenticeship. Entry to these types of 

education or training is possible with VBO or MAVO certificate. In 1997, some 267,000 

students were engaged on MBO courses and there were around 127,000 apprentices. There 

are fiscal incentives to encourage employers to provide apprenticeships. In addition to this, 

many people attend adult education classes, ranging from lessons in Dutch for non-native 

speakers through to complete courses leading to the acquisition of MAVO, HAVO or VWO 

qualifications. 

Recent developments in the BVE sector 

On 1 January 1996, a new Adult and Vocational Education Act (WEB) was introduced to 

impose a single coherent structure on these disparate forms of vocational and adult 

education. Such courses are now to be provided mainly by 46 Regional Training Centres 

(ROCs). These all provide a very wide range of education and training and have been 

created by amalgamating several hundred previously separate vocational and adult 

education institutions. In addition to the 46 ROCs, there are also 13 specialised vocational 

training institutions (LOBs). In this document we will refer to ROCs and LOBs as: BVEinstitutions. 

Bringing the various types of education and training together under one roof will make it 

easier to offer students training tailored to their particular needs. The new Act is the last in a 

series of developments which was triggered some time ago and includes a shift towards 

greater emphasis on the requirements of the labour market, increasing liaison between 

educational institutions and local trade and industry, the co-ordination of learning pathways, 

and the growing autonomy of institutions in terms of organising their own programmes. A 

better alignment of training and the world of work is being achieved in part by giving 

employers and trade unions a major say in deciding the exit qualifications for courses. 

The government has (a.o.t.) recognised the following developments in the BVE sector: 

1. a shift from ‘teaching’ to ‘learning’: from instructive towards constructive learning. 

2. Changing role of teacher: more and more he is the facilitator of the learning process: the 

pupils must learn how to learn while studying a concrete subject. 

3. The new possibilities of ICT. ICT touches every aspect of education spanning from the 

secondary to the sheer primary process of teaching itself. This has consequences to the 

pedagogy of teaching and learning. 

4. The learning materials will undergo a change of form. Electronic learning materials will 

have an impact on cost-structures and logistics. 

When in 1995 the BVEnet project started, the BVE-institutions were willing to change. This 

created a vision of synergy : New ways of learning with new tools. 

17 BVE = Beroepsonderwijs en Volwassenen Educatie (dutch) 

CIBIT 137 



Developments like the changing role and increasing importance of knowledge in society are 

important for the BVE-sector. The need for educational reform is therefore very high. 

The Dutch government sees information and communication technology (ICT) as important 

aids for the renewal of the educational system. If ICT is integrated broadly in the educational 

process, it could be possible to let students learn in their own pace. Furthermore ICT raises 

possibilities for concepts as Life Long Learning. 

In 1995 hardly any ICT was used in the BVE-sector. BVE-institutions did not have access to 

e-mail for everyone, there was limited access to the Internet (let alone intranet), no 

webmasters, expertise of HTML etc. The idea existed that teachers could do all of there work 

with a blackboard. Especially in the BVE-sector it became necessary to develop ICTapplications 

for education. The commercial sector gave a great impulse to the initiatives for 

developing ICT, because there is great influence from this sector on the BVE-institutions. 

The fact that the BVE had already been changing for a number of years, due to new 

legislation, mergers and new ways of financing, was not problematic. It actually served as an 

extra motivation, because the parties involved were used to changing. 

In 1995 there was some co-operation between different BVE-institutions, named innovationconsortia. 

However, these had already many problems with coping and maintaining the 

current ICT infrastructure, if there was any. There was hardly time or other resources for 

more innovative initiatives, like Internet applications for educational purposes. It became 

clear that successful exploration of the question: ‘How can ICT aid in innovating and 

professionalising the BVE-sector?’, should be initiated and guided centrally. The innovationconsortia 

had proven that initiatives started from within the sector were not likely to succeed. 

Because of the considerations mentioned above, the government decided to take several 

initiatives to renew the BVE with the aid of ICT. The goal is to initiate an emerging process 

within all BVE-institutions that uses the possibilities of ICT in order to keep the BVE sector 

up-to-date; prepare it for the knowledge society. 

Moreover, it is also important that the different institutions learn from each other. An 

interactive style of learning where the forerunners are given space to experiment with new 

developments and the rest have the possibility to learn from these experiences. 

Some of the taken measures are: 

• BVE2000 is an arrangement for stimulation and support of innovative projects in the field 

of educational tools and teaching methods by means of ICT. 

• MM NT2. Multi-media applications for Dutch as a second language. 

• Transito Cognito, a trial program to stimulate the exchange of knowledge and experience 

between the BVE-institutions and the (regional) private sector. 

• Mbo/hbo-twinprojects, a trial program aimed at the increasing the co-operation between 

MBO and HBO and to involve the public sector as well. 

• ATB is meant to increase the fit between the technical education and the mindset and 

experiences of the youth. 

• BVEnet, aims at making the BVE-sector familiar with the Internet and stimulate the use 

of this medium. 

To create a vision on the future regarding ‘ICT and education’ the BVE-institutions also has 

to understand the technical and practical possibilities of ICT. In other words: it is important 

CIBIT 138 


that they experiment with ICT. Only when the managers and teachers can experience the 

possibilities of ICT will they be able to think about education of the future. 

Of course, an important activity of BVEnet is facilitating experiments with ICT for and by the 

BVEnet itself. 


Introduction 

BVEnet is an Internet project which aims at stimulating and implementing Internet technology 

in the BVE sector. BVEnet is an initiative by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and 

Science together with the BVE-sector, aimed at experimenting with ICT and education. It 

started in 1995. The goal is to stimulate the use of ICT in the whole BVE-sector, with a focus 

on educational reform. The educational reform is especially aimed at independent learning 

by the student. Programmes provided should be tailor made for content and learning style of 

individuals. 

BVEnet exists since 1995 and was a project based organisation until 1999. It had a yearly 

budget and every year it was decided whether or not the project should continue. Because 

BVEnet proved itself over the years, it changed into an independent foundation, with a fixed 

budget (DFL 5 million, = 2 million Euro) every year. The goal is to make BVEnet costeffective 

as of 2003. The foundation has a management that is formed by representatives of 

the Interest Association for Secondary Vocational and Adult Education (BVE-council) and the 

Association of the National Bodies for Vocational Training (COLO). BVE-council and COLO 

represent the clients of BVEnet: around 60 BVE institutions. The Ministry of Education, 

Culture and Science finances BVEnet until 2003. 



The organisation of BVEnet has been kept small on purpose. This means that it is necessary 

to hire external parties for certain activities, which in turn leads to a less bureaucratic and 

lighter organisation. It also makes BVEnet vulnerable: the activities must be limited to 

evaluation and ‘networking’. If for example a report has to be made, BVEnet has to hire 

someone to perform this work and have interviews with the people working at BVEnet itself! 

No interference of Ministry 

Although the BVEnet is an initiative of the Ministry of OCW, there is no direct interference of 

the Ministry in the operations of BVEnet. This is to ensure that the organisation does not 

become too bureaucratic, but instead a small, flexible and client centred foundation. 

Management by delegation of client system 

Therefore the management of BVEnet is formed by clients: COLO and the BVE-counsel. In 

that way the client focus is safeguarded. 



CIBIT 139 


At this moment the foundation BVEnet has one directing executive (1FTE), educational 

consultants (3.6 FTE), editors (3.6 FTE) including PR, information, electronic newsletters and 

a newspaper in print, one secretary (1FTE) and a management-assistant (0.5 FTE) 

The advisors from BVEnet are situated mostly at an office in Nijmegen. Their tasks are 

stimulating initiatives, monitoring projects and providing. The goal is to divide the 60 

institutions over the advisors, and every advisor should visit his clients at least twice a year. 

External foundation to jury subsidy applications 

A jury (of three independent people) judge the proposals with explicitly formulated selection 

criteria. In the first six rounds, 326 proposals were submitted, of which 180 were granted. 

Every time there is around DFL 1 million available for projects. 

Processes 

Work is centred around projects 

There are two kinds of projects: 

• Demonstration projects are relatively small projects (maximum DFL 50.000, = 20.000 

Euro) whereby existing applications and services are altered for electronic use. Initially 

demonstration projects were limited to a 4 month period, but due to increased 

understanding, this limit was extended to 6 months. The goal of these projects was not 

just to let the parties involved get hands-on experience with Ict, but also to get other 

parties inspired. 

• Other projects were aimed at deepening the understanding of the results of the 

demonstration projects as well as researching fundamental issues. These are larger 

projects in which new services and applications are developed. In other words: current 

themes that might benefit the whole BVE-sector with implementing ICT in the 

educational system. In these projects there are more resources (time and money) 

available for experiments with totally new applications. Most of the time these projects 

are supported by external parties. In many cases these kinds of projects are a collection 

of demonstration projects, that are given the form of a centre of expertise where several 

practical projects are executed. Some examples of centres of expertise include: Intranet, 

Digital Drivers License, Emancipation net, and New Pedagogical Forms, 

Editorial tasks 

gather information, acquire, store and transfer knowledge for the BVE-site. All non-editorial 

tasks, like technical management, internet provider, account management, etc., are 

outsourced. 

Initiate projects 

Yearly DFL 2.5 million (1.3 million Euro) is spent on projects: DFL 1.5 million (0.7 million 

Euro) for small demonstration projects and furthermore some more difficult thematic 

projects. 

Simple procedures for small subsidies 

For the projects within the scope of BVEnet it is possible to submit project proposals twice a 

year, by sending them electronically to the virtual BVE-square. Institutions are asked for 

proposals through the website of BVEnet, the electronical newsletter, and ‘BVEnet inDRUK’. 


BVEnet carries out activities for the implementation of Internet in the BVE sector, activities 

which can be classified under the heading of acquiring, storing and transferring new 

technological knowledge: 

(1)Acquiring knowledge: Laboratory function 

CIBIT 140 


A large number of demonstration and depth projects are experimenting with useful Internet 

applications for the BVE sector. In order to gain this new knowledge BVEnet acquires and 

supervises these projects and they are carried out by BVE-institutions. The whole can be 

seen as a growing R & D laboratory for the BVE sector. 

(2)Storing knowledge: Library function 

The editors of BVEnet organize, store and make products and information services available 

on the BVEnet site (http://www.bvenet.nl). The editors themselves also search for information 

which is relevant to the BVE sector (national and international). In fact, the BVEnet site is the 

portal site and a virtual library of Internet applications for the BVE sector. 

(3)Transfering knowledge: Transfer function 

The third important activity of BVEnet is the transfer of acquired knowledge in the laboratory 

and stored in the library. The advisory and communication activities of BVEnet are carried 

out by means of the electronic BVEnet newsletter and the newspaper 'BVEnet inDRUK' 

(BVEnet in PRINT) and, most importantly, the BVEnet site. The BVEnet site is a source of 

information and a meeting place for teachers and managers of Secondary Vocational and 

Adult Education. The Internet applications, which have been developed within the context of 

BVEnet, are freely available to everyone. The intention is that these act as a stimulus to 

others to start developing new applications on the basis of knowledge that has already been 

accumulated. 

BVEnet advises on the use of Internet in education and also organises BVEnet 

implementation days together with BVE-institutions. On these days applications are 

presented which have been developed in demonstration projects. A number of CD-ROMS 

have been developed for teachers who do not have access to Internet yet. BVEnet is present 

at important IT conferences and educational fairs. 

ICT 

Website 

The website of BVEnet is greatly improved since May 1997 and consists of: 

• A personal profile that makes it possible to present information especially aimed at each 

individual (since may 1997) 

• Project database, containing all projects 

• Links with descriptions of educational developments 

• Recent news for the BVE-sector 

• Sources with governmental information (OCenW, BVE-counsel, COLO) 

• Database with all addresses of BVE-institutions 

• Technology lab: database with easy descriptions / manuals of all kinds of Internet tools 

that could be used in education. 

The website of BVEnet has turned into a standard. A number of the more than 100 granted 

BVE2000 projects have there own page, or a demo on the BVEnet. The network proves to 

increase the learning ability of the BVE-sector. It is a low level program with relatively simple 

projects ‘close at home’. An extra effect of using the Internet is that the infrastructure of the 

people who access BVEnet has to be functional as well. The more networks are used, the 

more it is necessary to create a good functioning network of your own (an intranet for 

example). BVEnet stimulates the development of intranets explicitly. 

Some examples of practical applications are: databanks of teaching material, multimedia 

centres, digital teacher workshops, cases for problem-driven learning via Internet, subject 

nets, examples of distance learning, description of Internet tools, list of addresses and 

thousands of relevant links and short descriptions of sites which are interesting for education. 

Other communication-media used 

• Implementation afternoons: A series of countrywide meetings centred around certain 

topics that are highlighted with success and failure factors. 

• CD-roms for teachers 

CIBIT 141 


• Phase of Pioneers explained (part 1 & 2): catalogue of demonstration projects. 

• Invitations on paper 

• Electronically distributed newsletter 

• Quarterly published newspaper in print ‘BVEnet inDRUK’ (BVEnet inPRESS) 


The development strategy: BVEnet as ‘booster’ 

Experiences from the past have shown that large-scale innovation projects often are too slow 

and lack success because of little support from within the BVE-institutes themselves. 

Therefore the BVEnet foundation pursues a development strategy. BVE institutions, being 

the institutions in which educational improvement and innovations are developed and 

implemented, are being stimulated to start experimenting themselves with electronic 

information and communication. Projects have to demonstrate the practical value of the new 

technology for BVE. 

The BVEnet foundation has chosen as core activity the development of all kinds of 

demonstration projects by the BVE institutions themselves. Because it is there that the 

people can be found who will have to master the new technology. The projects have to 

stimulate the learning processes about the use of Internet technology and also ensure a 

proper adjustment between the demand for and the supply of electronic information services. 

In this way the current BVEnet site enables everybody to profit from the Internet knowledge 

which has been acquired. Therefore the site is the face or profile of BVEnet. 

Starting up 

In the beginning, briefings were organised for all contact persons of the BVE-institutions. 

After that the first demonstration projects were explained. Reasons for the BVE-institutions to 

go to the briefings: 

• People are curious about forerunners. 

• It might just be possible to save some costs (for example by distance learning). These 

cost-savings however never came true. 

• The BVE-sector was already used to and willing to change. Legislation, mergers and 

other changes were already taking place, so the willingness to change was already there. 

• New educational concepts were coming up and BVEnet just seemed to fit in this. 

As little control as possible 

Government had no direct control over how money was spent. Also the organisation of 

BVEnet was deliberately kept small. The BVEnet is not a controlling but a stimulating 

organisation. They can be seen as the ‘knowledge stewards’ for the projects. 

The role of subsidies 

Subsidies were never exceeding DFL 50.000 (20.000 Euro) Most projects involved at least a 

million DFL. The money was never the issue. 

CIBIT 142 




Evaluation 

Results of the projects: especially ‘booster function’ 

Within the BVE-institutions there is mostly just a limited group of people who are forerunners 

or very enthusiastic, that conduct the experiments. This group consists of teachers, 

developers, system maintenance staff, and technical people. The subjects are rather broad: 

new target groups, teaching methods and curricula. The main subject is the development of 

new digital teaching materials. 

BVE-institutions use the BVEnet projects happily to start working on their own plans of using 

Internet technology. In many institutions the projects lead to a decrease in the barriers that 

are experienced by other people than those directly involved in the projects. Another 

consequence of the projects is that the public support for modern techniques is increased. 

Moreover it often happens that the BVE-institutions involved in a project start to increase 

their own internal budget for the use of Internet technologies. Despite the high costs 

involved, the projects clearly serve as the extra stimulus that is necessary to begin. 

Regarding the use of the website of BVEnet, it is a very successful project. Each week 

around 6000 to 7000 users log into the system and use it. Every week there are around 

200.00 hits. Another impressive number is the number of projects in he database, which 

exceeds 200 projects at the moment. 

In January 1998 the projects of BVEnet can be divided as follows: 

• Maintenance and management (15%): This section contains applications aimed at the 

support of policy processes and projects aimed at the internal and external 

communication and information provision. 

• Professionalism (15%): This section is about the professionalism of teachers and 

managers. 

• Multimedia centre (40%): All projects that cover the development of digital teaching 

materials, or that open up teaching materials in online databases, catalogues or lists of 

bookmarks can be found here. 

• Distance support (20%): These projects are aimed at the development of distance 

support. Experiments with tele-education, but also supervision of practical training on a 

distance and supporting through the Internet the choices for secondary education and a 

career / profession. 

• Certifications and testing (10%): All projects aimed at the online dissemination, building 

and communicating about the qualifying structure. Furthermore all projects that 

concentrate on applications for online testing and computer based testing. 

CIBIT 143 


Results with respect to content are small 

The main hurdle that has to be taken now is the realisation of a good technical infrastructure 

and the introduction of organisational change that is necessary to use the new techniques to 

its potential. An example could be the introduction of a centre of expertise on HTML-coding. 

The provision of a base of best practices has still only the level of how to start successfully. 

The deepening and gain of a more profound understanding will happen now that most of the 

simple but important hurdles have been taken. 

Success 

Overall the BVEnet is currently successful. In 1995 the BVE-institutions were not familiar with 

Internet or intranet technologies. Even in 1997 many institutions thought that the Internet was 

no important factor and claimed that teachers could do their work just as easy with a 

blackboard in front of a classroom. Since around 1997 these thoughts are no longer present 

in the BVE-institutions. 

The main goals, knowledge of and familiarity with ICT within the BVE-sector, are absolutely 

reached. Moreover, over 200 small projects have been started. Also the ‘booster’ function 

has been successful so far. Within the BVE-institutions people started to think about new 

possibilities. 

Another success is that the Ministry tried and succeeded in keeping distance from the whole 

BVEnet project. 

The changing role of BVEnet: from booster to lubricant 

Phase 1: BVEnet as booster 

In fact the first phase extended from 1995 (start-up) until now. Especially the tasks of making 

aware, boosting, providing a basic infrastructure and make agreements about webmaster, 

html, e-mail for everyone etc. 

In this first phase the demonstration projects were clearly aimed at exploration of 

possibilities. Until the end of 1997 almost 170 projects were started of which most are 

successfully finished. The goal of these projects was to see if the BVE-institutions got used to 

the internet and started to look for possibilities of using it in the primary process. 

At the moment the big threat is that the projects will all be the same: many small projects that 

are aimed at the same explorations. That’s why the goal has shifted to bundling several 

demo-projects into deeper areas of research. BVEnet now helps in formulating the plans and 

implementing them. In the future they will bundle learning experiences and thematically 

overlapping projects, for example learning environments or problem driven education. 

Phase 2: BVEnet as lubricant 

In the second phase that will extend until 2003, the idea is that more BVE-institutions will 

start working together and doing bigger projects composed of several small ones. 

It is important that not just one group develops and invests everything and other groups only 

take the benefits of that. In other words: money does matter and it is expected that there will 

be money available for the results of the projects for deepening into more profound 

understanding. 

The risk exists that the second phase will be less successful. There is less urgency in the 

projects. Thereby, plans are already made for the near future, so there is maybe not enough 

impulse to also start working in projects under the BVEnet umbrella. This means that until 

2003 BVEnet will function as lubricant. 

One of the most important tasks of BVEnet in the future will be the translation of 

developments in education and working in the outside world (private sector) to the 

educational environment. At the moment only BVE-institutions are the focus group of 

CIBIT 144 


BVEnet, but this has to be broadened in the future. The biggest changes are taking place in 

the outside world, so a more externally focused point of view will be necessary in the next 

phase. The most important topic from the outside world will be the implementation of lifelong 

learning concept 

Perspective on the future 

Until 2003 BVEnet will still be subsidised by the Ministry of OCW. After that it is supposed to 

become self supporting. With that in mind the BVEnet is already working on a commercial 

centre of expertise. That will be a major change for the current employees of BVEnet: from 

now on they will have to sell their knowledge. 

Success factors 

• Passion in the organisation and enthusiasm of the forerunners within the institutions 

• Grants, because the BVEnet could give away money. For the institutions with budgets of 

DFL 100 - 200 million (50-100 million Euro), the DFL 50k (20.000 euro) was never the 

most important stimulation effect of BVEnet. However, for the individual teachers who 

actually asked for the grants, DFL 50k was very stimulating. This has increased the 

entrepreneurship of the teachers enormously. 

• The situation has changed from –what does ICT do with education?– to –what does 

education do with ICT?–. In the beginning the technology was leading in the projects, that 

has changed to a leading role for educational topics. 

• The development strategy has always been bottom-up. In this way the execution of 

projects might take longer, but the acceptance of the results is also much better. 

• The image of the BVE-counsel was, and still is, very good. The procedures are tight and 

forces are bundled. 

• The sharing of best practices has been an inspiration and created enthusiasm 

• The whole BVE-sector was ready for changes and there was a clear need for that. In 

other words, the timing of BVEnet was perfect, regarding the sentiments in the sector. 

Lessons learned 

• Some projects fail, you have to accept that. 

• All projects are forced/stimulated to present the results and to also explain what the 

hurdles and failures were. 

• Because time is not yet a very important issue within the regular educational branches, 

the professionals working within the field are not very good at planning projects. 

Expiration of deadlines is quite frequent. Do not make the rules stricter. Provide 

knowledge for planning projects. 

• “When people leave, the agreements leave”. Contacts between BVEnet and the BVEinstitutions 

are often dependent on one enthusiastic key-figure. That is an undesirable 

situation, because if the key figure leaves, the whole project might collapse. It is 

important to deal with this cautiously. One of the measures is the stricter contract. The 

proposals are now also checked against the whole ICT policy of the institution. 

• Another important factor in this respect is that there has to be management commitment 

within the project context, otherwise it will never work. 

• BVEnet is very attentive on people who are not really coming to do a project, but only to 

get a grant of DFL 50k or more. These are the so called: grant-eaters. Most of the time 

these can be detected by looking at the project proposal and concluding that that kind of 

project has already been done four times before. Such proposals are rejected on the 

ground that they are not innovative enough. 

• BVEnet was a initiative that was extended every year after a discussion whether or not 

that should be the case. This has brought a lot of uncertainty until 1999. This uncertainty 

has scared some people away, because there was no idea if it would be possible to work 

on things for a longer period of time. 

CIBIT 145 


References 

Interviewees 

Interview Ed Feller, TRE-groep, 6 mei 1999 

TRE-groep, Regionaal Opleidings Centrum 

Ed Feller 

Hoogeveenlaan 20 

2545 TP Den Haag 

Tel: 070 - 3084242. Fax: 070 - 3084200 

Interview Aad van der Niet, directeur BVE-net (sinds 1 maart 1999), 11 mei 1999 

BVE-net 

Orangesingel 38, 6511 NW Nijmegen 

Postbus 1565, 6501 BN Nijmegen 

Tel 024 - 3823233. Fax: 024 - 3602958 

Email: vanderniet@BVEnet.nl 

URL: http://www.bvenet.nl 


• BVEnet als Internet-expertisecentrum van ROC’s en LOB’s: Planvorming voor 1999 tot 

2000, BVEnet, Nijmegen, maart 1999. 

• Leren met BVEnet: ervaringen met Internettoepassingen in het BVE-onderwijs, Cees 

Doets (eindredacteur), CINOP, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, december 1998. 

• ICT-impulsen voor de BVE-sector, Senter, Den Haag, juni 1997. 

• De elektronische leeromgeving in de BVE-sector, Jeroen Onstank en Joost Meijer, 

CINOP, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, september 1998. 

• Pioniersfase in beeld, BVE net, februari 1997. 

• Pioniersfase in beeld 2.0, BVE net, januari 1998. 

• The website of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science: 

http://www.minocw.nl/ 

CIBIT 146 


US Army 


Based on interview with Lieutenant Colonel Nick Justice (US Army Knowledge Office) during 

site visit on May 5, 1999, Washington, DC, United States. 

The goals of the United States Army 18 that are sought for with the knowledge management 

project are: 

• Digitizing the institutional army i.e. transforming the institutional army into an 

information-age, networked organisation that leverages its intellectual capital to 

better organise, train, equip and maintain a strategic land combat army force; 

• Modernise the army and reduce costs; 

• Connect active and reserve army components and institutional army through one 

environment; 

• Provide actice, reserve and institutional army and civilians with the tools required to: 

o increase information access; 

o focus collaboration; 

o improve and streamline programmes; 

o overcome geographic, time and organisational boundaries; 

o spend more time on analysing information, instead of collecting information. 


The goal that was seen by the United States Army as instrumental for reaching those 

organisational goals is: 

leveraging the army’s intellectual capital to better organise, train, equip and sustain the 

force. 






18 When refered to United States Army in this case study the instituational part of the united states army is meant. These 

people are not reservists nor people who engage in combat (tactical army), but are the ones who take care of all the 

supportive processes (e.g. logistics, HRM, administration, et cetera) necessary to be able to have an actice army. 

CIBIT 147 



• Relatively small central team 

• Mandate from the very top 

• Top down approach 


• Executive Steering Committee (ESC) 

• Paperless Career Field Designation process (CFD) 

Processes 

• After Action Reviews (AAR) 

• Lesson Learned Collection (CALL) 

• Early Bird – News Service 

ICT 

• HDQA Data Sharing Initiative 

• One Web Portal 

• Army Websites 

• Integration of the baseline infrastructure 



• Business Development Group for Army Knowledge Office – part of the Strategic Army 

Computing Center (SACC) (12 people) 



CIBIT 148 



Abstract 

The United States Army is a well known institution, its involvement in various missions 

around the world can be followed via CNN on a daily basis. 

During the last 10 years the US Army downsized its various components and component 

divisions: 

• reduced active component with 36% (770k – 495k people); 

• reduced reserve component with 26% (776k – 575k people); 

• reduced active component divisions from 18 to 10; 

• reduced reserve component divisions from 10 to 8; 

• closed 89 US bases; 

• realigned 69 US bases; 

• realigned labs; and 

• returned 653 overseas bases to local governments. 

The US Army bases its organisational structure on scenarios. Every scenario is 25 years 

ahead and a multi million dollar operation. All versions are tested fully. Their current army 

organisation is called ‘the army of excellence’, their future (locked) scenario is called Force 

21 and their 2025 future scenario is called ‘the army after next’ (unlocked). To be able to 

have implemented their locked scenario Force 21 into a real operable army (Army XXI) in 

around 2010 they started various projects among which the knowledge management project. 

Army XXI lead to the founding of the Army Knowledge Office and the Army Knowledge 

Online initiatives in late 1997. 

Currently the Army Knowledge Office (AKO) counts 25 people, serving 25,000 people. In 

June 1999 they should be at 49 people serving an increasing amount of people – finally 1.5 

Million people. Most of the AKO initiatives are either HRM or ICT (Web) based and are fully 

supported and implemented top-down. 


History of the army 

To learn about the history of the United States Army the website of the Center of Military 

History (CMH), it can be found on www.army.mil. It gives information starting at the very 

beginning in 1775 – Valley Forge…to the DMZ…To Bosnia and beyond. 

About the United States Army – Army Knowledge Office 

The mission of the United States Army is: to protect and defend the Constitution by deterring 

war and, when deterrence fails, by achieving quick decisive victory as part of a joint team 

(Title 10 USC (Law): organise, train, equip and sustain the force). Which can is translated 

into the the following responsibility: the army is responsible for providing combat ready land 

forces to the combattant commander in chiefs for ‘prompt and sustained combat incident to 

operations on land.’ 

CIBIT 149 


In order to maintain this responsibility in the next version of the army, called Army XXI the 

chief of staff of the army, General Dennis J. Reimer stated the following vision: Transform 

the institutional army into an information-age, networked organisation that leverages its 

intellectual capital to better organise, train and equip, and maintain a strategic land combat 

army force. 

As a result of this vision various projects were started and so in late 1997 the Army 

Knowledge Office was founded and counted 3 employees serving 350 senior executive 

people i.e. the generals of the army. The background of the first 3 employees was either 

technical or organisational. The Army Knowledge Office (AKO) is part of the responsibility of 

DISC 4 SACC (director of information systems for command, control, communications and 

computers – strategic army computing center). 

At the moment the Army Knowledge Office counts 25 people and serves 25,000 people. In 

June 1999 they should be at 49 people serving an increasing amount of people – finally 1.5 

Million people. 

The objectives of the Army Knowledge Office are: 

• Unimpeded access to knowledge; 

• Increased connectivity and situational/institutional awareness; 

• Cross-functional integration and collaboration; 

• Reduction in time required for cross-functional analysis; 

• Increased army productivity; 

• Leveraged IT infrastructure; and 

• Imbedded in army processes. 


The United States’ Army need for change was stated in the following organisational goals: 

• Digitizing the institutional army i.e. transforming the institutional army into an 

information-age, networked organisation that leverages its intellectual capital to 

better organise, train, equip and maintain a strategic land combat army force; 

• Modernise the army and reduce costs; 

• Connect active and reserve army components and institutional army through one 

environment; 

• Provide actice, reserve and institutional army and civilians with the tools required to: 

o increase information access; 

o focus collaboration; 

o improve and streamline programmes; 

o overcome geographic, time and organisational boundaries; 

o spend more time on analysing information, instead of collecting information. 

From these organisational goals the following knowledge management goals were derived: 

• Honor the past: 

o Leverage historical actions and lessons learned; 

• Master the present: 

o Create force multiplier to deal with downsizing. Dicipline and improve army 

systems and processes; 

o Enable teamwork and collaboration. Increase productivity by provinding 

army-wide electronic access to corporate knowledge; 

o Facilitate communication and decision making among army leaders. Provide 

an electronic repository for army communities, reduce costs for data access 

and analysis. 

CIBIT 150 


o Foster bottom-up innovation and speed up validation of re-engineered 

processes. 

o Improve cross-functional integration; 

• Shape the future: 

o Transform the army into a streamlined information age, knowledge-centric 

organisation; 

o Comply with defence reform initiative (DRI) and the Clinger-Cohen Act (i.e. 

money spent is connected to results); 

o Serve as a cultural catalyst for the Army XXI and the Army After Next. 

In short: knowledge management must leverage the army’s intellectual capital to better 

organise, train, equip and sustain the force. 



management system (i.e. knowledge infrastructure) was designed and implemented. The 

following categories will be discerned: leadership & management, organisational structure & 

HRM, processes and Information & communication technology. 


Relatively small central team 

Late 1997 the Army Knowledge Office was founded and counted three founding members. 

The AKO has been growing steadily since then. At the moment they count 25 people serving 

25,000 people. The end goal is to be serving 1.5 million people. 

Mandate from the very top 

The knowledge management project is part of the vision of the Chief of Staff of the Army 

(the person in command of the army, General Dennis J. Reimer). His vision statement is: 

“Transform the institutional army into an information-age, networked organisation that 

leverages its intellectual capital to better organise, train and equip, and maintain a strategic 

land combat army force.” 

Top down approach 

Using the very senior Executive Steering Committee and starting with the 350 generals of 

the US Army, the AKO is generating a critical mass at the very top of the army. These 350 

senior people will ‘talk it down’ to the troups below, an so on. Finally knowledge management 

will become part of the norms and values of every member of the army. These are the rock 

solid anchors of the army – this that never change, whatever the structure of the army. 


Executive Steering Committee (ESC) 

One of the objectives of the Army Knowledge Office was founding a Executive Steering 

Committee in order to help implement knowledge management into the institutional army. 

The charter for the ESC was approved and cosigned by DAS 19 and DISC4 20 . The mission of 

this committee is: 

19 DAS: Director of Army Staff. 

CIBIT 151 


• Serve as a catalyst for institutionalising knowledge management in the army; 

• Prioritize requirements and recommend funding strategies for AKO development and 

implementation; 

• Identify and resolve AKO issues; 

• Ensure that goals and objectives for the AKO, the Army Flow Model (AFM), and the 

Organisational Command Training Programme (OCTP) are coordinated and 

integrated 21 . 

The ESC is chaired by the DAS (organisational stakeholder) and by DISC4 (technical 

stakeholder). Momentarily the AKO is considering if a third chairman is necessary, since the 

stakes of the army’s employees are not fully covered, possibly the director of Human 

Resources is asked to be the third chair (people stakeholder). 

The 22 parties who are members of the ECS are, like the chairs all very senior army people 

(generals), representatives for the following five major groups: 

1. Staff of the minister of the army (secretarial); 

2. Shared staff (by 1 and 2): e.g. Chief of public affairs, Military Juridical Department 

(JAG), DISC4, et cetera; 

3. Army General Staff 

4. MACOMS Major Commands: chiefs of staff of FORSCOM (Combat), TRADOC 

(Training), AMC (Material) and MEDCOM (Medical); 

5. Reserve: Deputy director - Army National Guard and Deputy Chief – Army Reserve. 

Their first ESC meeting took place on January 14 th 1999 and for the moment AKO plans to 

have a meeting every month. The frequency of meetings will decrease over time, since 

knowledge management will gradualy become institutionalised in the army. 

Paperless Career Field Designation Process 

The problem of the Army Personnel Command (HR department of the army) was: How to 

support authorizations and assign officers during the OPMS XII 22 transition years (financial 

year 2000 - 2001). Due to the transition of the current ‘Army of Excellence’ to the ‘Army XXI’ 

new functional areas (roles) for officers are necessary. In addition to existing functional areas 

for officers (branches) like: 

• Infantry, 

• Armor, 

• Field artillery, 

• Signal (radiomen), 

• Transportation, 

• Military police, 

• Chemicals, et cetera 

new officer functional areas ar necessary: 

• Information Systems Engineers, 

• Information Operations, 

• Strategic Intelligence, 

• Space Operations, 

• Human Resource Management, 

• Force Management, 

• Simulation Operations, and 

• Strategic Plans and Policy. 

The solution found is: Use substitution rules to match officers from the current inventory to 

requirements of new authorisations during transition years. 

20 DISC4: Director of Information Systems for Command, Control, Communications and Computers. 

21 No information was supplied to be able to sufficiently describe the AFM (an set of executive level planning models for 

people, infrastructure and equipment that provide an integrated analysis across major functional areas: force structure, 

personnel, logistics, infrastructure and resources) and OCTP. 

22 OPMS XXI: Officer Personnel Management System for the Army XXI. 

CIBIT 152 


The process called Career Field Designation is conducted by the PERSCOM (personnel 

command; HR department of the army) using a lot of paperwork. The input of the process is 

the promotion list of a major, the preference of an officer, input from the commander and the 

abilities of the officers in case. This input is matched with the requirements of the army and 

approved by the CFD Board and leads to the output of a designated career field for the 

officer. This process was extremly slow and anything but transparent to the officer, the 

PERSCOM itself and to the current branch of the officer. 

Therefor the PERSCOM developed a blueprint of the CFD process, which was approved by 

Chief of Staff of the Army (=CSA: General Reimer) on Januari 1998. In June 1998 CSA 

directed a paperless process. 

The Army Knowledge Office developed a web enabled online process by which officers can 

directly communicate with PERSCOM and both have insight in the possibilities for a new 

career field designation. It took the AKO 2 months to develop the system (extremly fast!). 

The officer year groups of 1980 (1010 officers) and 1986 (1364) were processed by the 

system. With an incredible response: 

• of YG 80, 90.59 % responded, respectively 82.95% by website and the rest by mail; 

• of YG 86, 96.70 % responded, respectively 87.64% by website and the rest by mail. 

All officers who asked received their first branch preference and the CFD Board met all 

branch requirements and all functional area requirements. 

The system provides an almost real-time insight for everyone involved, for the PERSCOM it 

was a true innovation. And most important of all, it gave insight in the match between officer 

preferences and army requirements for the Army XXI. 

Currently the year groups of 81, 87 and 90 are submitted for CFD. Furthermore the success 

of this online system lead to the decision to develop more web enabled tools for PERSCOM. 

Processes 

After Action Review (AAR) 

An AAR is an analysis of performance; it provides soldiers and units feedback on mission 

and task accomplishment. After-action reviews identify how to correct shortcomings and 

sustain strengths; they serve as a leadership development tool. The art of conducting the 

AAR is mastered only through years of experience and training. Practice and critique are 

vital in providing good results. The AAR is conducted at the conclusion of a pure lane or at 

appropriate points during integrated lanes. 

Lesson Learned Collection: Center of Army Lessons Learned (CALL) 

The Center of Army Lessons Learned 23 , which was founded in 1985 at Fort Leavenworth, 

Kansas, collects and distributes lessons learned in combat missions of the US army. CALL 

consists of 40 people, most of them work on a part-time basis. One way in which CALL 

collects lessons learned is by electronic observation forms 24 , which are then evaluated, 

analyzed and organized. 

collecting the knowledge The starting point for the lessons learned architecture of CALL is 

that all CALL products originate with input in the form of an observation by an individual. 

Therefore it stimulates army members, and in particular soldiers, to report observation 

regarding tactics, techniques, or procedures that their unit used to work around unfavorable 

situations or circumstances. To facilitate rapporting, CALL maintains a WWW site that 

includes an electronic observation form. 

However, besides this passive form of collection, CALL also has a collection division which 

performs missions to collect lessons learned with respect to particular subjects. The 

personnel of this division are trained collectors of information and observations. The 

collection operations are derived from a Contingency Collection Plan, which is maintained by 

23 for detailed information is refered to http://www.army.mil or http://call.army.mil 

24 an example of these forms can be found at http://call.army.mil/CALL Observation Form.htm 

CIBIT 153 


CALL. Collection operations are guided by a collection plan which states which kinds of 

observation should be made. The procedures for collection missions are described in a 

handbook which is also published on the WWW. 

storing the knowledge Storage in CALL involves both editing and indexing. Editing is 

performed by CALL's analysis division. In the case of a collection mission as described 

above, the analysis team is in continuous interaction with the collection teams. A well defined 

procedure exists for analyzing incoming lessons learned. The collected and edited lessons 

learned are organized and published in a number of products: newsletters, bulletins and 

handbooks. To some extent, these products are also published on the WWW. 

retrieving and distributing the knowledge The corporate memory consists of a number of 

publications which are distributed to the soldiers. It is not clear in which ways the soldiers are 

stimulated to actually read the CALL products. In the case of retrieval, the soldier looking for 

information can make use of an electronic search form on the WWW. 

Early Bird – News Service 

At 1:00 AM every night a group of news analysts starts to make clippings of the 20 most 

important news papers (both national and international). These clippings are collected and 

disseminated via one of the most well read news services called: the Early Bird. It’s accessed 

by people starting from President Clinton down to a soldier in the field. It can be found on the 

army website (www.army.mil). 

ICT 25 

HQDA Data Sharing Initiative (HDSI) 

37 army databases were consolidated by DISC4 into a data warehouse. This initiative lead 

to: 

• Ground truth: one version for all analysis; 

• Single effort for data collection; 

• Data time synchronised; 

• Data descriptions stored in warehouse; 

• Frees analysts to analyse (NOT to collect data). 

One Web portal 

The current architecture is being changed rigorously due to the following problems: 

• Information is not easy to locate; 

• Multiple user IDs and passwords are required (due to stove-piped architecture); 

• Low information assurance; 

• Email addresses are location specific. 

The architecture being build is a personalised army portal, this portal ensures access to 

information from any place in the world. Army personnel can connect to the portal and use: 

enterprise mail, digital certificates, enterprise directory 26 , search mechanisms, E-forms, 

collaborative tools and a smart office (file cabinets, fax, newsgroups, army mail, calendar, 

help/FAQ, library access, live stream video, netmeeting and chatrooms). The benefits of this 

portal are huge: 

• Indexed and categorised information; 

• Single sign-on; 

• Secure access to web pages 27 ; 

• Email address does not change. 

25 

The Army Knowledge Office works together with EDS regarding the ICT parts of the knowledge management project. 

EDS awarded the project in Marchy 1998. 

26 

Army personnel will be provided with life-time Email addresses, which are searchable by means of an army wide 

directory. 

27 

A Smart Card system will be used to secure the access to the portal by a strong user authentication. 

CIBIT 154 


This architecture provides the army with the enabling infrastructure for knowledge 

management for now and in the future. It provides secure enterprise wide access and 

organisation to the army’s corporate body of knowledge. 

Army Websites 28 

The AKO developed and coordinates two major websites: 

• AO: Army Online: This is the army’s intranet, it has more than 13,000 users. 

http://www.us.army.mil 

• AHP: Army Home Page: This is the army’s public website, it has an average of 

65,000 visits a day. http://www.army.mil 

The army’s intranet is a portal to more than 1,200 army websites. The army’s public 

homepage contains a selection of content from the army’s intranet, it’s a means to keep 

civilians informed about the army’s operations. 

Integration of the baseline infrastructure 

One of the objectives of the AKO is to integrate the Army Home Page (AHP), Army Online 

(AO), the Army Flow Model (AFM) and the HQDA Data Sharing Initiative HDSI. Doing so the 

following product will be delivered: 

• an Army intranet (AO) with community chat rooms and discussion groups; 

• integrated models (AFM) for what-if decision making that allow cross-functional 

analysis of force-structure, budget, personnel, equipment and infrastructure; 

• a single source for reliable synchronised data (HDSI); and 

• internally and externally oriented web pages for information access. 



• Business Development Group for Army Knowledge Office – part of the Strategic Army 

Computing Center (SACC) (12 people) 




Relatively small central team 

Late 1997 the Army Knowledge Office was founded and counted three founding members. 

The AKO has been growing steadily since then. At the moment they count 25 people serving 

25,000 people. The end goal is to be serving 1.5 million people. 

28 It’s hard to describe these websites, the best way to get an idea of them is to visit them. 

CIBIT 155 


Mandate from the very top 

The knowledge management project is part of the vision of the Chief of Staff of the Army 

(the person in command of the army, General Dennis J. Reimer). His vision statement is: 

“Transform the institutional army into an information-age, networked organisation that 

leverages its intellectual capital to better organise, train and equip, and maintain a strategic 

land combat army force.” 

Top down approach 

Using the very senior Executive Steering Committee and starting with the 350 generals of 

the US Army, the AKO is generating a critical mass at the very top of the army. These 350 

senior people will ‘talk it down’ to the troups below, an so on. Finally knowledge management 

will become part of the norms and values of every member of the army. These are the rock 

solid anchors of the army – this that never change, whatever the structure of the army. 

Knowledge management is a cultural catalyst for Army XXI and AAN 

By means of the knowledge management initiatives of the AKO, the army will become more 

flexible with regard to the changes needed for the Army XXI and for future versions like the 

Army After Next. The projects of the AKO are the pilots of the future army structures and 

therefore serve as a catalyst. 


No specific methods were used. 

Evaluation 

• After 2 years of Army Knowledge Online the US Department of the Army is the 

national leader in IT innovation (actually it’s number three on the list, but since 

number one and two are so much smaller state agencies (environmental protection 

agency and US Government printing office), the US Army can be called number one 

of the large state agencies). 

• The paperless web enabled Career Field Designation process is a true innovation – it 

gave insights that weren’t possible without intranet technology and it only took two 

months to implement. 

Key learnings 

• Top down approach - start with the generals 

• Institutionalise knowledge management by integration with norms and values 

• Use simple web based tools, not LAN based (to reduce local authorisations) 

CIBIT 156 


References 

• www.army.mil 

• www.army.mil/ako/ 

• www.us.army.mil 

• Briefing pack (selection of various internal presentations) 


United States Army 

Department of the Army 

Office of the Chief of Staff 

Lieutenant Colonel Nick Justice 

attn: DACS-GOM Rm 2E749 

200 Army Pentagon 

Washington, DC 20050-0200 

tel: +1 703 697 7994 

fax: +1 703 614 4256 

Email: Justice@us.army.mil 

CIBIT 157 


The American Memory 

Abstract 

This case study describes what is called the American Memory, 

(memory.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html) a public digital library containing collections on 

American History. 

The American Memory is an initiative of the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., USA 

(www.loc.gov) and is a major component of the Library's National Digital Library Program, 

are multimedia collections of digitized documents, photographs, recorded sound, moving 

pictures, and text from the Library's Americana collections. 

The American memory resulted from a pilot that ran from 1990 until 1995, in which the 

primary goal was to provide access to the american history collections of the Library of 

Congress to local libraries throughout the US, even in remote places. As an important effect 

of this pilot, it appeared that American Memory was used by the K-12 school community to 

build lessons on american history. 

Today, the American Memory has grown into a web-based digital library in which currently 

over 50 collections are available. The digital library is basically organised according to those 

collections, but through the search facilities, the collection compound forms no impediment. 

To respond to the need of both students and teachers, the American Memory provides what 

is called ‘The Learning Page’. The Learning Page is designed for teachers, school librarians, 

students, and life-long learners. It has tools to help users navigate the American Memory 

Historical Collections, activities, lesson ideas, teacher-created lesson plans, and other 

information to help guide educators and their students in using the American Memory 

Historical Collections' primary sources in classrooms 

Contact information: 

Carl Fleischhauer 

Coordinator American Memory Project 

National Digital Library 

Washington D.C, USA 

+1-202-707-6233 

cfle@loc.gov 


The American Memory is an initiative of the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., USA 

(www.loc.gov). It is a major component of the Library of Congress National Digital Library 

Program (NDL), and consists of multimedia collections of digitized documents, photographs, 

recorded sound, moving pictures, and text from the Library's Americana collections. 

There are currently over 50 collections in the American Memory Historical Collections. The 

American Memory in its current form grew out of a pilot that ran from 1990 until 1995. So the 

CIBIT 158 


NDL is the larger whole in which the American Memory fits. 

On May 1, 1995, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington, the Commission on Preservation 

and Access and officials from 14 other research libraries and archives signed the National 

Digital Library Federation Agreement. Members hoping to digitize materials for students, 

scholars and citizens everywhere. 29 

With funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the NDL Program has been working with 

end users and conferring with teachers and students to determine the materials they would 

find most useful in electronic format. 

The Library is working with National Science Foundation recipient institutions as they conduct 

research on digital libraries. Collaborations with the University of Michigan for user interface 

and the University of California at Santa Barbara for Geographic Information Systems are 

two examples of such efforts. 

That the American Memory focuses on the digitization of American national history sources 

is not surprising in a sense. Of course, the first reason is the availability of the sources to the 

Library of Congress (this is a push component), second, the interest of the american 

audience in national history, already instigated in primary education adds to the success of 

the initiative (this is the pull component). From the early use studies it indeed appeared that 

K-12 schools are the prime audience of the system, because in this school system quite 

some attention to paid to american history teachings. 


From the source material, it appears that the American Memory originally was intended for 

providing electronic versions of selected Library of Congress archival collections to US 

libraries. American Memory's primary audience is the broad educational community, 

encompassing K-12 schools, colleges, universities, and public libraries. 

American Memory focusses on bridging the gap between formal and informal learning 

through providing access to american history collections of the Library of Congress in public 

libraries, situated on the periphery of the educational community, that serve as vital links 

between formal and informal learning - especially in rural locations. 

It is worth noting that the audience definition broadens the outreach of the Library of 

Congress in two ways. First, it extends access to the content of the Library's collections to 

individuals throughout the nation. Second, it offers access to students who are presently 

denied access to the Library's physical reading rooms. It should also be noted that American 

Memory was not viewed as an "educational" product from the outset of the project. However, 

it was noted that American Memory electronic collections -- like physical libraries -- can 

provide library service to the educational community from which potentially broad 

educational benefits will follow. 


During the pilot that ran from 1990 until 1995, various technologies to diffuse the content of 

the library to the points of contact have been used, varying from videodisks, CD-ROM to on- 

29 

It appears that the Library of Congress, in cooperation with the Association of American Publishers, has been 

negotiating to select and make available electronically copyrighted multimedia American history materials 

under collective licensing agreements to schools and libraries. The results of these negotiations are not 

known to the compilers of this case study. 

CIBIT 159 


line connections. 

American Memory's choices of technology during the pilot reflected the central feature of the 

on-line environment: digital diversity. In order to reproduce collections of books, pamphlets, 

motion pictures, manuscripts and sound recordings, the project created a wide array of digital 

entities: bi-tonal document images, grayscale and color pictorial images, digital video and 

audio, and searchable texts. To provide access to the reproductions, the project developed a 

range of descriptive elements: bibliographic records, finding aids, introductory texts and 

programs and searchable full texts. 

Reproductions were produced with a variety of tools: scanners, digital cameras, audio and 

video digitizers and human labor for rekeying and encoding texts. American Memory 

employed national-standard and industry-standard formats for many digital reproductions, for 

example, texts encoded with Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) and images 

stored in Tagged Image File Format (TIFF) files or compressed with the Joint Photographic 

Experts Group (JPEG) algorithm. In other cases-notably for moving images and recorded 

sound-the lack of widespread formats forced the pilot program to use ad hoc solutions. 

Of particular note is the Library's development of an SGML markup scheme for historical 

texts and documents. The scheme conforms to the guidelines of the Text Encoding Initiative, 

an international-standards effort promulgated by humanities scholars in a number of 

universities and other institutions. 

The greatest challenge in the digitization of historical collections is finding appropriate ways 

to handle rare manuscripts, glass plate negatives, bound books and other fragile originals. 

During the pilot, specialist contractors brought their equipment to the Library and digitized the 

physical artifacts under the watchful eyes of Library staff members. 

The cataloging and other descriptive data for access were created by Library staff. The 

participating divisions made a special effort to find efficient means to produce these data, 

often using a new PC-based cataloging software introduced to the Library by American 

Memory with the cooperation of the Library's Automation Planning and Liaison Office 

(APLO). For two collections, access to the items was furnished by a set of hierarchical 

menus, a rough-and-ready precursor to the on-line finding aids now being developed by the 

NDLP. 

The collections that were digitized during the American Memory pilot provided an interesting 

mix of rights issues, including what most people perceive as the "copyright archetype," an 

item for which the identity of the copyright owner is known. In one instance, the American 

Memory team sought and received permission from a dozen publishers and artists to 

reproduce 200 political cartoons on an evaluation CD-ROM. In another case, the team 

searched about 500 copyright records for a group of photographs and determined that none 

of the original copyright registrations had been renewed, thus permitting the Library to 

provide electronic access to the collection. 

To date, the American Memory is a web-based system that uses, apart from standard webtools, 

various home-developed tools. For an overview of current technological issues, visit 

memory.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html. 

In terms of staffing, the National Digital Library, of which the American Memory is part of, 

basically consists of four groups: 

Curatorial Staff. Staff assigned to the curatorial divisions prepare and process materials to be 

digitized. Curatorial staff also perform on-site digitization-materials that include rare and 

fragile items such as early drafts of the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg 

Address. 

Core Staff. NDL Program core staff work with the Library's divisions to prepare and describe 

the collections, verify the status of copyright and seek permission for use of the materials 

when appropriate, digitize the materials and verify that they adhere to the Library of 

CIBIT 160 


Congress's standards of quality. Digital conversion specialists in the central office provide 

project coordination and technical oversight. The more experienced specialists oversee 

collection development and production, serving as team leaders and as brokers among the 

division and automation staff and contractors. 

Infrastructure Staff. Infrastructure staff are primarily information systems experts who build 

and maintain the automated systems that store and provide access to the digital collections. 

These are the staff who must unscramble and make useful the world of the Internet. 

Educational Services Staff. The educational services staff focus on educational outreach for 

the use of the historical collections by the K-12 community. They research user needs, talk to 

the education communities, evaluate technologies for delivery of digitized materials, 

coordinate collection selection and develop and supervise contracts. 


A good summary of the formation and the approach to the design of the American Memory is 

given in a periodic report from The National Digital Library Program, The Library of 

Congress, November/December 1995 (No. 4) ISSN 1083-3978: 

• “The American Memory pilot was the seed that eventually grew into the National Digital 

Library Program, with its emphasis on digitizing the Library of Congress's historical 

collections-the "nation's memory." 

• The pilot, which ran from 1990 to 1995, identified the audiences for digital collections, 

established technical procedures, wrestled with intellectual property issues, demonstrated 

options for distribution and began institutionalizing a digital effort at the Library of 

Congress. 

• The American Memory pilot identified multiple audiences for digital collections in a special 

survey, an end-user evaluation and in thousands of conversations, letters and encounters 

with visitors. In 1989, to help launch the project, a consultant surveyed 101 members of 

the Association of Research Libraries and the 51 State Library agencies. The survey 

disclosed a genuine appetite for on-line collections, especially in research libraries 

serving higher education. 

• The most thorough audience appraisal resulted from an end-user evaluation conducted in 

1992-1993. Forty-four school, college and university, and state and public libraries were 

provided with a dozen American Memory collections on CD-ROMs and videodisks. 

Participating library staff, teachers, students and the public were polled about which 

digitized materials they had used and how well the delivery systems worked. 

• The evaluation indicated continued interest by institutions of higher education as well as 

public libraries. The surprising finding, however, was the strong showing of enthusiasm in 

schools, especially at the secondary level. 

• The evaluation team learned that recent reforms in education had created a need for 

primary-source historical materials, such as those in the Library's incomparable 

collections. Teachers welcomed digitized collections to aid in the development of critical 

thinking skills; school librarians used the electronic resource to inculcate research skills. 

• The corollary to audience, of course, is distribution. The American Memory pilot explored 

this topic through CD-ROM production for the end-user evaluation, public-private 

demonstration projects and in the placement of selected collections on the Internet's 

World Wide Web. 

• Electronic collections were provided to the 44 end-user evaluation sites from 1991 to 

1994 on a set of CD-ROM disks, some of which were supplemented by videodisks that 

contained still- and moving-image materials. Disks were produced for IBM-compatible 

CIBIT 161 


(DOS and Windows) and Apple Macintosh computers. One CD-ROM employed the 

experimental "XA" format as a means to present sound recordings. 

• The production of CD-ROMs was more challenging than expected. For example, diskproduction 

contractors had difficulty identifying software that could search texts or 

bibliographic records and also display document facsimiles. The CD-ROMs produced in 

1992 had to be re-engineered in 1993 or 1994 when newer versions of the underlying 

operating-system software were introduced. 

• Meanwhile, two private-sector CD-ROMs resulted from American Memory's distribution 

demonstration projects. Stokes Imaging of Austin, Texas, has published a Civil War 

photographs CD-ROM and World Library Inc. will publish a CD-ROM with the full texts 

and illustrations of 192 books about California history. 

• Two other public-private demonstration projects involve companies that are 

experimenting with on-line delivery: Bell Atlantic, a regional telephone company, and 

Jones Intercable, a television cable company. In both cases, the companies have a 

special interest in providing access to school communities and are using American 

Memory collections in test sites: Bell Atlantic in Union City, N.J., and Jones Intercable in 

Alexandria, Va.; Littleton, Colo.; and Palmdale, Calif. The technologies for these two online 

demonstrations are still evolving. 

• Issues other than known-owner copyright, however, are more frequent and challenging in 

archival collections. In the case of a group of folk music recordings, for example, the 

team faced not only the question of identifying composers, but also accommodating the 

rights of the song collector and the folk performers. (This complex investigation is still 

under way.) Meanwhile, privacy and publicity rights emerged in the case of photographs. 

One collection, for example, included portraits of celebrities. The pilot team began to 

establish procedures for cases such as these, but many details remain unresolved. 

• The selection of collections to digitize was strongly influenced by the elements described 

above. Considerations of audience, including a desire to serve the nation's schools, for 

example, guided the Library to collections that illuminate American culture and history. 

The evaluation indicated that content that relates to school curricula has high value. In 

addition, emphasis was given to the Library's unique special-collections holdings. 

• Another important consideration in selection is the "fit" of certain formats to technology, 

meaning both the technology to digitize and the technology for distribution. Photographs 

and other pictorial materials, manuscripts and printed matter were favored, because their 

methods for capture and digital formats are well established. In contrast, the sheer size of 

the digital file required to contain a legible image weighed against the selection of maps 

for the pilot. 

• Selection was also influenced by a collection's copyright status, readiness of cataloging 

and the degree to which selection will support other Library of Congress activities, 

ranging from arrearage (backlog) reduction to exhibitions and publications. 

• The American Memory pilot provided a model for digital access to historical collections as 

well as a method for institutionalizing the effort at the Library. It demonstrated that 

achieving this goal required the contribution of many Library units or-put another way-that 

the work of digitization must be dispersed broadly within the institution. In this, the 

American Memory pilot followed the path charted by the Library's Optical Disk Pilot 

Project (1982-1987); in fact, several members of the American Memory team were 

veterans of that earlier effort. 

• During the American Memory pilot, interoffice cooperation was manifest in a number of 

ways. For example, the project received regular and helpful guidance in matters of 

intellectual property from the Copyright Office. In 1991-1992, American Memory and 

Information Technology Services (ITS), the Library's computer center, demonstrated an 

early model for on-line access with assistance from IBM. In 1994, ITS and the American 

Memory team began preparing collections for the World Wide Web. 

• The Preservation Office provided conservation treatment for a number of American 

Memory collections. In a special experiment, American Memory staff and Preservation 

Office conservators digitized four Walt Whitman notebooks and placed the resulting 

images on the Internet. The experiment also produced a preservation microfilm. 

• The American Memory pilot offered a microcosm of the digitization of historical collections 

and helped blaze the trail for the National Digital Library Program's historical collections 

CIBIT 162 


activity. The success of the pilot has helped the Library raise private funds and win 

congressional support to continue and expand the effort.” 


To understand the applied methods in the American Memory, one should have a look at the 

checklist that is used to upload content to the website of the American Memory. This 

checklist can be found at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html. 

Evaluation 

The American Memory case study shows one example of many digital library initiatives, in 

this case with a particular success in the educational community. The American Memory is 

basically a digitized version of existing history collections (and is organized that way), 

bringing american history closer to the (american) citizen. If we look with a broader 

perspective at the concept of digital libraries, the vision that is presented by Dan Atkins (in: 

An International Research Agenda for Digital Libraries, Summary Report of the Series of Joint NSF-EU Working Groups 

on Future Directions for Digital Libraries Research, October 12, 1998, Editors: Peter Schäuble and Alan F. Smeaton) 

helps us to evaluate what the differences between traditional and digital libraries are, and 

what current issues are: 

“The integration and use of computing, communications, and digital content on a global scale, 

combined with the increasing possibility of cost effective digitization and convergence of 

formerly separate media types has created the conditions for new infrastructure/environments 

to support humans (as individuals and organizations) in distributed knowledge-based 

activities. We are in fact in the early stages of understanding the implications of these 

technologies and even what to call the environments they will enable us to create. (We are at 

the "horse-less carriage" stage of understanding of form and function.) Terms such as 

"knowledge networks," "collaboratories," and digital libraries are being used with overlapping 

meaning. There is also a strong overlap between R&D on architecture for federating a 

distributed, autonomous set of digital collections and services, and the architectural 

requirements for large-scale electronic commerce. Some argue that digital libraries are in fact 

a specific case of an information economy (brokering environment.) 

The concept of a digital library arose from the analogy with a place-based repository library 

containing an organized collection of print-on-paper and other physical artifacts combined 

with systems and services to facilitate physical, intellectual, and long-term access. The initial 

emphasis was on the retrospective conversion of print-on-paper objects into digital objects, 

usually page images, flat-text, compound documents of text and image, and/or structured 

documents. These digital versions of traditional library holdings offer distance-independent 

access, full-text searching, and potentially more powerful ways of finding timely and relevant 

information. Investment in retrospective conversion of physical objects to digital form, albeit 

not well coordinated, is continuing to increase. 

Beyond retrospective conversion, the emergence of the world wide web has accelerated 

broad appreciation that we are now inventing new genres - new broadly understood 

document types - that have no print-on-paper equivalent but exist only in a digital 

CIBIT 163 


computer/communication world. Furthermore wider audiences are now understanding that 

the underlying technology of digital libraries is so vastly different from the underlying 

technology of paper and ink. Digital information can be moved near the speed of light, stored 

at atomic scales of density, and converged into new document types combining, text, image, 

graphics, video, audio, hyperlinks, computational applets, and more. Digital libraries include 

the capabilities of physical libraries but potentially go well beyond them in scope and 

meaning. (What we are definitely not addressing well enough are questions of how we will 

preserve very long-term access to digital collections and continue to preserve our heritage 

with digital-only objects.) 

One of the most obvious differences is the potential for a world wide digital library - not a 

centralized repository - but rather an enormous distributed but interoperable system or market 

of organizationally autonomous collections and services. Furthermore the line between the 

digital library as a system for access of information and the digital library as the environment 

for creating and sharing information, particularly as part of a group activity will become 

increasingly blurred. The WWW is a crude, early form. 

Most traditional libraries have already moved into the hybrid age of print-on-paper and digital 

resources but much more transformation is in the offing. One prominent researcher has 

proposed the following dimensions for exploring the potential differences between traditional 

and digital libraries: 

Traditional libraries are stable and slowly evolving; digital libraries are highly dynamic, ephemeral and versioned. 

Traditional libraries hold atomic objects of mostly print in big crisp chunks; digital libraries hold inter-linked, multi-media 

objects which are multi-size, fractal, and ill-defined. 

Traditional libraries hold objects with largely flat structure and minimal context and meta information; digital libraries 

support documents with significant internal scaffold structure and significant context/meta information which might be 

automatically extracted. 

Traditional (academic) libraries hold objects which are scholar-authored and pre-credentialled through a ponderous 

publishing stream; digital libraries allow anyone to publish in a lightweight way, and can support pre-credentialling or 

credentially through use. 

Traditional libraries are based upon centralized control and relatively few access locations; digital libraries can be 

distributed and ubiquitous. 

In traditional libraries the objects are physically and logically co-controlled; in digital libraries the physical and logical 

organizations can be separated (allows virtual collections). 

The tradition of public libraries is universal access and free; digital libraries could be similar in this regard, or digital 

libraries could support rich layers of access control and management of terms and conditions. 

Traditional libraries support one-way, loosely coupled (slow) interaction; digital libraries support two-way communication 

with tight, fast interaction. 

Traditional libraries are based upon a model of one-way search (a consumer looking for an object); digital libraries 

support symmetric search (consumer looking for an object an producer of the object looking for a consumer). 

In traditional libraries structured text queries (and some browsing) are used to aid intellectual access; in digital libraries 

complex interactions of query, navigation/browsing, and social filtering can be used. 

This list is not necessarily good versus bad. It is rather an attempt to stretch the vision of 

differences between the digital library as a simulation of a traditional library and entirely new 

modes of support the life cycle of information creation, distribution, use, and preservation. 

The realization of these potentials, particular in ways that are human-centered and serve all 

of society, is a major challenge requiring a complex interaction between social and technical 

disciplines, informed by theory, but grounded and informed by carefully selected pilot 

(testbed) projects. The NSF DLI 1 projects have stressed not only the need for relevant basic 

research in supporting technologies, but also for validating this research in the construction 

and field testing of real digital libraries with useful collections. 

Our taxonomy for exploring a joint EU-US research agenda has been based upon five topical 

CIBIT 164 


groups: interoperability, metadata, intellectual property rights and economic issues, resource 

indexing and discovery in a globally distributed digital library, and multilingual information 

retrieval. These 5 areas are an attempt to cover the key research areas relevant to the 

realization of a global digital library supporting access to millions of geographically and 

organizationally distributed collections and services. There will not be a central management 

authority, but rather an architecture which enables and provides incentive for producers and 

consumers of collections and services to find and transact with each other in mutually 

agreeable ways. 

Interoperability, particularly in evolutionary ways, at many levels of abstraction, is a necessity 

and still poorly understood in a general way. Because of the scale of such an endeavor, 

metadata as surrogates and finding aids to target objects will continue to be of primary 

importance even as more structured, self-describing documents come into use. The issues of 

metadata standards, accommodation of heterogeneity in metadata, and automatic generation 

of metadata require additional work. 

The greatest barrier to broader deployment of digital libraries with high quality, highly 

credentialled context are economic and intellectual property issues, appropriated reinterpreted 

and implemented in the digital world. Furthermore, economic models provide the 

basis for scarce resource allocation and creation of incentives for participation in the type of 

distributed, autonomous digital library mentioned earlier. The same technology that offers the 

potential to help people find information they need and want, is also, at least know, fueling 

information overload. This together with the dynamic, ephemeral nature of WWW-enabled 

digital libraries, places great demand on middleware to support intelligent resource 

discovered and characterization (e.g. indexing). And finally , multilingual issues, mostly 

ignored in the (US) NSF funded DLI, is of critical importance in the EU and becoming more so 

in the USA. It is clearly critical to interoperability and the semantic level. 

Learnings from the American Memory for the Piazza 

di Ninive 

This latter expose on issues and the future of digital libraries is useful in itself for the 

development of the Piazza di Ninive. However, the compilers of this case study feel that a 

few elements are missing in the case study at hand that are most relevant for the Piazza 

itself: 

A community support infrastructure: Most digital libraries are mainly repositories of digitized 

content (sometimes active through notification mechanisms that alert users to particular new 

content that fits their interest profile) and not so much vehicles for exchange and 

development in a particular community. It is strongly felt that although the provision of an 

electronic collection of documents is an important functionality of the Piazza di Ninive, the 

real important part is the functionality for exchange and mutual development of the 

profession of teaching in Italy. 

An easy to use content uploading mechanism: Furthermore, it is observed that content 

uploading in the digital library described in this case study cannot be done by members of the 

user community. For knowledge sharing and development, easy-to-use content uploading 

mechanisms are a sine-qua-non for a support environment like the Piazza di Ninive. 

Content focussed on lessons learned. The content in the American Memory stems from 

existing collections and was not authored intentionally to convey lessons learned on 

american history to the users of the American Memory. In the Piazza di Ninive case 

CIBIT 165 


however, the content of the website should very much be focussed on experience sharing in 

the Italian educational community. Ways of working for lessons learned authoring, sharing 

and use are missing from the American Memory case study. 

Content categorisation. The American Memory uses a content categorisation system that is 

inherited from the librarian tradition. In the Piazza di Ninive case, content categorisation 

should follow the mental models of the users in the educational community. The elicitation of 

these mental models in an important task necessary to feed the information design of the 

Piazza di Ninive website. 

Mingling content with lessons. The American Memory provides a good example on how to 

mingle existing content with the possibility to create and follow lessons. In this respect, the 

Learning Page functionality of the American Memory can inspire the developers of the 

Piazza di Ninive. 

Digitizing content seems time-consuming. Although it is not clear to the compilers of this case 

study how much effort was put in the development of the American Memory, the time frame 

of development and the importance with which the initiative was endorsed suggests that the 

development of a digital library is a time consuming activity, that stretches years rather than 

months. It should be noted that the compilers of this case study have not investigated timeto-market 

parameters of this and other digital libraries. 

References 

The following references are relevant for this case study: 

Web references: 

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amhome.html (the American Memory website). This website 

provides much of the material that is presented in this case study. 

http://www.acm.org/dl (the digital library of the ACM). This digital library uses an e-commerce 

facility to charge users for obtaining copies of the documents in the library. 

http://computer.org/epub (the digital library of the IEEE computing society) 

http://www.jstor.org (the online scholarly journal archive) 

http://www.informedia.cs.cmu.edu (the terabyte digital video library project). This digital 

library is a showcase for the integration of video processing, speech processing, information 

retrieval and image processing, containing e.g. video news of CNN, documentary video from 

the British Open University, as well as material from several US government agencies. As of 

May 1998, the library contained more than 1000 hours of news and 400 hours of 

documentary video. 

http://www.nzdl.org (the New Zealand digital library). This digital library offers multi-lingual 

interfaces to its collections, as well as special retrieval engines for nontextual information. 

http://www-diglib.stanford.edu (the Stanford digital library). Within the Stanford digital library 

initiative, the Stanford Digital Library Infobus has been developed, to be able to broker digital 

library services such as document summarization, on-line payment, rights management, 

query translation and metadata management for distributed collections that are using 

different standards. Through the infobus, implemented as a distributed CORBA-based object 

CIBIT 166 


system, users can access digital library services without being aware of the standards that 

are used by the resources providing the service: the infobus operates as a broker between 

the user and the service providers. This is particularly important, because the Infobus 

provides a mechanism to overcome interoperability issues. 

http://www.cimic.rutgers.edu/~adl (the Advanced in Digital Libraries conference website). 

This conference is a platform for exchange in the digital library research and practitioners 

community. For others, see below. 

http://www.area.pi.cnr.it/ErcimDL/ (The ERCIM Digital Library Initiative website). 

Journal Special Issues on Digital Libraries: 

Communications of the ACM. Special Issue on Digital Libraries. April 1995, 38(4). 

ERCIM (European Research Council for Informatics and Mathematics) News. A Special 

Issue on Digital Libraries. October 1996, Vol. 27. 

IEEE Computer. Special Issue on the U.S. Digital Library Initiative. May 1996. 

IEEE Computer. Special Issue on Digital Libraries Challenges. February 1999. 

SIGLINK Newsletter. Special Issue on Digital Libraries. September 1995, 4(2). 

Digital Library Journals: 

D-Lib Magazine. "The Magazine of Digital Library Research." July 1995 - Present. 

International Journal on Digital Libraries. Springer-Verlag: Berlin, Germany. 1996-present. 

Conferences/Proceedings: 

Organizing the Global Digital Library (OGDL): Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries. 

The International Symposium on Research, Development, & Practice in Digital Libraries 

(ISDL). 

ACM International Conference on Digital Libraries. 

International Conference on Conceptions of Library and Information Science (CoLIS). 

IEEE Advances in Digital Libraries (ADL) Conference. 

European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries (ECDL). 

DELOS Series of Workshop Proceedings. 

Reports: 

An International Research Agenda for Digital Libraries, Summary Report of the Series of 

Joint NSF-EU Working Groups on Future Directions for Digital Libraries Research, October 

12, 1998, Editors: Peter Schäuble and Alan F. Smeaton. 

This report gives an excellent overview of current issues in digital libraries research as well 

as visions on how digital libraries will evolve in the future. 

People: 

Digital libraries experts contacted for this case study: 

Costantino Thanos - IEI-CNR 

ERCIM DLI Coordinator 

Tel: +39 50 593429 

E-mail: thanos@iei.pi.cnr.it 

Alan Smeaton 

Dublin City University 

asmeaton@compapp.dcu.ie 

Contact information American Memory: 

Carl Fleischhauer 

CIBIT 167 


Coordinator American Memory Project 

National Digital Library 

Washington D.C, USA 

+1-202-707-6233 

cfle@loc.gov 

CIBIT 168 


NDL Statement 

An NDL statement is added to the case study to better understand the backgrounds. It is the 

result of an interview that was held with the Operations Manager of the National Digital 

Library Programme. The protocol was provided by Bob Zich to Kenniscentrum CIBIT. 

Agency: 

Library of Congress (LOC), National Digital Library Program (NDLP) 

URL: 

http://www.loc.gov/, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/dli2/html/lcndlp.html 

Contacts: 

Bob Zich, Director of Electronic Programs, NDLP, 202-707-8330, 

rzic@loc.gov; 

Nancy Eichacker, Operations Manager, NDLP, 202-707-1335, neic@loc.gov 

Interview: conducted on the phone 04 May 1999 by Kristina Pleiss 

Note: Except where noted, the following information applies to the NDLP 

within the LOC, which accounts for about 90% of the total LOC Web site 

content. 

Background: 

The LOC has a total of about 4500 employees. The Web site was initiated in 

July 1994, and currently consists of a significant, although undetermined, 

number of documents. 

[E.g. The National Digital Library alone is projected to consist of 6.85 

million digital files by the end of 2000.] It receives over 90 million hits 

per month (including the library catalog). 

1. How are you organized to provide Internet Services? What are the full 

time equivalents (FTEs) for the following roles and where are they 

assigned? (IS department, business unit, Public Relations department, etc): 

Developer/Programmer (HTML, Scripting, Java, etc.): 

Content Development (editors, writers and other administrative roles 

dedicated specifically to content) 

Graphics Designers 

System Administrators (Web Server, File Wall, other infrastructure) 

Other: (Network and Server Engineering, Management, etc.): 

The NDLP has a total of 95 full-time employees, out of which 65 are 

involved in Web production. Although it is difficult to quantify since 

multiple roles are performed 

(see #2), the following FTEs apply: 3 developer/programmers, 7 graphic 

designers, and 6 system administrators. 

2. Do Web workers perform multiple roles? (for example, develop content, do 

graphic design and program HTML) 

Most Web developers perform multiple roles such as programming HTML and 

graphic design. 

Content development, however, is a distinct, full-time activity. 

3. What roles do your various Business Units play in developing and 

managing the site? 

Most of the sections within the LOC Web site operate relatively 

autonomously in regard to both Web production and policy. Approval of Web 

CIBIT 169 


pages is the responsibility of each business unit, although all documents 

must comply with the LOC Internet 

guidelines (see #8). 

The Publishing Board, composed of management with few Web-related 

responsibilities, determines high-level policy. 

4. What roles does your Information Services department play? 

The Information Technical Services unit has leased 6 system administrators 

to the NDLP. 

In addition, it performs system administration, network engineering, and 

related tasks on an organization-wide basis. 

5. Do you have a Marketing, Communications or Public Relations department? 

If so what roles do they play? 

The Public Relations Officer plays a major role in establishing both the 

design and the purpose of the main LOC Web site. Each section (e.g. the 

NDLP), however, operates relatively autonomously in regard to both Web 

production and policy. 

6. Do you contract out any portions of your Web development? 

Document conversion services (i.e. large-scale scanning) are contracted out 

on a multi-year basis. Only limited scanning for online exhibits and rush 

projects is performed in-house. All other Web production is performed by 

NDLP staff. 

7. How often do you change or update your design? 

The NDLP Web site is redesigned approximately every two years. Typically, 

major updates are due to the Web developers' collective desire to modernize 

or simply change the design. The main LOC site was recently redesigned in 

order to highlight the agency's upcoming bicentennial. 

8. How did you develop your design standards? What resources did you use to 

determine "best practice"? 

No formal process exists for developing design standards at the NDLP, 

although the Web 

Style Guide (http://lcweb.loc.gov/loc/webstyle/) has existed since late 

1997. Design ideas are gleaned from a general familiarity with Internet 

trends as well as actively looking at Web sites from other cultural 

institutions and government 

agencies. In order to offer the broadest site accessibility, especially for 

schools, a minimalist 

approach is followed and certain limits are placed on what technologies or 

features can be included (e.g. Java, frames). A different set of design 

standards are enforced among university grantees to ensure both 

interoperability and a common interface. 

9. Could you describe your site content management processes and/or 

tools/software/DBMS you use? 

Site content management processes vary depending on the collection. There 

is no standard "toolkit" for Web production, with each individual developer 

utilizing a number of common software packages (e.g. PhotoShop, HTML 

editors). Because development of the 

CIBIT 170 


LOC Web site is decentralized, no site management software is utilized. 

Note that due to the LOC's emphasis on information retrieval, techniques 

for capturing and storing metadata are employed. 

10. If you provide news stories, how long are these archived? Are there 

plans to archive them in some other way when the number of articles becomes 

great? 

In accordance with the LOC's strong support for digital preservation 

efforts, all NDLP Web documents - with the exception of daily announcements 

- are archived indefinitely. 

11. What is your annual budget for Web development and management? 

The annual NDLP budget is $12 million, about half of which is allotted to 

salaries. 

12. What is your strategy for the next two-to-five years? 

The long-term strategy for the NDLP Web site is determined by the Digital 

Futures Group. 

It is anticipated to be at least a continuation, and possibly an increase, 

of the current efforts. Specific tentative plans include hiring an external 

consultant to perform a Web site usability study. 

13. Do you measure return on investment, If so how? 

No formal mechanisms exist for measuring ROI at the NDLP. Due to the 

combination of government ($20 million) and private ($45 million) monies, 

there is no lack of funding. 

In addition, since the program is viewed as a proof-of-concept effort, the 

extreme start-up costs are not unexpected. Two types of existing ROI-like 

measures are user surveys and individual reporting requirements for each 

corporate sponsor. Note that there is a strong organizational mandate to 

continue providing NLDP documents on the Web at no charge to the public. 

ADDENDUM 

My interpretation of content developer is that 

> it is the staff that is involved with collection selection, 

> processing, organization (finding aid and database work, image 

> linking, file naming), and packaging for web publication. That 

> packaging step is what we refer to as the development of framing 

> materials, or the collection framework. In the NDLP production 

> operation we have teams of these content staff who are organized 

> roughly by organizational affiliation--by the LC division with which 

> they work. We have a number of production teams (one that works with 

> the Rare Book Division, one for Prints and Photographs, one for 

> Geography and Maps, Manuscripts, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and 

> Recorded Sound, Music, American Folklife Center, the Law Library, and 

> General Collections). We also have a project team for African 

> American Collections and two other special project teams. Finally, we 

> have what we call a production team and editorial team, which provide 

> technical production support and editing services to the other 

> production teams. There are 52 staff who work on this array of 

> teams. Although we tap into the staff of the divisions themselves 

> (curatorial and processing staff) for their collections knowledge, I 

CIBIT 171 


� do not think of them as direct project support and have not counted 

� > them in my total of 52. 

CIBIT 172 


Annex: case study long lists 

Private sector case studies long list 

N° 

Organisation Size Project 

name/Specification 

Name /URL Further Research Case / Design 

1. 3COM ?EK N (long shot) ? 

2. 3M Exploitation of knowledge, John Howells N (long shot) C 

learning and sharing 

culture, 

interface 

customer 

3. American memory and 

Whole host of heavy duty systems for Y, if interested in D 

other digital library systems 

retrieving rich information, interesting from a technology foundations for 

(technical) design point of view for Piazza di heavy duty community 

Ninive. 

systems 

http://memory.loc.gov/ 

4. Amoco Corporation Dave Ledet, Wanda Jones Known case, no description 

found 

C 

5. AMS (American 8000 Knowledge based 

N C 

Management Systems) 

Communities of Practice 

6. Anglian Water Encyclopaedia on ?Eelco contact 

Y (from perspective of C / D 

water/system to enable 

creation, collection and 

http://www.anglianwater.co.uk/ design) 

dissemination 

knowledge of water 

of 

7. Arthur Andersen Knowledge Repository Terry Finerty, Wendi Buckowitz, William Ives Y C /D 

8. Bass Brewers Intranet with various Mike Maryon N C 

publishing services 

9. Bekaert Group Jan Sijnave Known case, no description 

found 

? 

10. Boeing Steven Poltrock, Lisa Pratt N (long shot) C 

11. BRINT WWW 

Yoghesh Malhotra Y (from perspective of C / D 

users 

design) 

12. British American Tobacco Intranet Brian O’Connell C 

13. British Petroleum Virtual Teamwork, already 

working on the 2 nd Kent Greenes Y (Rated as one of the most C 

level of 

elaborate KM projects) 

CIBIT 173 


the KM project, 

connecting knowledge 

and strategic focus 

14. British Telecom Their intranet is 

amazingly good, 

according to various 

media and experts. The 

intranet supports their 

knowledge sharing 

culture of communities of 

interest and it includes 

agent technology with 

various functions, 

Grapevine, search 

engines, et cetera. 

15. Buckman Labs 1300 K’Netix (Knowledge 

Infrastructure for sharing 

knowledge) / Multi-lingual 

learning 

center/Communities of 

practice, 

learning) 

interest and 

16. Caltex Intranet to support 

17. Chevron 

network of professionals 

Best Practice Transfer, 

learning organisation, 

18. Contact Consortium 

Communities 

Hub for experiences for 

design of virtual 

19. Department of Defense 

environments 

Center for Army Lessons 

Learned (CALL)/ Lessons 

Learned sharing system 

20. Department of Energy The Department of 

Energy Lessons Learned 

Programme/Lessons 

Learned sharing system 

(DOELLIS) 

Mick Cope, Seona McGregor, Scott Stewart Y C / D 

Melissie Rumizen, Sheldon Ellis Y (Rated as one of the most 

elaborate KM projects) 

Barry Hobson N C 

Jim Tighe, Patti Wagner, Jeffrey Stemke Y (Frequently remarked as 

the case study for 

knowledge transfer) 

Bruce Damer 

www.ccon.org 

Y (if interested in virtual 

environments) 

? Y (Known as one of the 

most elaborate Lessons 

? 

Learned systems) 

Y (government case study 

for KM) 

21. DOW Corning ? ? 

22. EDS Intranets for enterprise Julian Morgan-Jones, Donna Stemmer 

wide 



23. Eli Lily ?EK ? ? 

CIBIT 174 


C 

D 

C 

C

24. Ford Motor Corporation ?EK ? ? 

25. Glaxo Wellcome Helen Chapman N C 

26. HEFCE John Rushforth Y (educational body case 

study) 

? 

27. Hewlett-Packard Move from individual Judy Lewis, David Akers, Chuck Sieloff, Y C 

knowledge to Marilyn Martiny 

organisational knowledge 

28. Hofmann-LaRoche Much faster business Patricia Seemann N C 

process due to 

knowledge explicitation 

and database for sharing 

29. HSL (Dutch High Speed 

Railway) 

http://www.hslzuid.nl 

Y (micro case study, but 

interesting in terms of 

design) 

D 

30. Hughes Space 

Communication 

and 

http://www.hughespace.com/ 

N (no info available) 

31. Human Genome www.ornl.gov/hgmis 

US Department of Energy, 

Oakridge National Laboratory 

Y (interesting, big 

knowledge sharing project) 

D 

32. IBM Knowledge ecologies, Dave Snowden Y C 



markets, 

mapping,recreation of 

medieval craft halls within 

organisations for tacit 

knowledge exchange 

33. ICL 19.000 VIK (Valuing ICL Elizabeth Lank Y C 

Knowledge) 

34. Intel N.S. Sridharan Y C 

35. International Benchmarking 

Clearinghouse 

http://www.ibc.apqc.org/ 

C / D 

36. Linux Community building their 

own operating system 

http://www.linux.org Y C 

37. Lucent Technologies Viesturs Vucins N (no info available, though C 

EK has contacts, long 

38. Manpower Knowledge-base, Global Marc Bunke 

shot)) 

Y C 

learning center, Virtual 

39. Microsoft 

account management. 

Interesting in terms of 

delivery systems for MS 

Allan Dornan Y (but long shot) C 

training and best 

CIBIT 175 


practices 

internal KM 

as well as 

40. Monsanto 30000 Tools and techniques to 

help create a learning and 

sharing organisation 

41. NASA The NASA Space 

Engineering Lessons 

Learned Programme/ 

Lessons Learned sharing 

system (SELL) 

42. Nationaal kennisdebat 

(National Knowledge 

Debate, organised by Dutch 

Ministry of Education) 

Jane Rady, John Garret Y C 

Maarten Sierhuis, Bill Clancey 

http://www.nasa.gov/ 

http://wwwdarwin.arc.nasa.gov/DARWINweb/ 

papers/ISCATA98Paper0198.html 

http://wwwdarwin.arc.nasa.gov/DARWINweb/ 

papers/ICIS98Paper043098.html 

"NASA is deeply committed to spreading the 

unique knowledge that flows from its 

aeronautics and space research...." 

Y C 

15 M Interesting case study, because it partly failed Y (if interested in failures as 

well) 

43. National Semiconductor Emphasize culture and 

technology, deploys Lotus 

Notes and Web-based 

technology, faculty clubs, 

interest profiles and 

44. NatWEST 

sharing rallies 

Tools that allow people 

to instruct software 

agents so they perform 

better as the people who 

are using them learn. 

Tools are developed by 

group with carte blanche. 

45. Nokia Lotus Notes based 

infrastructure, 

Competence center, webbased 

applications using 

Domino, content 

management processes, 

team-work, 

systems. 

reward 

? N (contacts via Etienne 

Wenger, but long shot)) 

Bruce Greenhalgh, Sherman Woo N (faintly interesting from 

change mgt perspective) 

Ilkka Tuomi Y C 

CIBIT 176 


C 

C 

C

46. Nortel Networks Web-based knowledge Tony Roberts N C 

management projects 

throughout Europe 

47. Novartis AG 86000 Web-based technology Joerg Staeheli Y C 

for collaboration (yellowpages, 

blue pages, 

knowledge market place), 

grants to allow different 

business units work 

together, hosting periodic 

knowledge fairs to spark 

ideas 

48. Pfizer Inc ? N (hard to get info, though 

EK has contacts)) 

C 

49. Phillips 

Company 

Petroleum 

Per Steinar Johansen N (long shot) ? 

50. Pink Elephant Education and training, 

job rotation to let people 

Theo Locher Y C 

learn, coaching, 

knowledge transfer via a 

transfer center. 

51. Royal Mail Integration of people, Marc Baker N C 

process and technology 

to support the 

development of a 


culture 

sharing 

52. Sears Sears success sharing 

N C 

intranet/best 

transfer system 

practice 

53. Shell New Ways of Arjan van Unnik Y (for their simple design) C/D 

Working/Communities of 

Practice 

54. Siemens KEC Networking/ Josef Hofer-Alfeis, Stefan Schoen Y C 

knowledge sharing 

project, process oriented, 

CoPs 

55. Singapore ONE ?EK Y (mega infrastructure for 

all kinds of public services) 

C/D 

56. Sollac Best practice and lessons 

learned database, intranet 

with video conferencing, 

Daniel Atlan N C 

Email, shared 

CIBIT 177 


documents, various 

databases, technology 

watch, reward systems. 

57. Sprint Developed knowledge - N (not much info available) C 

base and web site, 

publishing guidelines, 

defined processes for 

reviewing, updating and 

retiring content and 

developed an extensive 

communication plan 

58. Sun Microsystems ?EK N ? 

59. Swiss Life ?EK N ? 

60. Texaco Communities of Practice Betty Zimmerman N C 

61. Texas Instruments Best Practice Transfer Carla O’Dell Y (Frequently remarked as C 

the case study for 

62. The WELL, UCLA Tool for Communities Marc A. Smith 

knowledge transfer) 

Y D 

63. Unilever Knowledge Mapping Manfred Aben N (not much public C 

information: 

is an issue) 

confidentiality 

64. US West ? C 

65. Volkswagen WWDECK (World Wide Ferdinand Schultz, Christof Senghaas Y C 

Development and 

Exchange of Corporate 

Knowledge) very 

elaborate knowledge 

management project, with 

various organisational 

and technological 

components 

66. World Wildlife Fund Jan van den Bremer Y C 

67. Worldbank Stephen Denning Y C 

68. XEROX Eureka (knowledge Danny Bobrow, Marilyn Whalen Y C 

sharing that works since 

the last couple of years) 

CIBIT 178 


Remarks: 

1. The required column ‘size’ can’t be filled out for almost all of the case studies, the only number most studies give is the amount of employees the company has, they don’t give a number of users of the 

specific case. Therefore the column is mostly empty. 

2. Many cases included in the long-list are known to Eelco and myself, but due to the limited amount of time we couldn’t describe each case study. 

3. Further Research indicates if we find it valuable to further investigate the stated case or company. 

4. Case or Design indicates if the case is useful as content for Piazza di Ninive or relevant as a design example for the Piazza. 

5. We have a host of examples that can help designing (in terms of functionality and technical design) the Piazza environment. We have not (yet) focussed on that element of the work. Some of them are 

included in the list, but we need some time to sort them all out. For example, we have not (yet) looked into big community environments (aol, community intelligence labs, Excite The Campus, etc.), but 

we can if you wish to (can be inspiring in terms of setting up the Piazza). 

Public sector case studies long list 

N° 

Organisation Size Project name/Specification Name /URL Further Research Case / Design 

69. KALIF, European Union 

base : Netherlands 

area : Europe 

70. BVENET 

base Netherlands 

area Netherlands 

71. MASIE-CENTER 

base : USA 

area : worldwide 

72. Technical University of Twente, faculty of 

applied educational sciences 

base : Netherlands 

area : Europe 

73. askeric 

base : USA 

area : Worldwide 

74. scholars.com 

base : Canada 


75. Province of New Brunswick, Canada 

base Canada, 

area : Province of New Brunswick 

~300 Knowledge and Learning infrastructure for the Learning 

and Training Industry 

Electronic information services for professionals in the 

business of adult learning for business 

Dutch website 

All kinds of electronic and regular information services 

and professionalisation events for professionals in the 

online learning business 

features GURU Elliot Masie. (english 

State of the art research center in the field of online 

learning and online professionalisation 

Electronic information services for professionals in the 

business of adult learning for business 

In the business of online delivery of real quality 

education including coaching services for students and 

coaches 

Excellent performance in the telecommunications 

hardware infrastructure 

Eelco Kruizinga 

www.kalif.org 

we can tell you all you want C/D 

www.bvenet.nl Y D 

Elliot Masie 

Www.masie.com 

Y C/D 

Betty Collis, known contact ? C/D 

www.askeric.com ? C/D 

www.scholars.com Y ? C / D 

Leonard Weeks Managing Director 

no URL yet 

Y? D 

76. IQPORT Learning infrastructure for life long learning services. www.iqport.com Y D 

CIBIT 179 


ase : UK 


77. Middlesex University 

School for Life long Learning 

base : UK 


78. GEM 

base : Italy 


79. website on doctoral research on 

educational technology 

80. University of Helsinki Excellent research and practice on life long learning 

initiatives 

Information and knowledge exchange with a currency 

based value and reward system 

Excellent Work Based Learning programmes 

the Dean of this school is known Y C 

including accreditation of work based learning with 

academic titles 

contact 

very experienced with academic level 

professionalisation 

teachers 

programme for trainers and 

Italian based organisation http://qem.jrc.it/english Y C/D 

http://www.edtech.unco. 

edu/disswww/dissdir.ht 

m 

Jussi Koski, known contact, also 

closely related to Nonaka 

CIBIT 180 


Y !

81. UCLA 

base : USA 


82. GKN (Global Knowledge Network) 

base : worldwide 


83. Microsoft University 

base : USA 


84. University of Colorado 

Base :State of Colorado, USA 

area : USA 

online learning site including a professionalisation area 

for online trainers 

business good practice of worldwide organisation of 

learning services in hybrid format, online combined 

with in class learning 

http://www.OnlineLearni 

ng.net 

www.globalknowledge.n 

et 

prof. Ghosh, Germany through 

Amalia di Stefano (CLEPA, Austria) 

state of the art, because they have to be www.microsoft.com 

section Education 

CU-Online, just one example of virtual universities as a 

part of the content 

85. Circle of Fire 3D VR worlds technical infra, nice to look at from a 

design point of view 

86. Digischool, a private initiative, great on 

Excellent private initiative by primary school teachers 

autonomy 

with large audience in the Netherlands. 

87. CIBIT 

1000 Good practice on communities of study, hybrid 

base : the Netherlands 

area : Europe 

learning. 

88. Dutch Government 

base : the Netherlands 

area : Netherlands 

(English translation available) 

Life long learning nation wide discussion, national 

debate 

http://www.cuonline.edu 

. 

www.activeworlds.com 

Www.cibit.nl 

www.virtual.cibit.nl 

CIBIT 181 


? 

Y? D 

Y? D 

www.digischool.nl Y C 

D ? 

we can tell you all you want to 

know 

D 

www.lll.nl Y C/D 

C 

D

Analisi - knowledge management case studies - Aetnanet

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?