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The extent to which a
knowledge-based society, and organisations within it, can succeed will
depend, among other things, on how effectively it can create new
knowledge, share knowledge, apply that knowledge and use that
knowledge to provide new products, services and processes. The
pervasiveness of computing has impacted on the individual and the
society in which they live. Commercial organizations increasingly face
global competition and new business challenges. They must seek to find
new ways of competing effectively, attempting to distinguish
themselves by developing products and services based on a unique
combination of knowledge and expertise. Non-commercial organisations
such as government departments and agencies, public and non-profit
organisations also have to effectively integrate into the emerging
knowledge based society. Initiatives such as e-government and
e-citizenship, e-learning, e-business, to name but a few, present
serious challenges for individuals and organisations in a
knowledge-based society.
Knowledge Management is based on the
idea that an organisation’s most valuable resource is its knowledge
which may be enshrined in its people and processes and the information
systems, computer based or other, used to support these. Knowledge
management is about ensuring that people have the knowledge they need,
where they need it, when they need it – the right knowledge, in the
right place, at the right time. Knowledge Management has now become
the focus of considerable attention and is emerging as a mainstream
discipline and is increasingly becoming part of organisational
culture.
An educated, skilled workforce that
can create and use knowledge effectively, together with a dynamic,
supporting telecommunications infrastructure and continual learning,
research and development and innovation, have become integral to
creating and sustaining a knowledge-based society capable of competing
globally. Information technology and computing professionals play a
key role in using knowledge management to meet business challenges and
develop business solutions and to meet social challenges and develop
social solutions.
Currently there is a skills gap in
the Information Technology sector globally and in Ireland in
particular. It has become necessary to increase the number and quality
of higher education graduates at all levels to support the knowledge
economy. In the past computing graduates have not been equipped with
all the skills required to take on the knowledge-intensive roles
computing professionals must now adopt to help organisations meet the
challenges posed by the knowledge-based society. Upskilling of the
existing workforce and raising education levels has been recognized as
essential in this task.
Within knowledge management,
computing professionals use their knowledge and intellect to help
organisations convert ideas into products, services and processes.
Their main value to an organization is building and exploiting a
knowledge infrastructure to facilitate knowledge management processes,
establishing environments in which other knowledge workers can create,
learn, share and use knowledge for the benefit of the organization and
its customers. They will be required to work collaboratively with
other knowledge workers within an organization. They will be required
to identify, create, collect, codify, build and map knowledge into
knowledge bases which can be used by other knowledge workers and users
and knowledge systems. They will also be required to build knowledge
based systems to exploit these knowledge bases to facilitate other
knowledge workers and users and knowledge based systems. All such
tasks will be undertaken in an existing enterprise infrastructure into
which any new endeavour must be integrated in a secure manner. Many
such undertakings will be as part of a wider innovation within the
organization and in many cases may require a degree of innovation on
behalf of the computing professional.
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