Thursday, November 10, 2016

Transferring of Knowledge: Myths and Realities of Reinvention

“Knowledge is the Mother of Wisdom and Virtue”
Motto Engraved in the
stained glass of the ceiling in the Jubilee Room (formerly the main reading room of the Parliamentary Library)

 
Some of the attitude and policy changes towards knowledge transfer and management can start from the bottom, but true change is spawned by leadership — and that begins at the top ...
~  Dr Russell Cope ... Paraphrased  - (Example of Knowledge Transfer within the parliamentary environment)


If we cannot make sharing of ideas, information and knowledge work for all, in the end it will work for none ... Steve Jobs on why less is more

You can view the web cast of this conference at summitwebcasting.com/webcast/11-18-16/.

Knowledge Tranfer and Rising Tide of Information ...  Knowledge is a  critical asset  to public sector organizations, and successfully managing this asset is essential if governments are to achieve their goals and objectives. Private and public sector organizations have recognized that facilitating the generation, sharing and use of knowledge across organizational boundaries is critical to meeting the challenges of the future. Connecting the right people with the right knowledge at the right time can, among other things, enhance decision making, ensure better-informed policy and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of operations through innovation...
This web-tool contains guidance in numerous forms to aid public sector organizations in both evaluating and improving practices related to the strategic management of knowledge. It is flexible so that organizations can use the practices, tools and ideas that work for their particular context.
The central feature of the good practice guide is a self-assessment tool that includes two key components, the Self-assessment Guide (left side of the brain) and the interactive self-assessment instrument (right side of the brain)
“Who is RDA? The Research Data Alliance (RDA) is an international organization focused 
on the development of infrastructure and community activities aimed to reduce barriers to data sharing and exchange, and promote the acceleration of data driven innovation worldwide

 ATPI Logo (2014)

The American Tax Policy Institute sponsored a conference on Improving the Tax System Using Advances in Social Knowledge and Technology at Skadden's Washington, D.C. office on Friday:
Panel 1:  How behavioral economics relates to and might be taken into account in developing tax policy and administration
  • James Alm (Tulane) (Panel Chair)
  • Mike Hawkins (HM Revenue & Customs)
  • Eric LoPresti (Taxpayer Advocate Service, IRS)
Panel 2:  Using social science to improve the tax system and promote voluntary compliance
  • Susan C. Morse (Texas) (Panel Chair)
  • John Guyton (Office of Research, Applied Analytics & Statistics, IRS)
  • Ronald Hodge (Office of Research, Applied Analytics & Statistics, IRS)
Panel 3:  Applying artificial intelligence and Big Data principles to Improve Compliance and the Examination Function
  • Sarah Lawsky (Northwestern) (Panel Chair) 
  • Benjamin Herndon (Office of Research, Applied Analytics & Statistics, IRS)
Panel 4:  Addressing problems of taxpayer privacy, identity theft and data security
  • Leslie Book (Villanova) (Panel Chair)
  • Kenneth C. Corbin (Return Integrity and Compliance Services, IRS)
  • Damon Asper (Return Integrity & Compliance Services, IRS)


Slideshare Presentation – “Repository-agnostic data curation Dash is a user-friendly data deposit and discovery platform in development by the UC Curation Center. John E. Kratz, Stephen Abrams, Shirin Faenza, Scott Fisher, Nancy Hoebelheinrich, Marisa Strong, Bhavitavya Vedul.a Funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, award #58062.”

Toward Harnessing Language in Support of Intersectionality and Cross-sector Power Building Language is a key ingredient in a winning theory of change. Language can build bridges  and change minds. By acknowledging the ability of language to shape and reflect reality, progressive campaigns can become more powerful vehicles for social change, inclusion, and justice
Citizenscience.gov is an official government website designed to accelerate the use of crowdsourcing and citizen science across the U.S. government. The site provides a portal to three key assets for federal practitioners: a searchable catalog of federally supported citizen science projects, a toolkit to assist with designing and maintaining projects, and a gateway to a federalcommunity of practice to share best practices.”


ABA Journal, Julie Sobowale, April 1, 2016: “Artificial intelligence is changing the way lawyers think, the way they do business and the way they interact with clients. Artificial intelligence is more than legal technology. It is the next great hope that will revolutionize the legal profession. Change can be brought on through pushing existing ideas. What makes artificial intelligence stand out is the potential for a paradigm shift in how legal work is done. AI, sometimes referred to as cognitive computing, refers to computers learning how to complete tasks traditionally done by humans. The focus is on computers looking for patterns in data, carrying out tests to evaluate the data and finding results. Chicago-based NexLP, which stands for next generation language processing, is creating new ways for lawyers to look at data…

  • “Nearly 80 percent of a company’s data is unstructured,” [Jay] Leib says. “While unstructured data represents the lion’s share of a company’s data, for years lawyers have been stuck with antiquated tools that focus primarily or solely on Boolean search. Better tools are needed to truly understand data, infer meaning, classify the various types of ideas present, and help you get to the result fast—even if that result didn’t involve the keywords you used.” [David] Roth helped develop technology that can turn information into stories. Story Engine is a program that can read through unstructured data and summarize conversations, including the ideas discussed, the frequency of the communication and the mood of the speakers. The company uses the data to build models to analyze behavior and find signs of fraud or litigation…”

Kennedy Elliott Visual Journalist Washington Post – 39 studies about human perception in 30 minutes – “Graphics editors like me often rely on common wisdom and experiential knowledge to inform our decisions about design and visualization choices — which is incredibly valuable
Podcasting and Social media influences and permeates many aspects of daily life for all Citizens today,. and the workforce is no exception. These digital platforms offer the potential to enhance worker productivity by fostering connections with colleagues and resources around the globe ...


Presentation by Deborah Kilroe, Associate Director for Communications at CBO, at the 
Fourth Annual Global Network of Parliamentary Budget Officers Assembly. “CBO continually strives to make its work more accessible on its website and social media platforms. This presentation provides an overview of the significant innovations that CBO has implemented in recent years to enhance the online presentation and accessibility of the agency’s work.”
Via ars technica uk this is a long read that documents the long, circuitous, challenging and unfulfilled promise of access to human knowledge provided without impediments specific to economic or social status, country of origin, age, ethnicity, i.e., for everyone – Open access: All human knowledge is there—so why can’t everybody access it...

Metaknowledge – Crowds aren’t as smart as we thought, since some people know more than others. A simple trick can find the ones you want  by George Musser
“Dražen Prelec, a behavioural economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is working on a way to smarten up the hive mind. One reason that crowds mess up, he notes, is the hegemony of common knowledge. Even when people make independent judgments, they might be working off the same information. When you average everyone’s judgments, information that is known to all gets counted repeatedly, once for each person, which gives it more significance than it deserves and drowns out diverse sources of knowledge. In the end, the lowest common denominator dominates…Good metaknowledge is precious. It requires not only that you know a subject but also
that you know yourself. And self-knowledge is the most difficult knowledge of all.”
An algorithm that finds truth even if most people are wrong

Via LLRX.com – Peter Drucker and the Forward Focused Mindset: Author, professor, editor Bruce Rosensteinhighlights his 10 Elements of the Future based on his many years of study of Peter Drucker’s work. Theseelements are an actionable resource for proactively and positively engaging with the multifaceted challenges and opportunities we are encountering in our work places and personal lives.
Intellectual Property and Collaborative Research

Health issues funding opportunities for info sharing and analysis


Knowledge@Wharton – “When it comes to workplace events that produce resent ent and anxiety, few score higher than the big annual performance review. Calls to end this time-consuming and often unproductive practice have gone unheeded — until now. Recently, Adobe, Kelly Services, GE, Deloitte and PwC have ended them, and the rippling out to smaller firms and other sectors appears to be underway. To which many say: good riddance…”

“It’s a big change, the extent to which it seems to be happening, and it’s happening broadly,” says Wharton management professor Peter Cappelli, who has researched the usefulness and accuracy of performance reviews. What’s happening now is nothing less than a revolution in performance management systems, he notes, and for companies that take it seriously, “it’s a fundamental change in the way to manage your employees and the relationship with them…“
“Getting feedback once a year is totally not serving a purpose. It comes as a verdict, a judgment, whereas the intention here is to be course-correcting, to have coaching throughout the year.”–Anna A. Tavis




Napolitano, Giulio, Looking for a Smarter Government (and Administrative Law) in the Age of Uncertainty (September 23, 2016). Forthcoming, Comparative administrative law, edited by Susan Rose-Ackerman and Peter Lindseth, II edition, Edward Elgar. Available for download at SSRN:http://ssrn.com/abstract=2842495
“The paper analyzes to what extent the crisis erupted in 2008 and the subsequent age of global uncertainty changed the recipes of reinventing government and administrative reform experienced in the last two decades of the twentieth century, characterized by the rolling back of the state, due to its fiscal crisis, the opening of markets, and the advancement of globalization. As a matter of fact, the explosion of the financial and economic crisis of 2008 and its long-lasting effects definitely undermined the unquestioned confidence in a clear set of measures aiming to push back the state and to mimic market recipes in its management.  In a more and more uncertain context, a global search for a smarter and simpler government, able to do more (or at least the same) with less, started in last ten years. Privatization and deregulation were put at the margins of the political agenda, even if still practiced in specific cases. These were supplanted by a more sophisticated approach to regulation, based on public participation and accountability, retrospective review, and cognitive sciences. A significant revision of NPM took place too. Major attention was paid to setting priorities, measuring and publicizing outcomes, enhancing transparency and accountability. Local governments were concentrated in number and specialized in tasks. The establishment of a digital government and of effective electronic services accessible to all required an overall commitment to advance the public sector at the frontier of technological innovation. A relevant reformation of administrative law too was needed to cope with all these major transformations.  The paper, however, highlights that the praise for a smarter government runs the risk of remaining an ambiguous formula, simply revealing the absence of a set of clearly successful measures in the reforms’ toolkit. Taking seriously the quest for a smarter government, on the contrary, would require huge investments in careful policy-making, high bureaucratic capacity, continuous digital innovation, sophisticated administrative law rules and institutions. Effective change, in any case, is slow and uncertain. Governments and bureaucracies are complex machineries, which tend to perpetuate traditions and conducts. As a consequence, the impact of many reforms is simply interstitial. Only mid-term and stable policies can produce significant effects.”


The Returns to Knowledge Hierarchies [subscription req’d] Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization”> J Law Econ Organ(2016) doi:10.1093/jleo/eww008

Slideshare Presentation – “Repository-agnostic data curation Dash is a user-friendly data deposit and discovery platform in development by the UC Curation Center. John E. Kratz, Stephen Abrams, Shirin Faenza, Scott Fisher, Nancy Hoebelheinrich, Marisa Strong, Bhavitavya Vedul.a Funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, award #58062.”

Federal Workforce: Lessons Learned for Engaging Millennials and Other Age Groups, GAO-16-880T: Published: Sep 29, 2016. Publicly Released: Sep 29, 2016.“With more than 30% of federal employees eligible to retire by 2019, a lot of jobs could open up that the current federal workforce can’t fill. So, the government needs to recruit and retain the next generation of workers. Strong employee engagement—a positive feeling about one’s employer and its mission—tends to help agencies hire and keep employees. You might think that millennials are less engaged than other age groups, but the data in this testimony showed that engagement doesn’t vary much by age. Engagement increases for everyone when agencies demonstrate that they value their employees..”

 SSRN Acquired by Elsevier – “At the beginning of Summer, we promised to share our evolving technology roadmap. With new resources for design and development, we are reimagining SSRN’s possibilities. First, we implemented our long-awaited full-text search. Now we’re sending a portion of our users to a Beta version of the new site. Go to the Home page and you may be lucky enough to get a sneak peak  (visitors are being randomly sent to the new site) so do try your luck.Here’s a little more information on what we’re planning. We’re excited to share a cleaner, simpler site with easier navigation. The new Home page design is the first of a series of new pages we’ll be rolling out over the next few months. We hope you like the new look and, more importantly, that it makes it easier for you to find what you need on SSRN…”

In general, speeches are best written in simple, direct, and often short sentences that listeners easily understand. They should be written with a sense for an event’s occasion and purpose and likely audience, including such factors as age, gender, culture, profession, political affiliation, and size of audience. Speechwriters should strive to maintain a clear theme throughout a speech.Transferring Speeches


Via Library of Congress: “Since 1932, the National Press Club has hosted luncheon gatherings that have allowed presidents, visiting world leaders, and other leading personages to address the press and answer questions about pressing current affairs. In 1969, the Press Club donated to the Library of Congress audiotapes of talks they had been recording since 1952, a collection that has grown to nearly 2,000 recordings. ForFood for Thought: Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Other National Press Club Luncheon Speakers, 1954-1989, the Library has made available online talks by some of its most important luncheon speakers, including eight U.S. presidents (George H. W. BushJimmy CarterDwight D. EisenhowerGerald R. FordHerbert HooverRichard M. NixonRonald Reagan, and Harry S. Truman), six foreign heads of state (Menachem BeginFidel CastroCharles de GaulleNikita KhrushchevAnwar Sadat, and Margaret Thatcher), and such renowned cultural and political icons as Muhammad AliJames BaldwinLeonard BernsteinAudrey HepburnAlfred HitchcockBob HopeEdward R. MurrowA. Philip RandolphJonas Salk, and Adlai E. Stevenson. Accompanying essays set the topics discussed into relevant historical contexts and provide suggestions for further reading…. More about this collection
Johns Hopkins Medicine news: “When practicing and learning a new skill, making slight changes during repeat practice sessions may help people master the skill faster than practicing the task in precisely the same way, Johns Hopkins researchers report. In a study of 86 healthy volunteers asked to learn a computer-based motor skill, those who quickly adjusted to a modified practice session the second time around performed better than when repeating their original task, the researchers found. The results support the idea that a process called reconsolidation, in which existing memories are recalled and modified with new knowledge, plays a key role in the strengthening of motor skills, says senior study authorPablo A. Celnik, M.D., professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “What we found is if you practice a slightly modified version of a task you want to master, you actually learn more and faster than if you just keep practicing the exact same thing multiple times in a row,” says Celnik
Johns Hopkins Medicine news: “When practicing and learning a new skill, making slight changes during repeat practice sessions may help people master the skill faster than practicing the task in precisely the same way, Johns Hopkins researchers report. In a study of 86 healthy volunteers asked to learn a computer-based motor skill, those who quickly adjusted to a modified practice session the second time around performed better than when repeating their original task, the researchers found. The results support the idea that a process called reconsolidation, in which existing memories are recalled and modified with new knowledge, plays a key role in the strengthening of motor skills, says senior study authorPablo A. Celnik, M.D., professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “What we found is if you practice a slightly modified version of a task you want to master, you actually learn more and faster than if you just keep practicing the exact same thing multiple times in a row,” says Celnik