Uniform standards for the global enterprise
Today's standards work in the KM space suffers from a single glaring problem: Our industry still can't agree on what is included in the term "knowledge management." There is still no real effort to address the issues associated with metrics and best practices. However, we may be making some progress.
AIIM made a commitment to the marketplace during the past year by helping to define what is included in KM and how it should be used. From those efforts, standards should eventually evolve, but look for it to be another six to nine months before AIIM gets serious about developing them. Complicating the issue is whether AIIM will focus on e-business or KM. If AIIM decides to pursue a broader e-business strategy, look for KM-related standards to move much more slowly.
Within the KM space, some important new standards are taking place, especially for the traditional document imaging applications. A new standard is being developed for identification and indexing of documents, pages and page components. That should help standardize indexing approaches for corporatewide repositories of information.
As organizations are increasingly multinational in both operations and customers, legal issues become important and are often a significant barrier to developing enterprisewide KM solutions. In the United States, digital documents and e-mails can be accepted as legal documents under English Common Law. In France, under Napoleonic Law, the same documents can only be used if specific laws have been passed that expressly allow the documents to be stored on particular types of media and under certain procedures.
New work is being led by British standards officials to help develop a common set of specifications that can be adopted as an international standard. Such a standard would significantly benefit organizations that struggle with multiple processes unique to each country.
Not all of the industry advances are formal standards. Look for new KM initiatives led by Microsoft to tighten the scope and terminology for what is included in KM.This next year is critical for the KM industry when it comes to standards. New legal initiatives, freedom from Y2K clamp-downs and an ever faster pace of business mean that organizations will rush to implement KM solutions. Smart companies will take a look at what is out there and carefully pick and choose existing and emerging standards to help guide their decisions.