Annual Regional Summit 2009 - Background

CITO’s 6th Annual Regional Summit
Knowledge Management: A lifeline in these challenging times
May 20-21, 2009, Jamaica Pegasus Hotel

BACKGROUND

The National Information and Communication Technology (NICT) Strategy states that at the centre of a productive and prosperous Jamaica is a knowledge based society. This knowledge based society is regarded as one where the people are ‘in the know’, having easy access to information with the people using their knowledge for productivity and innovation. A society like this is not unattainable, as we see these characteristics in the United States and Singapore. How did they get there? There were many roads, but Knowledge Management is the key.

Knowledge Management (KM) is defined as the discipline within an organisation or country that ensures that the intellectual capabilities are shared, maintained and institutionalized. It is a holistic combination of measures for managing people, processes and technology and comprises a range of practices used in an organisation to identify, create, represent, distribute and enable adoption of insights and experiences. Such insights and experiences comprise knowledge, either embodied in individuals or embedded in organisational processes or practices.

In this changing world with its uncertainty, our greatest asset is knowledge and information. These (knowledge and information) primarily reside with our people – employees and associates. It is therefore incumbent that governments and private sector capture this knowledge. This will translate into greater efficiency, innovation, better customer service, and in the end, cost savings and profit.

Ernst & Young conducted a survey of 431 US and Euro firms called, "Executive Perspectives on Knowledge in the Organisation."

• 87% of their respondents named knowledge as critical to competitiveness.
• 44% reported that they were poor or very poor at transferring knowledge within their organisation.

The respondents saw chief barriers as: top management failure to signal importance (32%), lack of shared understanding of strategy or business model (30%), and organisation structure (30%).

CITO’s Knowledge Management Summit will seek to give the attendees the information (knowledge) to capture this great resource with its people.

MAJOR ASPECTS

Human Resource Management: The success or failure of any KM initiative lies, to a great extent, in the capability to manage and motivate its citizens and its employees, since people are at the heart of the Knowledge Management philosophy. The Summit will seek to share with participants the best practices in Knowledge Management and how to overcome the barriers of transferring and sharing knowledge.

Legal Issues: IT Professionals rely heavily on the production and storage of information in computer systems and on information from external systems such as the Internet. It is necessary for the information professional to understand the regulations concerning information in systems and the legal issues involved in using internal and external information sources for the management of knowledge. The history, current legislation, challenges in compliance, and future of related legal issues for corporations in a national and global environment will be explored with key issues such as Intellectual Property (IP) issues and liability issues of shared knowledge.

Records Management: Is defined as the field of management responsible for the efficient and systematic control of the creation, receipt, maintenance, use and disposition of records, including the processes for capturing and maintaining evidence of and information about business activities and transactions in the form of records . The Summit will seek to explore in the Jamaican context, how the E-Transaction Act will affect how records are managed.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT): Developing, integrating, exploiting and managing organisations’ structural knowledge assets and carefully designing the interfaces towards the tacit knowledge assets at both tactical and strategic levels are critical. ICT has an integral role in the capturing and dissemination of knowledge. The Summit will showcase solutions for sharing of knowledge from the simplest to most complex and will seek to show how using ICT can:

• serve the knowledge based worker for higher efficiency or better quality,
• maintain and develop the organisations’ knowledge repository independent of turnover rates, and
• open new possibilities for knowledge based services with wireless broadband

SUMMIT 2009

How will the private and public sector navigate the road to knowledge management and be competitive and offer exemplary service? How will the public sector meet the objectives of the Vision 2030 Jamaica and the e-Powering Jamaica 2012 initiatives? These and other issues will be the focus of the next CITO Summit May 20-21, 2009.

CITO’s 6th Annual Regional Summit - CALENDAR OF EVENTS

• Launch and Sponsor’s Breakfast Friday 6th February 2009 at 7:30 a.m. Port Antonio Suite, The Jamaica Pegasus
• World Information Day 17th May 2009
• Church Service to mark World Information Society Day, Sunday 17th May 2009**
• The first World Information Society Day took place on 17 May 2006 and was originally to commemorate the founding of the International Telecommunication Union. The main objective of the day is to raise global awareness of society changes brought by the Internet and new technologies. It also aims to help reduce the Digital divide.
• CEO Breakfast, Wednesday, 20th May 2009 at 8:00 a.m. -9:30 a.m., The Jamaica Pegasus (Summit Exhibition Opening and Walkthrough)
• Panel Discussion – “The use of Broadband to drive Entrepreneurial Activities” Wednesday 20th May 2009 at 2pm, Jamaica Pegasus
• Summit Day Thursday 21st May 2009, Ballroom, The Jamaica Pegasus

** This activity is to be confirmed.

For additional details please contact: K. Morrish Cooke or call: (876) 968-6802 or e-mail summit@cito.gov.jm