Wien Mags Wissen

Background Information

The initiative contributes to the Organizational Strategy of the Vienna City Administration.

The “Strategy House” Framework determines three main fields of action:

•Client/Citizen Orientation

•Efficiency

•Staff Orientation

Each field is broken down into four sections relating to optimization, cooperation, transparency and reputation. The Knowledge Management Programme audits all strategy fields with respect to knowledge management and guides divisions and departments to strategically implement methods and tools to help save valuable staff time, improve collaboration, transparency and efficiency.

Goals of the Initiative

The Knowledge Management Initiative is supposed to contribute to the following goals:

•Maintain efficiency of public services despite urban growth and information overload

Like many other cities, Vienna sees a steady increase in inhabitants within the ongoing trend of urbanization (currently Vienna has approximately 1.8 million inhabitants). Within a few years, Vienna is expected to grow by roughly the population of Salzburg (150,000), while the number of staff at the city administration is likely to remain stagnant at 65,000.

Long-term goal: Achievable, on track, though this project can only be one of a combination of methods to achieve this goal.

•Preserve valuable staff expertise despite natural turnover and retirement

According to internal demographic analysis the loss of knowledge due to retirement or employee turnover poses a burden to Public Administration, especially because there are narrow regulations on successor employment and overlapping time may be short or non-existent.

Short-term goal: Plans will be in place and rolled out soon.

•Promote value-based management, involvement and engagement

Following the five leadership principles of the City Administration (act ethically, work cost-effectively, act with social responsibility, convey trust and appreciation, live respectfully and responsibly, support integration and innovation), the Knowledge Management Initiative, as typical human resource management (and not solely an IT project), is expected to create staff involvement and engagement and become a community-driven program in which departments and staff help each other without much headquarter coordination.

Short-term goal: The goal mentioned above will be achieved in the first year.

Innovation for the Initiative

The Knowledge Management Programme and Strategy should be considered evolutionary. There were already numerous knowledge management projects in place throughout the departments of the city administration. The current project and program aims to follow a strategic and systematic approach and to promote knowledge management from a niche expert issue to a broad initiative accessible and manageable for all departments. The system of strategy generation applied and program developed is entirely new and the first large-scale application of this concept, InfoMap, is the first of its kind. The initiative adopted a new approach of auditing the organizational strategy with regard to knowledge management. Innovation was reflected in the whole process from setting goals to selecting tools, while the implementation of projects was conducted by a self-help Community of Practice and a Knowledge Management Unit.

Outcomes and Assessments

•Staff participation goes far beyond expectations.

•The staff took active participation in the project for better efficiency and quite a few colleagues believed that “there is such a positive and helpful spirit within the program”.

•The community-driven approach was started with the strategy project and resulted in the formation of a Community of Practice composed of volunteers only. Within the Community of Practice, experienced users would help departments and colleagues who are new to the program with their respective projects. This way, the Executive Office doesn’t need to establish a large unit to consult internal projects of 70 departments. The aim of promoting a sense of collaboration and sharing has been achieved already. The community is quickly growing, currently forming an identity by giving itself a set of goals and routines.