A digital governance platform for knowledge management and sharing at a university in the Western Cape

Abstract

In this digital era, many organisations generate a lot of information that is often not captured or easily available. Institutions generate data or information that is not managed and or shared among them due to a lack of an information sharing and management system in place, resulting in the loss of quality, value and new knowledge. Also adds to a reduced response time, and increased workload among Knowledge Workers (KW) and Knowledge Experts (KE). Salari (2022) says with the increased use of the internet, there is a lot of information that can be used, examined, and used to make important decisions for the development of the organisation (Salari, 2022). It is common for organisations to have strategies to help them manage their process and information flow and measure the efficiency of the services provided. Milakovich (2021) says digital governance provides strategies to apply advanced technologies to manage remote workforces, measure performance and improve service delivery (Milakovich, 2021). To improve or be responsive to service delivery the organisation has to consider the concerns of their stakeholders in relation to the solutions it intends to implement. Ansell and Trondal (2018) says effective governance entails balancing continuity and stability on the one hand with adaptability and experimentation on the other (Ansell & Trondal, 2018). In Higher Education Institutions (HEI), the community needs to access the generated information in an efficient fashion and commonly would request it from the frontline Knowledge workers (KW), who feel overwhelmed by the number of requests for information, while they have other substantive duties to fulfil. The research aims to determine whether an automated Knowledge information system with IM reduces the KEs and KWs workload and improves the organisation's response time to clients. The purpose of introducing a Knowledge Management System (KMS), is for the organisation to systematically retain knowledge and retrieve it easily when needed (Rizal & Harib, 2018).The research is looking at the implementation of an Information Management System (IMS), as a case study at a university to determine by observation if the deployed open-source customer support ticketing system will help to reduce the workload increase the KW are complaining about, while allowing the institution to record and capture new knowledge that can be vetter and authenticated by the Knowledge Experts (KE). This is a qualitative study, collecting empirical evidence that will be measured by looking at the number of queries or tickets received for requested information versus the time taken to resolve the queries by the KW. At the same time looking at the generated knowledge that will be vetted and authenticated by the KE and observe if it contributes to the amelioration of the workload and Institutional Memory (IM). The findings show there is merit in the argument of the KW that they have an increased workload. By implementing the Information Management System (IMS) through the Service Desk platform, OsTicket has gathered enough data to indicate the volume of work the KW has dealt with and the differences between the workload of the KW and the KE.