Joe McCrea said

"The Knowledge Enhanced Public Sector is a vision of a new way for the public sector to operate, to perform and to relate to its key internal and external stakeholders.

It is more efficient and therefore more effective in delivery and performance. It has a conscious understanding of its collective knowledge base and the processes that underpin it.

It is able to deliver higher standards of stakeholder and citizen satisfaction, and through providing a more stimulating and rewarding experience for its staff, it encourages higher levels of staff retention.

The sum result is that it is able both to adapt to changing circumstances with greater flexibility, but also to withstand the strains of such changing circumstances with greater resilience.

The Knowledge Enhanced Public Sector has a mature understanding of the potential benefits of IT, and is not scared to adopt new technology, but it also has a real appreciation of IT’s pitfalls and weaknesses, when seeking to address fundamental organisational and cultural challenges. It is neither IT focussed nor IT phobic.

It has a keen appreciation of its own long term strengths and history, as well as an understanding of the limited usefulness of theory divorced from practice. It has the maturity and courage to avoid being rootless or reckless, and the wisdom to be be neither hidebound by theory nor hamstrung by history.

Above all else, global trends and cultural shifts mean that a knowledge enhanced public sector is the only viable long-term successful future for the public sector – it is neither a fashion nor a fad.

There are 5 foundations on which the Knowledge Enhanced Public Sector rests.

Knowing what you know' - clear and visible analysis of the type, range and location of the information, knowledge and expertise which an organisation collectively holds

'Knowing how you know' - clear and visible understanding of the core processes, procedures and activities (formal and informal) whereby an organisation's information, knowledge and expertise is created, used, re-used or lost...;

'Knowing who knows' - clear and visible accessibility and maintenance throughout the organisation to the creators, producers, holders and conduits of information, knowledge and expertise..;

'Knowing where you know' - clear and visible appreciation and support of the formal and informal communities within and surrounding an organisation where information, knowledge and expertise reside, grow and flourish;

'Knowing why you know' - clear and visible comprehension and exploitation of the human and structural interactions and cross-over points which underpin the creation, development, use, frustration and interplay of an organisation's information, knowledge and expertise – internally and with stakeholders.

The development of the original UK Knowledge Network compatible departmental systems and a central repository was a painstaking and painful process…but it was only the start.

The joining-up process is now becoming embedded and the unified ‘Knowledge Network’ is maturing…

A whole host and range of self-sustaining communities across and beyond the departments are coming on stream..

That is what is meant by ‘Knowledge Enhanced Government”.

Now we have to rise to a greater challenge…and a much more exciting aim…

- We need to move beyond the central government arena.

- Learning and applying the lessons and success achieved so far.

- Moving to incorporate Agencies and NDPBs, and local and regional government.

- Reaching out to embrace key stakeholders in business and voluntary sectors… And on again to directly engage individual citizens. Once we have achieved that, we can truly claim to have delivered a ‘Knowledge Enhanced Public Sector”….