On the 11th August the Directorate: Knowledge Management held a workshop to present the Knowledge Management Strategy in line with the series of workshops planned, this being the last workshop at Maccauvlei Conference Centre.   “Knowledge Management must become a core organisational competency and sustainable business process, meaning that its aim should be to support the achievement of key initiatives and empower people to learn from the knowledge repositories of the organisation to prevent re-inventing the wheel.  Sedibeng District Municipality(SDM) should learn from itself, assisted by the developed Knowledge Management Strategy” said the Director: Knowledge Management, who is currently the Acting Executive Director of Strategic Planning and Economic Development; Mrs Mapula Phiri - Khaole.

The key objective of the workshop was to present the practical ways in which the SDM Knowledge Management Strategy and the Blueprint Framework for Knowledge Management implementation and roll-out plan for the Knowledge Management Strategy could be used to facilitate and promote knowledge sharing for better service delivery to communities. It was also an attempt to have buy-in of the political leadership of Sedibeng District Municipality to understand the importance of knowledge sharing, knowledge exchange and knowledge tourism, as the new economy that is so certain, an economy that never goes into recession, but grows as its used.

The Knowledge Management Strategy is believed to be the tool to transform the Sedibeng District Municipality into an African icon for learning Communities of Practice. The latter facilitates harnessing tacit and elicit knowledge from all employees, thus encouraging them to become knowledge workers as they appreciate and get to be part of communities for knowledge sharing, as they develop a culture and passion for what they do because they want to. Unleashing this human capability in all Local Government employees, will enable, empower and encourage them to use their experiences, innovation, capabilities and knowledge for effective service delivery, learn reliable and consistent communication and usage of knowledge enablers, which may come as tools and techniques that could improve knowledge sharing. To mention a few of such tools and techniques here are some such as:

• Enterprise Knowledge Portal:
  an application used by organisations to create single point of entry into all common applications;
• Records Management:
  a system used to ensure compliance with legislated access, storing and archiving of important organisational documents and
• Video and E-conferencing:
  Technology which enables real time, synchronous communication and viewing between regional separate groups for collaboration in specific knowledge events or forums to name but an few.
  Habits and practices, the culture and environment also being taken into consideration as these Knowledge Management enablers are used.

This Strategy Framework was developed by Sedibeng District Municipality KM Directorate,  Communities of Practice members together with the consultant service provider called KMI INKABA Management Consultants (PTY) (LTD) and is pending the adoption for the next council sitting in September.