In 1999, Triune Group in collaboration with the U.S. Air Force (USAF) introduced Air Force Knowledge Now (AFKN), a methodology promoting knowledge sharing and collaboration across the Air Force. By focusing on social, behavioral and cultural aspects of knowledge sharing, AFKN was able to generate more widespread success than most Knowledge Management systems, which focused primarily on capturing information through technology.

Guiding Principals

1. Decentralized Approach - Let Your Users Lead
2. Ease of Use - Make it Easy and Users Will Come
3. Strong Support Structure - A Human Touch is Critical
4. Reach - Access must be Anytime Anywhere
5. Validation - Users Need to Trust the System
6. Rewards - Recognition Sweetens the Deal
7. Word-of-Mouth Cultural Shift - Users will Advertise for You

Focus Areas

The Air Force Knowledge Now program has two focus areas:

1. Collaboration Suite: Provides management and maintenance of the Air Force Knowledge Now application; a web-based platform providing knowledge sharing and collaboration through Virtual Workspaces (called Communities of Practice) offering Web 2.0 functionality. The AFKN approach has always been technology agnostic and the program has embraced new technologies as they have become available.
2. Knowledge Management Services: Provides consulting services throughout the Air Force to help organizations design and implement knowledge centric solutions, typically on the Air Force Knowledge Now application. These solutions include a KM Maturity Model, Knowledge Retention & Transfer (KR&T) process, and Knowledge Management Workshops (Taxonomy Development, Implementation, Governance, etc.).

Collaboration Suite

Adopting a Communities of Practice (CoPs) architecture, AFKN promotes commitment to working together by building a collective knowledge base around a common vital interest. By going beyond explicit knowledge, which is usually limited to some type of stored information, it reflects the social, behavioral and cultural aspects of knowledge sharing. By focusing on tacit knowledge ("know-how"), true organizational learning occurs, thus creating a more agile and adaptive Air Force.

This web-based collaborative environment allows members of a CoP to use shared information and communications tools to conduct business, manage projects, keep abreast of important group issues, and solve group problems. The capabilities of the AFKN system include:

Capability	Description
Document Management System (DMS)	File sharing relevant to work and special interests. The DMS includes version control, check in/out, multi-level security, auditing, review periods, etc., and supports all file formats (documents, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, audio, movie files, etc.)
Discussion Forums and Blogs	Threaded discussions. Discussion forums enable users to have meaningful group interaction regarding a specific topic, course of study, idea, project, etc. They also can be used for private messaging, blogging, polling, journal entries, and more. Attachments reside within KN’s DMS to leverage all of its features and functionality.
Learning Management System (LMS)	Online eLearning. Each Workspace has the capability to host and manage its own SCORM version 1.2 training courses. Users can register and take courses, receive/print certificates, and review transcripts. Workspace Administrators can create course frameworks (categories of courses), manage students, run reports, and include feedback/questionnaires.
Wiki	Collaborative, editable web pages. Wikis allow users to create, delete, modify, and lock web pages through an integrated text editor. Each community has its own Wiki with a dedicated search feature, user-defined tagging, and customizable navigation. Wikis can serve as directories, glossaries, and even intranets. The Wiki is also employed to provide robust online help.
Action Item Tracking	Assign, update, and track tasks and projects. Users can create and group tasks within projects and provide status updates and history for online review and access. Includes powerful security, parallel tasking, and project management features. Attachments reside within KN’s DMS to leverage all of its features and functionality.
Questionnaires	Conduct polls and surveys. Workspace administrators have the ability to use text areas, checkboxes, dropdown lists, and radio buttons to design questionnaires and feedback mechanisms that collect responses from workspace users. Responses can be collected anonymously, if desired, and can also be exported to a spreadsheet for easy analysis and review.
Search and Discovery	AFKN search currently indexes all Knowledge Now content (including people and expertise) and several external sources as well.
Alert Notifications	Users can easily subscribe to be notified as content changes within a workspace, a discussion forum, or even down to an individual document. The alert system aggregates changes in all your work spaces into one clickable email.
Other Features	Each workspace can also include a Community Calendar, a Mailing List tool, Blogs, and many other tools.

In 2011 the Air Force decided to execute a planned retirement of the AFKN technology and migrate users to a SharePoint 2010 environment. The Program Office will be working support the user population through the stand-up of the new environment beginning late 2001 and the phase out of the old. The current schedule is for the existing AFKN to be shut-down May 2012.

Knowledge Management Services

Capabilities that support AFKN are:

• Comprehensive workshops
• Online virtual collaboration and sharing
• Robust Document Management
• Expertise Locators
• Integrated E-learning
• Search/Discovery (powered by Vivisimo Velocity, starting in 2009)
• Shared Network Folders
• Threaded Discussion Forums
• Validated practices library

Key Performance Indicators

Since its inception, AFKN has grown to over 400,000 users with the establishment of over 19,000 CoPs. By promoting proven Knowledge Management practices and consulting expertise, AFKN was able to garner such top leadership support, that in 2004, the Air Force CIO John M. Gilligan, designated the AFKN approach as the Air Force wide “Center of Excellence for Knowledge Management”. This means that AFKN is the U.S. Air Force’s only certified and accredited enterprise-wide Knowledge Management program.

See also

• Knowledge Management
  Knowledge management
  Knowledge management comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences...
  
  
• Communities of Practice (CoPs)
  Community of practice
  A community of practice is, according to cognitive anthropologists Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, a group of people who share an interest, a craft, and/or a profession. The group can evolve naturally because of the members' common interest in a particular domain or area, or it can be created...
  
  
• Explicit Knowledge
  Explicit knowledge
  Explicit knowledge is knowledge that has been or can be articulated, codified, and stored in certain media. It can be readily transmitted to others. The information contained in encyclopedias are good examples of explicit knowledge....
  
  
• Tacit Knowledge
  Tacit knowledge
  Tacit knowledge is knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalising it. For example, stating to someone that London is in the United Kingdom is a piece of explicit knowledge that can be written down, transmitted, and understood by a recipient...
  
  
• Organizational Learning
  Organizational learning
  Organizational learning is an area of knowledge within organizational theory that studies models and theories about the way an organization learns and adapts....
  
  

Further reading

• Collison, C. & Parcell, G (2004), Learning to Fly - Practical Knowledge Management From Leading and Learning Organizations, Capstone Publishing, ISBN 1-84112-509-1
• Wenger, Etienne. (2002). Cultivating Communities of Practice. Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press; ISBN 1-57851-330-8
• Wenger, Etienne. (2002). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press; ISBN 0-521-66363-6 78