Article Preview
Top1. Introduction
Organizations must become knowledgeable organizations to survive in the digital disruptive era. A knowledgeable organization is conscious of the knowledge needed to function and is able to evolve its systems to ensure its people master this knowledge (Collins, 2004). As the literature has stated that innovation can answer the challenges of the digital disruptive era (Asawa, 2018), knowledge organizations must know how to innovate.
In the context of government or public organizations, changes in the disruptive era have become major challenges and responsibilities when carrying out public services. As government institutions are a specific kind of organization, with different problems and levels of representation, accountability, and responsiveness than enterprises in the private sector, these organizations should not import knowledge management tools and models from private companies without considering the context in which it functions as a government institution.
This research used Indonesian government institutions (IGIs) and state-owned enterprises (SEOs) as a case study. IGIs and SEOs are currently conducting bureaucratic reforms that have a pivotal role in making IGIs clean. The first movement of bureaucratic reform in Indonesia in 1998 was marked by the promotion of clean governance through a corruption, collusion, and nepotism program. Bureaucratic reform also had the major purpose of encouraging the establishment of effective and efficient organizations. To achieve this, every government institution had to utilize and empower their intellectual capital, including learning from best practices. However, a common obstacle is that knowledge and experience in an organization are often scattered and un-documented. Much of it might exist only in the minds of the individuals in the organization (tacit knowledge). To transform individual (tacit) knowledge to organizational (explicit) knowledge, the organization needs to use knowledge management (Herschel et al., 2001; Jones & Leonard, 2009).
Knowledge management can function as a tool in the process of organizational transformation because it helps to develop a culture of learning in an organization. Knowledge management is expected to give birth to a system for storing and exchanging knowledge within government institutions. The resulting system is then used to manage and maintain the existing knowledge in the organization to support various public activities, which can then be used as an instrument to bridge all stakeholders’ needs. With such a system, the public space becomes more open and public services improve. This will enable the public to find the information they seek more easily and express their aspirations, resulting in improved public services.
Indonesia has initiated a program to implement knowledge management as stated in the Minister of Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform No. 14 of 2011. This program contains the guidelines for the Indonesian Knowledge management program, which refers to the Presidential Regulation No. 81 of 2010 about the Grand Design of Bureaucratic Reformation 2010–2025 as shown in Figure 1 below. The grand design roadmap for the Indonesian Bureaucratic Reformation 2010–2025 uses knowledge management combined with change management.
Figure 1. 2010-2025 bureaucratic reformation road map
Knowledge management is the basis that will help ministries, institutions, and local governments in their efforts toward bureaucratic reform. The Grand Design of Bureaucratic Reform 2010–2025 and the Road Map of Bureaucratic Reform 2010–2014 contain eight areas of change and achievement conditions to achieve these objectives, as knowledge management is the foundation for program implementation with public trust as output, not profit as output, which is the case in the private sector.