What is Knowledge Management in Government?
What is knowledge management in government?
The goal of knowledge management in government is to make knowledge accessible and actionable for better decision-making, improved citizen services, and increased operational efficiency. When implemented effectively, knowledge management helps break down silos, preserve institutional memory, and elevate the experience of citizens and employees alike.
Types of knowledge in government
Knowledge in the context of government includes data, insights, policies, procedures, and situational expertise, which tend to be buried in long documents, flow charts, and even people’s heads in disparate and inconsistent silos across the enterprise. The onus is on the knowledge user to find the answer needle in this haystack. Here are some examples:
- How long is a new passport valid for?
- How much will I get per month in social security payments?
Insights
- What neighborhoods are most prone to flooding?
- What population segments have been most affected by disease X?
- Which neighborhoods need more police patrols?
Policies
- Is there a cap on property tax deduction?
- What are the criteria to claim someone as a dependent for income tax?
- Is there a deductible for Medicare Part A?
- Am I eligible for disability benefits?
Procedures
- How do I amend my tax return?
- How do I buy a T-bill?
- How do I renew Medicaid?
- How do I get a permit to add a room to my home?
Compliance
- Knowledge management
Who | What | When | How | Why - Knowledge use
Who | What | When | How | Why - Privacy and security
FedRAMP | GDPR | HIPAA - Best-practices
Who | What | When | How | Why
Expertise
- What is the difference between a T-bill and a T-bond?
- Am I better off taking standard deductions or itemizing?
Knowledge Management in Government: Challenges, AI Solutions, and Best Practices
Knowledge Management Challenges in Government
Government agencies are grappling with:
- Knowledge silos: Fragmented data and content repositories result in incorrect, inconsistent, and non-compliant answers. This chaos craters user trust in the KM system and hinders adoption.
- Employee turnover: Recent DOGE layoffs and a spate of baby boomer retirements, aka the Silver Tsunami, are precipitating a knowledge crisis.
- Obsolete technology: Legacy KM systems have failed to deliver on their promise with 84% of frontline users hating their current desktop tools across industries, per Gartner.
How AI Can Help KM
Historically, knowledge management has been a resource-intensive task the AI revolution changes everything knowledge! A centralized knowledge hub, paired with AI, can:
- Automate knowledge: AI can help automate the KM process end to end—discover most frequently asked questions, source trusted content, create, curate, publish, and optimize knowledge, making KM easy and speeding up time to value. However, AI must be backed by trusted content and data unified in a central hub. For instance, Deloitte estimates that automation could save up to 1.2 billion federal hours annually, translating to potential savings of $41.1 billion per year!
- Leverage data: Machine learning algorithms can identify patterns and insights from vast datasets.
- Improve Decision-Making: AI can help mine insights—the most common questions and the best answers for them, for example—from conversations with citizens and internal conversations among experts. It can also use reasoning to guide managers to better situational decisions and agents to help answer citizen questions or resolve issues.
Knowledge Management in Government: Best Practices for Success
Proven best practices for KM in the government sector include:
- Invest in Modern KM Tools: Adopt AI-powered platforms that automate knowledge management with the backing of trusted knowledge unified in a central hub. Make sure the tools are FedRAMP-authorized and comply with all privacy and security requirements.
- Partner with proven vendors: KM is more than just technology. Getting quick business value requires domain expertise which many companies (e.g., startups) lack.
- Foster Knowledge-Sharing Culture: Encourage knowledge sharing among employees through incentives, gamification, and evangelism.
- Ensure adoption: Train frontline employees to use the KM tool rather than hunt for answers.
- Measure and manage: Make sure to measure usage and operational metrics impacted by AI knowledge. AI can also help extract insights from raw user feedback for continuous knowledge improvement.
Success Stories in Knowledge Management for Government
Forward-looking government agencies have been using AI knowledge to provide citizen service at scale while delivering great experiences to employees as well. Here are two examples from our clientele:
- A large federal government agency achieved groundbreaking results after adopting the eGain AI Knowledge Hub. They were able to divert up to 70% of incoming calls to AI virtual assistants, cut case handling time by 25%, and streamline online form-filling with AI knowledge assistance. These impactful improvements boosted agent engagement to 92%, well above the industry average of 67%.
- A mammoth federal agency described their experience with the eGain AI Knowledge Hub as a “phenomenal success.” The solution now supports 25 million users and 128,000 contact center agents and service staff, delivering consistent, compliant, and accurate information through AI-guided service workflows.
Knowledge management in government: Conclusion
Modern AI knowledge management platforms—like eGain’s—make KM easy for government agencies by combining the power of AI with trusted, compliant content managed in a central hub.
To help government teams experience the benefits of knowledge management, eGain offers the Innovation in 30 Days program: a unique, no-cost, no-risk production pilot with expert-led setup and support. We also offer our agentic AI technology free of charge for qualified non-profit and government organizations for 6 months. These are proven paths that many public sector clients have used to transform their service operations risk-free.
