Connecting peers across and beyond Scotland

Interview with Mike McLean, Knowledge and Collaboration Manager at the Improvement Service for Scotland

Creating a national directory of working groups and people

The Improvement Service has been using Knowledge Hub since its inception in 2012. With a devolved government, communities have greater power and as a knowledge management organisation we wanted a place to bring people together – local government, national government and its partners – to share best practice, discuss new ideas, and build on work together.

Working at the centre of local and national government and delivery projects locally, the Scottish Public Service Network (SPSN) on Knowledge Hub enables us to connect to the wider world – with colleagues in England and across the UK – sharing expertise, practice and ideas across the country. With a dispersed audience, Knowledge Hub is holistic in its approach and the advantage is that it creates a searchable national directory of working groups and people’s skills and expertise.

A safe harbour to share knowledge and information

The stability of Knowledge Hub provides a safe harbour, and is the go to place to share knowledge and information. When asked to participate in knowledge management projects, we use our Knowledge Hub membership to bring insights and knowledge from a wide range of groups. Before starting new projects we can check if they exist already, then raise awareness of them across the network and help to draft communication strategies and other documentation.

Uptake is far quicker and engaging than other methods. Knowledge Hub is a resilient system that is endorsed by other government teams and departments. It can be accessed by members from all government organisations without them having to face any IT barriers. The support is absolutely unbelievable – when we have a question or an issue it gets resolved within a couple of hours.

My vehicle of choice for getting messages out there

As a small organisation our digital network has given us quite a high prominence across the sector where traditional methods have not worked so well. It’s helped to create a role for us where we now act as a broker of information and knowledge that can help overcome joint problems and sourcing content.

As a digital network owner our feedback is listened to and we contribute to the development programme of the Knowledge Hub platform, including the redesign of the interface. We have also jointly created a range of training materials and have better communication with our groups.

Personally Knowledge Hub is my vehicle of choice for getting important messages out there. I visit Knowledge Hub every day – frequently prompted by the email notifications. The library feature in groups is very helpful and has the ability to hold a variety of formats. Not everyone can attend workshops and conferences and our groups allow them to access content and materials, and to comment and rate them. The people directory is useful as I find it far more extensive than LinkedIn for local government because I can find out what people are working on based on their group memberships and activity.

Knowledge Hub is a knowledge management tool that will help you connect, discover and share your ideas within one public sector environment. And it’s free for individuals to use!