Ask, Learn, Share

Like Shell's concept of Ask, Learn, Share. Ask before doing, learn while doing it, share when it is complete. #kmw10

National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace

On Friday (25 June 2010) the White House blog posted information and links on the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace .

This is a very important work that of course will directly affect Digital Identity Management.  There is lots of commentary in the DiDM space.

Do HR Leaders understand social media

Do HR Leaders understand social media?

I am both encouraged and discouraged by what I read in this post titled HR Leaders Tout Social Media.  The encouragement comes from HR professionals acknowledging value in social media.  The discouragement because HR professionals clearly don't seem to appreciate what enterprise social media is. The following quote explains a lot; "64 percent said they plan to create content on blogs, websites, video or audio, while 57 percent plan to spend more time maintaining a profile in a social or professional network"  This quote is indicative of the misunderstanding within most organization about what enterprise social media is and isn't.  Blogs, websites, video, audio and professional social networks are NOT a part of enterprise social media.

Organizations need extensions in existing policies that address social media.  In most instances existing policies are fine, they just need to acknowledge social media.  There also needs to be a rational balancing of risk vs. reward undertaken with respect to enterprise social media.

Surviving in the new economy

The nature of employment is changing.  Jobs are disappearing and they won't be replaced, at least not with full time employment.   Most people will become contractors or temporary staff - flexible workforces engaged in "staff augmentation".  Many jobs will disappear entirely.  Economist call this structural job loss.

Individuals and organizations need to acknowledge, understand, and ultimately embrace this fundamental change in our working lives.  This change is so foundational that it will literally be "sink or swim" for many people.

Over the last twenty plus years we have seen the change from long-term employee/employer relationships, to a more transient work life, and now to the rise of the 'contractor'.  The contractor isn't an employee, but they do all the things that a traditional employee would do without the real and perceived benefits of being an employee.

The NY Times had an article on this very topic a few weeks back - In Job Market Shift, Some Workers Are Left behind.

As this change gathers steam, organizations can minimize the negative impact on individuals and the organization by working at leveraging the collective knowledge of their employees, contractors, consultants and customers.  This can be accomplished by providing processes that enhance knowledge flow, technology that facilitates both knowledge capture and reuse, and developing work environments that encourage greater interaction and a sense of belonging.

 

The Social Connectedness of Knowledge

Listen to my XLRQ internet radio Embrace the Noise piece titled The Social Connectedness of Knowledge.

pii 2010

Privacy Identity and Innovation 2010 conference will take place in Seattle Washington, USA on 17-19 August 2010.

It's an all-hands-on-deck conference where industry executives, technologists, consumer advocates, policy experts and other stakeholders will come together as a group to examine critical issues like:  

• How emerging technologies & business models are impacting the way data is created, shared and aggregated
• Effective approaches for building online trust with users
• Ways in which user preferences and social norms are shifting
• Changes in the regulatory landscape, in the U.S. and internationally
• The role of anonymity and the future of reputation management on the Web
• The latest developments in user-centric identity management

Blacklisting Companies

An interesting phenomenon is taking place and I am all for it.  It's called blacklisting companies.

This started because job seekers were/are tired of being ignored by company HR departments. Yes, HR departments are probably inundated with resumes these days, but that is no excuse for not politely responding with a "thanks but no thanks" communication.

As  economic conditions rebound, knowledge workers should and will consider carefully the companies they seek employment with.

My own personal check list is as follows:

1. Does the company encourage and support open and honest communication and collaboration?
2. Are reasonable collaboration tools provided and used?
3. Is non-business related internet access blocked, screened or monitored?
4. Does the company support and use social media to connect to their employees, customers and business partners?
5. Do overly restrictive security policies  detract from or enhance productivity?
6. Do the majority of employees have a passion for what they do and a belief  that the organization is providing value to its constituencies?
7. Does management embrace knowledge management and continuous learning?

The 'T' word

“Trust is present or it is absent. Grab a nerd and he’ll tell you that even the absence of trust is a measure of trust and that particular measure is zero. When trust is non-zero (which is better, believe me) it is based on one of two methodologies -- empiricism or transparency (the other T-word).”

http://www.assetinternational.com/ASMW/PostDetail.aspx?id=876&blogid=226

Trust has been a cornerstone of Knowledge Management from the beginning.  The referenced post resonates with me because it very succinctly describes what trust is and the inherent value of trust to our personal and professional lives.  Trust is also transparency; we have all experienced the breakdown of trust because of a lack of transparency.  The explosion of the social graph is made possible through trust and transparency.  Transparent people engender trust and at the same time foster and facilitate knowledge sharing without even consciously trying to make it happen.

The Case for Collaboration and Security

David Coleman of Collaborative Strategies has posed a very relevant item around the need to collaborate on security.  The post is titled "The Challenge of Collaboration AND Security".

employees are not children

Employees are not children so don't treat them like they are and they will be much more productive, and happy.  This is something that has very much been on my mind lately for several reasons that I won't go into.  The eWeek article below looks at how 37Signals goes about getting things done in what appears to me to be a pretty efficient and people friendly way.  http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Management/37Signals-Breaks-Free-of-Rigid-Work-Culture-464279/?kc=EWKNLCSM11102009STR1

Why is it that so many companies think they need to be parents to their employees?  Instructing employees on what to do, where to do it and when to do it.  Some even going to the level of creating events to *reward* casual dress days.  If you treat your knowledge workers with respect and trust you don't need to be parents or the benevolent master.

Customer Conversations Are Changing

"The long-held notion that companies control the conversation is being challenged by social media."

http://www.fastcompany.com/article/how-social-media-upending-enterprise

I couldn't have said it better myself.  This statement is true for both internal and external customers.  Organizations will need to let go of the conversation and be willing to address their constituents in the method of their choice.  Organizations will also need to manage and leverage the knowledge generated by these new conversation methods.

Identity Management 2009 - Transparent Government: Risk, Rewards and Repercussions

The OASIS IDtrust Member Section would to thank the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for kindly hosting the Identity Management 2009 Conference at their Gaithersburg, MD facility.

Identity Management 2009 - Transparent Government: Risk, Rewards and Repercussions

Who owns my medical (identity) records?

In the U.S.A. the "healthcare reform debate is raging in our congress and on main street. What is missing is intelligent conversation around how the Laws of Identity should be applied to medical records/health records. Maybe I could recoup some of my out-of-pocket costs for healthcare if I could charge the hospital or provider when they sell MY records for research. What about my health insurance provider and all the claims data they have on me.

An interesting point, and one lost on all in the media, is that the debate is really about health insurance costs and not healthcare itself. Sure there is noise and dollars being thrown to digital medical records but no one seems to be even talking about the endless cost increases from providers, hospitals, and diagnostic testing. I have personally seen around a 45% increase in office visit fees from my family physician in the last two years. My health insurance costs rose only about 12% in that same time period. So, where's the problem? We can't place the blame entirely on insurance companies, after all it is to their advantage to reduce medical costs not increase them.

Sorry for my digression into reality. I read, I think for the first time, in a mainstream news article something that has long been ignored in the U.S.A.'s debate on healthcare: Who owns an individuals medical records. The Dallas Morning news had a single paragraph in an article last week titled "Who really profits from digital medical records?".

"Data sharing confronts age-old assumptions that providers, not patients, own health records, which are valuable assets that can be used to obtain grants and market hospitals. It requires the government to decide what kinds of systems will improve care and how providers should use the systems to achieve that. "

Identity for the smart grid

The Smart Grid screams for a User-Centric Identity Metasystem but instead we get a brain dead unsecure mess.

If you haven't figured it out by now, I have some eclectic interests and at some level they all do interconnect.  At least I THINK they interconnect.

I've a sensor network in my home and follow the whole smart grid, power monitoring space.  Some day I'll publish some info on what I have in my home and what I plan to do. 

So, I was terrified to read about how little attention is paid to security of power meters.  What planet are these companies on that build sloppy embedded software that is not secure.  The bad guys won't need to blow up power pylons, they can just send out a command to their bot net and turn everything off.

Did you like the way I got a plug in for the User-Centric Identity Metasystem proposal that Kim Cameron posted earlier this week? ;-)

Micromanagers

The corollary to the item I posted in September about emotional intelligence is the Micromanager.   A cancer if ever there was one on the organization and social life in general.  The micromanager has a pathology that causes great harm to individuals, organizations and groups.

I came across a quote in an article by Alan Deutschman in FastComay - Is Your Boss a Psychopath?, that really struck a cord... "

Psychopaths succeed in conventional society in large measure because few of us grasp that they are fundamentally different from ourselves. We assume that they, too, care about other people's feelings. This makes it easier for them to "play" us. Although they lack empathy, they develop an actor's expertise in evoking ours. While they don't care about us, "they have an element of emotional intelligence, of being able to see our emotions very clearly and manipulate them," says Michael Maccoby, a psychotherapist who has consulted for major corporations."

That sums it up pretty well.  Yes, I am implying that a micromanager is a psychopath.  You can not act in a normal fasion with a micromanager, the rules of the game are not the same.

Login with you favorite ID

You can now login to comment on KM News posts using your favorite digitial ID - AOL, facebook, Google, Windows Live ID, Yahoo or OpenID.

This really cool capability comes courtesy of RPX from JanRain.

OpenID's future

I read with interest this morning Dave Kearn's last missive from Network World - Has OpenID lost its mojo.  I share Dave's concern about OpenID, but I don't think its lost its mojo.  There are plenty of site using OpenID and it is spreading.  Yes, there are lots of people using Facebook, but in my network I have not encountered a single person or entity using it.  I have high hopes that Hardt's move to MSFT will be a positive step for both Infocards and OpenID.

Here's wishing that 2009 will be the year that digital identity management really takes off and we can have platform interoperability and true data portability that allows the individual to be 100% in control of their digitial identity.

People are complex

I just finished reading David Coleman's latest blog over at Collaborate.com - Is Trust Critical for Collaboration.  David comes to an interesting conclusion that I can and do support.  I too have been one of those people that put trust at the top of the list when it came to collaboration and community. Oh, read the article for his conclusion about trust. :-)

Having just gone through a bit of a team crisis, I can attest to the fact that cultural context is more important to collaboration than is trust.  The team trusted each other, worked OK together, but even though we were not geographically dispersed we did not share a common cultural context.

David is spot on with when he said "People are complex and the interactions between them are even more complex, and from complex systems arise emergent characteristics which can’t be planned for, and often can’t be managed or controlled."

It is frustrating when command and control kicks in to address the "problems" that arise from these complex people interactions.

Generational Shift

There has been lots of conversations lately about generational shifts in communication methods.  This presentation from Dr. Pete Markiewicz is very informative.  The communication methods and approaches to work will become more evident as Millennials make their way deeper into the global workforce.

The Millennial Generation, technology and work


There are those that cross the generational boundaries of communication.  As an example I would fall into what the presentation terms GenX but many of my communications modes are "Millennial".  I am adapting, sometimes slower than my children would like, but I am adapting.  There are those that have no interest or even understanding that they need to adapt.  Not just adapt to survive, but adapt so that there is a cross generational polination of ideas and knowledge transfer.

[amtap book:isbn=0971260605]

Personal health-care knowledge

How do you go about managing your personal knowledge as it relates to your health?  Tough, isn't it.  You know what ailments you have or have had but how do you easily articulate that to your physician.  How can you really be an informed consumer of health care services when you need to share your health history with medical professionals but you don't have that information at your finger tips?

There's a push amongst Google, Microsoft and others to help us manage our personal health information.  The problem is that much of the information we need is locked up inside huge data stores within health insurance companies and in paper files at multiple health care providers.

Google just announced that Massachusetts Blue Cross Blue Shield will make available each members claims data for inclusion in a personal Google Health Account.  This is to my knowledge the first health insurance company to do this.  The hole in the dam has opened....

Internet technology is changing ever more rapidly, potentially even surpassing Moore’s Law.   Consumers are expecting an exponential increase in the availability of technology-based services, even from health-care organizations.   It is only a matter of time before health care consumers will demand expect electronic access to all the information related to their personal health history.  I believe that this will become a deciding factor as to what insurance company gets a persons business and loyalty in the not to distant future.