Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 18th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview II. Working Group on e-Government Author(s) Dace Aizstrauta University of Latvia Riga Latvia Title Revealing the concept of knowledge management in public administration and e-government policy in Latvia File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract An increasing number of organisations understand that information and knowledge is their most important resource, unfortunately it stays as a passive property if the organizations do not engage in the management of this valuable resource. Public administration institutions create and work with immense amount of information every day, big part of this knowledge) is embedded in the bureaucracy and civil servants, so the need to manage the knowledge in an effective way is an important task for public administration. Although elements of knowledge management can be found in almost every public administration, careful management of information and knowledge, i.e. the creation, sharing and application of knowledge, in an effective way is crucial especially during the crisis when many public administrators lose their positions, agencies are being restructured, united or liquidated, as it is done in Latvia. The technical basis for managing knowledge relies upon appropriate technological infrastructure, applications for knowledge transfer, data bases to manage the change effectively, etc. But although information technology plays an important role in knowledge management systems, there also has to be a clear policy, understanding and involvement of civil service to reach effective knowledge management system. Therefore this paper analyses the policy planning documents in the field of development of public administration, civil service and e-government in Latvia from knowledge management perspective. An approach that combines three knowledge management dimensions with three phases allows categorizing all tasks of the policy planning documents and evaluates their distribution among these dimensions and phases - to what extent do the policy planning documents in the field of development of public administration, civil service and e-government development correspond to knowledge management framework? The central conclusion is that the policy planning documents are aimed mainly at creation of knowledge in the process dimension. The tendency is similar in all three analysed documents despite the differences of context they have been elaborated in. The article raises questions about the validation of such knowledge, the role of IT systems and the need for an analytical framework for evaluation of policies from knowledge management perspective. The paper outlines a wider study of knowledge management in public administration in Latvia and further empirical analysis and exploration of the existing elements of knowledge management systems in public administration.
