
C. KMWG Charter and By-Laws

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CHARTER — Federal Knowledge Management Working Group

1.0 Authority

The Federal Knowledge Management Working Group (KMWG) is an interagency body that brings the benefits of the government’s intellectual assets and academic and industry relationships to all people who work for or interact with the U.S. Federal Government.

2.0 Purpose

KMWG will meet the following objectives:

Enhance how government and its extended environment use knowledge for the public good.
Improve decisionmaking for better government performance.
Improve service to the public.
Provide members a platform for learning, networking, research, sharing, and collaboration.

3.0 Governance

The elected leadership of the KMWG will oversee the policies, practices, and activities of the KMWG.

4.0 Operations

The Leadership of the KMWG will develop and implement bylaws for the conduct of KMWG business, meetings, and other activities. These bylaws will be submitted to membership for approval and ratification.
The KMWG will determine its meeting and activities schedule according to its bylaws, and publish and maintain a public calendar. The KMWG will maintain an official archive of all minutes and documents related to all meetings and other activities as delineated in the KMWG Bylaws.

5.0 Programs, Projects, and Activities

Programs, projects, and activities undertaken by the KMWG will support the strategic objectives and goals stated in the KMWG strategic plan and subordinate action or implementation plans.
Occasionally, the KMWG will establish ad hoc task groups to address particular issues. In such cases, the KMWG leadership will seek nominations and select individuals to lead and populate such task groups.

6.0 Structure

The structure and leadership of the KMWG will be described in its bylaws.

7.0 Ratification

The proposed bylaws will be ratified by the KMWG co-chairs and subject to approval by the membership.

BY-LAWS — Federal Knowledge Management Working Group

1.0 Membership

1.1 Members

Whereas the “business” of government is executed by an extended workforce drawing from individuals employed by government, public sector, private sector, not-for-profit sector, and academic organizations – both domestic and international, the Federal Knowledge Management Working Group (KMWG) will be made up of members representing this “extended enterprise” who are focused on leveraging knowledge management (KM) to enhance the government’s ability to meet the challenges of its 21st Century missions. Members are eligible to vote and be elected to leadership positions in the KMWG.

2.0 Leadership

The leadership of the KMWG shall consist of two co-chairs. Each co-chair must be one of the following:

Federal government employee
Political appointee
Elected representative
State government employee
Local government employee
Tribal government employee

2.1 Nomination

Any member can self nominate to serve as a co-chair of the KMWG.

2.2 Elections

All elections will be carried out on-line. Elections for the co-chair positions will be held during the week prior to the annual business meeting. In the event that a co-chair is unable to execute the responsibilities of the position or in the event of the resignation of the co-chair prior to the end of a tour of duty, special elections should be held within 30 days thereafter to elect a replacement.

2.3 Tour of Duty

All co-chair tours of duty will start in April and will end on the last day of April. One co-chair will serve from April of an odd numbered year through the next odd numbered year and the other will serve from April of an even numbered year through the next even numbered year.

3.0 Communities of Practice

Each Community of Practice (COP) will publish a charter and bylaws based on the KMWG charter and bylaws.

3.1 Participation and Membership

Each COP encourages open and dynamic participation of individuals working or interested in an area of KM practice.

COPs are networks of members organized by members to pursue common interests in the KM areas of practice.

COP leadership roles follow the KMWG model and requirements.

Participation in a COP may be formal or informal, and may involve individuals from all sectors of the economy including but not limited to:

Government
The private sector
Academia
Nonprofit organizations
Quasi-governmental organizations
Nongovernmental organizations

3.2 Activities

Each COP:

Is established for each major area of KM consistent with the KMWG Charter.
Encourages collaboration and cooperation with other organizations and communities to promote knowledge creation, sharing and transfer.
Maintains an active and open communication channel for the membership.
Supports activities at no- or low-cost to ensure the broadest participation among members.
Provides opportunities for remote and peripheral participation among members.
Will hold at least one meeting or event each year to maintain active status.

4.0 COP Leadership

Each COP will have one co-chair who must be in compliance with § 2.0 and one co-chair who is from the following sources (domestic or international):

The private sector
Academia
Nonprofit organizations
Quasi-government organizations²
Nongovernmental organizations

4.1 Roles

Provide overall guidance and leadership to maintain social, cultural, COP, and organizational relevance
Work with stakeholders to identify the strategic fit of the COP and value for the organization
Build and maintain relationships with key stakeholders, subject matter experts, and members to strengthen the COP’s recognition and support by the organization
Measure and evaluate the COP’s contributions to the organization
Work with active members to set community mission, purpose, goals, norms, and values
Work with the COP to make policy changes as needed
Support and create additional COP roles
Assess the health or status of the COP
Hold and lead COP meetings, activities, discussions, events, and conferences

4.2 Responsibilities

Ensure that COP bylaws and charter are ratified by the members and are published and approved by the KMWG co-chairs.
Ensure that the purpose of the COP is realized for its members.
Communicate with the KMWG co-chairs about events, activities, and new issues related to areas of practice.
Develop and communicate activity plans to inform membership and maintain a public calendar of events.
Encourage participation to provide a broad perspective on the issues.
Ensure that the COP activities are consistent with the Office of Government Ethics (OEG) ethics requirements and standards of conduct.
Notify the KMWG co-chairs when the COP should be dissolved due to lack of interest in the area of practice.

4.3 Nomination

Any member may nominate another member to serve as co-chair of a COP.

4.4 Elections

All elections will be carried out on-line. Elections for the co-chair positions will be held during the annual business meeting. In the event of a COP co-chair is unable to execute the responsibilities of the position or in the event of the resignation of the co-chair prior to the end of a tour of duty, special elections should be held within 30 days thereafter to elect a replacement.

4.5 Tour of Duty

5.0 Standing Meetings

5.1 Annual Business Meeting

The KMWG annual business meeting will take place each year during April in conjunction with the e-Gov KM Conference in Washington DC and will be opened to the public. Only KMWG members will be eligible to participate in the vote for KMWG co-chairs and COP chairs.

5.2 Ad Hoc Meetings

The KMWG co-chairs will call other occasional meetings at least bi-monthly to offer educational, informational, and networking opportunities to the general membership. Such meetings will be opened to the public and advertised on the official KMWG Web site.

6.0 Ethics, Standards of Conduct, and Conflicts of Interest

The basis for behavior of the KMWG co-chairs and each COP co-chair will be the ethics requirements and standards of conduct published by the OGE. All affected individuals will familiarize themselves with the OGE standards of conduct and self-certify that they have done so at each annual business meeting. All affected individuals are expected to strictly adhere to the OGE standards and avoid even the perception of a conflict of interest or other impropriety.

6.1 Removal of Members

A majority of the members can terminate the membership of any individual who is determined to:

Undermine the spirit of the KMWG.
Violate OGE standards of conduct.
Uses his/her access to other members to promote personal products or services.
Uses the KMWG Web site for personal use.

7.0 Ratification

The proposed bylaws will be sent to all KMWG members to obtain their comments. Once these comments are incorporated into the final bylaws, they will be ratified by the KMWG co-chairs and approved by the membership.

8.0 Amendments

Amendments to these bylaws may be proposed by any KMWG member and submitted to the KMWG co-chairs who will then put the matter to a vote to the general membership. If approved, amendments will be incorporated into the bylaws.

Footnotes:
¹Exception: to accomplish this, one co-chair elected in April 2007 will have a tour of duty of only year – through April 2008, while the other will have a tour of duty through April 2009.
²For example, international and U.N. organizations.

Tags : KMWG

Short Link: http://wiki.nasa.gov/cm/wiki/?id=2706

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Posted by Jeanne Holm on Apr 20, 2009 8:58 PM \| Reply To This \| Permalink \| Remove All positions are two year positions (there are no one year positions). The one-year position is an artifact of needing to initiate a rotational basis where we don't start two 2-year positions at once.
Posted by Neil Olonoff on Apr 20, 2009 2:57 PM \| Reply To This \| Permalink \| Remove Reality Check Regarding Membership I think it's important to recognize that more than two-thirds of the group are non-government employees. A great deal of the energy that has powered recent activities has been generated and contributed by them. This was the one of the original reasons that the group wanted to become free of the interagency model. Now with by-law changes the group needs to embrace a new, expansive public-private model.
Posted by Bonnie Smith on Apr 20, 2009 12:40 PM \| Reply To This \| Permalink \| Remove By Laws/Charter Review Charter 1.0 OK 2.0 OK 3.0 OK 4.0 OK 5.0 ADD at end of paragraph “, as appropriate to address the need.” 6.0 OK 7.0 OK By Laws 1.0 OK 1.0 Consider adding Current or former federal government employee or military. Also consider adding a statement regarding delegation of authority. This would allow the government to retain the overarching leadership role and still have others carry out the role of chair or co-chair through delegation. Rationale: This will open the opportunity to have industry or academia act as chair/co-chair while leaving the leadership role in the hands of the government. May be a good compromise. 2.0 OK 2.1 On-line voting. There does not appear to be anything on the site that is specific to how this voting takes place. I would think we should have a process that at least is identified or does the voting take place via email… Does a consensus at meetings constitute a vote? It appears it may. If this is the only way voting can take place we definitely need a process defined. If it is there, I’m missing it. 2.3 OK 3.0 Replace “will” with “is encouraged to”. Each CoP at a minimum should produce a read me file that defines the purpose of the group and other pertinent pieces of basic information about the group. 3.1 Membership should include former military and/or government employee 3.2 OK COMMENT: There needs to be a CoI paragraph to address learning groups not specific to accomplish anything other than knowledge sharing and learning. This is a more informal environment that may facilitate communications by following the same structure as a CoP, but they would not be “required” to do so. Wiki’s are a common tool of CoIs. CoIs do not require chairs, they take on their own informal hierarchy based on strengths/weaknesses of participates. There is no task to accomplish, as in action groups. As far as what these groups are called….who cares. The KMWG is made up of individuals, teams, and teams of teams. The WG is a team of teams, Action Groups are CoPs as they by definition require action to be taken and output to be accomplished. SIG or CoI may/may not take action or produce a formal output. WG, AG, CoPs may need some formal structure (or guidance on minimums), vice SIGs or other CoI environments that are self maintaining and/or developing. 4.0 Consider comment above. Also, roles are defined as responsibilities. Roles include leader, facilitator, coordinate, director, manager, advocate, champion, chair, co-chair, secretariat, etc. 4.2 Revisit responsibilities outline under roles and compare to this list. Shorten and eliminate duplication/redundancies. 4.3 OK 4.4 See note above regarding voting. Consider adding The remaining co-chair may designate…until such time as a formal co-chair can be determined. 4.5 OK 5.0 OK 6.0 OK (fix period on second bullet) 7.0 OK 8.0 The text does not say when amendments can be submitted. If voting only occurs once a year then this limits when amendments can be submitted. Recommend amendments should be accepted at any time (quarterly, if necessary). This would allow for discussion on the wiki before any voting/decision takes place. There should be an out-of-cycle process that can be identified. Refer to note above around the voting process. If we are going to have a chair/co-chair environment and the role of those individuals is to direct, manage, then do we not give them decision making authority? Does everything have to have a vote? What’s the process? Comment: Once we are sponsored, then we may want to revisit the charter/by laws as (OPM?) may wish to provide/impose guidelines that would directly affect the current set of documents. Bonnie
Posted by Ray Chance on Apr 19, 2009 6:01 PM \| Reply To This \| Permalink \| Remove Copyright Information I propose that the bylaws clearly state that all content contributed to the KMWG wiki is in the public domain and no individual, private organization, or government agency shall claim any copyright ownership on the submitted material. I also propose that KMWG wiki administrators shall not prevent members from using online publishing tools including RSS syndication to repurpose content at their sole descretion. All I wish to do is to have the listserve emails sent to another email address instead my standard contact email address. I aso would like to see a FULL content feed containing all of the Listerve data published through RSS syndication. Thanks, Ray
Posted by Neil Olonoff on Apr 18, 2009 6:36 AM \| Reply To This \| Permalink \| Remove Clarification of "annual rotation" There's been a misunderstanding of one of my proposals. Currently the by-laws call for two KMWG co-chairs. One is a two year position; the other is a one-year position. My proposal was to allow the one-year position to be occupied by anyone, including non governmental personnel.
Posted by Richard Detsch on Apr 17, 2009 12:26 PM \| Reply To This \| Permalink \| Remove Proposed changes to KMWG By-Laws As one of the newer members, perhaps I can bring an outside perspective. Having said that, I must say I’m very impressed with the current charter and do not see a need for major change. Rotate co-chair positions annually: I do not support the proposed change to rotate the co-chair of the Federal KMWG annually. The current overlapping system seems like a great idea in terms of assuring continuity. KMWG Co-chair may be non-governmental: I do not support this proposed change because it adversely affects the appearance of being unbiased, especially when a co-chair is dealing with people outside of the group. CoP Co-Chair may be non-governmental: I do not support this for similar reasons to above paragraph. Community of Practice stood up anytime: I agree with this change. We live in exponentially changing times. The KMWG co-chairs should not have to wait until April to launch a new Community of Practice. Multiple types of sub-groups: I support giving the KMWG co-chairs the flexibility to start up two types of groups - Communities of Practice for continuing efforts; and Special Interest Groups for efforts that have a defined end date. If a Special Interest Group is only set up for a short time and had a small number of members it would only need one chair. Efforts lasting over four months or large enough to have subgroups should have two co-chairs. Posted by Richard Detsch on Apr 21, 2009 12:18 PM \| Reply To This \| Permalink \| Remove RE: Proposed changes to KMWG By-Laws After thinking about how important the not-gov contributors are to KM.gov, I've revised my recommendation on COP co-chairs. I do support allowing one of the COP co-chairs come from non-gov agency. The KM.gov interactions are open enough to monitor communications and efforts that are not in the government's best interests. Posted by Neil Olonoff on Apr 18, 2009 6:38 AM \| Reply To This \| Permalink \| Remove RE: Proposed changes to KMWG By-Laws There was no proposal to rotate co-chairs annually.
Posted by William Neufeld on Apr 17, 2009 12:01 PM \| Reply To This \| Permalink \| Remove By Laws I agree that the co-chairs be government employees. Federal practice is the focus of the group. Other groups can be formed that include state and local government participants as well as private sector members. The sharing of practices between groups is important but we shouldn't dilute the importance of the federal nature of the group. I think we have plenty of talented federal members that should have the chance to lead the group if they choose. I also agree that ratification or approval of changes in the composition of the group should occur more often, maybe at the call of the chair or a majority of the membership. As a I read the by-laws the Community of Practice designation would not preclude what we have been calling the "KM Initiative." An earlier vote of the membership would have put us further ahead than having to wait until April. It seems that that portion of the by-laws is fairly strict almost bureaucratic in nature to apply to a an organization based partly on dynamic response as an operating principle.
Posted by Giora Hadar on Apr 17, 2009 7:40 AM \| Reply To This \| Permalink \| Remove I disagree with the proposed change to rotate the co-chair of the Federal KMWG annually. The original change to a two year overlapping leadership positions was put in place to provide continuity of leadership. The original arrangement, started in 1999 with Shereen and Alex and continued until 2006 left gaps in this continuity. Several co-chairs either resigned or failed to accomplish their responsibilities, leaving the other co-chair to carry the load for the remainder of their term. Introducing the overlapping terms allowed this to be limited to no more than a year and the current bylaws allow for calling for new elections to fill behind a non-performing or resigned leader. I strongly disagree with the proposal to allow two nongovernment leaders, both at the co-chair and at the COP levels. We must have a government person at the helm when we deal with other government entities. If and when we re-establish sponsorship under CHCOC, they will demand such leadership from us. Different ethics rules apply in the government sector, and we must follow them. I also disagree with the proposal to have only one chair for any COP. We need a balance between views of two leaders and, again, in case one steps down, the other provides continuity until elections are held for another to complete the unexpired term.
Posted by Neil Olonoff on Apr 16, 2009 8:48 AM \| Reply To This \| Permalink \| Remove Proposed changes to KMWG By-Laws I suggest that the By-Laws be reviewed PRIOR to the leadership vote so that the following changes to the by-laws may be implemented immediately, if they are ratified. I suggest that the following proposals be offered for ratification by the to change the by-laws as follows: Proposed By Law Change: Sub-groups under the Federal KM Working Group may be Communities of Practice, Initiatives or Special Interest Groups, at the discretion of the sub-group's leadership and members. No vote is required to determine this status which confers no change in any other requirement. {Reasoning: different activities require different structures and approaches.} Proposed By Law Change: A ratification of a new sub-group may be held by vote at any time, at the discretion of the KMWG leadership. {Reasoning: yearly vote is too long to wait if participants want to move quickly on an initiative.} Proposed By Law Change: The KMWG co-chair position which rotates yearly (as opposed to every two years) may be a non-governmental persons, as long as they demonstrate proven experience and knowledge with Federal knowledge management, and sign an agreement to refrain from marketing products and services. {Reasoning: opening the position to the full membership affords a much greater selection of talented and motivated individuals. The current organizational charter and sponsorship circumstance does not require the chair to be governmental.} Proposed By Law Change: Chairs of sub-groups (e.g., Communities of Practice) can be non-governmental persons, as long as they demonstrate adequate connection and experience with Federal knowledge management. The requirement for one co-chair to be a Federal employee is rescinded. {Reasoning: opening the position to the entire membership affords a much greater selection of talented and motivated individuals. One motivated individual can operate as or more effectively as two.} Proposed By Law Change: Initiative sub-groups do not require two co-chairs. One chair is sufficient for the organization of a sub-group, and that individual may be a non-government individual. Co-chairs may be selected or elected {Reasoning: One motivated individual can operate as or more effectively as two.}
Posted by Neil Olonoff on Apr 15, 2009 7:57 PM \| Reply To This \| Permalink \| Remove Suggest "Initiative Based Groups" be Added to By-Laws Suggest that the KMWG permit the inclusion of "initiative based groups," to be called "Initiatives."
Posted by Jeanne Holm on Apr 15, 2009 12:55 PM \| Reply To This \| Permalink \| Remove Changes to the By Laws Please look over the by-laws and charter on the "view" tab on this page. I welcome suggestions for changes that would better serve the community. Let's have the discussion here. If you'd like to discuss anything in detail, please email me at jholm@jpl.nasa.gov.
Posted by Ellie Trevarthen on Mar 25, 2009 7:30 PM \| Reply To This \| Permalink \| Remove Suggested Changes to KMWG Charter and By-Laws Please use this Discussion page to contribute your suggestions for changes to the KMWG Charter and By-Laws.