9. Knowledge Flows and Services Improvements

Capturing knowledge from external sources can have a major effect on public services; we have seen this in the examples of technologically enabled independent living and the robotic, diagnostic and information processing impact of artificial intelligence. Knowledge transfer is also important when public agencies are capital-starved encouraging working smarter, (often simply meaning working faster), as a way of enhancing total factor productivity. Knowledge, from Dewey’s (1927) perspective, is part of pragmatic technology either embedded inside the technology or in the human techniques deployed in ways-of-working. As the early 20th Taylorism showed some knowledge can be captured and codified in rules or today’s computer code and data centres. Control of codified knowledge can be ambiguous. Is the technology used to cut costs and reduce staffing, which we term knowledge management (KM) or is the technology used for the benefit of society to enable more person-to-person service contact, which we term socialised knowledge? As ICT-rich countries move from the era of digitalisation and networked information technology (IT) into the era of artificial intelligence (AI) in what direction is the control of bytes exercised? For other countries, digitalising data is the first challenge, and should not be underestimated: digital records and payment systems can be low-hanging fruit, quickly enhancing service quality and lowering costs.