SAF RECEIVES TOP AWARD FOR KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT EXCELLENCE

For the effectiveness and impact of its Knowledge Management (KM) initiatives, the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) received the highest accolade in the 2010 KM Excellence Awards.

Brigadier-General (BG) Lee Shiang Long, Head Joint Communications and Information Systems Department, received the Platinum Award from Guest-of-Honour Dr N Varaprasad, Chief Executive of the National Library Board during an award presentation ceremony on 16 Sep.

The SAF is the first to receive a Platinum Award, which is administered by the Information and Knowledge Management Society (iKMS). The award is only given when iKMS' international evaluation panel has assessed that an organisation's KM initiatives are widespread and have significantly improved the organisation's performance.

"The level of consistency and focus towards KM within the SAF is particularly impressive because it has such a high level of personnel movement across roles," said iKMS Awards Secretary Mr Patrick Lambe.

During his presentation at the award ceremony, BG Lee shared the initiatives which have helped the SAF to become a "knowledge-based organisation". In particular, he spoke of the Enterprise System for Innovation, Learning and Knowledge (eSILK), a searchable repository of official documents which are easily accessed and actively updated by SAF personnel.

For example, the lessons learnt from Exercise Lightning Warrior, an integrated air-land live-firing exercise held in South Africa, are made available to all SAF personnel through eSILK. The system also provides tools such as blogs, forums and polls for members to create and share knowledge across the Services and the larger Ministry of Defence.

Established in 2008, the KM Excellence Awards aim to recognise good KM practices in organisations within Singapore. Past winners include the Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) (Silver Award), Singapore Police Force (Silver Award), Ministry of Finance (Bronze Award) and National Library Board (NLB) (Bronze Award).

Besides the SAF, other winners this year include the Singapore Youth Olympic Games Organising Committee (Silver Award), the Supreme Court of Singapore (Bronze Award) and The Attorney-General's Chambers (Bronze Award).