Knowledge Sharing in Malaysian Armed Forces Pay Directorate Through a Knowledge Management System

Abstract

There is little or no emphasis on knowledge retention in Malaysian Armed Forces Pay Directorate (Jabatan Arah Urusan Gaji Angkatan Tentera - UGAT) despite its large organisation and its function in preparing the payroll for the MAF which consists of triservices (Army, Navy and Air Force). When this study was conducted in 2006, it was found that UGAT Directorate is further complicated by out-dated record-keeping in the form of hard copies ranging from user and training manual, policies, procedures and instructions. There is little or no knowledge sharing culture in UGAT. Knowledge sharing is only practice during seminars, through phone calls or when they met ecah other. This is the only time knowledge is being exchange. When staff with experience retired or posted to another department, they carried their expertise with them. These factors emphasize the need for UGAT to adopt Knowledge Management System (KMS) which would support the need of the organisation business process. To overcome this problem, of retirement and movement of the staff the organization decided to embark on a systematic way to retent knowledge in the organization by developing a Knowledge Management System. Before developing the KMS, a Knowledge Management (KM) framework is being proposed to UGAT. At initial stage a prototype of the Knowledge Management System was developed. The benefits can be seen in the form of distribution and sharing of knowledge, knowledge retention in the form of creation of unlimited number of document repositories (unlimited storing of knowledge) and easy web search within the organisation. A survey was implemented for the purpose of this research using self-developed questionaires, to investigate the current nature of knowledge sharing, information technology usage, level of knowledge on payment and allowances, and attitude towards the implementation of the KMS.