While the moves caused by the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) have helped to cut some overall costs and consolidate disparate military programs, it is also believed to have caused “knowledge transfer loss”, according to a new study.
The Senior Service College Fellowship (SSCF) report focused on the U.S. Army Command, Control, Communications, Computer, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) and sought to find out if “the ability of Team C4ISR to perform its acquisition, administrative, and sustainment mission in a timely and professional manner increased, decreased, or remain unchanged.”
The study found that while 38 percent of knowledge is easily captured and transferable, the remaining 62 percent is much harder to quantify since it remains in each individual and rarely makes it into print or otherwise.
Team C4ISR’s BRAC relocation was expected to result in personnel losses as high as 70 percent, yet only resulted in just over 30 percent. The large number of new hires helped to mitigate the loss of knowledge, the report said.
Eighty-eight percent of the senior leaders surveyed in the report said there was some decrease of knowledge, yet 50 percent of these same respondents cite either no loss or some increase in service. An estimated 30 percent of the respondents said they actually experienced an increase in customer satisfaction and support. Overall, 75 percent of Army senior leaders believe the BRAC move was more beneficial than not.
“If there was ever an area where we need creative leadership, knowledge capture and transfer is it,” the report stated. “(The DoD) have not done a very good job at executing the various mandates to formulate knowledge capture. We appear to just not like sharing our knowledge, documenting our lessons learned, passing along successes and failures, etc.”
The report further recommended that an updated study could be conducted over the next five years to verify knowledge transfer as an issue or as a level 1 and 2 leadership requirement.
