Dale Casey
email: dale.ellen.casey@hfk.no

Educational Management Systems in Secondary Education in Hordaland County, Norway: Positional Paper

Keywords: Educational management system, school management system, learning management system, integration. 1

Educational management at the secondary school level in Norway is quite similar for all the counties in Norway. Not only are systems used in secondary education integrated, they are also integrated with many other systems used in government and education at various levels. This positional paper describes these systems and how they work together.

Introduction

The goal of this positional paper is to present the systems for educational management used in Hordaland County, Norway and to indicate how they are integrated, from a user point of view. Integration and interfacing of systems should be easy to achieve, but that is far from the situation we experience today. In Norway, we divide educational management systems (EMS) into two categories: school administrative systems (SAS); and learning management systems (LMS). Systems used for school administration contain functions for planning a school year, making schedules. A schedule would include a group of students, a subject and a teacher and in some instances a time and place. The EMS is also where official records are stored; these include semester grades, final grades, examination grades as well as attendance records and behavior grades. A learning management system is used in the classroom to implement the day to day business of education, like assignments and lessons and learning resources. This necessitates integration between the EMS and the LMS.

It is important to have a basic knowledge of the school system and the philosophy behind use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the schools, both for education and management. I start by giving a short description of the Norwegian educational system and Hordaland County. Next there will be a brief description of the major management systems in use followed by an explanation of how the systems interact.

Norway, Hordaland County and the Norwegian educational system

Norway is a small country with respect to population, but a very large country geographically with many remote areas. ICT has been instrumental in facilitating equal opportunity and access in all regions of the country, not least of all in education. When you only have a population of 5 million, coordination of data and systems is easy, or at least it should be. National initiatives are relatively easy to implement, ensuring pretty much the same structure which allows us to use the same system or systems with similar architecture, throughout the country.

Hordaland County is one of 19 entities that are separately responsible for education of secondary level students (15 to 18 year olds). Approximately 10% of Norway's population lives in Hordaland County, so we educate approximately 10% of the nation's youth. That means we have about 25,000 students, requiring 3,000 educators and 2,000 to 3,000 support personnel (maintenance, library, administration, etc.). The secondary schools in Hordaland County range in size from 100 students to over 1,000 students. Digitalization makes it possible to give equal education to all students.

There are 10 years of mandatory education, starting at the age of 6. For the first 6 years of mandatory education, the students receive an evaluation twice per school year, but no grades are given. Grades are only given in the last 4 years of mandatory education (in junior high school). The grades are used to rank students when they apply for secondary education (high school) and the grades given in high school are used to rank applicants to higher education (university).

Further education is optional, but all youth have a right to free secondary education, vocational or college preparatory courses. Almost all Norwegian youth complete at least secondary education. The first two years of a vocational education take place in school after which there is a two year apprentice program administrated by the department of education in each county. At the end of the apprenticeship, a journeyman certificate is issued. (A journeyman is a person who has served an apprenticeship at a trade or handicraft and is certified to work at it, for example, an electrician.) There is also a special program where you obtain both college preparatory competency and a journeyman certificate. The two year apprenticeship is particularly useful for students planning on becoming engineers, ambulance personnel or nurses.

Education in ICT in primary and secondary education is called the 5 th skill. The 5 skills are: reading, writing, speaking, arithmetic and use of ICT. ICT is not taught as a separate subject. ICT competency is evaluated in each subject, assessing how well the students use the digital aids that are appropriate to the subject. We also have the National Digital Learning Arena whose sole function is to develop digital aids for the subjects taught in secondary school. Many other digital aids from other providers are also in use.

Since digital competency is a part of every subject, even more so in secondary school, students need a laptop available at all times. In Hordaland, we give each student a laptop. We use computers with Microsoft Windows operating system. Our supplier sets up and configures the computers in accordance with requirements we set. Students can freely download, as if the computer were their own. They pay a fee for 2 or 3 years, after which they may keep the computer. The fee corresponds to the grant each student gets from the national government. Other counties have other solutions. Some allow their students to bring their own computer (Macintosh or personal computer (PC)) and, at the other extreme, other counties own and retain full control over the computer and only permit students to download pre-approved applications.

Brief description of our management systems

This section contains a short description of seventeen systems in use. Some of these are used in other areas, not just education. The * indicates a national database.

Residents' data base (Folkeregister)*. Folkeregister is the official national register containing (almost) every resident in Norway, with their address. This is "where you come into existence" in Norway. Your birth is registered and you are issued a person number. For non-nationals or immigrants, an application for a person number must be made, and a permanent one is only given if one has fulfilled certain criteria. All students wishing to pursue secondary education need a person number. However, there are many instances where a temporary person number is made up. Typical examples include exchange students or students in the process of applying for asylum. Almost without exception, the person number is used to synchronize databases. In many instances the person number is used as in the identification data (ID) field of a database to uniquely identify a person. Examples of use are bank accounts, tax records, personnel databases and in this context, our SAS and our LMS.

Curriculum Data Base (GREP)*. The curriculum database is an official code book for education. It contains codes and curriculum information including the structure, study program codes, and course codes for all subjects taught in Norwegian secondary schools. In addition to the codes, the database contains 13,000 competency objectives for the courses taught as well as information on the examination form, number of teaching hours (credits), etc. These codes are imported to our SAS and LMS.

Application for admission to secondary education (VIGO)*. VIGO is a nationally owned system for processing applications to secondary education. It is cordoned off to only permit application to secondary education in the county of residence, with a few exceptions for programs available for students in the whole country.

All application, processing of applications, assignment to a school and program and acceptance functions are electronic. Grades are imported from an SAS at the primary level. The grades are then weighted and assigned a point score. The sum of these points gives a score for overall achievement. This score is used to rank students.

Students must apply for school and a study program every year. They are allowed 3 choices and are guaranteed admission to one of these 3 choices. If they have completed a previous level of a particular study program, then they have to be admitted to one of the following programs from the same study program. It is not permitted to go on to a 2 nd or 3 rd year of a program until the previous level has been completed.

Processing of applications is a 4-stage process. The first stage produces statistics about how many students have applied for what programs and where. This is used by the county department of education to make adjustments to the offerings at the various schools. If there are few applicants for a program at a particular school, then that program is dropped and those applicants have their application transferred to a school where the program will be held. If there are more applicants to a program than there are places, a new class may be created. The score for overall achievement is used to place students, those with the best grades, i.e. the best score, are placed first choice.

The second, third and fourth stages consist of: ranking students; assigning them to a school; informing them; and the applicants either accepting or declining. This is primarily done by system generated text messages (SMS). Students receive a message containing information on what they have been accepted for. They can either accept the placement or be put on a waiting list for another choice. Students who do not send an acceptance are no longer considered to be applicants. This process is repeated taking into account the new data supplied by the applicants -did they accept, change their priority or want to be on a waiting list. If they are on a waiting list, they can also accept admittance to a lower priority course and still be on a waiting list. The resulting data are exported to our SAS.

At the end of every school year, student progress is loaded into the VIGO system by our SAS. This is used for the next school year, for applying for higher education and to provide statistics for the national government.

Personnel and Payroll (PAGA).

Every employee in Hordaland County starts their data trail in this system. It is also used for paying wages and transferring taxes to the treasury. There is a special code that indicates if an employee works at a school or the county department of education. This code is used to key export of personnel data to our SAS.

Student PC Administration (FrontEnd).

Each student receives a laptop when they start school. The laptops are set up by the provider, given an ID number in the form of a barcode that is attached to the computer. The PCs are distributed directly from the supplier to our schools in accordance with the number of computers needed.

School Administrative System (Extens).

Our SAS is called Extens and is a product developed in Norway. It is based on the Norwegian secondary school system. Any SAS should reflect the structure, functions, laws, rules and regulations of the educational system it is intended to manage. In Norway, education is controlled centrally, that is, the national government is responsible for all levels of education for private as well as public education. Thus the educational system for the whole country is homogeneous.

There are other systems in use in other counties in Norway, but there is little practical difference between them. For this reason, when it became time for a new SAS for secondary schools, the national government deemed it was time for one system in all the counties of Norway. This resulted in a document detailing the user demands for a new system and tenders have been obtained. Many complex aspects were uncovered and have been addressed.

The SAS has the following "modules": employee information and administration, for both teaching and non-teaching staff; student information and administration; school information and administration; semester administration; examination information; class administration; course codes (national standard) and requirements, both national and local, and administration; student assessment, attendance and behavior including reports; and administration of student PCs.

This system is the hub of all our other systems for use in the schools. This will be reflected in the section entitled "Integration" where the point of perspective considers how this system links and integrates to and from other systems.

System for Schedule Planning (UNTIS). Our SAS does not have a very useful module for schedule planning activities. This necessitates another system being integrated into the mix. Course codes, classes, teachers and students are joined together to produce necessary schedules. This system produces hypertext transfer protocol (http) files that can then be published on school web pages.

Access (AD -Active Directory).

Each user is given a unique username and password in our directory (AD). This gives access to a network and an email account. Personnel receive this as a result of being registered as an employee. Students receive this as a result of being admitted to one of our schools. Authentication (Feide)*. The username and password as well as the person number are sent to a central access function called Feide. Feide makes single sign on possible as a function for all your applications. All end user systems provided by a county or city must use this central sign on system. You can either sign on directly to Feide or you can sign on to one of the applications you have access to. We use Feide for access to our LMS.

Email System for Employees and Email System for Students. Each employee and each student has an email account through Hordaland County. These email accounts are created automatically, directly following creation of a user in our directory. Username and password for logon to an email account is the same as the logon to all other systems.

There are two separate email systems, one for students and one for employees. There are positive and negative sides to this separation. On the plus side, all employees are found in the same email address book, whether they are work at a school or at the central administration. On the negative side, students and only students are found in the student email address book. That makes it difficult for a teacher to send an email to a student and vice versa.

Learning Management (LMS -"Its learning"). We use a learning platform called "Its learning". "Its learning" is also the name of the company that provides the system and this company is based in Norway. It is the most popular system in use in Norway at the secondary level. The system is in use in countries outside Norway, like the Netherlands and the UK. There are versions for elementary school, secondary school and higher education.

The LMS is used to organize daily activity in the classroom, including courses with teachers and students. Since this information is already contained in our SAS, it is imported as is to the LMS. The teacher can then create teaching plans, activities, lessons, tests and keep track of student progress, effort, behavior and attendance. It seeks to offer everything a teacher needs, every day, for implementation of the goals for a course.

In addition to the functions built into the system, there is an extensive applications library including Britannica Online, Atekst (a digital newspaper archive), NRK skole (television programs from the Norwegian broadcasting agency), NDLA (see the next sub-section), etc. Currently there are 28 applications; some of these require a license fee. "Its learning" has formal agreements with Microsoft and Google so these products can also be used from within the system.

National Digital Learning Arena (NDLA)*. The NDLA was established when the Norwegian counties (all except one) decided to pool a considerable amount of their funds for teaching resources to create digital learning aids for use in secondary education. These resources are open and free to use. They currently encompass general studies courses (subjects found in all study programs) like Norwegian, English, mathematics, social studies, physical education and general science. There are several subject areas for college and university preparatory courses and 9 (of 13 available) subject areas for vocational trades. These resources are available for use from inside our LMS as well.

Documentation of Student Progress (SkoleArena)

. SkoleArena is a system for documentation of student progress. SkoleArena contains the official record of all work, evaluation, attendance, behavior and examination results. Attendance, behavior and examination results are entered directly into SkoleArena as is the semester grade. Grades for classroom activity may also be entered manually, but our policy is that these grades be registered in our LMS and imported.

Students can log on to this system (or click on a link from our LMS) to see their progress in each of their courses or their attendance and behavior records. Teachers have access to information for the students they have in their class and in the subjects they teach.

System for Examination Administration and for Implementation of Digital Examinations (PAS/PGS)*.

Examinations are submitted for evaluation and grading anonymously so this system (PAS) is used to assign a candidate number to each student for each examination they will sit. We have many digital examinations that are standard for the whole country, like Norwegian, English and mathematics. These examinations are found on PGS. When a student submits a digital examination, it is also evaluated in its digital form. There are 2 examiners for each examination. Each examiner opens the examination and makes their evaluation and sets a grade. If the examiners disagree on the grade, they discuss it and agree on the final grade to be given. Digital examinations save time and money. Sending examination papers through the mail to and from remote areas of the country takes time and is costly, not to mention the risk of losing them along the way. Examination grades are entered in SkoleArena and exported to our SAS.

National Certificate Database (Graduation Certificate/Journeyman Certificate)*. The purpose of the National Certificate Database is to maintain a record of all certificates and transcripts of grades issued from secondary schools. The database goes back to 2000. Our SAS produces a paper copy for the recipient. At the same time, it sends an electronic copy to this database. Journeyman certificates will become a part of this system in 2013.

Application for Admission to Higher Education (Samordnet opptak)*. The system for application to higher education has the same purpose as the system for admission to secondary school. Higher education is university or college education. Those wishing to pursue higher education register their application electronically. All institutions of higher education are included. The applicant registers which school they wish to attend and which course of study they wish to pursue. Acceptance is based on points for performance in secondary school. Certain courses of study require specific subjects and a minimum grade in order for the application to be considered. For example, language studies require the student to have completed the language they wish to study in secondary school; medical students need chemistry and biology as well as mathematics.

Learning Portal (Skoleportalen). Skoleportalen is a website owned and operated by Hordaland County. The tool used for creating templates and publication of pages is Episerver. We provide the schools with a set of master templates that they personalize to fit their own school's needs. Editors are given access to edit their own school's pages through the access system (AD) in the county.

Our learning portal was established in 2000 and has had the same function and appearance since. The learning portal is intended to be an electronic door into schools and activities in the school. These activities include LMS, mail and a pull-down menu with a list of school websites. In addition, there is a rather extensive pointer collection, broken down into the various study programs. It is possible to search the pointer collection as there are meta-tags as well as the study program breakdown.

Integration -not really, it's just import

This section will explain how our systems are integrated or, rather, interfaced. We have no true integrations; we send copies of data from one system to others. Updates in the receiving system(s) do not result in updates in the original. When data in the original are changed, they are re-imported. This results in the overwriting of any changes that have been made at the receiving end.

In the following sections, the systems are explained as pairs, with the exception of the first few sub-sections. Since our key system is our SAS, it will be used as a core from which the other systems are described in terms of their connections. At the end, how all the systems are interfaced will be illustrated (see Figure 1).

GREP and other systems. One system that is used with many other systems is GREP. GREP is the national code database and these codes are imported to many systems. Many of the systems the codes are imported to allow additions and changes at user discretion. Unfortunately, changes in one system are nontransferable to other systems, causing inconsistency between systems.

The following systems use these codes (note use is independent between the systems they are used in and data flows only one way, from GREP): VIGO (application for admission to secondary education, uses original codes only); Extens (SAS); "Its learning" (LMS); NDLA (digital aids); SkoleArena (documentation of student progress); National Certificate Database (uses original codes only); PAS/PGS (system for examinations, uses original codes only); Samordnet opptak (application for admission to higher education, uses original codes only).

SAS and "Folkeregister". The first pair of systems is our SAS and Folkeregister (resident database).There is no direct connection between these systems, but the person number used in our SAS has to be identical to the one used in the Folkeregister. However, it is possible to register people manually in the SAS when they do not have a person number. In these cases, the number is made up. If a permanent number is issued, the number created in the SAS has to be changed.

VIGO and SAS.

Data from the VIGO system (for application to high school) is imported to the SAS, including assignment of school and program of study. At the end of a school year, student assessments are exported from the SAS to VIGO. This is necessary for the next year of application, whether it be for further secondary education or higher education. This is not an integration, but a transfer of data first from VIGO to the SAS and then from the SAS to VIGO.

PAGA and SAS.

Employees are registered in our personnel and payroll system PAGA. If they are to work in a school or at the department of education, they are imported to our SAS. The personal data imported to the SAS is complete except for the details of their daily work tasks. The school or department name is also imported to the SAS.

FrontEnd and SAS. Our supplier of student PCs registers each PC in FrontEnd (the PC administration system). The supplier also attaches an ID sticker with a barcode to each PC prior to delivery and distribution. When a student comes to pick up the PC, the consultant accesses the student in the SAS and scans the barcode. All computer information is then imported to the SAS and it is coupled with the student that will be using it. It also facilitates collection of the fee for using the computer by producing a bill and the student must also sign a contract (or the parents must sign it if the student is under the age of eighteen).

UNTIS and SAS. The next system pair is UNTIS (schedule planning) and SAS. Course information is imported to UNTIS where schedule planning is completed. The plans may then be imported to a school website. Other useful functions included are calculation of workload in order to assure that employees have the same amount of work that they are being paid for and that students have the correct courses and amount of coursework.

SAS and AD.

When a student user is created in the SAS, a command goes to the AD (access control) asking it to create a user. The user is created and given a username and password for email, network and various other systems. Employee users are created in connection with registration in the personnel system. When a student has finished high school, a command goes from the SAS to AD with this information. When an employee terminates their position, the personnel system sends this information to AD. The user accounts are put into an inactive status where they remain for a year and a half before being deleted. The username cannot be used again until the inactive user has been deleted. SAS and email systems. Both employee and student email addresses are created by the AD. This happens as soon as a username has been created in the AD. These are then imported to the SAS. The email address could be edited by the user via our SkoleArena, but we have turned off this function. It was necessary to deactivate this function due to incompatibility of the set of symbols and letters allowed in SkoleArena and the SAS. Certain symbols would cause the LMS import to fail and it would fail until the email address was corrected.

SAS and LMS.

The next pair of systems is one of the most important. It is between the SAS and the LMS. At the beginning of a school year, all students should have an inactive status in the SAS. This means they are stored away in the trashcan of the LMS. Students that will continue to study are moved out of the LMS trashcan at the start of the next school year. The students that have finished their schooling are left in the trashcan until the period of quarantine is over. This is currently 18 months, after which they are deleted.

All courses from the previous school are deleted in the SAS. This causes them to lose their connection to the structure in the LMS and they are then transferred to the archive where they stay until a teacher retrieves them or deletes them. Furthermore, the hierarchy or structure from the previous year is deleted in the LMS as it no longer reflects the current structure of courses and classes. Some counties keep the structure of more than one school year, but we do not. All deletion from the trashcan in the LMS must be done manually.

At the start of a new school year, the schools make a complete course plan in the SAS. The course plan consists of subjects to be taught, who is taking them, in which group and who will be teaching them. Classes are also created with a "contact teach-er" teacher and all the students. This structure is then imported to the LMS and a new school year is created. Each course and class in the SAS causes an LMS course or class to be created. Changes in students or teachers that are made in the SAS are automatically updated in the course or class groups.

SAS, SkoleArena and LMS.

SkoleArena is an interface between the LMS and the SAS. It shows some of the data that is in the SAS. There is additional data stored only in SkoleArena. Some of the data in SkoleArena are concatenated and stored in the SAS. This data includes attendance, behavior, semester grades and examination grades. The fields that are available for direct edit are actually fields in the SAS. Examples of this are email address and telephone number. Most schools have chosen to lock these fields for their students to avoid them registering garbage.

SkoleArena also receives data from the LMS. Our LMS enables all everyday learning activities to be done digitally. This includes tests and course work. The teacher evaluates and comments on the work and sets a grade or approved/not approved status on the work. These evaluations are then exported from the LMS to SkoleArena.

SAS and PAS/PGS. The next pair of systems is PAS/PGS (examination system).

Examination data is imported to the SAS. This includes examination codes, student identification (person number), examiner identification (person number) and the date of the examination.

SAS and Certificate Database. The SAS and the certificate database are also connected. Examination grades as well as behavior and attendance are printed out for the student at the end of each semester and school year. This certificate is also sent to the central database from the SAS.

Samordnet opptak, VIGO and Certificate Database. At the end of a school year, all grades are transferred from the SAS to VIGO. They are then sent to the national government (bureau of statistics). If the student is applying for higher education, the results also go to the system used for application for admission to higher education (Samordnet opptak). Samordnet opptak also uses data from the certificate database.

AD and other systems. Our AD (user directory) has many functions. When our AD creates a user, an email account is automatically created. Editors of school websites are given access to their school's website in our AD. The users are then imported to the website and may sign in with their same username and password. The AD is also connected to "Feide", enabling single sign on to 19 applications.

Conclusion

No computer systems in Norway can be called "large systems"; there are not enough data records. However, the amount of data is no longer relevant, since storage and retrieval of data is the simplest part of a system. The largest system is of course the "Folkeregister" with 5 million people registered. The systems are none-the-less very complex and there are many connections that have to communicate with one another. This is where the issue lies; data only flows one-way. The systems end up with corrupt data. Data that was identical to begin with gets changed in one system and the changes do not go back up the line to the source. Sometimes this causes a break in synchronization so transference to other systems down the line becomes impossible.

Glitches in source data create problems in the integrated systems that have to be corrected manually, but you have to find them first. In one instance, a huge amount of "garbage" was sent to our SAS from the national database due to an error they had. The changes in our SAS caused our LMS to try and create 8,000 new courses. Fortunately we had a safeguard on and stopped the import. Had it gone through, all of these courses would have been garbage, but they would have required manual deletion and a quarantine period of 18 months before they could be permanently deleted.

Data imported from the same source to different systems is not always identical in the various systems. The SAS and the LMS import data from the national subject database, independent of each other. Each of these systems allows for supplementation with local goals and evaluation criteria. Since there is no synchronization of this information, this is at best double work, and in the worst case they are not the same. When grades/evaluations are imported from the LMS to SkoleArena, goals and evaluation criteria do not pass over. The teacher then has to go into SkoleArena and connect up the same goals and evaluation criteria that they had available in the LMS.

There are many examples of "where it can go wrong" and it does almost every day. These kinds of errors are time consuming to find and they result in low quality data. For the most part it works astonishingly well. In a perfect world, we would have one central pool of data with applications drawing from it. Unfortunately, our system providers do not have the same philosophy.

Acknowledgements. The author would like to thank: colleagues at Hordaland County for valuable feed back in connection with this paper and the presentation made at the ITEM 2012 conference in Bremen; and Don Passey, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Educational Research, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YD for encouragement and help in preparing this paper for publication.

Figure 1 .

 1 Figure 1. Interconnections between the educational data systems used in Hordaland County.


Anne Gregor

Michael Wilmes
email: michael.wilmes@senbjw.berlin.de

Christian Kiock

Pupils' Data: Implementing a Management Information System to Optimise Planning in Berlin Schools

Keywords: Information management system, educational management, planning optimization, pupil data

Parents are able to choose the school their children will attend. Thus, a core task of the Berlin Senate Administration Office for Education, Youth and Science (SenBildJugWiss) is having optimally-resourced schools with the adequate number of teachers at the start of a school year. The project's mission was to obtain accurate figures by efficiently processing data of approximately 320,000 pupils from 700 schools. This processing included reporting on the various target groups of the SenBildJugWiss. The solution was to implement the OLAP-Database Palo as a management information system (MIS) tool. By doing so, it was important that an initial version was completed fairly swiftly to demonstrate main functions for future users, to highlight necessary adjustments for integration into the existing system, to define key performance indicators (KPIs) and their data sources, as well as creating the desired reports. One of the major challenges was creating a homogeneous data structure and harmonising the search and query language (SQL) tables. The outcome is a MIS that best fits the requirements, including meeting strict data protection regulations. The created reports provide, inter alia, the data delivery status required -the amount of pupils per class and schools eligible to gain certain levels of resources.

1

The problem

The initial situation

As a result of the School Structural Reform, parents are able to choose the school their children will attend. Thus, a core task of SenBildJugWiss is having optimally resourced schools with an adequate number of teachers at the start of a school year.

Resources are planned by analysing detailed pupil data [START_REF] Thomas | Bürokratieabbau und der Einsatz moderner Informationstechnik als Aufgabe der Bildungsverwaltung?[END_REF]. Unfortunately, these analyses only deliver deficient and unreliable information due to a heterogenic ITsystem and a lack of IT-integration with some departments of the SenBildJugWiss. Therefore, despite being available in SQL-data bases (DBs), it was not possible to aggregate the relevant data efficiently. Depending on the know-how of individuals, analyses were carried out using MS Excel. Consequently, interdisciplinary reports were either sparsely accessible or took a long time to be created [START_REF] Jedox | Anwenderbericht Berliner Senat: Die Hausaufgaben für Europa sind gemacht[END_REF].

1.2

The legal framework

The Berlin Data Protection Act, Berlin Education Act, and Berlin School Act.

There are numerous legal data protection regulations that fundamentally affect both the design and functionality for software components of an IT platform as well as corresponding SenBildJugWiss organisation processes. Details for automating search of personal data as well as adhering to technical standards are defined in Paragraphs 64 to 66 of the Berlin Education Act [3] and in the Berlin School Act [4], containing, inter alia, the following details:

• Legitimacy for pupil data processing in automated files, possible data to be collected and the point of time of their erasure.

•

Functions responsible for data processing.

•

Spatially separating personal computers (PCs) used for analysis from those used for lessons.

•

Depersonalising specific pupils' data categories already entered by the schools using a software tool.

•

Administering an automated pupil DB in SenBildJugWiss using unique indices instead of pupils' names (pseudonymisation).

•

Authorisation for searching for pseudonymised pupil data.

When processed automatically, the data is separated according to its purpose and is done in such a way that only respective authorised personnel can access it [5]. Furthermore, there are detailed requirements for maintaining data processing systems; thus, the Data Protection Officer is an important stakeholder [5].

The Berlin Employee Representation Act. This act contains details of tasks relating to specific employee representatives. The Women's Officer and the Representative of Disabled Persons are among them [6]. The following clauses (amongst others) needed to be applied in the project:

2

The project "Pupils' Data"

Mission and objectives

The mission of the project was to:

• Digitalise data of approximately 320,000 pupils from 700 schools.

•

Efficiently automate processing and analysis of this data for delivery of figures to SenBildJugWiss. • Create a reporting system in the context of business intelligence, i.e. implementing a MIS in the existing IT system.

The objectives were to: • Improve planning.

•

Optimise use of resources: teachers and budget.

The project was undertaken by a range of team members. The team members and their functions are described in Table 1.

Design

The project began by creating a test environment for executing trials isolated from the operating system. This test environment has been permanent and will also be used for making any further changes to the Palo-DB. Furthermore, a pilot version of the Palo-DB for explorative prototyping [9] was created. Due to information gathered, a prototype was developed and was also examined in the test environment. After having achieved satisfying results, the trial underwent live operation in some departments of the SenBildJugWiss. The roll-out for all users was planned to start after successful completion of the trial.

Information flow

Preparation of data imports into Palo-DB from schools. As authorised personnel, head teachers enter the data into an MS Excel file. A special software is then applied that verifies the completeness of the data and changes the MS Excel files into two common separated values (CSV) files in order to anonymise the data by separating them from any identifying attributes. This software was especially developed for this purpose by the Fraunhofer Institute. Both files are sent via an encrypted e-mail to the person responsible at the SenBildJugWiss. All necessary data from these files are loaded into the Palo-DB, which is stored on a SenBildJugWiss server. The date when data would be used was determined during the project. Subsequently, defined reports are able to be created by permitted users via the cockpit (user interface) of the DB. User authorisation for the Palo-DB is managed using the user access system of the SenBildJugWiss-server. Access rights are administrated using their central directory service. To ensure unity, roles were set up identically in the Palo-DB and an interface was programmed using the LDAP standard. Furthermore, the administration of new passwords and user permissions is not applicable. The user can only access data according to the respective rights of the schools or district.

Preparation of data imports into

Available reports

Users of the currently-created reports are the IT Centre of Competence, the 13 educational authorities, the twelve supervisory school authorities (as of March 2012), and the head teachers from all 700 schools. Table 2 shows the available reports, the KPIs and the dimensions that can be interrogated using filters. All data protection requirements were met by the project. The Palo-OLAP-DB processes approximately 3.5 million pieces of data at a high calculation speed. The system can also be run on a server with a memory of 4 gigabytes. The DB works solidly and plausibility tests have yielded accurate calculation outcomes. The control cockpit at the front end for end users is found to be user-friendly. Required information can be retrieved via a mouse click and without intensive training being necessary. By requiring local authorities to supervise schools, the essential KPIs for optimal resource decisions are now currently available. As a result, KPIs are created from cross-functional data sources due to linked files from various departments. Thus, a further outcome of the project is that it contributes to an improved interdisciplinary collaboration. Based on role-defined access to pupil data, the Supervisory School Authorities (responsible for school buildings, districts and for teacher resourcing) are able to coordinate more quickly with each other.

Live operation for further users is planned via a web solution. Further modules can be added to the existing solution using the same IT infrastructure in order to gain further efficiencies across the various educational administrative authorities in the Federal State of Berlin.

•

  Paragraph 79: The duty to obtain consent from employee representatives regarding measures of the SenBildJugWiss. • Paragraph 59: The participation of the Main Personnel Council, especially in IT projects. • Paragraph 74: Conclusion of a works agreement. This is a helpful tool that formally documents permission to execute the project and records details that have been agreed regarding the procedure [6]. In view of the above, the chairman of the Main Personnel Council is one of the most crucial stakeholders. The SGB IX-Rehabilitation and Participation of Disabled Persons and Berlin Equality Act. The Representative of Disabled Persons is empowered by Paragraph 95 of the SGB IX [7]. The Women's Officer acts according to Paragraphs 16 and 17 of the Berlin Equality Act [8]. Paragraph 3 of the Berlin Equality Act requires active contribution to an equal proportion of both genders in professional functions which, of course, applies to this project too. DIN EN ISO 9241 and Workstation Regulation. DIN EN ISO 9241 requires userfriendly software design, and workstation regulation ensures access and use of ergonomic hardware equipment.

•

  Head of IT and another IT employee of the Department "eGovernment@School" SenBildJugWiss • Integration of the Palo-DB into IT systems including ensuring correct interfaces between systems using lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) within data protection (user access management, and authentication) IT Expert Data Warehouse • Department "eGovernment@School" SenBildJugWiss • Process implementation, and report design • Future internal capacity to use Palo Software design • Jedox AG (external) • Designing Palo OLAP-DB 3 Realisation of the project and results

  Palo-DB from SenBildJugWiss. Before the files are used, the person responsible authenticates the sender e-mail via sender certificate. The two CSV files per school are imported into two separate SQL-DBs. These files are copied to another server belonging to the SenBildJugWiss. The names of pupils are replaced with unique indices. Data Import into Palo-DB. The Palo-DB is opened. The now anonymous data in SQL format, further MS Excel and SQL files are manually linked to the Palo-DB.

Table 1 .

 1 Project team members and their functions.

	Role in the Project Team	Function
	Project Leader	• Head of Department "eGovernment@School"
		SenBildJugWiss • Overall responsibility for project management
	Project Coordinator	• Department "eGovernment@School" SenBildJugWiss • Organisation of communication
	Project Officer	• Department "eGovernment@School" SenBildJugWiss
		• Planning and managing the project, focusing on data
		protection
	Project Consultant	• 2k Consultants (external) • Project expertise in the public sector, including
		knowledge on developing a data warehouse, imple-
		menting business intelligence using Palo in the public
		sector, monitoring and identifying KPIs
		• Interfacing with the software provider Palo-DB • Supporting project management
	Data Protection Expert	• Data Protection Officer SenBildJugWiss
		• Ensuring data protection adherence
	IT Experts
	DB System Management

Table 2 .

 2 Available reports, KPIs and query functions.

	No. Report	KPI	Query dimension
	1	Delivery over-	Total pupils	Federal state, district,
		view	Pupils who are "Exempt from	school
			Purchase of Teaching Materi-
			als" (EPTM) or Non-German
			origin (NGO)
			Number of classes
			Average class sizes
			Values from the previous year
	2	Delivery status	Delivery status per school
			Comments may be entered
	3	Delivery status	Delivery status per delivery	Deliveries 1-4, district
		detail	per school
	4	SenBildJug-	Pupils who are EPTM and	District, school
		Wiss tuition	NGO
		supply
	5	Pupil data	Status of forecasted number of	Status
			pupils:	Type of school
			Total, additions, those chang-	Type of focal
			ing schools, leavers, un-	point of support
			changed status, unknown sta-	Delivery date 1-4
			tus for change from secondary	District, school
			level (SEK) I to SEK II
			Pupils per school type
			Pupils per focal point of sup-
			port
			Pupils per delivery date
			Contact data of schools
			Values from the previous year
		6 Pupil data with	As report 5, but without "Pu-	District, school, class
		classes	pils per focal point of support"	level
			and "Status"
			Number of classes
			Average class size
	4	Discussion and future prospects

Acknowledgements. This is a sub-project of the wider "eGovernment@School" project of the Berlin Senate Administration Office for Education, Youth and Science, run in collaboration with 2K Consultants.

Data Protection Act: Accessible at: http://www.datenschutzberlin.de/attachments/346/BlnDSG2008.pdf, (2012) 6. Berlin Employee Representation Act: Accessible at: http://www.berlin.de/imperia/md/content/hpr/rechtsgrundlagen/persvg_berlin_mit_wo_11. 07.11.pdf?start&ts=1326116332&file=persvg_berlin_mit_wo_11.07.11.pdf, (2012) 7. SGB IX: Accessible at: http://www.sozialgesetzbuch-sgb.de/sgbix/95.html, (2012) 8. Berlin Equality Act (Landesgleichstellungsgesetz): Accessible at: http://www.berlin.de/imperia/md/content/senfrauen/lgg.pdf?start&ts=1188374644&file=lgg.pdf, (2012) 9. Holey, T., Welter, G., , Wiedemann, A.: Wirtschaftsinformatik (2nd edition). Olfert, Ludwigshafen, Germany, (2007)


Roshayu Mohamad
email: roshayu.mohamad@aeu.edu.my

Karen Manning

Arthur Tatnall
email: arthur.tatnall@vu.edu.au

Knowledge Management in University Administration in Malaysia

Keywords: Knowledge management practices, organisational culture, Malaysia, higher education administration. 2

Knowledge management is important to both business and government organisations as a means of improving their operations. This research project investigated cultural factors affecting knowledge management in higher education administrative departments in Malaysia. It considered strategic decisions made by university administrations and adoption decisions made by individual staff members. As the study was conducted in the South-East Asia region, organisational culture in this region is important. The paper describes the factors found to affect the practice of knowledge management in higher education in Malaysia.

Introduction

The use of Knowledge management practices is widely considered to be a way to enhance organisational performance in business, government and other organisations. The research project described in this paper investigated cultural factors affecting knowledge management in higher education administrative departments in Malaysia. The concept of knowledge management is not new, and has been well known in Malaysia for over a decade, but in Malaysia the use of knowledge management techniques must be considered to be still in the developmental stage.

This paper investigates the strategies and innovation factors behind all these adoption decisions -strategic decisions made by the university administration and adoption decisions made by individual staff members. Following the university adoption decisions, we will consider whether complete adoption of this technology by individual administrators necessarily follows.

an organised set of data -information that is combined with experience and judgment will then become knowledge.

Knowledge is authenticated information [START_REF] Alavi | Knowledge Management and Knowledge Management Systems: Conceptual Foundations and Research Issues[END_REF] and refers to the understanding, awareness or familiarity acquired through study, investigation, observation or experience over time [START_REF] Bollinger | Managing organizational knowledge as a strategic asset[END_REF] and acts as a basic foundation of the information a person needs to perform a task [START_REF] Bartol | Encouraging Knowledge Sharing: The role of organizational reward systems[END_REF]. According to Alavi and Leidner [START_REF] Alavi | Knowledge Management and Knowledge Management Systems: Conceptual Foundations and Research Issues[END_REF] knowledge is also personalised information that is related to facts, procedures, concepts, interpretations, ideas, observation and judgment that is possessed in the mind of individuals.

McMurray [START_REF] Mcmurray | Transferring knowledge between supervisors and managerial peer groups: failing at trust gurdle[END_REF] defines knowledge as the mixture of experience, values, expert and contextual information that helps the people or organisation in the evolution and absorption of new experience.

Knowledge is rooted in philosophy, which traditionally distinguishes three types of knowledge: 'knowing how' refers to the skills one develops and, most of the time, is tacit in nature; 'knowing that' resembles information since it is de-contextualised; and 'knowing things' refers to the knowledge of acquaintance [START_REF] Asimakou | The knowledge dimension of innovation management[END_REF]. Knowledge is also categorised as declarative, procedural, causal, conditional and relational knowledge [START_REF] Alavi | Knowledge Management and Knowledge Management Systems: Conceptual Foundations and Research Issues[END_REF]. However, the most commonly used taxonomies in literature are Polanyi's [START_REF] Polanyi | Personal Knowledge: Toward a post-critical philosophy[END_REF][START_REF] Polanyi | The tacit dimension[END_REF] and Nonaka's [START_REF] Nonaka | A Dynamic Theory of Organisational Knowledge Creation[END_REF] dimensions of tacit and explicit knowledge. Nonaka [START_REF] Nonaka | A Dynamic Theory of Organisational Knowledge Creation[END_REF] and Nonaka and Takeuchi [START_REF] Nonaka | The Knowledge Creating Company[END_REF] argued that knowledge is created through conversion between tacit and explicit knowledge through the process of socialisation, externalisation, internalisation and combination. This knowledge concept comprises epistemological and ontological dimensions.

In organisations, knowledge resides in many different places such as databases, knowledge bases, filing cabinets and people's heads and is distributed right across the enterprise. Too often one part of an enterprise repeats work of another part simply because it is impossible to keep track of, and make use of, knowledge in other parts of the organisation. Organisations need to know what their knowledge assets are, and how to manage and make use of these assets in order to get a maximum return. This is where knowledge management concepts play an important role in organisations.

Two types of knowledge are involved in higher educational settings: academic knowledge and organisational knowledge. Academic knowledge is the primary purpose of higher education, while organisational knowledge refers to knowledge of the overall business of an institution, its strength and weaknesses, the market it serves and the factors critical to organisational success [START_REF] Coukos-Semmel | Knowledge management in research university: the processes and strategies[END_REF].

Knowledge management (KM) concepts are gaining acceptance in the field of education [START_REF] Petrides | Knowledge Management in Education: Defining the Landscape[END_REF]. As in business concerns, Higher Education Institutions (HEI) have also realised the need to gain competitive advantage due to stiff competition and pressure to face globalisation. With the growing interest of KM in education, numerous studies have been conducted to examine KM issues in a wider context. Research in KM implementation for HEI has just recently attracted the attention of researchers [START_REF] Leitner | Intellectual Capital reporting for universities: conceptual background and application for Austrian universities[END_REF], and has been rather limited especially in the South-East Asian region [START_REF] Sharimllah | The practice of knowledge management processes. A comparative study of public and private higher education institution in Malaysia[END_REF][START_REF] Sadiq | Knowledge sharing in higher education institutions. Perspective from Malaysia[END_REF] A study conducted by Davenport et al. [START_REF] Davenport | Successful knowledge management projects[END_REF] identified four types of objectives for knowledge management practices in organisations. These objectives have been widely referred to in the literature of KM implementation for higher education such as in Thorn [START_REF] Thorn | Knowledge Management for Educational Information System. What is the state of the field?[END_REF]. They are:

• To create knowledge repositories.

• To improve knowledge access.

• To enhance the knowledge environment.

• To manage knowledge as an asset.

Organisational Culture

Organisational culture has been identified as a critical success factor for knowledge management, however, there is little research conducted to understand how organisational culture contributes to knowledge management practices. Hofstede [START_REF] Hofstede | Culture's consequence: International differences in work-related values[END_REF] argues that the organisation's culture is nested within a national culture and therefore the national culture influences human resource practices and organisational behaviour. However, studies by Magnier-Watanabe and Senoo [START_REF] Magnier-Watanabe | Organizational characteristics as prescriptive factors of knowledge management initiatives[END_REF] show that organisational characteristics are factors that affect knowledge management practices in organisations more strongly than national culture. Based on this argument, the focus of this research was on the culture from an organisational characteristics perspective and not in terms of the national culture. This study was conducted in the South-East Asia region and organisational culture in this region is important. Countries' independence from British rule is often marked by a passive management culture borrowed from the British colonial era [START_REF]Human resource management in Pakistan[END_REF] and public sector organisations of these countries are often bureaucratic, centralised and non-responsive to customer need.

Innovation in Knowledge Management

Innovation can be described as a pervasive attitude that allows business to see beyond the present and create the future and therefore becomes the key driver of the organization's ability to change [START_REF] Razak | Organizational Innovative Capabilities: An Empirical Study of Malaysian Firms[END_REF]. In this context it is important to understand what is meant by innovativeness and the innovative culture of an organization. Firm innovativeness is defined as an openness to new ideas as an aspect of a firm's culture [START_REF] Hurley | Innovation, market orientation, and organizational learning: an integration and empirical examination[END_REF]. It is conceptualised from two perspectives:

1) viewing it as a behavioural variable, which refers to the rate of adoption of innovations by the firm; and 2) viewing it as an organization's willingness to change [START_REF] Hurt | Scales for the measurement of innovativess[END_REF]. It is also important that a creative environment backs up the organizational attitude and takes actions people are comfortable with [START_REF] Razak | Organizational Innovative Capabilities: An Empirical Study of Malaysian Firms[END_REF], which constitute the cultural element of the organization.

Knowledge Management in Higher Education

Knowledge management is still considered in its infancy in Malaysia [START_REF] Ngah | The relationship between knowledge management and trust: Malaysian perspective[END_REF]. Studies conducted in the area of Higher Education in Malaysia are sparse. This research narrows down to the organisational cultural aspects and intends to investigate the adoption of knowledge management practices in higher educational administrative departments from the perspective of organisational culture, so it is important to understand the unique culture of an academic environment.

Conceptual framework

Many studies have linked organizational cultures as a pre-requisite for effective knowledge management. Scholars and practitioners believe that supportive and adaptive organizational culture enables the successful implementation of knowledge management practices in organizations [START_REF] Saeed | Knowledge Management Practices: Role of Organizational Culture[END_REF]. This paper studies the extent to which the cultural factors in organizations affect their knowledge management practices. Based on the literature, this study adopts a conceptual framework involving the following seven cultural factors (see Figure 1): 1. Willingness to share knowledge. 2. Co-operation amongst organizational members.

3. Involvement and participatory culture which includes open communication channels, encouragement of participation, involvement in decision making and encouragement for sharing information. 4. The need of high-level of trust in organizations and among employees. 5. The need of a culture that encourages problem seeking and solving which will encourage employees to look for problems as a way to improve the organization and to embrace the capacity to learn from failure. 6. Adaptability or capability to absorb internal change in response to external conditions. 7. Sense of mission and vision which influences the organization by providing purpose and meaning as to why the work is important, and defines the appropriate course of action for the organization and its members.

Research methodology

This study used a mixed methods research approach. In the qualitative phase, interviews were conducted with participants from higher education administration in five Malaysian universities. From these, and from studies from the literature, a conceptual model was developed to show the effect of cultural factors on knowledge management practices in higher education administration: knowledge sharing; cooperation, involvement and participation; trust; problem seeking and solving; adaptability to change; and sense of vision and mission. The quantitative phase then used questionnaires distributed to university administrative staff and managers to investigate how these factors affect each other and how they affect KM implementation.

The data collected from the key informant interviews conducted has been transcribed and analysed using content analysis and categorisation processes to bring to the surface the culture elements or areas discussed during the interviews. The results from this analysis were used to develop web-based questionnaires to be used for the second phase of the study. The second phase of data collection (quantitative data) started by sending emails to the administrative staff and managers from the chosen HEI requesting their participation in the survey. The data collected from the web-based questionnaires was then analysed using the Partial Least Square (PLS) method and PLS software to test and estimate causal relationships using a combination of statistical data and qualitative causal assumptions. Out of 20 public universities in Malaysia, 6 universities are included in the qualitative study phase, and 10 universities are included in the quantitative study phase. A total of 22 respondents were contacted for the interview sessions with 12 agreeing and providing useful answers (54.5%). The data collection for the quantitative stage took place over 2 months and participant lists were obtained directly from the university's human resource department. A total of 1,000 participants were contacted, resulting in 351 useful responses (35.1%). Three hundred and sixteen participants answered the Bahasa Malaysia survey, while 35 participants answered the English survey.

Findings from the qualitative study

Knowledge management practices in Malaysian HEI administrative departments: Respondents viewed KM implementation as a way to manage organisational knowledge in order to achieve business excellence. Most commented that the knowledge management practices in their administrative departments are in the developmental stage with a lot of opportunities for improvement. As one respondent said:

"… later data can be retrieved for the right purpose, at the right time and for the right source …"

Behaviour and support towards knowledge management as an innovation:

Findings from the interviews reveal that three out of five universities have already been implementing knowledge management for quite some time and are in the stage of strengthening their practices. On the other hand, the findings from one university showed that their staff are unaware of the existence of such practice. One respondent indicated that "knowledge management is a difficult new thing".

Knowledge sharing culture: Knowledge sharing culture does exist in university administrative departments but it was stated by some respondents that this culture only occurs among staff within the same group level and the same department. This is particularly true when dealing with tacit knowledge or staff experiences of knowledge in performing jobs specific to their expertise. Partial knowledge-sharing does occurs in these institutions and some individuals also engage in knowledge sharing to the extent that they believe it will be beneficial for them to do so, and that it will not damage their reputation. A typical response was that:

"I see that everyone is busy doing their own work and did not bother about other people. Sometimes we don't really know what's going on in the campus …"

Co-operative culture: Co-operation ranges from moderate to good among administrative staff in Malaysian universities, but one respondent commented that: "It depends on individuals: some people are not willing to cooperate with others." In dealing with cooperation, the majority of the respondents commented on the importance of the leadership role needed to make cooperation happen. One said that it "… depends on the leaders who head the particular tasks". Another also commented that staff are willing to co-operate with people who are willing to co-operate with them: "given a fair opportunity". Factors encouraging staff to cooperate include:

• Their understanding of the subject matter.

• Belief that others need to know what they know.

• Their sense of belonging to the unit or department.

• Reward factors.

• Relationships among staff.

• Encouragement based on leader attitude.

Involvement and participation culture: Results from the interviews on involvement and participation culture led to the following observations:

• Some staff regard the involvement and participation culture in their university as being good, with the existence of various tools for staff to participate. • The involvement and participation culture varies according to staff motivation. • The involvement and participation culture depends on the leader -whether this person is open minded and willing to accept suggestions from lowerlevel staff.

Trust culture. The majority of the respondents rated trust culture in HEI administrative departments as good to high. One of the respondents also noted that willingness to help others depended on the social relationship with these people. Two of the respondents also related trust with cooperation: "… trust and cooperation come together" and "… trust leads to cooperation among staff".

Problem seeking and solving culture: It was observed that problem solving cultures do exist in the administrative departments of Malaysian universities and that: "… post mortem, root cause analysis does exist …" and that "… there is a system here … where people will meet in order to find solutions for some kind of problems that arise … whoever can come out with the solution will be rewarded [by the university]."

Adaptability to change: Comfort or familiarity with what people already practice may be a factor in people's reluctance to change. In most situations management has to make some practice or implementation compulsory in order to make people change their current practice or adopt a new one.

Sense of vision and mission:

Results from the interviews showed that administrative staff in Malaysian universities are aware of their institutions' vision and mission. However, it was observed that staff support toward the organisational vision and mission varies.

Other emerging factors:

• Leadership. are using Bahasa Malaysia as their medium of communication. There were a few respondents who indicated that language became a barrier for staff to support knowledge management. The most common statement was that language became a barrier to communication and a barrier to understanding. • Religion. Interview findings showed that few respondents associate the necessity to share and distribute knowledge in their organisation with religious factors. Since most Malaysian public universities staff are Malays whose religion is Islam, they relate existing practices with their religion. A few respondents indicated that knowledge is a fundamental principle of Islam and added that distributing and sharing knowledge is a good deed promoted by their religion and that the act of storytelling was also demonstrated in their religion.

Findings from the Quantitative Study

The result from the PLS analysis revealed relational details about the seven factors investigated: knowledge sharing, cooperation, problem seeking and solving, involvement and participation, trust, adaptability to change, and, vision and mission do not directly influence knowledge management practices in higher educational administration in Malaysia. Space restrictions mean that it is not possible in this paper to give full details of the results of the qualitative study, but it was shown that the following factors do affect each other in knowledge management implementation:

• That involvement and participation affect knowledge sharing in higher education administration. • That involvement and participation affect problem seeking and solving in higher education administration. • That trust affects adaptability to change in higher education administration.

• That trust affects cooperation in higher education administration.

• That vision and mission affect trust in higher education administration.

• That vision and mission affect cooperation in higher education administration.

• That co-operation affects knowledge sharing in higher education administration.

Conclusion

The study shows that the seven indicated factors: knowledge sharing, cooperation, involvement, adaptability to change, trust, problem seeking and solving, and vision and mission do not have a direct impact on KM practice in university administration in Malaysia, but that some factors do affect one another. The research suggests that leadership and available technology are the most important concerns of the participants when knowledge management practice is discussed, and that language and religions might also have an effect on KM practice in Malaysia. It is also interesting to see that reward factors, which were indicated as one of the factors that affect KM practices, were found in this study not to be a reliable measure. This research was confined to Malaysian universities but this then opens up more possibilities for future research on knowledge management implementation in higher educational administration in other countries.

Figure 1 .

 1 Figure 1. Conceptual framework to study the effect of cultural factors on KM practice in HEI administrative departments. The following were the research questions: • What is the perception of administrative managers and staff in Malaysian public universities on viewing KM as an innovation? • What is the state of KM implementation in the administrative departments of the public universities in Malaysia? • Are cultural factors such as knowledge sharing culture, cooperative culture, involvement and participation culture, trust culture, problem seeking and solving culture, adaptability to change culture, and the sense of vision and mission perceived as affecting KM practices in the administrative department of the public universities in Malaysia? • Do these cultural factors affect the KM practices in the administrative departments of the public universities in Malaysia?

  The majority of public university staff in Malaysia are Malay and

	respondent said: "What makes people contribute, I think is the
	administrator. I always believe that the leader is the most important person."
	• Technology. It was observed that at the beginning of the interview sessions
	most respondents linked their understanding of knowledge management
	practices with the existing technologies they have available for storing and
	retrieving information and knowledge. Comments included:
	"I think culture has to be supported by the technology.
	People must practice knowledge management through
	technology … Culture alone is not enough, especially
	in our traditional culture … I think, since our university is
	technology oriented, that is what makes our movement
	towards knowledge management is faster compared to
	other university."
	• Language.
	Throughout the interviews comments on leadership issues
	arose from participants in each university involved in this study. One