Knowledge Management vs Information Management inside the DoD

A United States,​ Department of Defense perspective on the distinction between Knowledge and Information, and what this means for KM within the DoD. After personally working on the Department of Defense Instruction for Knowledge Management for the past 4 years I am proud to say that we have agreed on a definition for Knowledge Management and the Instruction will soon be published.

The DoD will define Knowledge Management as a discipline focused on integrating people and processes enabled by tools, throughout the information lifecycle, in order to create shared understanding and increase organizational performance and decision-making.
In contrast, the DoD defines information management as the function of managing an organization’s information resources for the handling of data and information acquired by one or many different systems, individuals, and organizations in a way that optimizes access by all who have a share in that data or a right to that information.

Thus within the DoD Information Management is more on how to gather and access the data where Knowledge Management is taking that data and turning it into organizational shared  understanding that can be utilized for decision making.