Taking a Step Back From News Aggregation Tools: What is Current Awareness?
Jinfo Blog

By Shimrit Janes

Abstract

There is a well-known quote from Clay Shirky, in which he suggests, "A revolution doesn’t happen when society adopts new tools, it happens when society adopts new behaviours." Law firm RPC's approach to using news aggregation tools is rooted in this thinking. After selecting and rolling out Attensa as part of its knowledge management programme, the team has turned to helping lawyers think through which sources support their objectives, and what they need to do once articles arrive in the application.

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It is a deceiving aspect of change projects that the element that is likely to take up the most money - the technology - is also arguably also the quickest part of the project to implement. Work out what your requirements are, consult with your user base to identify the specific user cases for how they will make use of the technology, then select the tool that best matches up with those requirements, fits your budget, and your existing technology. Test. Deploy. Maintain.

What is easy to forget once you’re in the grips of a technology-based project, however, is the people that will be using the tool every day. What assistance will they need to embed the new tool in their working practices? Will they need to change long-held behaviours (and beliefs?) What benefits can they expect to receive from adopting the new tool? Will everyone be using the tool in the same way?

Enterprise News Aggregation: An Essential Tool

Our deployment of enterprise news aggregation tool Attensa was not a "nice to have". Rather, its selection formed part of a wider knowledge management (KM) programme that sought to make use of emergent social technology as a way of encouraging the flow of knowledge around the firm. (Read more about Attensa in FreePint's article "Attensa StreamServer - "attention management" for the enterprise".)

Forward-thinking City law firm RPC wished to up its game in the current awareness stakes as a way of improving the service offered to our clients, the knowledge of our people, and our competitiveness. The selection of a news aggregation tool that integrated with the firm's social intranet "Edge" was just the start of that journey.

What is Current Awareness?

As a way to help lawyers understand how current awareness fits into their other activities, we wrote a simple-to-follow definition:

Current awareness is...

...a piece of information...

...that can be used to gain knowledge and insight, from...

• The bigger picture in politics, the economy, society, technology, and the environment
• Trends and news about your clients and the sectors you work in; and
• Changes affecting the legal sector and professions, such as the Legal Services Act

... to feed into...

• Business planning and strategy formulation
• Relationship building with networks
• Reputation management; and
• Learning and research

            ... and shared with the relevant audience.

RPC’s Model of Current Awareness

We also developed a model that provided a flowchart that could be used to help identify which outcomes were anticipated, and how current awareness could contribute to those outcomes. In particular, the flowchart asked lawyers to think through:

• Outcomes: the context/outcomes for which current awareness is required
• Scope: the areas of current awareness that need to be monitored to achieve the desired outcome
• Filters: the constraints required for monitoring the areas of current awareness, driven by purpose and available resources
• Tools: the tools needed for pulling, curating, and pushing the materials being monitored and reviewed
• Actions: the actions and behaviours required to ensure current awareness is monitored and reviewed.

With the definition, model, and a number of other checklists and menus, our KM team works with lawyers and teams to help think through:

• How Attensa will be used
• Which other tools and sources are needed
• Which behaviours need to be adopted for the current awareness strategy to be effective
• And - most importantly - what they need to get out of it.

FreePint Subscribers can find out more by reading Shimrit's full case study: "News Aggregation Solution Gives City Law Firm RPC a Competitive Edge".

Editor's Note: Beyond Aggregation

This article is part of the FreePint Topic Series: Beyond Aggregation, which runs from October to November 2013. Register your interest, and you'll get pre-notification of when registration opens for any webinars in this series, as well as a free copy of the FreePint Report: Buyer's Guide on News Content when we publish in November.

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