Building Institutional Memory from the Ground Up: A Knowledge Management Foundation for Saudi Arabia’s National Energy Agency.

About the Client

K.A.CARE remains Saudi Arabia’s national body for recommending nuclear and renewable energy policy, now chaired by the Kingdom’s Minister of Energy and operating within the ambitious energy diversification targets of Saudi Vision 2030, which envisions tens of gigawatts of new renewable capacity alongside an expanding domestic nuclear and uranium exploration program. An organization tasked with steering multi-decade national energy strategy is exactly the kind of institution for which losing the reasoning behind past decisions carries real, long-term strategic cost.

Industry Context

Knowledge management platforms have continued to evolve well beyond the SharePoint- and taxonomy-based foundation Iknow built for K.A.CARE in 2014 and 2015. Microsoft has reported that SharePoint became the leading grounding source for Microsoft 365 Copilot in 2026, and enterprise taxonomy and metadata tools comparable to the Smartlogic Semaphore platform Iknow deployed now increasingly incorporate AI-driven auto-classification. That evolution reinforces rather than replaces the fundamentals this program established: a well-governed taxonomy, a curated content repository, and a clear institutional record of past decisions remain the foundation that any AI-powered knowledge tool depends on to be trustworthy. For a rapidly growing, highly technical national agency navigating a multi-decade energy strategy, that foundation is arguably more valuable today than it was in 2014.

Current Situation

K.A.CARE had no formal knowledge management foundation in place despite conducting substantial technical and policy research central to the Kingdom’s energy future. Content was scattered across file servers and repositories with no consistent organization, there was no way to publish or share K.A.CARE’s studies with stakeholders or the public, and rapid staff growth meant the reasoning behind important historical decisions risked being lost as new employees replaced institutional knowledge holders.

• No knowledge management foundation. K.A.CARE lacked the people, process, and technology foundation needed to promote knowledge sharing and organizational learning across its research and entrepreneurial activities.
• Unorganized, scattered content. Existing content lived across multiple file servers and repositories with no consistent taxonomy, metadata, or governance.
• Institutional memory at risk. Rapid onboarding of new, predominantly young staff created real risk that the critical decisions and thinking behind important events in K.A.CARE’s history would be lost.
• No external content strategy. K.A.CARE had no curated way to bring in relevant external news, industry analysis, financial and economic data, or scientific and technical content to support its research.

• Build the knowledge management foundation and capabilities across people, process, and technology.
• Capture and organize K.A.CARE’s existing content.
• Publish and disseminate K.A.CARE studies to stakeholders and the general public.
• Define the KM strategy, roadmap, and implementation plan.

How Iknow Structured the Work

Iknow structured the engagement as a portfolio of 11 discrete workstreams, moving from foundational assessment and content organization through strategy, governance, institutional memory, and external content curation, ultimately converging on a single implementation roadmap.

Key Activities & Decisions

• Content Audit & Current-State Assessment. Iknow analyzed the content on K.A.CARE’s file servers and repositories — file counts, sizes, types, and growth projections — and, through extensive interviews with senior management and the IM&KM Project Team, assessed existing knowledge-sharing mechanisms and the organizational and cultural factors shaping collaboration.
• Platform & Taxonomy Foundation. Iknow built a SharePoint 2013 team site — including a content repository, search, discussion forums, and a team directory — designed as a reusable template for future collaboration sites. Iknow also developed a comprehensive enterprise taxonomy covering Industries/Technologies, Business Processes, Document Types, Geography, and External Organizations, loaded into the Smartlogic Semaphore tool to enable partially automated content tagging.
• Content Cleansing, Migration & Enrichment. Iknow collected roughly 200 important documents from the Strategy Sector’s study library and the Physical City Project, classified and tagged them using the new taxonomy, and uploaded them into a new, searchable KM content repository.
• Strategy & Governance Design. Building on further leadership interviews, email surveys of Sector and Department leadership, and external benchmarking, Iknow developed K.A.CARE’s IM&KM vision, business objectives, and performance metrics, along with governance recommendations, success factors, and detailed role descriptions for both centralized KM positions and complementary roles within individual Sectors and Departments.
• Institutional Memory Timeline. Iknow built a historical “subway map” timeline covering roughly 60 critical studies and events organized by major themes — Physical City, Regulatory, Financial/Economic, and Technology — in paper, electronic, and web formats, with expandable content nodes serving as templates for future rich-content documentation.
• External Content Acquisition. Iknow screened and evaluated 135 potential external content sources, narrowed the field to roughly 15 for product demonstrations, selected 7 for individual trials, conducted 88 total trials, and negotiated and finalized contracts with the recommended vendors.
• IM&KM Roadmap. In consultation with Strategy Sector leaders, Iknow produced a detailed roadmap describing 17 recommended projects covering content development, technology, and organizational capabilities, complete with timeline and project dependencies.

Stakeholders & Collaboration

Iknow worked extensively with K.A.CARE’s senior management, its dedicated IM&KM Project Team, and leadership across the organization’s Sectors and Departments, combining direct interviews, workshops, and email surveys to ground every workstream in real organizational priorities.

Delivering 11 Workstreams Without Losing Coherence

A program spanning content auditing, platform deployment, taxonomy design, governance, institutional memory, and vendor curation risked fragmenting into disconnected initiatives. Iknow addressed this by structuring the engagement as a single coordinated portfolio, with the IM&KM Strategy and Governance workstreams tying the more tactical workstreams — content audit, taxonomy, SharePoint deployment — into one coherent vision, culminating in a unified 17-project roadmap.

Curating Trustworthy External Content From an Unfiltered Market

With 135 potential external content sources to consider, K.A.CARE risked either an overwhelming, unfiltered vendor list or a rushed selection based on marketing claims alone. Iknow addressed this with a staged evaluation process — narrowing 135 sources to 15 for demonstrations, then to 7 for hands-on trials, and running 88 total trials — before negotiating and finalizing vendor contracts based on direct evidence of fit.

Operational Outcomes

• Produced more than 100 separate deliverables across the 11 workstreams, including a fully configured SharePoint 2013 collaboration platform and an enterprise taxonomy operating inside Smartlogic Semaphore.
• Cleansed, classified, and migrated roughly 200 key documents into a new, searchable KM content repository.
• Delivered a historical timeline documenting 60 critical studies and events across four major organizational themes, in paper, electronic, and web formats.
• Screened 135 external content sources down to 7 vendors selected through 88 trials, with contracts negotiated and finalized.

Strategic and Organizational Outcomes

K.A.CARE used the results of this project to secure funding for an 18-month follow-on implementation project — direct evidence that the strategy, governance model, and roadmap Iknow delivered earned executive and budgetary confidence. The program was designed to deliver benefits including faster response to business opportunities, higher-quality decisions grounded in prior work, greater efficiency through reuse of data and tools, stronger cross-sector alignment, and improved collaboration and employee engagement. It also targeted institutional-memory-specific benefits, such as preserving the reasoning behind past decisions regardless of staff turnover, optimizing onboarding time, and improving new employees’ contextual understanding and decision-making.

Timeline to Impact

Iknow delivered the complete 11-workstream program, including the strategy, governance model, institutional memory timeline, and implementation roadmap, within the 14-month engagement, with K.A.CARE moving directly into securing funding for the next implementation phase upon completion.

Core Skills

• Knowledge Management Strategy
• Information Architecture & Taxonomy Design
• Governance & Organizational Design
• Content Curation & Vendor Management
• Institutional Memory & Digital History Programs

Methods & Frameworks

• Content auditing and current-state assessment
• Taxonomy and metadata schema development
• Staged, evidence-based vendor evaluation
• Roadmap and implementation portfolio planning

Technologies & Tools

• Microsoft SharePoint 2013
• Smartlogic Semaphore (taxonomy and automated tagging)
• Dublin Core metadata standard