Designing a National Knowledge Hub: KM Strategy and Framework for Saudi Arabia’s Premier Think Tank.

About the Client

CSD was established by Cabinet decree as an independent national think tank reporting into Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Economy and Planning, mandated to provide rigorous, independent socioeconomic research and policy advice to the Kingdom’s decision-makers. The organization is structured around three departments — policy analysis, consulting, and knowledge management — and was conceived as a central node connecting government agencies, researchers, and subject matter experts across Saudi Arabia’s development agenda.

Industry Context

CSD’s mandate sits inside Saudi Vision 2030, the Kingdom’s national transformation strategy, which explicitly targets a shift toward a diversified, knowledge-based economy and stronger government effectiveness through digital transformation. Building a credible national knowledge infrastructure — capable of capturing research, connecting experts, and supporting evidence-based policy across ministries — is a recognizable pattern among ambitious government think tanks worldwide, though few attempt an internal KM platform and a government-wide knowledge hub at the same time. Iknow’s prime contractor on the engagement, Naseej (then operating as Arabian Advanced Systems), had been a leading regional technology provider to libraries, knowledge centers, and government institutions across the Arab world since 1989, pairing Iknow’s global KM strategy expertise with the regional delivery and Arabic-language localization capability the assignment required.

Current Situation

CSD’s own business plan described its KM ambition in bold terms: a robust knowledge management capability serving as both a knowledge-sharing platform and integrated data management center for internal CSD use, and a national-level knowledge management interface and data hub for stakeholders across the Kingdom. CSD released a competitive request for proposal in the second quarter of 2017 to help establish its knowledge management department and bring that vision to life.

• Building an enterprise KM capability from a blank slate. CSD’s knowledge management department did not yet exist in operational form, leaving no current-state baseline, taxonomy, technology, or governance to build from.
• A dual-scope mandate. The KM architecture had to work simultaneously as an internal platform for CSD’s own staff and as a national-level knowledge hub serving stakeholders across every KSA government organization.
• Bilingual, government-wide governance requirements. Taxonomy, metadata, and controlled vocabularies needed to function consistently in both Arabic and English and remain usable across dozens of external government entities, not just within CSD.
• A high-stakes competitive bar. CSD had selected Iknow’s team over many of the world’s leading strategy consulting firms for a flagship initiative of a newly established institution, leaving little room for a generic or templated approach.

• Develop CSD’s overall KM strategy and design, specifying the foundational elements of an enterprise-wide KM commitment across people, technology, organizational process and protocol, content, and individual skill, attitude, and behavior.
• Shape a strategic KM architecture and blueprint, and articulate the values and behaviors essential to its success.
• Identify CSD’s and the National Knowledge Hub’s major user groups and business requirements.
• Establish core frameworks and protocols for managing knowledge, along with the essential IT systems and tools required to implement them.

How Iknow Structured the Work

Iknow organized the engagement into eight workstreams delivered over roughly 20 weeks across three sequenced phases: a KM Strategy Framework phase, a KM Technology Design phase, and a KM Roadmap phase — moving from foundational strategy and benchmarking through taxonomy and platform design to governance, operating model, and a prioritized multi-year roadmap.

Key Activities & Decisions

• Baseline Assessment and Think Tank Benchmarking. Iknow assessed CSD’s current KM capabilities, practices, and processes to establish a baseline, then benchmarked KM functions and best practices from recognized global think tanks and applied those findings directly to CSD’s new program.
• KM Strategy and User Group Analysis. Iknow authored CSD’s KM strategy statement, defining the National Knowledge Hub’s dual purpose and its initial focus on four categories of strategic knowledge assets — project deliverables, external research content, subject matter expert profiles, and extracted consulting methodologies — and identified 10 distinct user groups through extensive use-case analysis.
• Knowledge Taxonomy and Metadata Design. Iknow built the subject-matter taxonomy on the American Economic Association’s Journal of Economic Literature Classification System, which Naseej translated into Arabic, and incorporated the Maknaz Expanded Thesaurus to supply synonyms and related terms for autoclassification. Iknow then constructed a composite metadata model spanning seven categories and 25 elements, along with 10 bilingual controlled vocabularies.
• Technology Requirements and Solution Recommendations. Iknow collected and validated the business and technical requirements for the Knowledge Hub platform, evaluated hundreds of commercial and open-source software products against them, and recommended 16 named products — supported by three system architecture diagrams covering the end-user, logical software, and data and content workflow views.
• Governance, Operating Model, and Organization Design. Iknow developed an Interactive KM governance model with a RACI matrix defining three governance bodies, mapped 34 future-state business processes, designed a four-level KM department structure with 25 job descriptions, and built a three-year staffing plan.
• Portfolio Prioritization and Roadmap. Iknow facilitated a Portfolio Prioritization Workshop to propose, discuss, and refine candidate roadmap projects, scoring each against visibility/credibility and time-sensitivity criteria, then translated the results into a sequenced Year 1 KM implementation roadmap spanning four parallel workstream tracks.

Stakeholders & Collaboration

Iknow worked as subcontractor to prime contractor Naseej, combining Iknow’s KM strategy and governance expertise with Naseej’s regional delivery and Arabic-language localization capability, and engaged directly with CSD’s Head of Knowledge Hub, CSD President, and Board of Directors throughout the engagement.

Designing One Architecture for Two Very Different Audiences

Building simultaneously for CSD’s internal staff and a government-wide national audience risked producing an architecture too narrow for national scale or too generic for CSD’s own daily use. Iknow addressed this by defining an explicit dual-purpose strategy statement and four knowledge-asset categories designed to scale from CSD-internal use to Kingdom-wide adoption, and by building the taxonomy and metadata schema bilingually and collaboratively with Naseej from the outset rather than as a later localization step.

Recommending a Coherent System, Not a Shopping List

With hundreds of candidate commercial and open-source products in play, there was a real risk of recommending disconnected point solutions rather than a genuinely integrated platform. Iknow addressed this by producing three system architecture diagrams — covering the end-user, logical software, and data and content processing workflow views — that showed explicitly how all 16 recommended products would work together to deliver the required Knowledge Hub functionality.

Operational Outcomes

• Delivered 40 primary deliverables and deliverable categories across eight workstreams within a roughly 20-week engagement.
• Produced a complete KM governance and operating model, including 34 future-state business process descriptions and maps, a four-level KM department structure, 25 job descriptions, and a three-year staffing plan.
• Delivered a bilingual taxonomy and metadata architecture — seven metadata categories, 25 elements, and 10 controlled vocabularies — and recommended 16 named software products validated against documented requirements.

Strategic and Organizational Outcomes

CSD's Head of Knowledge Hub, President, and Board of Directors reviewed and accepted these deliverables. On that basis, the Board approved funding for the Implementation Phase, which launched in 2019 — converting an initial strategy engagement into a funded, multi-year national initiative.

Timeline to Impact

Iknow completed all eight workstreams within the five-month engagement. Board approval and the start of the Implementation Phase followed roughly a year later, consistent with the budgetary and governance cycles typical of large public-sector technology investments.

Core Skills

• Knowledge Management Strategy & Program Design
• Enterprise Taxonomy & Metadata Design
• KM Technology Architecture Advisory
• KM Governance & Operating Model Design
• Organizational Design & Workforce Planning

Methods & Frameworks

• Current-state assessment and industry benchmarking
• Portfolio Prioritization Workshop facilitation
• RACI-based governance design
• Future-state business process mapping

Technologies & Tools

• American Economic Association Journal of Economic Literature Classification System
• Maknaz Expanded Thesaurus (autoclassification and semantic enrichment)
• Enterprise knowledge management and content platforms (16 recommended solutions)