Strengthening Communities: Towards AI-Empowered Knowledge Management for Community Social Services

Abstract

The welfare and well-being of vulnerable and marginalized individuals, such as those facing poverty and food or housing insecurity, heavily rely on their access to essential social services. These services are commonly provided by community social service organizations, which are known to deal with multifaceted needs and must collaborate with a network of other social services. Operating in such distributed networks presents unique challenges in knowledge management and knowledge transfer (KM/KT), which are critical for effectively serving these populations. My dissertation research focuses on studying KM/KT within these distributed social services networks. My dissertation comprises four studies that: 1) Examine technology integration barriers and opportunities in community social services. 2) Explore knowledge management processes within these organizations to identify how technology can better support their work. 3) Investigate the potential of AI in community social services through participatory design. and 4) Implement and evaluate a technological intervention for community service knowledge management.