About The Editor:  Dana Winner

From the Pentagon in the 60’s to London in the 70’s, from Washington D.C. to the Middle East and ultimately, Iraq, Winner takes us on a woman’s journey through the eras of the Information Age, as she evolved from Jr. Programmer to President of a Knowledge and Information Management business operating in the Middle East and Washington, D.C. While never obscuring the challenges and lessons learned, her enthusiasm for the “ars” and technologies of Information Systems emanates from every page, insisting that hardware and software are also “womenware”.

Winner is one of the first second-generation commercial computer programmers. She was also one of the pioneers of Contemporary Christian Music in the 60’s and 70’s. Careers as a recording artist/performer and Information Systems engineer have given her a rare understanding of the shared elements of “ars” and technology that was commonly understood amongst the ancients but which has largely been lost in our industrial age approach to education and business.  In Hardware, Software; Womenware, Winner weaves a tapestry in which threads of “ars” and technology are interdependent and in which the intrinsic functions of females are pivotal to the future effectiveness of Information Technology.

KNOWLEDGE AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

In 1990 as Sr. System Engineer for U.S. Air Force Systems Command and then in 1991 as IT Dept Mgr for APICS she implemented aspects of TQM, which contributed an emphasis on teamwork and metrics to the roots of KM. Beginning in 1993, she was an analyst in Business Process and Enterprise Engineering for projects supporting FBI Laboratory Case Management Expert System Architecture Design and US Coast Guard Payroll BPR giving her Knowledge, Skills and Abilities that are foundational to organizational KM. Her involvement in what would later be known as “Knowledge Management Systems” can be traced back to 1994 when, as a United Nations Development Program Consultant, she was a Project Manager for the Kuwait government democratization project, responsible for implementing the Kuwait Ministry of Commerce and Industry Client Inquiry Services Center (CRM) Prototype and as PM/designer for the Kuwait Council of Ministers Government Services Decision Support System Prototype, both of which would now be categorized as, respectively, eGov/Biz Intelligence and

Her professional involvement in the discipline which emerged in the mid-90s as “Knowledge Management” began in 1997. As contractor’s Project Manager of the National Institute of Health ERA Projects she was responsible for the implementation of the NIH Commons which is a Scientific & Medical Research Grants Management Expert System supporting the online development, submission and review of Scientific Research Grants, which at that time was frequently referred to as a KM System as well as one of the first eGovernment Portals. Concurrently, she was contractor’s project manager for the development of the Edison Inventions Tracking System, a joint project between HIH and National Science Foundation. The NIH Commons included the award winning CRISP-on-the-WEB Portal which was, at the time, the largest online Knowledge Repository and one of the most globally used Knowledge Portals on the web. A core component of CRISP was the thesaurus, which had a contributory relationship to the National Library of Medicine’s thesaurus (MeSH). As an Oracle Healthcare Practice Consultant she was responsible for Quality Assurance for the development of the National Cancer Institute, Cancer Informatics Infrastructure and was involved with the design and development of several Knowledge (Expert) Systems supporting Cancer Clinical Trials such as the Cancer Common Data Elements and also was a member of the Oracle Repository Management Standards and Practices committee which was considered fundamental to the development of Oracle KMS.

As an eHealth, eGov and voice/data convergence specialist she returned to the Middle East in 2000 where she found Knowledge and Information Management is a major challenge in a culture that currently does not highly value K&I as a basis for decision-making; where reading, life-long learning and free inquiry are lost arts for the majority of people, even those in government and business. Because of her eHealth work in Dubai, she was invited to present a paper for Distributed Medical Intelligence Conference 2002, “Connecting the Dots: eHealth in the Middle East”. As Program Manager she was responsible for the implementation of the ZAIN (MTC-Kuwait) eBiz Portal before becoming involved in Rebuilding Iraq in 2003. She has built a Middle East business in Knowledge and Information Management, partnering with IMTAS in Security InfoSys and with International Knowledge Management Institute providing KM training and consulting. She has built the organization in the region by winning and conducting Security Information Systems Projects in Iraq, organizing Certification in Knowledge Management (CKM) courses in Kuwait and winning and conducting KM consulting project with clients such as Islamic Development Bank (IDB) in Jeddah, KSA. Middle East KM training clients include Knowledge Managers from Zain Telecommunications Operator, Dubai Police, Kuwait Civil Service Commission, KISR, IDB, MNF-I and others. She has conducted the CKM Theme I “Advanced KM essentials” (see www.kminstitute.org for details of the course).

She collaborated with IKMI Chairman, Douglas Weidner, and IKMI Partner Dr. Barry Hardy, to develop the Proposal for the Islamic Development Bank KM System Planning and Design project and conducted that project as the Project Manager with a team of 6 consultants in 2008. In June 2008, she organized the KM Change Management Workshop for Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research (KISR) and continues to consult with KISR as they develop their KM program. Most recently she convened the “KM Leaders” “Community of Practice” in Kuwait with a plan to expand in the region. (http://www.kmleaders.org ) and is on the Steering Committee for the startup of a “Community of Interest” - the American Business Council – Iraq (http://www.ABC-Iraq.com). In June 2007, she presented a paper for the WFEO Women in Engineering and Technology conference “Hardware, Software; Womenware” and is currently writing a book of the same name. A primary theme of the book is the evolving relationship between Information Management Systems, Information Technology and Knowledge Management over the past 50 years, with a focus on the participation of women. Ms. Winner presented a paper in March 2009 at the Dubai Government 2015 Strategy “Innovation & KM” Conference, titled “KM and IT: A Multi-dimensional Relationship”. Most recently she completed a 6 month KM Program development project with USAID/Iraq in Baghdad.

CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN MUSIC

From 1968 to 1982, Dana was one of the pioneers in Contemporary Christian Music before it became commercialized. With guitarist partner David John Price, she performed in hundreds of concerts throughout U.S. and U.K. and co-wrote and performed for five recorded albums and nation-wide radio and TV play.