Information And Communication Technology As A Driver Of Knowledge Management In Local Government
AJALA, Anthony Ayodele, OBANLA, Adebayo Bankole, Oluwatobi ATOLAGBE, BALOGUN, John Durojaiye, Dr Willoughby John Olawale
Volume 6, Issue 2, September 2026
Local government is the tier of administration closest to citizens, yet it is often the tier least equipped with the technological infrastructure needed to capture, store, and apply institutional knowledge. This paper examines Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as a driver of knowledge management in local government administration, using the SECI knowledge-creation model and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as its theoretical foundation. Using a qualitative comparative-review methodology drawing on recent Nigerian and comparative international literature (2014–2025), the paper finds that ICT adoption is consistently associated with improved operational efficiency, record accessibility, and service delivery at the local government level, but that adoption remains constrained by inadequate infrastructure, poor power supply, low digital literacy among personnel, and weak integration between ICT systems and the tacit institutional knowledge that career civil servants hold. The paper argues that ICT should be understood not merely as a record-keeping tool but as the infrastructure through which local governments convert individual and tacit knowledge into shared, explicit, retrievable organizational knowledge. It recommends sustained investment in digital infrastructure, mandatory ICT literacy training tied to knowledge-sharing objectives, and knowledge management strategies explicitly designed around the realities of local government administration rather than borrowed wholesale from private-sector or federal-level models.