UNDPWiki: Innovating UNDP's Communities of Practice (2009)

UNDPWIKIA wiki as a collaborative tool for UNDP

Several thousands of employees

Operating in 166 countries

Main areas of work:

Democratic Governance

Poverty Reduction

Crisis Prevention and Recovery

Environment and Energy

HIV/AIDS

“rain” of knowledge

UNDP Organic

One Community of Practice for each area of work

Two facilitators for each CoP

Tool: mailing listsCore product: Consolidated Reply

UNDP Knowledge Management strategyHow UNDP manages shared knowledge

Consolidated Replies are a synthesis or summary of responses to a member’s query and are also supported by country experiences and researched materials. They provide a comprehensive summary of responses to any given question, query or

discussion that takes place on the Communities of Practice, in a user friendly format designed to make key information available at a glance. 

Consolidated Reply

1. A network’s member asks a question

1. A network’s member asks a question

2. Individual replies are gathered from the network

1. A network’s member asks a question

2. Individual replies are gathered from the network

3. Facilitator prepares the Consolidated Reply

1. A network’s member asks a question

2. Individual replies are gathered from the network

3. Facilitator prepares the Consolidated Reply

4. The Consolidated Reply gets sent back to network

1. What happens to old Consolidated Replies?

how to handle revisions and updates?

can old CRs be found and used again easily?

2. Where is the community?

who are my networks's mates?

how can I find someone with the skills I need?

Limits

Solution: wiki integration

A wiki is an editable website.

1. Unlike mailing lists, it’s a place where content is organizedcategorize pages and make them easy to find based on custom criteria (countries of relevance, topic areas, contributors…)

2. Unlike traditional websites, it’s dynamic: pages are extremely easy to updatechange each page's content without having to log into a content management system like WordPress or access the server via FTP or other means: you just hit the edit button.

3. It’s expressly conceived for co-authoringkeep track of a page's authors and edits, and revert edits if needed

per page discussions

4. It makes it possible to upload and share files on wiki pages

5. It’s a social platformcategorized profile pages

Solution: wiki integration

A wiki is an editable website.

With many options available in the web, MediaWiki is likely the most advanced, feature-rich, free wiki package available.

MediaWiki's main strengths:

stable: being originally written for use on Wikipedia, it’s constantly maintained and developed by thousands of developers.

extendible: with 1300 and growing extensions, it makes it very easy to integrate the wiki with additional features

customizable: it’s open-source

Choosing the right wiki engineMediaWiki = stable + extra features

UNDPWIKIHow It Works

For each network, the wiki stores the complete archive of Consolidated Replies.

Each Consolidated Reply is categorized and therefore made searchable by:

networks

regions / countries of relevance

topic areas

country office formulating/contributing to the query

person formulating/contributing to the query

date of issue

custom keywords (optional)

UNDPWIKIHow It Works

Region pages:

graph displaying distribution of CRs within the region's countries

automatic list of most recently posted CRs related to region

UNDPWIKIHow It Works

Country pages:

list of CRs related to the country

list of Country Experiences on the country 

UNDPWIKIHow It Works

Country Office pages:

list of queries asked by members of CO

list of CRs contributed by members of CO

list of profiles from the country office 

UNDPWIKIHow It Works

Topic pages:

list of CRs related to specific topic 

UNDPWIKIHow It Works

Profile pages:

optional picture and professional/contact detailslist of queries asked by member

list of CRs contributed by member 

UNDPWIKIS.ORGHow It Works

Country Office pages:

list of queries asked by members of CO

list of CRs contributed by members of CO

list of profiles from the country office 

UNDPWIKIS.ORGHow It Works

Region pages:

graph displaying distribution of CRs within the region's countries

automatic list of most recently posted CRs related to region

UNDPWIKIS.ORGHow It Works

Topic pages:

list of CRs related to specific topic 

UNDPWIKIS.ORGHow It Works

Country pages:

list of CRs related to the country

list of Country Experiences on the country 

UNDPWIKIS.ORGHow It Works

Profile pages:

optional picture and professional/contact detailslist of queries asked by member

list of CRs contributed by member 

UNDPWIKIExtra Features

Maps: pages can be geographically tagged and a map with placemarks representing the tagged pages gets automatically created

UNDPWIKIExtra Features

Forms: users can create pages using user-friendly forms instead of using the wiki markup, for an easier editing experience

UNDPWIKIExtra Features

Tag Clouds + Multicategory Search: users can browse the wiki filtering by one or more categories at a time

UNDPWIKIExtra Features

Offline Edition: an offline edition of UNDPWiki is automatically created, updated and made available for download, to allow users to access the content of UNDPWiki from DVD / USB key or any computer without the need of Internet access.

Single networks can have their own customized offline editions including just Consolidated Replies relevant to their own community of practice.

UNDPWIKIS.ORGExtra Features

Maps: pages can be geographically tagged and a map with placemarks representing the tagged pages gets automatically created

UNDPWIKIS.ORGExtra Features

Forms: users can create pages using user-friendly forms instead of using the wiki markup, for an easier editing experience

UNDPWIKIS.ORGExtra Features

Tag Clouds + Multicategory Search: users can browse the wiki filtering by one or more categories at a time

UNDPWIKIS.ORGExtra Features

Offline Edition: an offline edition of UNDPWikis is automatically created, updated and made available for download, to allow people to access the content of UNDPWikis from DVD / USB key or any computer without the need of Internet access.

Single networks can have their own customized offline editions including just Consolidated Replies relevant to their community of practice.

1. Adopted web 2.0 platform for online collaboration as a basis that enables further development and extension in terms of both reach and features

2. Increased visibility and therefore extended benefit from old Consolidated Replies

3. Added a social element to the CR system: benefit extended from access to information (CRs) to access to knowledge (people)

4. Knowledge capture and mapping:Enabled visualization of geographic and thematic distribution of knowledge exchanges

Enabled automatic highlights of most active contributors

Achievements

Possible implementations for future development:

page ratings

upgrades to profiles: making them searchable by skills and other criteria (LinkedIn)

pdf export of wiki pages

internationalization

google-like search engine

integration of new kinds of contents (research papers, reports...)

Next Steps

Credits

undpwiki has been designed and developed by:

Davide Piga: knowledge management specialist

davide.piga@unep.org

Giovanni Savastano: it manager and web-designer

gsavastano@gsavastano.com

www.undpwiki.pdavide.me