UN: The KM Experience

Lessons learned from 26 KM projects

within the UN system

The Source

Inter-Agency Knowledge Fair onUN Effectiveness in Knowledge Sharing

Turin, Nov 2010

116 presented projects, 26 selected: the core of KM within the UN system.

•11 solid platforms (websites, repositories) •7 liquid networks (not strictly web-based)•8 offline activities (learning, workshops, fairs, campaigns)

Keywords

1. Needs Assessment (Demand Driven Programming)2. Commitment and Leadership from the top (Legitimacy)3. Funding4. Partnerships5. Technology6. Facilitation7. Open-Access vs. Restricted Content8. Repurposing of Knowledge9. Impact of KM

Needs Assessment

Needs Assessment (Demand Driven Programming)

See your Knowledge Sharing system through the eyes of your audience:

“Tailor your system to the context and needs of its users. Understanding your target audience is critical to designing an

effective Knowledge Sharing”.

1/9

Needs Assessment

How:

“Work on specific needs assessment: discuss within specific groups and communities their business scenarios and find agreement on

how the group wants to use a set of specific tools for their particular purpose. Guide the development process of the social media

platform more closely along these business scenarios”.

1/9

Needs Assessment

Failing to consider the community’s needs is a major cause of nonsuccess in KM projects:

“The formulation of top-down policies describing in detail specific workflows for staff, mandating them to use the system, and to use it a certain way, proved counter-productive. It created natural change

resistance and diverted the perspective away from the actual benefits for the user”.

1/9

Needs Assessment

Feedback

Establishing clear channels for user feedback is a way to integrate the demand driven approach in the long term programming. Knowledge Sharing initiatives need to be flexible, in order to be constantly adapted to the changing needs of the community:

“We are constantly evolving and adapting our services through regular feedback from agencies, teachers, students and staff. To respond more effectively to the requirements and needs of our

counterparts, agency and staff”.

1/9

Leadership from the top

Goal: get a reputation of a well-known and useful tool for various stakeholders and practitioners.

How?

It increases legitimacy of the project and therefore effective interest and participation of all the actors involved.

“Agency leadership is required. CoPs are voluntary and function successfully if they are driven by passion, including passion of the

Convener”.

Senior Management Buy-in

2/9

Leadership from the top

“Affiliating with a respected, neutral body within the UN System produced buy-in and willingness from the highest level of the

agencies and organizations it monitors, has successfully built the trust and confidence of UN specialized agencies and programmes,

which have become active participants, feeding the knowledge-base with information about their activities. Therefore, the knowledge-base positioned itself as a neutral, high quality, reliable and up-to-

date source of information”.

2/9

FundingThe sustainability of a KM project requires long term funding, as KM is never a one time initiative, it is a delicate process that needs to be sustained over time.

1.Promote funding at corporate level: It is essential to take into account the KM strategy in the annual work plan. Have a committed leadership. Adopt an aggressive resource mobilization strategy based on the successful track record of the project.

2.Innovative funding strategies based on partnerships: When facing financial constraints, several projects recurred to collaboration and/or financial support from the main stakeholders, partner institutions and online volunteers.

3/9

Funding

"After three years of development, the UN (WFP) created Nutrinet platform was successfully handed over to a regional institution, Nutrinet Foundation, who is now in charge of managing and further developing the knowledge management system. The Nutrinet Foundation is also responsible for mobilizing resources to fund it in a sustainable way and so far has received more than US$200,000".

3/9

Partnerships

Almost all contributors highlighted the value of working in collaboration and openly with all the actors involved in the process:

“Comprehensive knowledge sharing requires partnership building with other UN agencies and outside partners”.

4/9

Partnerships

Benefits of partnerships:

1.Create synergies (unlock resources: funding, skills);2.Increase outreach;3.Reduce duplication (avoid “reinventing the wheel”).

4/9

Partnerships

Create synergies

Working in collaboration with other stakeholders can lead to cost sharing and virtuous synergies:

“Continue to build local linkages with women’s organizations and other grassroots movements. Also build greater synergies between existing projects supporting women in politics from the initiation of

the project”.

4/9

Partnerships

Increase outreach

Involving other actors working on the same topics also means getting access to new channels of communication to vehicle your message:

“Global partnership between key organizations is one of the most important aspects of this project. Each of the 5 partners of iKNOW

politics are leaders in the field of promoting women’s political participation and governance”

4/9

Partnerships

Reduce Duplication

“The notion of “not invented here” and the hesitation to engage into a committed collaboration with other UN agencies often overshadow the obvious benefits that a consolidated and commonly owned approach would have for all UN partners”.

Two common anomalies lead to “reinventing the wheel” and in some cases to duplication of projects:

1.“Not invented here”2.Silos Effect

4/9

Partnerships

Not invented here

UN: There is a general sense of diffidence when it comes to adopt solutions invented by other agencies, even if the solutions are good.

Partnerships help to overcome this problem, by extending ownership to all involved actors:

“Agency mandates were perceived as threatened by the initiative. The challenge was to gain recognition of the IAU as tool / service, not

a competitor. The solution was to foster greater ownership by establishing a Steering Committee and ensuring that the Unit

engages in all activities in response to requests from agencies”.

4/9

Partnerships

Silos effect

Agencies are usually not comfortable having other agencies know what they are doing, and how, even if they would benefit from accessing each other’s knowledge:

“The UNCT had recognized the need to have centralized data, but what was not clear was whether they would be willing to not only provide the data required but have that data publically accessible. Agencies were not comfortable having other agencies know what they were doing and how much funding they were receiving and

from whom”

4/9

Partnerships

How to identify partners

“The collective effort to network with and engage key stakeholders and partners in the design and construction of the portal was successful because the effort was based on careful research,

assessment of partners’ relative interests, competitive advantages, and accessibility, and on clearly-defined channels for proposed

collaboration”.

4/9

Technology

Technology vs. People

Focus more attention on the “real” participant network, rather than the “virtual” platform and tools. Too much expectation given to the nice designs or modern tools can distract from the focus:

“The final goal of technology in KM is creating links between assets, groups and people. All contents should be linked to people. People

come first, technology must serve this purpose”.

“Information is not the same as knowledge. The information can be shared. Knowledge cannot. Instead, knowledge is built through the interaction of relevant people. Good documents are not enough if

you intend to change behaviors”.

5/9

FacilitationInformation sharing cannot rely on spontaneous interest or contributions from participants.To keep this kind of system alive, a basic support structure is needed.

An adequate structure would include :

•Web Team (web programmer, web designer)•Facilitation Team (“knowledge brokers”)•Documentation (help modules and guidelines)

6/9

Facilitation

Web Team

“It is critical to have a competent technical web programmer who also fully understands the project’s mission, and who can communicate the relative benefits of each programming decision to the content editors and team”.

6/9

Facilitation

Facilitation Team

Facilitators are Knowledge Brokers, not Knowledge Producers.

Duties:

1.Collection, consolidation and distribution of information;2.Proactive Moderation (internal and external promotion);3.Identification and use of champions and local focal points (presence in the field is key).

6/9

Facilitation

Collection, Consolidation, Distribution of Knowledge

Good pieces of information are not enough. Information has to be “digested” by someone in the system:

“Dedicated support is required to draw up the regular newsletter, summarize the contributions to queries and e-discussions and foster engagement with network members”.

“Simple, brief, and easy to read booklets should be developed to target policy/decision-makers on technical issues regarding MDG measurement and tracking”.

6/9

Facilitation

Mobilization

Facilitating a network also means mobilizing members to actively participate:

“Get the press officers or people involved to communicate directly to the project editors. Use direct communication channels (tel, email). Avoid sole reliance on information posted on the organizations’ and agencies’ websites. In addition, send people to cover relevant conferences”.

“Define regular deadlines for sending contributions, to ensure accuracy and relevance”.

6/9

Facilitation

Focal Points

Nominating focal points helps to anchor projects in country programmes, rather than isolating them in UN Offices:

“Network in 5 regional offices: the degree of awareness of knowledge sharing in the project countries is extremely high”.

“Absence of a dedicated editorial team made it difficult to guarantee quality of shared information. To overcome this challenge, each Nutrinet portal has relied on a dedicated focal point in the country”.

6/9

Facilitation

Champions

“We have found champions that push forward the continuous use of the platform.”

“Start piloting with a group of enthusiastic users and document the lessons you learn. Particularly try to win senior management champions who can spread the word and serve as role model within their teams”.

6/9

Open-Access vs. Restricted Content

Broad membership and open access make it possible for the community to benefit from the knowledge and resources of a

greater cross-section of society.

This reduces isolation and helps contrasting the negative tendency to reinvent the wheel.

“It is useful to engage with practitioners and experts beyond UN agencies, notably in government bodies, civil society, academia,

development partners, donors and other organizations”.

7/9

Open-Access vs. Restricted Content

How to open?

“Open to the public requires starting a change in the management process within your organization which changes the mindset from the IT-driven paradigm “Only share what has to be shared with those who need to see it” to a new knowledge-driven paradigm:

Restrict only content that absolutely has to be restricted; other than that share as widely as possible and appropriate”.

7/9

Open-Access vs. Restricted Content

Problem: Copyright

“The nebulous nature of information disclosure policies and concerns about providing open-access on the platform”.

Solution

“Engage partner agencies earlier on in the planning and designing of the project. This creates more buy-in and removes some of the

copyright obstacles you might face at later stages”.

7/9

Open-Access vs. Restricted Content

Problem: Discretion

“People may not feel comfortable sharing their views publicly”.

Solution

“Usually this problem is due to simple lack of information. Respond directly to these concerns. For example, design clear guidelines for

what will and will not be published as open-access”.

7/9

Repurposing of Knowledge

Replication, scalability of initiatives and re-purposing of knowledge are intrinsic objectives of KM.

Producing knowledge is only an intermediate objective: knowledge is useful when it is used, and possibly re-used.

8/9

Repurposing of Knowledge

How to make knowledge re-usable: Flexibility

“The concept has been successfully adapted to local circumstances in terms of the type of knowledge-sharing desired (e.g., CoP,

programme-based network, or other configuration), the topics to organize networks around, and the operational arrangements. This

flexible approach has facilitated replication”.

8/9

Repurposing of Knowledge

Standardization

Standardization through the use of templates make it easy to categorize and reuse knowledge. Even case studies can be used as templates:

“Collect and highlight common uses and good practices on how the system has been used in specific business scenarios. These can serve

as templates for other users, who e.g. want to organize an event, jointly draft on a document, engage with external partners,

coordinate within a project team, etc”.

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Impact of KM

Balance between sharing knowledge and getting the work done

There is a balance between sharing knowledge and spending time on policy and programming. It is important to not overburden practitioners with too much “knowledge”:

“Several agencies expressed concern that an interactive platform through which agency staff would share knowledge and engage in

dialogue would impose a burden on their staff rather than enhancing their efficiency and streamlining their work”.

9/9

Impact of KM

How to evaluate impact of KM?

“The value of KM can only be appreciated by acknowledging the “hidden” value of collaboration, interaction, and knowledge

sharing. To overcome this limit, consider keeping track of success cases. It is vital for raising funds”.

9/9

Thank You

Davide Pigapiga.davide@gmail.com

http://pdavide.me