Background paper e-conference Knowledge Management: Worth the effort?!

Introduction

This short background paper aims to highlight some of the key issues and questions to guide the discussion during the e-conference "Knowledge Management: Worth the effort?!", which IRC and partners are organising from 20 September to 15 October 2004. It contains information on:

• the setting and link with existing knowledge sharing in the sector;
• two recent quotes on the importance and definition of Knowledge Management;
• objectives and outputs of the discussion;
• two offline conferences that are planned to feed into the e-conference;
• the four phases and key questions, and
• three major topics as a starting point for discussion

The setting

This e-conference builds and expands on the concerted knowledge management and sharing collaboration of IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre and partners for improved water and sanitation in the developing world. This comprises various programmes and initiatives:

• IRC’s Resource Centre Development (RCD) 18 + Country Programme (http://www.irc.nl/content/view/full/393), which aims at supporting partner organisations in the South to develop their information functions, products and services.
• The WELL Resource Centre Network (http://www.lboro.ac.uk/well/), dealing with water, sanitation and environmental health. The Network comprises nine organisations. It provides access to information on these subjects through a variety of services and activities, one of which is on knowledge management.
• Streams of Knowledge (http://www.streams.net/), a global coalition of water and sanitation resources centres. Promoting access to information and knowledge sharing is one of the main aims of Streams.

Many of the partners involved shared experiences and knowledge through RCD, KM and WELL workshops at recent international conferences and meetings such as the Knowledge sharing and capacity building in the water and sanitation sector OneWorld E- conference, March-April 2000, the 3rd World Water Forum in March 2003, the 6th Water Information Summit in September 2003, and in the broader development sector, Making Knowledge Networks Work for the Poor workshop, November 2002, and the World Summit on the Information Society, December 2003. Major issues and recommendations related to information and knowledge management (IM/KM) from these meetings can be summarised as follows:

Most attention so far has gone to three main issues:

• Improving access to information and knowledge - covering the availability, accessibility and affordability of information (especially of scientific information in developing countries)
• Promoting knowledge sharing, through learning circles and vertical/horizontal coalitions, peer-to-peer technology, communities of practice, infomediaries, help-desks, e-learning and better interaction/mutual learning with target groups (the poor).
• Networking: international and regional cooperation – covering networking models, “digital solidarity”, collaboration tools like portals and common terminology (thesaurus), network effectiveness, strengthening existing structures and Resource Centres.

Other issues such as the capturing of local knowledge, development of local content in local languages and dissemination channels besides Internet, capacity building, and quality control/standards were also mentioned several times.

Surprisingly little attention was given to new or innovative ICT tools, user needs, impact measurement, and the enabling environment (policies). Not mentioned at all were advocacy for the promotion of IM/KM and ethical dimensions.

The full list of IM/KM issues and recommendations from all these meetings can be found at: http://www.irc.nl/content/view/full/9981.

Recent Quotes

"In the past 20 years or so, better understanding has developed of the importance of getting research findings in the water and sanitation sector out to those who stand to benefit from them. This conceptual change, which links knowledge sharing to achieving its aims of international development and poverty elimination by, for example, awareness-raising among policy makers, has been supported by agencies such as the World Bank and the UK Department for International Development (DFID). These concerns were highlighted recently at the Sixth Water Information Summit, which focused on strategies to overcome the 'digital divide' between the North and the South and on sharing knowledge and information to support the management of the water and sanitation sector".

This quote is from Julie Fisher (WEDC) who in her lead article introduced the theme issue on Knowledge Management in Waterlines of April 2004.

‘Information in use’

In an effort to avoid academic discussion about what ‘knowledge’ is, we have defined ‘knowledge’ as ‘information in use’ for purposes of the model. In this way we bring together the two main interpretations of KM. One emphasises ‘Information’ and the other human resource management (HRM) or ‘use’. Combining these two leads to the understanding that KM is about ‘knowledge friendly organisations’ (KFO); that is, improving organizational or network knowledge sharing mechanisms and practices (Weggeman, 2000).

Objectives/outputs

The objective of this e-conference is to build on existing failures, successes and joint learning examples, in order to gain more insight into key features of effective knowledge management application in the developing world and the responses needed from the developed world.

The overall summary report will hopefully be used by all participants to advocate for KM within their organisation or network. Another expected output will be a (closed?) community of practice with committed members that will continue after the e-conference.

Two offline conferences

The e-conference will benefit from two planned meetings in the field organised by partners:

- 7 Sept. 2004 : Workshop: Information Management/Knowledge Management in the water supply and sanitation sector. A joint effort of IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre, The Netherlands and Nepal Water for Health (NEWAH), Nepal.

- 21 Sept. 2004 (afternoon ): Workshop KM: Worth the effort?!, prior to the13th ITN Africa Conference - Poverty! Water, Hygiene and Sanitation, Harare, Zimbabwe, organised by: Southern Africa Development Community - Water Division (SADC - WD) and Institute of Water and Sanitation Development (IWSD), 22 - 25 Sep 2004.

In half day workshops participants will discuss their views on the background paper and questions, results of which will be fed back into the e-conference.

Phases

We plan to do the e-conference in four weeks covering the following topics:

Week 1: What constraints can we identify in knowledge management?

Facilitator: Dick de Jong

Week 2: What are the benefits and added values of KM?

Facilitator: Ewen Le Borge

Week 3: What KM success stories are worth sharing?

Facilitator: Cor Dietvorst

Week 4: How can we scale up, what can we do next for effective KM for water and sanitation programmes/organisations?

Facilitator: Jaap Pels

Short summaries of the discussion will be circulated after each week.

Three major topics

As a starting point for discussion and contributions from participants we highlight three important topics:

• Communities of Practice
• Scales of KM
• Components

Communities of Practice (CoP)

Frank Odhiambo and Jaap Pels write in a forthcoming article: “Most people in an organisation obtain their information from face-to-face meetings or in conversation. What is often lacking in an organisation though is a supportive culture that encourages openness and knowledge sharing. It is a challenge to get professionals who share an interest to interact, share, create and update information where this is not the norm. It is perhaps for this reason, coupled with the fact that it is easy, that so many organisations predicate their KM strategy on building information repositories. In fact, a clear indicator of a non-supportive knowledge sharing culture is when the IT department is put in charge of KM. Whereas repositories have their place, they can never be a substitute for what is contained in peoples’ heads.

Communities of practice are therefore an essential strategy for any KM programme. CoP’s are typified by people, domain and purpose; a group of people who share an interest interact to learn from each other. It is this goal of learning from each other that marks the difference between CoP’s and pure socialising. The more colleagues interact, the less time they will spend reinventing the wheel. There are several studies which show that 20 – 30 per cent of an organisation’s resources are wasted reinventing the wheel (Boshyk, 2000). KM should therefore be people-oriented as already stated and technology-enabled not technology-driven”.

Scales of KM

Odiambo and Pels also identify three distinct levels at which KM can be practised:

1. The first is at the personal level. When you practice KM at this level, you acquire and create knowledge, manage documents, share learning, and collaborate with colleagues (Richardson, 2001). A spin-off of personal knowledge management is that if each and every person in an organisation takes responsibility for what he or she knows, does not know or wants to know more about (learn), then a corporate level KM initiative is likely to be easier to implement because an enabling environment will already exist at the personal level.
2. At a wider interpersonal level, we have organisational KM. At this level, KM is about creating, capturing and re-using knowledge in the attainment of the organisation’s objectives (Weggeman, 2000). We stress that efforts at this level should be directed at establishing a culture of openness and knowledge sharing as well as encouraging face-to-face and interpersonal communications.
3. Finally, KM can take the form of networking, like the WELL, RCD and Streams programmes. At this level, organisations come together to leverage information, skills and experience, sharing between themselves in order to deliver common objectives. For this to succeed, solid communications and regular (exposure) visits between partners are crucial.

Components

Knowledge needs to be managed. Two structured approaches for in- and external KM programmes on which we want to focus are:

• The Knowledge Value Chain Model constructed by prof.dr.ir. M.C.D.P. Weggeman, which focuses to a great extent on the process.

• the “8 Cs” Framework to analyse and assess Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in rural communities developed and used by Rao and the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation in India. This focuses on components that can be used for planning and evaluation.

Knowledge Value Chain

Weggeman’s model characterizes mission, vision and goal (s) of an organisation, describes the ‘Knowledge Value Chain’ (KVC) and arguments why closing the (KVC) loop is important.

Source: The KM model by Weggeman: http://www.irc.nl/content/view/full/8371

The chain combines:

• Strategy
• Culture
• Management style
• Personnel
• Structure
• Systems

For each of these elements four issues need to be tackled:

Identifying the knowledge gap

Developing and buying knowledge

Knowledge sharing

Evaluating knowledge

“8 Cs” Framework

In the discussion it would be worthwhile to combine the components of the Weggeman model with the “8 Cs” Framework to analyse and assess ICTs in rural communities developed and used by Rao and the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation in India:

- Connectivity

- Content

- Community

- Commerce

- Capacity

- Culture

- Cooperation

- Capital

For each of the eight components, the comparative framework looks at both the instrument and industry aspects of ICTs in developing countries. Do conditions favour the beneficial use of ICTs as an instrument at national level? Do conditions favour the development of a sustainable ICT industry both nationally and internationally.

Source: Adapted from Rao 2003 (http://www.itu.int/osg/spu/visions/developing/index.html)

So, let us use this e-conference to learn from sharing good and bad KM examples and experiences in your project, organisation, or network. Let us learn from each other and let us start by practising to become an effective Community of Practice.

Acknowledgements

Dick de Jong, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre.

The author appreciates the useful comments and suggestions received by members of the Core Group for the e-conference, especially Frank Odhiambo, Marjorie Kusetera, Ratan Budhathoki, Jaap Pels, Viktor Markowski, Tettje van Daalen and Cor Dietvorst.

References

Boshyk, Y. (2000). Beyond knowledge management : how companies mobilize experience. In: Donald A. Marchand, D.A. and Davenport, T.H. (eds). Mastering information management. London, UK, Prentice Hall. P. 51-55.

Fisher, J. (2004). Spreading the word : a key component of research. In: Waterlines, vol. 22, no. 4, p. 2-4. (This article draws from a 2003 study by WEDC available at http://wedc.lboro.ac.uk/staff/..%5Cpublications%5Cdetails.php?book=1%2084380%20047%200)

Odhiambo, F. and Pels, J., (2004). Knowledge management in development organizations : the Learn@WELL experience. Draft paper for 30th WEDC International Conference, Vientiane, Lao PDR, October 2004

M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (2003). Rural knowledge centres : harnessing local knowledge via interactive media : policy makers workshop, 8-9 October 2003, Chennai. Chennai, India, M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation

Richardson, D. (2001). The practical reality of knowledge management within development initiatives. Guelph, Ont., Canada, TeleCommons Development Group. http://www.telecommons.com/uploaddocuments/Practical_Reality_of_KM1.doc [accessed 20-04-04]

Weggeman, M. (2000). Kennismanagement : de praktijk. Schiedam, The Netherlands, Scriptum