Summary third week: Lessons learned

The topic of the third week of the E-conference was: KM success stories and lessons learned. We first provide a general analysis of the 14 case studies that were presented followed by a summary of the answers to the questions: What worked, what didn’t work, what did you learn?

Geographical focus

Fourteen case studies were presented of which eight were from Asia, four described global initiatives, and there was one each from Europe and the Middle East. There were no case studies from Africa or Latin America.

Levels

The majority of the cases (10 out of 14) dealt with KM within networks or between organisations. Although most KM literature focuses on the organisational level, Mr. Laxman Kharal of the National Management Information Project/Section (NMIP) in Nepal is the only one who refers to KM in his own organisation. Similarly no-one described how they manage their own knowledge. In three cases KM at the personal level was interpreted more in the lines of knowledge, attitudes and practices of poor communities, i.e. by G. Beena of SEUF (India), Dr Zuberi (Bangladesh) and Dr. Malik of Universität Karlsruhe.

Elements

None of the cases covered all of the elements in the Knowledge Value Chain. The most mentioned elements were needs assessment (7) and knowledge sharing (7)*, followed by knowledge development (6). Knowledge application and evaluation were each mentioned twice, and knowledge searching just once.

* Although there were 10 case studies describing networks, three of these were still under development.

Design

The majority of the case studies (8) mention a strategic approach to KM, followed by (ICT) systems (7), culture (5), personnel (4), and organisational structure (3). Management style was not mentioned in any of the case studies.

Applications/tools

The three most named tools were websites/portals (6), e-conferences/forums (6) and face-to-face meetings/workshops. Different forms of (hard copy) publications were mentioned including: newsletters, monitoring reports, case studies, research reports, and wall newspapers. Others tools mentioned were: exposure visits, libraries, help desks, and FM radio.

What worked

SEUF in India has improved the quality of project reporting of its own staff and NGOs by holding documentation training courses.

The 1999-2000 One World Water Think Tank series showed that is possible to co-organise e-conferences with several organisations and that these e-conferences attract participation from developing countries.

The National Management Information Project/Section (NMIP) in Nepal showed that government is willing to fund KM activities.

The Swiss AGUASAN group, a Community of Practice (CoP), has existed for 20 years based solely on face-to-face meetings, without a website or e-mail discussion group.

HIF-net has set up an e-mail discussion forum that has stimulated the local creation and sharing of health information among many partners with increasing involvement of developing country participants.

In IRC’s experience project related e-mail discussion groups with a fixed time run relatively well.

What didn’t work

The Nepal workshop mentioned that many organisational libraries “are not systematically managed and accessible for everyone”.

NGOs in Bangladesh do not take local knowledge, attitudes and practices into consideration, which has hampered the success of safe water campaigns in arsenic affected areas.

A failure to attract funding means that the arsenic crisis website can now longer be maintained. Similarly, IRC had to pull out of an online training course because there were not enough paying participants to recover the costs.

Some IRC e-mail discussion groups started off well but then relied too much on the moderators for contributions.

Lessons Learned

Beena of SEUF (India), Dr Zuberi (Bangladesh), S.M. Ali of WEDC (UK) and Walid Badawi of UNDP/METAP have all emphasised the need to take local knowledge, attitudes and practices into consideration in any KM activity.

Dick de Jong (IRC) has drawn on experiences from IRC and other organisations to highlight prerequisites for successful e-conferencing and e-forums, including:

reserving enough preparation time, acquiring skills, a neutral platform, and focused discussion on one or two specific questions by a proactive “reader-centred” moderator.

According to Walid Badawi of UNDP/METAP, a successful network should localise KM solutions, have realistic objectives, and have a content development strategy and an engagement strategy. Urs Karl Egger of SKAT adds to this: commitment of members, passion for the topic, enough resources (time and money), and trust.

Susana Neto, I think, speaks for many who manage a website when she says they are easy to start but difficult to maintain.