Full list of IM/KM issues and recommendations

Adapted from the subject headings of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)

Conferences referred to:

Advocacy for the promotion of IM/KM for the water sector

• No recommendations found

Understanding user needs and user behaviour

• Information use: what is the evidence that information and knowledge are really used when made available? Evaluating the impact of information dissemination was underscored but the practicalities of doing so remain to be developed. The uselessness of some types of “global” information because it is inappropriate or inapplicable to local conditions was highlighted. This also indicates a possible role for resource centres in adapting this type of information to local situations. [STREAMS]

Information and communication infrastructure (Internet, satellite technology)

• Promote affordable and reliable high-speed Internet connection for all universities and research institutions to support their critical role in information and knowledge production, education and training, and to support the establishment of partnerships, cooperation and networking between these institutions. [WSIS]
• Arid Lands Information Network (ALIN), Kenya, promotes use of Worldspace.com satellite to download practical, packaged Internet-based information to radios in remote regions [MKNWP]

Access to information and knowledge

• Costs: not free to ensure value is put on information and knowledge, or neutral financing or a subsidy system is needed to increase access for the poor [STREAMS]
• Help organisations and individuals access the information they need [STREAMS]
• Develop policy guidelines for the development and promotion of public domain information as an important international instrument promoting public access to information [WSIS]
• Governments, and other stakeholders, should establish sustainable multi-purpose community public access points, providing affordable or free-of-charge access for their citizens to the various communication resources, notably the Internet. These access points should […] have sufficient capacity to provide assistance to users, in libraries, educational institutions, public administrations, post offices or other public places, with special emphasis on rural and underserved areas, while respecting intellectual property rights (IPRs) and encouraging the use of information and sharing of knowledge [WSIS]
• Support the creation and development of a digital public library and archive services, […] developing a global understanding of the need for “hybrid libraries” [i.e. hard copy and electronic documents], and fostering worldwide cooperation between libraries. [WSIS]
• Encourage initiatives to facilitate access, including free and affordable access to open access journals and books, and open archives for scientific information. [WSIS]
• Promote electronic publishing, differential pricing and open access initiatives to make scientific information affordable and accessible in all countries on an equitable basis. [WSIS]
• [A]ccess to knowledge is as inequitable as access to water and sanitation. For the high-tech North, with satellite dishes, optical fibres, broadband Internet access and personal computers omnipresent, the latest data, experiences and trends are accessible at the click of a mouse. At the agency and community level in developing countries, where that knowledge has to be put to good use, communication is more basic and networking more rudimentary. [WIS6]
• Offering and promoting a problem-solving service or helpdesk in which RC [Resource Centre] staff will use networks and Internet tools to search for solutions or information and feed them back to users in useable formats. [WIS6]
• Launch an initiative and commit funds so that access to water, sanitation and hygiene information and knowledge sharing is affordable for users in more developing countries. [WWF3-1]
• Facilitate identification of the different sources of information, and their access, through Internet (Web portals) or other media. [WWF3-2]

Capacity building

• Enhance the capacity of indigenous peoples to develop content in their own languages. [WSIS]
• [Give] NGOs, CBOs, local agency professionals and community workers periodic access to Internet services, with guidance on how to retrieve relevant information and share problems and experiences with others. [WIS6]
• Build capacity for local and national resource centres […] to:
  manage information and databases ; be more attentive to the kind of information the local partners need; collect information from different media (Internet); and disseminate information with an appropriate media for local partners (paper) [WWF3-2]

Assessing and ensuring quality/reliability of information

• Quality control of information in a network - a role for resource centres as a clearing house and quality controller of information (problem of censorship) - beyond a certain level of preliminary sorting … users should themselves sort out the grain from the chaff. [STREAMS]
• The twin challenges are to provide quality assurance and to direct users to timely and relevant information. […] Peer review of stored data is a quality-control technique used by some website managers, including CEPIS. […]. Downside. Peer review takes time, so the information flow slows down. It also may filter out an important part of knowledge transfer - controversy. [While there is a place for peer review where facts and figures [O]pinions and anecdotes need to be encouraged not stifled (see box). [C]iting the background and credentials of contributors should be enough to enable users to judge for themselves what weight to put on provocative opinions. [WIS6]

Enabling environment – national/international policies

• Positive policies can enable access to information (and vice versa) – e.g. the Ugandan government imposes a tax on mobile phones in the commercial urban sector and uses the revenues to subsidise rural use of phones [MKNWP]

ICT applications

• The WIS6 discussion group on E-learning sees an expanding role for ICT-based knowledge transfer using existing and new interactive tools (Blackboard, Moodle, www.bellanet.org). [WIS6]

Local content, language aspects, indigenous knowledge

• How to link up local knowledge with the global technical knowledge base: resource centres connected to grassroots NGOs or a network of resource centres facilitating NGOs with complementary fields of excellence [STREAMS]
• Support local content development, translation and adaptation, digital archives, and diverse forms of digital and traditional media by local authorities. These activities can also strengthen local and indigenous communities. [WSIS]
• Nurture the local capacity for the creation and distribution of software in local languages, as well as content that is relevant to different segments of population, including non-literate, persons with disabilities, disadvantaged and vulnerable groups especially in developing countries and countries with economies in transition. [WSIS]
• Give support to media based in local communities and support projects combining the use of traditional media and new technologies for their role in facilitating the use of local languages, for documenting and preserving local heritage, including landscape and biological diversity, and as a means to reach rural and isolated and nomadic communities. [WSIS]
• [C]oncerted action to speed the flow of knowledge to and from the community level. [WIS6]
• Respect for local knowledge underpins successful communication strategies [MKNWP]
• Communications systems must outlive the project if they are to bring lasting benefits - plugging into the social networks that exist as part of the community itself [MKNWP]

Information product development and dissemination

• Need for “selecting, screening and packaging information for different target audiences” [STREAMS]
• Promote electronic publishing, differential pricing and open access initiatives to make scientific information affordable and accessible in all countries on an equitable basis. [WSIS]
• Through the Water News Services Working Group, efforts are being made to help local initiatives as both news disseminators and news gatherers. […] A prime focus of attention was the News Service Resource Guide, developed by the Group as a tool to help anyone interested in starting or running a news service. [WIS6]
• Developing, packaging and sharing information/knowledge products based on local demand to suit the technological capacity of the constituents. Sharing would use different vehicles ranging from full Internet access, through E-mail, fax, hardcopy (with varying language fluency), TV and radio, newspapers, etc, to posters and street theatre. [WIS6]
• Diversify the kind of media use to shared information (not only Internet, but also CD-ROM, books, video, radio in local language, etc.) adapted to each target group. [WWF3-2]
• Organise local workshop[s] or use traditional methods (theatre, etc.) to share information and knowledge [WWF3-2]

Promoting knowledge sharing

• Two new concepts "learning circles"/"circles and cycles of learning" and "vertical and horizontal coalitions" to ensure - sharing and utilisation of knowledge at all levels. [STREAMS]
• Promote the use of peer-to-peer technology to share scientific knowledge and pre-prints and reprints written by scientific authors who have waived their right to payment. [WSIS]
• A major plank in achieving those goals [Millennium Development Goals for water and sanitation] is knowledge sharing - ensuring that the most up-to-date approaches and appropriate technologies are used to bring sustainable services to those who lack them [WIS6]
• The concept of developing "Communities of Practice" is seen as a productive way forward. On the international level, IRC is already working on a project that will provide a foundation for future bridges to the global knowledge base for southern Resource Centres (RCs). The aim is to create a portal through which IRC will provide all the knowledge-sharing infrastructure and applications. Resource Centres in the South will provide content through their own websites, hosted at the portal site, and will be partners in the knowledge management operations. In this way, it is envisaged that shared ICT and expertise can expand the capacity of the RCs and draw a wide range of grassroots experiences into the global knowledge network. [WIS6]
• Support Communities of Practice (CoP) to facilitate the learning on water sanitation and hygiene from the grass-root level to the Internet community and networks and vice versa. Resource Centres and networks are nodal points to facilitate this process. [WWF3-1]
• Intermediaries. The missing link is interactivity between sources of knowledge and users. It is clearly not possible for those without Internet access to benefit directly from the structured searches and instant links that make the digital highway such a powerful knowledge management tool. One key role of any intermediary institution is to bring its community-based constituents as close as possible to the immediacy of the Internet to help solve their problems or to provide them with tailor made information. Another is to help communities to share their experiences either through the Internet or by organizing workshops or exchange visits. [WIS6]
• The ‘information intermediary’ is a key to the success – or failure – of the technology in disseminating information. If they do not understand the information, or are not reflecting the information needs of the communities on whose behalf they are accessing information (and evidence suggests that this might be so) then the impact of the initiative is considerably weakened [MKNWP]
• Development organisations need to work with intermediaries who are closer to the end users but be aware that such organisations and individuals can misrepresent – or misunderstand – the information needs of their constituencies as often as the rest of us [MKNWP]
• Regular interaction between those who know the new technologies, systems and trends and those who are familiar with local community needs and contexts. [WIS6]
• Offering and promoting a problem-solving service or helpdesk in which RC [Resource Centre] staff will use networks and Internet tools to search for solutions or information and feed them back to users in useable formats. [WIS6]
• [C]oncerted action to speed the flow of knowledge to and from the community level. [WIS6]
• E-learning initiatives […] On-line tuition, backed up with courses and notes on CD-ROM or in hardcopy. [C]loser integration of E-learning with knowledge management and social networking. […]. Examples: The NetworkUniversity (Univ. of Amsterdam); UN Water Virtual Learning Centre; World Bank Institute's Global Development Learning Network (GDLN); and the Distance Learning Information Sharing Tool (DLIST) used by Environmental Management students at Peninsula Technikon (South Africa). [WIS6]
• Face to face communication is best [MKNWP]
• Competition for resources and status threatens any co-operative venture [MKNWP]
• For networks to work better for the poor, the institutions that work with the poor […] need to create systematised communication methods – so that:
  a. staff learn from projects and respect and build on the knowledge held by the people with whom they work;
  b. the information needs of their primary stakeholders (or beneficiaries) are identified within every project, and communication techniques and strategies (toolkits) designed to respond to them and;
  c. the institution reflects on these findings and communicates them with a range of stakeholders who might benefit from the experience and analysis. [MKNWP]
• Active and participatory learning approaches are the path to future sustainable learning. [WWF3-3]

E-conferencing

• Developing electronic conferences for a global exchange and development of networking, but: [hold them] in the main different languages used; and local relay must play a role to involve stakeholders who have no access to e-mail. [WWF3-2]

Standards

• Promote principles and metadata standards to facilitate cooperation and effective use of collected scientific information and data as appropriate to conduct scientific research. [WSIS]
• To help share knowledge across language boundaries, the Summit asked IRC to bring together a working group to develop a common multilingual Thesaurus for the water resources sector which could be used by all the search engines. [WIS6]

Measuring impact

• Information use: what is the evidence that information and knowledge are really used when made available? Evaluating the impact of information dissemination was underscored but the practicalities of doing so remain to be developed. The uselessness of some types of “global” information because it is inappropriate or inapplicable to local conditions was highlighted. This also indicates a possible role for resource centres in adapting this type of information to local situations. [STREAMS]

Ethical dimensions of IM/KM

• No recommendations found

Networking: international and regional cooperation

• How to link up local knowledge with the global technical knowledge base: resource centres connected to grassroots NGOs or a network of resource centres facilitating NGOs with complementary fields of excellence [STREAMS]
• A networking model for enhancing accessibility to knowledge (which is similar to the “cascade model”) through “levels or orders of resource centres”. First order resource centres are the highest levels and these are linked to lower order resource centres [STREAMS]
• The Digital Solidarity Agenda aims at […] mobilizing human, financial and technological resources for inclusion of all men and women in the emerging Information Society. Close national, regional and international cooperation among all stakeholders in the implementation of this Agenda is vital. To overcome the digital divide, we need to […] provide financing for the development of infrastructure, equipment, capacity building and content, which are essential for participation in the Information Society. [WSIS]
• Feeding global knowledge networks with local experiences and sector data. [WIS6]
• Promoting and supporting dialogues/fora/networks among community-based workers and linking these to national and regional networks. [WIS6]
• [D]eveloping the RC [Resource Centre] network into a knowledge management hub for the whole WSS sector. [Refers to IRC RCD programme and the Streams of Knowledge Coaltion] [WIS6]
• [M]aintaining member interest and optimising the effectiveness of a network [through]: 1. Committed moderator with institutional support and resources that match the level of ambition; Development of "Communities of Practice";
  2. Regular outputs that demonstrate the power of the network to consolidate information and help in problem-solving;
  3. Advocacy and promotion to highlight network benefits; Links with other networks to extend influence and widen the knowledge base;
  4. Links to national and regional goals and where appropriate to the Millennium Development Goals;
  5. Periodic monitoring, evaluation and reporting of feedback and results;
  6. Planning from the start of the possible ending of the network or its commercialisation/institutionalisation once the goals have been achieved. [WIS6]
• The Sanicon website combines information resources from 18 partner agencies [...] a helpful model for overcoming inter-agency rivalry (no lead agency), though it suffers from lack of incentives to update data regularly. [It uses] segmentation and signposting. [WIS6]
• To help share knowledge across language boundaries, the Summit asked IRC to bring together a working group to develop a common multilingual Thesaurus for the water resources sector which could be used by all the search engines. [WIS6]
• [A] portal should be more than a gateway. To attract regular users, it needs to be part of a broad portfolio of information and communication channels. It might for instance include news items, thematic discussions through bulletin boards, periodic E-conferences and permanent thematic E-mail networks, and should establish regular electronic or hardcopy communication with registered users. [WIS6]
• Creating new networks should be treated with caution since it would mean yet another institution competing for resources and people’s time. Instead we should look to use and strengthen existing structures. [MKNWP]
• Commit resources to assist and to strengthen Resource Centres, partnerships and networks in developing countries in sharing information and knowledge to improve water sanitation programmes to reach the MDG goals. [WWF3-1]