The following is a summary of the report from Workshop 2 (Rationalizing the CD knowledge architecture & LenCD’s role and knowledge services) at the LenCD Partners' Meeting in Kigali in February 2011. The complete report is attached below.
Outcomes
Approximately 25 people attended the workshop – a large turnout which indicates substantial interest on the part of network members. Knowledge management is an emergent practice area that is important to enable shared learning and exchanging of experiences, and it was very encouraging to see the strong interest on the part of network members.
Our first step was to invite everyone present to share what their organisations are doing and planning in the area of knowledge management, and what challenges they experienced. Although this took a long time with so many people present, it was valuable to learn about the wide diversity of audiences and activities that network members engaged with, and the wide range of issues they had to deal with. Many people noted that their organisations are increasing investment in this area, developing knowledge management strategies, or simply recognize that it is an important issue and are motivated to learn more about it.
Based on the results of this exercise and the most common issues and priorities that emerged, we developed three practical questions and divided into three parallel groups to discuss them:
What are the challenges faced in filtering, finding, and cataloguing information and knowledge, and how could they be addressed? The group identified challenges that included assessing quality of information, and classifying, categorising, and otherwise organising it. The main solution suggested was to create an open process for partners to freely contribute information to a common resource pool, organised in a web-like way, with peer-review mechanisms for quality assurance. Technically, this might be implemented using a wiki, and using social networking tools.
What are the incentives and disincentives to sharing information and knowledge among organisations, and how could we maximise sharing? The group concluded that to promote knowledge sharing, organisations need: a supportive organisational culture, structure, and leadership; a neutral and independent space within which to collaborate with others; incentives built in to consultants’, staff members’, and projects’ terms of reference as a core activity rather than as an afterthought; rewards or recognition at the organisational and individual levels; and stronger expression of the demand for knowledge and joint production. Regarding barriers to knowledge-sharing, the group noted that: results-based management is a disincentive to contributing to a collective or commons, particularly since attribution can be unclear; we suffer from under-investment in research and development; and capacity development funds tend to be centralised and linked to standard technical assistance and north-to-south knowledge flows, rather than incentivising local partners.
What is the most useful way to document practical experience and case stories for sharing? The group suggested that a standard format for presenting experiences might be helpful, and noted that stories should enable readers to learn from the process, not just the outputs. A peer-review process for quality assurance of stories would be helpful, but evaluation criteria could be established and determining what makes a good case could be tricky. The motives and incentives for producing case stories need to be addressed, whether for marketing or for genuine learning, we need to overcome reluctance to document failure, and we need to ensure proper attribution. The provisions of the LenCD charter were noted as helpful in addressing attribution concerns and promoting collaboration. Finding and retrieving relevant case stories requires multi-faceted searching on multiple criteria.
Based on these inputs, a series of more than 20 ideas for specific activities were generated. A group of nine people met on Saturday, the final day of the meeting, to discuss them and narrow them down to a smaller list of priorities. Please see the complete report, attached below, for the full list.
