This presentation summarizes lessons learned and good practices emerged from a comparative study of 26 knowledge management projects across the UN system. It was first presented on 2 March 2011 at the workshop: "Aligning Strategy & Practice - UNEP’s engagement in countries - Learning from MDG-F and Delivering as One". If you wish to use this presentation for any reason/purpose please contact me.

1. UN: The KM Experience
Lessons learned from 26 KM projects
within the UN system

2. The Source
Inter-Agency Knowledge Fair on
UN 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)

3. Keywords
1. Needs Assessment (Demand Driven Programming)
2. Commitment and Leadership from the top (Legitimacy)
3. Funding
4. Partnerships
5. Technology
6. Facilitation
7. Open-Access vs. Restricted Content
8. Repurposing of Knowledge
9. Impact of KM

4. Needs Assessment 1/9
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”.

5. Needs Assessment 1/9
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”.

6. Needs Assessment 1/9
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”.

7. Needs Assessment 1/9
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”.

8. Leadership from the top 2/9
Goal: get a reputation of a well-known and useful tool for various
stakeholders and practitioners.
How? Senior Management Buy-in
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”.

9. Leadership from the top 2/9
“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”.

10. Funding 3/9
The 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.

11. Funding 3/9
"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".

12. Partnerships 4/9
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”.

13. Partnerships 4/9
Benefits of partnerships:
1.Create synergies (unlock resources: funding, skills);
2.Increase outreach;
3.Reduce duplication (avoid “reinventing the wheel”).

14. Partnerships 4/9
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”.

15. Partnerships 4/9
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”

16. Partnerships 4/9
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

17. Partnerships 4/9
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”.

18. Partnerships 4/9
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”

19. Partnerships 4/9
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”.

20. Technology 5/9
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”.

21. Facilitation 6/9
Information 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)

22. Facilitation 6/9
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”.

23. Facilitation 6/9
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).

24. Facilitation 6/9
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”.

25. Facilitation 6/9
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”.

26. Facilitation 6/9
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”.

27. Facilitation 6/9
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”.

28. Open-Access vs. Restricted Content 7/9
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”.

29. Open-Access vs. Restricted Content 7/9
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”.

30. Open-Access vs. Restricted Content 7/9
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”.

31. Open-Access vs. Restricted Content 7/9
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”.

32. Repurposing of Knowledge 8/9
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.

33. Repurposing of Knowledge 8/9
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”.

34. Repurposing of Knowledge 8/9
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”.

35. Impact of KM 9/9
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”.

36. Impact of KM 9/9
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”.

37. Thank You
Davide Piga
piga.davide@gmail.com
http://pdavide.me