FAO as a Knowledge Organization Leveraging on Partnerships to Promote Knowledge Exchange in Agricult

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FAO as a Knowledge Organization - Leveraging on
Partnerships to Promote Knowledge Exchange in
Agricultural Domain

• Gauri Salokhe, Stephen Katz
• Knowledge Exchange and Capacity Building Division
• Gauri.Salokhe_at_fao.org, Stephen.katz_at_fao.org

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What is Knowledge Management?

• A catchy/trendy modern term, but is elusive as a
  concept!
• Everyone has an intuitive sense of what it is
  about, but there is no universal definition.
  Entire books are written about it!

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What is Knowledge Management?
From Learning to Fly, Chris Collison and Geoff
Parcell, Capstone Publishing

• It is about capturing, creating, distilling,
  sharing and using know-how. That know-how
  includes explicit and tacit knowledge. Know-how
  is used as shorthand for know-how, know-what,
  know-who, know-why and know-when.
• Its ... about the communities that keep know-how
  of a topic alive by sharing what they know,
  building on it and adapting it to their own use.
• It is not snapshot of what is known at a single
  point in time, but an evolving set of know-how
  kept current by people who regularly use it.

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What is Knowledge Management?

• A complex set of functions involving processes,
  people and technology interacting together.
• Not about doing something new but doing things in
  some new ways.
• Partially about information technology and tools
  but mostly about process and empowerment of people

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What is Knowledge Management?

• In summary, KM is about
• connecting people together to create, share and
  exploit knowledge more effectively
• connecting people to the information they need to
  develop and apply their knowledge in new ways
• connecting people to the tools they need to
  process information and knowledge

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Pulp Fiction vis-à-vis KM

• Non-Linear, Out-of-Sequence
• How, where and when do you start?
• Requires a different mind-set (If-then-else/loop-
  until structures dont apply!)
• Unconventional Approach
• Top-down or bottom-up? Maybe both?

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Knowledge Management...

• Can appear at times to be a mechanism for
  like-minded people to come and hug trees
  together.
• Perhaps too much hype associated with it
• Whats the fuss all about anyway? FAO has been
  doing knowledge management for over 60 years.
• Why does FAO need to do Knowledge Management?
• Its just more work on top of the too many things
  I already have to do
• And if you want to be cynical Is KM really the
  right terminology? Is knowledge really something
  you can manage, or is it something you share,
  adapt and apply on a case by case basis?

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What is FAO?

• With KM concepts now crystal clear, a brief note
  about FAO
• FAO is a specialized agency of the United Nations
  with its own independent governance
• 190 Member Countries
• 2008-2009 core budget of US 868 million and
  almost an equal amount of external funding
• HQs in Rome, Offices in over 80 countries
• Around 4000 staff World-Wide

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Knowledge Exchange Capacity Building Main
Areas of Work

• Support to the FAO web-site (http//www.fao.org)
• Knowledge Management Services (http//www.fao.org/
  KnowledgeForum/)
• WAICENT - World Agricultural Information Centre
  Portal (http//www.fao.org/waicent)
• Electronic Publishing all FAO Publications
  on-line
• Standards for Information Management - AGROVOC
  Thesaurus, AGRIS Classification and metadata
  exchange schemes
• Field Programmes
• Capacity Building and E-Learning
• Library Services

in ENGLISH, FRENCH, SPANISH, ARABIC, CHINESE...
and now since 2008 also RUSSIAN!
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... in Theory
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... in Practice
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Independent External Evaluation

• Released in October 2007 after two years of work
• A team of International experts, core team of 6
• Divided into 4 areas
• Technical Work
• Management and Administration (KM was here)
• Governance
• FAOs Role Externally
• Report More than 400 pages, 109 recommendations
• Available from the FAO Home Page
  ftp//ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/meeting/012/k0827e02.
  pdf

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Independent External Evaluation Key Messages

• 2) FAO is in a serious crisis which imperils its
  future
• 3) If FAO was to disappear tomorrow, much of it
  would need to be reinvented
• 8) As a knowledge organization, FAO should
  support Members in ensuring that needs are fully
  met not necessarily to undertake each task
  itself. It must ensure that the worlds
  knowledge of food and agriculture is available to
  those who need it when they need it and in a form
  which they can access and use

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Back to the Beginning..
Back to the Beginning..
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Why is KM Important

• Information/data without applied knowledge (i.e.
  analysis, interpretation, adaptation within
  context) cannot resolve problems on their own
• Most of an organizations knowledge assets are
  located within the heads of people. That is, the
  so called tacit knowledge
• Dos and Donts are tacit knowledge assets not
  readily available
• Many international institutions have adopted
  knowledge management approaches as a corporate
  strategy (e.g. The World Bank and UNDP)
• Those who are not equipped to be part of the
  emerging global knowledge society will be left
  behind.
• FAO currently is not entirely a knowledge
  organization but an organization with a lot of
  knowledge

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FAO as a Knowledge Organization - Model
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Towards a KM Strategy

• Main Issues are divided into four categories
• Staff and technical expertise (Internal)
• Member States and Partnerships (External)
• Organizational structure and culture
• Technology and Infrastructure

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Issues and Recommendations Members
Partnerships (External)

• Issues
• FAO is quite internally focused but itself
  produces only a fraction of the knowledge
  required for addressing the world problems in
  poverty and hunger. There is an increasing need
  to work in partnerships and networks.
• FAO nevertheless needs to know where appropriate
  and authoritative knowledge is to be found and
  how it can be accessed.
• FAO and its partners are both suppliers and
  consumers of knowledge.

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Issues and Recommendations Members
Partnerships (External)

• Recommendation Foster strategic partnerships
  and networking to facilitate KS
• To do this, there is a need for
• FAO to become more of a facilitator and
  concentrate its actions as a doer in its areas of
  comparative strength.
• FAO to help ensure that the worlds knowledge of
  food and agriculture is available to those who
  need it when they need it and in a form which
  they can access and use.
• Strong partnerships need to be established with
  partner UN organizations, Non-Governmental
  Organizations, Universities, Governments and
  private organizations to assure knowledge sharing
  and collaboration.

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Examples of possible collaboration areas
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First Steps towards KM
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Opportunities for Collaboration

• A coordinated network of Question and Answer
  Services at national and regional levels
• Common metadata sets for sharing Q and A using
  technologies such as RSS or XML
• Direct linking to specialized Q and A services

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Opportunities for Collaboration

• Learn from the each others experience, both
  successes and failures.
• Create and share Good Practices which
• have been adopted successfully in more than one
  region
• are interdisciplinary in nature, reflecting the
  complex nature of the problems addressed.

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Opportunities for Collaboration

• Create a network of partners/specialists to share
  and support resolve issues
• Ensure
• Demand-driven
• Support and sponsorship from management
• Ensure proper membership (mix of experts)
• Continuous facilitation
• Flexible approach (i.e. tools, size, timeframe)
• Recognition to staff time dedicated to this
  activity

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http//aglr.aua.gr
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Objective

• developing adapting repurposing learning
  resources on topics related to agricultural and
  rural development worldwide
• LORs with reusable learning resources and
  interoperable metadata
• LORs with open standards and technologies
• global federations of LORs

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Participating Organizations
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• established February 2008
• 110 members - 26 countries and 16 organizations
• 75 in organizations with digital LOR
• Working with European Expert group mapping
  metadata APs (European Committee for
  Standardization)
• e-Conference on agricultural LORs - May 2008
• Workshop on Learning Technology Standards - Sept
  2008

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Organic Agriculture (OA) Agroecology (AE)
Co-funded by the European Commission eContentplus
programme
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AgriFeeds
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News / Latest Developments
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Events related to Agriculture
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USAIN and FAO

• Inform and involve Subject Specialists from the
  United States into Thematic Knowledge Networks
• Increase involvement into the Coherence for
  Information in Agricultural Research and
  Development (CIARD) initiative
• Work together on information sharing standard,
  development of tools, capacity building materials
• Get Resources from American agricultural research
  into AGRIS
• FAOs multilingual resources are available for
  reuse
• Collaboration between FAO and USAIN in projects
  in developing countries and to share experiences
• New Interest Group?
• Regular exchange of information through F2F events

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Thank you!

• Gauri.Salokhe_at_fao.org