EU Aid practitioners

Knowledge Sharingand presentation of capacity4dev

18 March 2013, Brussels

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Overview

- 1) Introduction on Knowledge Sharing

- 2) Presentation of capacity4dev

- 3) Proposals for Discussion : What could be offered ?

Why Knowledge sharing is important ?Intangible products – knowledge, ideas, innovation, networks - are defining our capacity.

Problem to capitalise knowledge: Large and geographically dispersed organisations do not know what they know. Expertise learnt and applied in one part of the organisation is not leveraged in another.

Increasing turn-over of staff. When someone leaves an organisation, his knowledge walks out of the door with them.

Knowledge sharing is important:for our own capacityto support the development of capacities in Partner Countries

(recognised in Busan outcome document)

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Aid Practitioners: Who are we?

Staff including field staff number of country offices

ADA 130    

AECID 1,300 700 43

AFD 1,700 700 68

BTC 650 470 18

CE 4,000 2,500 140

DFID 2,600 1,300 64

GiZ 17,000 15,000 90

KfW 4,000    

Luxdev 115 60 6

Slovakaid 39 4  

Czech Development Agency      

Total 30,104 20,034 3864

Knowledge Sharing:What is capacity4dev?

VIDEO

capacity4dev.eu: European Commission’s Knowledge Sharing Platform on Development and Cooperation

Capacity4dev.eu = Capacity Development through Knowledge Sharing!

4 pillars :

1.Consolidate knowledge and build Institutional Memory

2.Support Thematic Expertise, bridge the silos, Support good practice and innovation exchange/ help identify specialists

3.Enable cross-learning among practitioners from EC, EEAS, MS, Donors, International Organisations, private sector, CSOs, Governments, Academia…

4.Consolidate multiple knowledge sharing tools and communities of practice around a common environment

1. Consolidate knowledge and build Institutional Memory

• 20% staff leaves the organisation each year • 50% of staff on short term contracts or externals• 90% of the knowledge leaves the organisation when they leave

• What is left behind ? Few notes, official documents in Unit drives/ ARES and … a big mailbox !

Short Institutional memory =>Constant reinventing of the wheel …

How to tackle the loss of knowledge ? - Transfer important knowledge exchanges from email to

capacity4dev.eu- Capitalise on your knowledge through capacity4dev.eu groups

2.1. Support Thematic Expertise

Expertise scattered: Need to establish Thematic networks. But …many of the Thematic Networks still run on e-mail Hi workload for few people running the network and inefficiency of email as a knowlledge sharing tool: loss of memory

C4D: decentralised knowledge sharing through groups, the platform does the emailing, knowledge shared stays an builds-up in groups

2.2 bridge the silos, Support good practice and innovation exchange

Thematic experts often work in Silos: No time to see what is happening in other Themes even it often has a direct impact on their work: Hard to see the big picture

C4D: Content categorised by one or more Theme / Region – Country

2.3 help identify specialists

Even within Thematics often people are not fully aware of what other colleagues are doing: Collaboration opportunities missed

C4D: People section: Find colleagues interested or with expertise on specific themes or regions then Contact them or Join/Start a group on a specific Theme or region and start sharing.

3. Enable cross-learning among practitioners EC, EEAS, MS, Donors, Int. Organisations, private

sector, CSOs, Governments, Academia…

• Few opportunities for HQ and Delegation staff to meet and exchange with peers / experts from other organisations

• Only through few annual gatherings / workshops and personal networks

Our knowledge remains often confined in-house and is not made available/ used by others

Knowledge from other practitioners doesn’t reach us

C4D : share your knowledge and make it available to other practitioners through groups.

Use capacity4dev.eu to find knowledge and learn from others

4. Consolidate multiple knowledge sharing tools and communities of practice around a

common environment

• Each Unit, Sector and even large projects and Delegations invented their own way of being more efficient using online tools

• Email, Wikis, Blogs, CIRCABC, dedicated sites, dedicated knowledge sharing platforms (ROSA) …

Knowledge is scatered in multiple locations, the community of practice is fragmented and users need to learn a great variety of tools

C4D : Consolidate knowledge sharing around capacity4dev.eu using groups (web rationalisation strategy)

What is offered:

Fast Facts6500+ Professionals from all over the world: 2000+ staff (EC/EEAS), 4500+ from Private Cos, CSOs, Government, Donors etc…300+ Knowledge pieces, 8000+ Documents, 2300+ Blog posts and 600 workshops shared in200+ Groups

• Access to a large community of development practitioners from across the world

• 300 knowledge pieces (Voices and Views) on a great variety of themes backed with video and references.

• Knowledge sharing tools for teams: Fully fledged free Groupware for the development community: Public , EC/EEAS or Private groups with: Group site, Blog, full document library, events, survey tool, project management and reporting tool, group chat, members rooster, powerful search, taxonomies, group statistics and soon document based online consultations (co-ment)

• Peer support functionality: get help from the community

• Your profile page, personalised mail notifications, personal content and people recommendations

• Secure hosting (EC Infrastructure)

Quick fly-by of capacity4dev.eu

• http://capacity4dev.ec.europa.eu

Results in 2012

• 68% growth with 2500 new members joining the community

• 65 new knowledge pieces (Voices and Views) on a great variety of themes backed with video and references.

• Knowledge sharing in groups: 3800 new documents blog posts, 300 new workshops shared

• Key new functionalities added: project management tool in groups, Peer support functionality

• Security and governance reinforced, migrated to EC data-centre

Proposals for discussion

What could be offered ? What would be required ?

EU groups EU MS experts to join and share on thematic groups + Technical support

Visible EU MS Identity on Projects EU MS implementers to join and share

Presence in Voices & Views Corporate involvement

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What else we can offer to EU MS?

• Today over 300 professionals from of EU Member States Ministries and Development Agencies already on capacity4dev.eu, participating in various Public, EC-EEAS and Private groups.

• Tomorrow it would be possible to create a 4th type of group called "EU Group" where EU MS staff could automatically get access to.

• The issue is that an important % of the staff of EU MS and their agencies (as it is the case in EuropeAid) leaves the organisation every year. So the list of staff from MS will be very quickly outdated / irrelevant.

• Solution: work with MS services to be able to validate emails / users on a daily basis. (REST services implemented by EU MS IT departments, accessible by capacity4dev.eu that can verify the validity of the users once a day)

• If need be there could be the possibility to create custom groups where the group owner chooses which EU Institution, EU MS Ministry or Agency can have automatically access to his group.

Action plan

• Mapping ? Interoperability ?

• EU MS interest in an EU-wide KS effort?

• Technical possibilities at EC level ?

• April Partners meeting

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Join the community today!

• As simple as … 1,2,3• 1. Become a member of capacity4dev.eu• 2. Join the groups you are interested in• 3. … start learning and contributing your experience!

We are here to help you come on-board! www.capacity4dev.eu/contactor capacity4dev@ec.europa.eu

Online help and guidance www.capacity4dev.eu/help Hands-on Training every 15 days (register on Syslog, or contact us)