What is Knowledge Management (KM)

Knowledge Management in the context of the RUFORUM Network (Part I)

I was recently honored to be invited by CTA (Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation) to participate in a training workshop dubbed ‘Knowledge Management for Senior Management in Agriculture and Rural Development’ which was held from 10-12 November 2014 in Ede-Wageningen, The Netherlands. This provided me with a rare opportunity to discuss and reflect on Knowledge Management concepts, methods, tools, frameworks and models – and how they relate to the RUFORUM Network Platform.

The term ‘Knowledge Management’ (KM) is understood differently by various people. Maybe this signifies the complexity of the concept? Or this implies that KM is an evolving concept? It could also be that the different KM actors perceive KM only in relation to their distinct roles.There are over a hundred published definitions of Knowledge Management (Dalkir, 2011).

Knowledge Management definitions denote a very organizational or corporate orientation (KMWorld, 2012). According to the Gartner Group (cited by KMWorld, 2012): "Knowledge Management is a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing all of an enterprise's information assets. These assets may include databases, documents, policies, procedures, and previously un-captured expertise and experience in individual workers."

What is required for KM to succeed?

Successful KM is about people, processes and technologies. There needs to be common and reliable information and communication technology infrastructure to facilitate sharing. People who know must be connected and the behaviors of asking, listening and sharing encouraged. Processes to simplify sharing, validation and distillation are important for the success of KM.

Why Knowledge Management is important for the RUFORUM Network

Today’s economies are driven by knowledge and information assets. KM is important to the RUFORUM Network for the following reasons:

1. A well implemented KM strategy will position us to produce knowledge products for advocacy to inform agriculture and education policy makers. This will hopefully change the face of agriculture in Africa through quality agricultural post-graduate training and agricultural research. A successful advocacy strategy could also result in African governments investing more in agricultural higher education.
2. KM is key for helping Africa solve its developmental puzzle. We have opportunities to collate and disseminate knowledge that is unique to the African experiences. This knowledge is rare and difficult to locate in a properly packaged manner. If our knowledge is effectively managed and accessible we will be able to share and find solutions without reinventing existing solutions.
3. KM will help the RUFORUM network to remain competitive and sustainable. KM could help us to identify sources of self-sustenance through our knowledge products that we could sell to our “customers”. 

Part II will discuss Knowledge Management for Networks - with the RUFORUM Network as an example.

The ICT Department of a university compared to the ICT Department of a Secretariat for a network of universities

I work in the field of information and communication technology (ICT). When I joined the ICT industry it was called the information technology (IT) industry. Communication was added during the early 2000’s to recognize the important aspect of the communications infrastructure and related systems.

Having worked in ICT departments for banking services, national railways services, higher institution of education and currently a secretariat for a network of 46 African universities – I understand that the functions of the ICT departments in varying industries remain similar.

When I moved to Uganda to take up the position of Program Manager responsible for supporting ICT Services at the RUFORUM Secretariat I was struck by the differences in the implementation of the strategy for the ICT Department of a university and the ICT Department for a secretariat of a network of universities.

Prior to joining the RUFORUM Secretariat I worked for 10 years at Africa University – initially as a Systems Engineer and was later promoted to Director of the ICT Department.

The table below highlights the differences I have noted while leading the implementation of the two strategies - the Africa University ICT Strategy and the RUFORUM Secretariat ICT Strategy:

	Africa University ICT Department	RUFORUM Secretariat ICT Department
Strategy Focus	To strengthen the university and align the ICT strategy to support teaching, learning, collaboration  and research	To strengthen the Secretariat and inspire member universities to harness ICT
Department Size	Had a team of 20 technical staff	Has 2 technical staff
Technical Skills	A diverse set of technical skills was available among the technical staff Limited need to outsource technical roles	Narrow set of technical skills Have to outsource technical roles
Hosted Services	All mission critical systems were hosted on campus – because there was capacity to maintain the systems	The majority of the mission critical systems are hosted on the cloud – to ensure uptime and reduce maintenance burdens
The users of the ICT services – accessing the systems and network	A narrower set of users – these were students and staff.	Potentially a wider set of users located in various countries globally – these are secretariat staff, students on RUFORUM scholarships, grantees, governance bodies, faculty staff from member universities and other stakeholders
Decisions on new projects	Guided by a Senate Committee: the computerization committee	Guided by RUFORUM Secretariat Management supported by consultants
The ICT infrastructure and equipment	Larger local area network, about 1,000 concurrent users of network services	A smaller local area network, about 50 devices on the local area network
Funding	The budget is part of the university-wide budget. Students pay a technology fees. The department offers training services to the community for a fee.	The budget is supported through projects funding. Need to continuously mobilize resources

 

Conclusions

The fundamental functions of ICT departments do not change. Their roles are to support the business processes of a particular industry. As a Manager of an ICT Department one needs to develop a strategy that fits the business of that organization. In my case I had to step out of my comfort zone and operate across different technical areas, work with external service level providers, write proposals to mobilize resources and generally multi-task. I have benefited from the experience that RUFORUM has given me – I have been part of “sowing the seeds” by participating in developing web-based information management systems that are being used by network stakeholders across Africa to extract, share and deposit information.