New 5-year Research Programme: ‘Emergent Issues in Information and Knowledge Management (IKM) and International Development 2007-2012’
At the last EADI bi-annual conference in September 2005, Simon Maxwell of the ODI and Paul Engel of ECDPM challenged the EADI working groups to become a focus for research in their subject areas. Taking up this challenge and building on earlier work at the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), some members of the EADI Information Management Working Group (IMWG) have developed a ground-breaking, new research programme.
In April 2007, the research programme "Emergent Issues in Information and Knowledge Management (IKM) and International Development" was approved for funding by the Directorate General for International Cooperation (DGIS), part of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The programme, to be known as the IKM Emergent Research Programme, will run to mid-2012 and has been funded for approximately €500,000 per annum, a total of €2.5 million over the 5-year period.
The programme has its own steering group of internationally renowned experts who are responsible for its intellectual direction and management, and it will be administered by the EADI Secretariat in Bonn. The director of the programme is Mike Powell, author of the Oxfam book ‘Information Management for Development’ and the architect of this joint research initiative.
EADI Information Management Working Group
Commenting on this new research programme, Thomas Lawo, EADI Executive Secretary said:
"For EADI, this programme represents an important opportunity. It aims to create an environment in which researchers, practitioners, policy-makers and knowledge managers have an opportunity to reflect on their use and management of knowledge. New perspectives on how these can be improved to better serve their goals will be developed. Advocating greater investment in and use of Southern knowledge production is an explicit aim of the programme. This initiative of the EADI Information Management Working Group will give new incentives for the association as a whole."
Innovative elements
Mike Powell stresses that the Research Programme has a number of innovative elements:
"It is essentially a piece of networked research with programme work overlapping with the interests and practical challenges faced by its participants in their own work. The programme is founded on the initial involvement of a group of approximately 20 people, many of whom are members of the EADI IMWG, with the intention that many others will be able to interact with and be part of the programme as it develops over time. For a research group, it has a high proportion of members who actively work as reflective practitioners in the field of information and knowledge management for development. They are complemented by a number of academic researchers, whose disciplines range from new media to history. The resulting mix is very unusual for a research programme but necessary for one attempting to address the multi-faceted nature of the use of knowledge in development in a holistic way.
"Approval for this research programme is particularly satisfactory because it results not just from a bureaucratic process but from a real dialogue with a number of people in the Ministry over the proposed content of the programme and its relevance to development policy and practice. Such a level of engagement with a potential funding application is extremely rare in my experience, and very welcome."
The research programme
Using targeted research and building on existing networks and other initiatives, the research programme aims to improve development practice by promoting change in the way the development sector approaches the selection, management and use of knowledge in the formation and implementation of its policies and programmes. It aims to achieve this by:
· raising awareness of the importance of knowledge to development work and its contested nature;
· promoting investment in and use of Southern knowledge production of all types and origins;
· creating an environment for innovation, supported by research on existing and emergent practice, for people working in the development sector to raise and discuss means of addressing these issues; and
· finding, creating, testing and documenting ideas for processes and tools which will illustrate the range of issues which affect how knowledge is used in development work and stimulate thought around possible solutions.
Previous work in this area has been piecemeal, with the result that research into links between research, knowledge and management have often had limited audiences and little impact on practice. This programme will link its research and development activities to a detailed and interactive advocacy and communications strategy. The programme will be structured around three working groups:
1. Exploring discourses
This group will work on knowledge creation and content, focusing on the production, communication and use of knowledge from a range of Southern sources – project-based, activist and intellectual; and support processes of autonomous expression.
2. Making the most of information
The group will explore appropriate new artefacts for communication and expression and their reception and use by development professionals; and improve the handling of information to cover the range of development information, its varied formats and its multiple uses at different times.
3. Management of knowledge
This group will investigate the needs of users and producers of information and knowledge, and how they can be met by new structures and practices for managing, sharing and applying knowledge.
For more information
To keep up-to-date on new developments related to the IKM Emergent Research Programme, please register at: www.dgroups.org/groups/ikmemergent to join the mailing list.
