ETF gets the knowledge

Since 2010, the ETF has been working on a new strategy for knowledge management. The aim is twofold, according to Ian Cumming, leader of the operations knowledge team which also includes Mirella Rossi and Denise Loughran.

“The team wants to ensure that the knowledge we create and generate is used to the best possible effect,” he says, “this means retrieving the results of our work in a timely and comfortable manner but more importantly looking again at how we interact in order to achieve deeper insights into how we solve our common challenges by sharing knowledge.”

While 2010 was the year of consultation and consolidation of the strategy, 2011 has been the year for starting to put it into practice. The team works in the Evidence-Based Policy Making Department and is now supporting a number of knowledge pillars: re-visiting past results such as events, publications, and projects to ensure they are retrievable for our current thematic priorities; promoting the corporate services of the library both as information but also as a place or hub where people can congregate and interact; initiating a number of pilot communities in using corporate social media tools for working together and most importantly, providing expertise to projects and country work in the applied use of knowledge and sense-making tools and methods.

A final important element of the work is to ensure that the ETF shares and brokers knowledge of EU evidence based policy practice in training as well as applying knowledge management strategies and techniques together with its partners in a peer learning environment. This means working together with project and country teams in an integrated fashion.

During 2012, knowledge management methods will be more deeply embedded in Torinet, an eleven-country pilot working alongside the Torino Process mapping exercise for promoting evidence-based policy making. This will include practices designed to encourage stronger cooperation and mutual reflection and learning, deeper thought and the generation of new ideas both nationally and within projects.

All in all, Ian, Mirella and Denise believe that the benefits, both for the ETF and for partner countries, will be many. “First, people will be able to locate things more easily, will be aware of who does what and will experience a richer participatory interaction. Second, these new approaches will build a stronger link between the vital ETF triangle of

knowledge, evidence and decision making,” says Rossi, member of the ETF knowledge management team. This will not only give the ETF and its partners better tools and approaches for solving complex problems but will also make a significant contribution to the impact of the ETF’s work.