APLIC 2014 - Building a Technical Knowledge Hub: Applying library science to Pathfinder's organizational experience
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Sarah Burns discusses the development and implementation of Pathfinder’s technical knowledge hub; from conception to systematic integration into all projects and programs. Presented as a case study, the session will showcase all of the steps involved in creating the hub, including, but not limited to, taxonomy creation, SharePoint library development, and the ever-so-important change management activities conducted.
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APLIC 2014 - Building a Technical Knowledge Hub: Applying library science to Pathfinder's organizational experience
- 1. Building a Technical Knowledge Hub: Applying Library Science to Pathfinder’s Organizational Experience Sarah Burns, APLIC Conference, April 2014
- 2. OVER 1,000 STAFF IN 20 DEVELOPING COUNTRIES WITH A $100 MILLION BUDGET
- 3. Pathfinder staff have growing access to their 50 years of experience and expertise.
- 4. CONTEXT PROBLEM OUTCOMESPROCESSESAPPROACHES No information sharing, but knew it was important; new intranet touted as savior..
- 5. CONTEXT PROBLEM OUTCOMESPROCESSESAPPROACHES Amazing staff with amazing experience, but the knowledge was only in their heads; no one could re-use or re-purpose it.
- 6. CONTEXT PROBLEM OUTCOMESPROCESSESAPPROACHES Hub Common language - Taxonomy Expertise Captured - TALs External Information - Library Internal History - Archive Expertise searchable - Yellow Pages Knowledge sharing - VCATs
- 7. CONTEXT PROBLEM OUTCOMESPROCESSESAPPROACHES Constant change management – constant contact and communication and showcasing the benefit.
- 9. CONTEXT PROBLEM OUTCOMESPROCESSESAPPROACHES Taxonomy - Needed an official and consistently applied Pathfinder vocabulary.
- 10. CONTEXT PROBLEM OUTCOMESPROCESSESAPPROACHES Created SharePoint libraries, fields for cataloguing, and collected materials.
- 11. CONTEXT PROBLEM OUTCOMESPROCESSESAPPROACHES Archive – collection of electronic and paper materials from all projects.
- 12. CONTEXT PROBLEM OUTCOMESPROCESSESAPPROACHES Communities of practice to share knowledge.
- 14. CONTEXT PROBLEM OUTCOMESPROCESSESAPPROACHES Further improving current systems, constant training and marketing of services and products, and unrelenting enthusiasm.
- 15. 1. PATIENCE 2. PERSEVERANCE 3. CELEBRATE THE SMALL VICTORIES 4. REPEAT
- 16. Questions?
- 17. twitter.com/PathfinderInt facebook.com/PathfinderInternational Youtube/user/PathfinderInt For more information contact Sarah Burns sburns@pathfinder.org
Editor's Notes
- This session will cover the development and implementation of Pathfinder’s technical knowledge hub; from conception to systematic integration into all projects and programs. Presented as a case study, the session will showcase all of the steps involved in creating the hub, including, but not limited to, taxonomy creation, SharePoint library development, and the ever-so-important change management activities conducted. Always a work in progress.
- Pathfinder works in: Abortion, Advocacy, Adolescents & Youth, Contraception, Gender, HIV & AIDS, Maternal & Newborn Health, growing in PHE and CCP. Knowledge Management: has always had a library, had a KM Coordinator for four years before I arrived, the coordinator was limited by technology. I started little over three years ago and have been given the mandate of maintaining the library and doing what I think is needed for KM – which is great but daunting!
- Can really impact development outcomes if people have access to the right information. Started three years ago with a little physical library collection, a non-updated ‘extranet’, and a 3 month old SharePoint deployment with no adoption or content. Context: High turnover led to information walking out of the door and knowledge of how things were done. Few staff retiring with years and years of experience Documents residing on R drives that were only accessible by those physically within the headquarters office. Documents residing on personal computers and non-accessible drives all over the world. A lot of recreating the wheel, or those who didn’t were the only ones who knew where things were. Ability to implement these KM changes came because: New technology created intranet and an opportunity for a place for information for all Pathfinders. New KM person, new director of unit, new vision and direction for KM. Organization was growing from a small NGO to a medium sized one, the need for systems and less information residing only people’s heads was becoming more and more apparent.
- 50 Years of experience scattered around the world. External information only reaches small audience. Knowledge stuck in Technical Advisor’s heads. High turnover led to information walking out of the door and knowledge of how things were done. Few staff retiring with years and years of experience Documents residing on R drives that were only accessible by those physically within the headquarters office. Documents residing on personal computers and non-accessible drives all over the world. A lot of recreating the wheel, or those who didn’t were the only ones who knew where things were. Everyone hated the intranet. I spent first year and half just working solely on improving the intranet; navigation, search, content, just general acceptability of it. Don’t have formal executive buy-in, don’t have a strategy, had to figure this out in an ongoing basis; do we have a KM strategy for just Technical Stuff or do we have a KM strategy for everything. Had champions and less of a formal structure.
- Solution became apparent quickly – need one place for all materials – and that is iShare plus we identified the types of information people needed; broke it into this ‘information architecture’. First needed to improve iShare and build trust in the system; created a new navigation and worked with people to get content on there and built a super-users team, all could have been better, but still on the right track. Second developed a taxonomy so that all materials in iShare could be tagged in the same way. Third collected materials from Technical Advisors for their Technical Assistance Libraries. Fourth weeded and catalogued physical library, plus got ejournal subscriptions so all Pathfinders could have access to materials, not just HQ. Fifth got the archive started, collected electronic materials from country offices, catalogued the paper materials in the basement, worked with new projects to get materials collected in an on-going basis so that materials are added on-going instead of just at the end. While this was going on, created a Yellow Pages so people could find each other and started the VCATs so that technical experts talked to each other. Continuous change management – constant reminders, communications, always chat with field staff when in HQ, made a DVD walking through Hub, etc.
- Constant change management – constant contact and communication and showcasing the benefit. Always taking the extra time to show someone instead of just sending it to them. Three times a year we have a library session, yearly reports on TALs, Library, VCATs. Training sessions with every visiting field staff Sessions for technical advisors to bring to the field and train country offices DVD training session of walking through the available sessions Need to do more to make people aware – has only email and sessions, need to get some organic growth going, which is happening.
- First needed to improve iShare and build trust in the system; created a new navigation and worked with people to get content on there and built a super-users team, all could have been better, but still on the right track. Had to improve just the general SharePoint first. Then had to go back to my initial attempts to get stuff up and fix the architecture. Created separate document libraries instead of just one, and had to add the terms. Had to adjust the navigation and figure out how people search for it. Did focus groups with card sorting exercises to determine best information that had to be on iShare as well as how it should be organized.
- Second developed a taxonomy so that all materials in iShare could be tagged in the same way. Took terms from interviews with Technical Advisors, worked with POPLINE thesaurus, worked with IPPFs library terms, and UNAIDS vocab, and put together our own list. Had TAs edit it and then added the terms to the iShare Term Store; had a quick session to teach our TAs about metadata and why it was important; got the buy-in and they took time to edit it, now have definitions and acronyms. Used the same vocab for the website and integrated the SharePoint system and our website so that materials uploaded to our intranet get uploaded to our website. All materials in the archive, the TALs, and the library are tagged the same way, allows for easily searchable content. Released the taxonomy to all staff.
- Third collected materials from Technical Advisors for their Technical Assistance Libraries. * Technical guidance from our technical advisors on how best to use the resources. Fourth weeded and catalogued physical library, plus got ejournal subscriptions so all Pathfinders could have access to materials, not just HQ. External information into our system for people to learn from. Send monthly technical area updates to keep people in the loop. Technical Assistance Libraries – work in progress with the advisors to collect resources; some just do, some it is a struggle, some add their own, some don’t. Library – all done and still get ejournal subscriptions
- Fifth got the archive started, collected electronic materials from country offices, catalogued the paper materials in the basement, worked with new projects to get materials collected in an on-going basis so that materials are added on-going instead of just at the end. Embedded in projects in a non-systematic way, but it is in the start up and closing checklists. Working with identified staffer to collect materials in an ongoing basis; mostly through email, which is not ideal, but it allows people to collect what they need to and send to me for uploading. Also collect hard copy stuff at the end so our archive collect is growing. Every time a project finishes a technical document, they upload it to the archive. Goal is to feed this archive into our website collection so that people can see our entire history of content. Already being used for re-use of materials.
- VCATs – communities of practice led by technical advisors on our multiple technical areas. Work sometimes and sometimes don’t work well, but there is a community building in most of our technical areas; did get executive buy-in. Used as a vehicle to get information out about other aspects of the KM programs. Created guide for VCATs; had a session on facilitating virtual communities. Less about the library science and more KM, but it is an integral part of embedding the KM systems.
- Staff can re-use and adapt materials for new projects. Staff can see what was done before and adapt ideas for new projects. iShare is now liked and there is far more content and it is building really well and people do use it and feel more comfortable using it. – Still improving, but still ok and a huge increase in the positive response on feedback surveys and actual site usage. Taxonomy is being used, there is a common understanding of ‘metadata’ and there is a buy-in from everyone on the need for a common taxonomy for all systems. TALs are a work in progress, but even though it was my first project, they are the least used part of the whole hub – good lesson on demand/supply. Library is used, went from 90 requests to 300 last year, plus added survey results of having monthly technical updates and new ejournals Archive is not used that much yet because we are still working on getting it released to the wider audience, but have 1900 items in it and those who are familiar with it like it. May have grown too much for it to be useful; project to identify the best things to re-use to add to the TALs to reduce the amount of searching and filtering that staff have to do. Yellowpages are waiting for SharePoint improvements, but we do have a general list of staff with their general areas now and it is constantly being used and asked about by staff. Then had to go back to my initial attempts to get stuff up and fix the architecture. Created separate document libraries instead of just one, and had to add the terms. Had to adjust the navigation and figure out how people search for it.
- * iShare will be undergoing a huge re-do in a few years with an upgrade, so hopefully any major problems with the initial architecture can be re-done with the upgrade. Taxonomy is always being improved. TALs are constantly being added to; need to improve system for adding materials Library; further refine the collection of ejournals Archive – need to embed further into projects, make easier for people, feed it into more website projects for actual collection, and move away from collecting it all at the end of a project. Potentially feed to other ways of adding materials; less abbot manually adding and more about archiving iShare sites to records collections or something- take the manual entering out of it. Yellowpages – further integrations with SharePoint so that the profiles are easier to edit, the phone numbers are right, and so that we can use the information in more than just the profiles. VCATs – actual funding for in-person meetings, more country rep and exec buy-in, more just general buy in from some Tech advisors that see them as too much work. These are an organically growing thing, could be helpful to have a part time coordinator to help with that part.
- Lessons Learned: There is a fine balance between getting stuff in iShare done and learning about SharePoint – know that what you’re doing is going to hit a snag and be OK with it. Don’t expect change to happen overnight; don’t give yourself one year to implement KM. Start small and work towards it, each time someone asks you for something and you can show them it is in the system and they can get it themselves, it is a step in the right direction because they will use it and then if someone asks them, they’ll show that person and it’ll grow. Capturing tacit knowledge is super time consuming and there is no real way to capture it. The TALs, while a good idea, are not supposed to replace the need for talking to each other. Don’t separate out the sources of information to people. I started with each of these separate things and then amalgamated it to the Hub when I realized that the only difference between this information matters to me, it is the Google effect. Need to be able to limit to a specific thing, but also need to be able to see whatever we have in a different search.