Institutional Learning and Change Initiative

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The centrality of knowledge for development cooperation agencies led in the two years after the WDR to the rapid spread of notions of knowledge management and knowledge sharing across the agency community. The British Department for International Development (DFID) has embarked upon a knowledge sharing project. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is developing a new knowledge management network; as is the German Agency for Technical Cooperation. The Inter-American Development Bank, the European Commission, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and the Canadian International Development Agency are also amongst those that have embarked on knowledge projects. This trend is not confined to official development assistance. A number of existing NGOs have also become active in the new knowledge-based aid, such as Oxfam and TearFund in Britain. Moreover, a new set of what may be termed” Knowledge NGOs” has also appeared on the development stage, including OneWorld and the International Institute for Communications and Development.
This paper is a contribution to the first large-scale internal evaluation of such activities, currently underway in the World Bank. It will provide a brief comparative perspective for the Bank on knowledge sharing activities in four other agencies. Three of these are agencies which we have been researching for nearly three years: DFID, JICA and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). Our analysis of these agencies is based on 120 interviews with staff from these agencies; analysis of large numbers of agency documents and web pages; and feedback from agency staff regarding our provisional analyses. More detailed analysis of these agencies’ knowledge activities is available from our project homepage: www.ed.ac.uk/futgov-home.html. At the request of OED, we are also providing some comparative analysis of a fourth agency, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). Here our analysis is based on a brief visit to EBRD in May 2002.