闫军的博客复制网址 | 设为主页| 加入收藏

欧阳严明世界银行的知识管理网址

http://www.worldbank.org/ks/vision.html

Knowledge Bank Pillars


Creating, sharing and applying knowledge has always been an important part of the World Bank's programs to assist its member countries to promote growth and reduce poverty. It is only since the mid-90s, however, that the Bank has attempted to organize its knowledge activities in a systematic way to maximize their potential benefits.


The Bank's knowledge strategy has three pillars:

First, making effective use of knowledge to support the quality of our operations:
In order to do this, the Bank has established technical units with specialized Thematic Groups, which are charged with capturing the information the Bank and other institutions have acquired in their areas of specialty, and processing this information into useful knowledge. There are over 100 Thematic Groups. Each of these groups has a website providing access to important studies and information relevant to the topic, as well as specially commissioned best practice papers designed to distil the Bank's unique experience in supporting projects in different countries. The Thematic Groups are managed by different Sector Boards which help to ensure that good practices are applied and adapted to country situations, so as to enhance the quality of the Bank's operations. These Sector Boards also manage the Advisory Services which are available to Bank staff, as well as its partners and clients, and provide quick responses to questions. In a typical month each of these services handles more than 200 queries.

Second, sharing knowledge with our clients and partners:
This has led to new ways of working - participatory activities in which government officials, NGO and private sector representatives, and donor government colleagues, become part of a team which shares knowledge and information and is thus able to build programs which have genuine ownership and commitment on the part of the Government. The Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF) and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) have put this new way of working on the map. Increasingly, the Bank is supplementing this with a range of new technology-based programs which greatly enhance our knowledge sharing capacity. The distance learning programs carried out by the Global Development Learning Network, for example, enabled it to reach 45,000 government and private sector participants in 2001. The Development Gateway also provides a unique portal for access to information. It now carries information on about 300,000 donor supported activities being undertaken worldwide.

Third, helping clients enhance their capacity to generate, access and use knowledge from all sources:
Ultimately, the success of national development efforts depends on the trained human resources and institutional arrangements available to carry them out. Supporting countries to enhance their development capacity is therefore central to the Bank's mission of poverty reduction. The World Bank Institute (WBI), which enables client learning activities, has developed a number of thematic programs aimed at enhancing capacity. An extremely important program the Bank has initiated in recent years is Knowledge for Development, which helps countries assess what they need if they are to be effective players in the global knowledge economy. The Bank has also supported the Global Development Network (GDN), which links research institutions in the developed and developing countries and ensures that gaps are filled in researching the poverty reduction agenda. The African Virtual University (AVU) works with African universities, helping them to raise their standards and build the continent's stock of trained human resources. In the technology field, infoDev supports small pilot activities designed to help bridge the digital divide. World Links for Development brings students and teachers in secondary schools in developing countries into contact with their counterparts in industrial countries, and assists students and teachers to integrate technology into their curriculum.

Taken together these programs represent a major change in the way the Bank supports development. It means that students in Ghana have access to quality tele-education in their classrooms. It means that midwives in Uganda have mobile telephones, enabling them to get advice from physicians when they encounter conditions which threaten the lives of mothers. It means that agriculture students in China can go to the Gateway and find out about development projects in their own and other countries. It means that private sector and NGO representatives in Nicaragua can join with the Government in developing the approach embodied in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper. Above all, in country after country it means that an increasing number of poor people, and others striving to create opportunities to reduce poverty, are acquiring the knowledge that can help them in this task.