2023 KM REALITY AWARD WINNER: Inter-American Development Bank

The KM Reality Award recognizes an organization in which knowledge management is a positive reality, not just rhetoric. The award recipient has demonstrated leadership in the implementation of knowledge management practices and processes, realizing measurable business benefits.

To be considered for the reality award, the knowledge management program must be in place for at least 1 year, receive support from senior management, and have defined metrics to evaluate the initiative and its impact on organizational goals.

During the KMWorld 2023 conference, on Thursday November 9, Inter-American Development Bank was announced as the winner of the 2023 KM Reality Award.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) is the top source of development financing for Latin America and the Caribbean. IDB provides loans, grants, and technical assistance, and conducts rigorous research and impact evaluation, all in the service of its mission to reduce poverty, improve health, education, citizen security, and safety nets, and support infrastructure.

The IDB prioritizes social inclusion and equality; productivity and innovation; and regional economic integration and addresses cross-cutting issues of gender equity and diversity, climate change and sustainability, and institutional capacity and rule of law.

Challenge

For a multilateral institution such as IDB, the knowledge it generates, acquires, and disseminates is instrumental to improve the design of development interventions (policies and programs) that are supported directly by the institution or implemented by bank clients in the member countries.

The aim is to improve the effectiveness of IDB’s lending program and policy dialogue, create new solutions for practitioners, respond to client demands, close knowledge gaps, and identify emerging development challenges in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC) region.

In 2018, the independent Officeof Evaluation and Oversight (OVE) conducted an in-depth review of knowledge generation and dissemination within the IDB. From this review, it was identified that some of the processes in place for prioritizing, financing, and tracking knowledge generation and dissemination activities should be improved.

One of the recommendations was to better align the bank’s research agendas, unifying bundles of knowledge products (organized thematically, by sub region, and or by country), independent of the funding source (administrative budget lines, technical cooperation funds, or loans) and the originating unit. The findings also indicated that the prioritization process of knowledge gaps should be strengthened.

Strategy

In the following year (2019) the Knowledge and Learning Division of the IDB introduced a novel approach to strategic planning of knowledge agendas. This innovative process, built upon refined methodologies, was designed to enhance the knowledge generation and dissemination initiatives of IDB’s sectors, countries, and projects.

Aiming at tackling the challenges mentioned, the Knowledge and Learning Division at the IDB developed a methodological framework for the strategic planning of knowledge agendas.

This methodology helps IDB units to:

• Prioritize thematic areas for a knowledge agenda aligned with the business strategic objectives;
• Identify opportunities for the creation, systematization, dissemination, and reuse of knowledge;
• Foster collective work and multi-sectoral synergies to consolidate theBank as a cutting-edge knowledge provider that pushes the global knowledge frontier;
• Define the activities and financial resources necessary to materialize a knowledge agenda that meets the needs of the region; and
• Provide a toolbox to support the agenda’s implementation and monitoring.

The knowledge management team has already applied this methodology with different sectors, countries, regions, and initiatives of the IDB Group.

Examples are the knowledge agendas of Brazil, Paraguay, and the Andean Region (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Venezuela), as well as several sectoral areas such as migration, labor market, tourism, education, regional integration, financial inclusion, health, and sanitation.

More than the application of the methodology itself, the result has been the strengthening of the organizational culture to prioritize the knowledge gaps in a systematic way and elaborate knowledge agendas aligned with the business strategic objectives and operational needs in a rigorous manner.

Results

This initiative enhanced the following KM competencies: KM strategy, KM culture, knowledge creation, knowledge dissemination, and metrics.

As previously mentioned, the methodological framework has been implemented in a variety of countries, regions, sectors, and initiatives.

Examples are the knowledge agendas of Brazil, Paraguay, and the Andean Region, as well as several thematic areas such as migration, labor market, tourism, education, regional integration, financial inclusion, health, and sanitation.

For each of these countries, regions, and sectors, the process culminated in a concrete action plan that includes the strategic objectives, progress indicators, activities, new knowledge products to be generated, consumption metrics, responsible parties, and an estimated budget for each activity/product.

In addition, each round of iteration with the different client units has allowed IDB to refine the methodology over the past years. The process has also been institutionalized and incorporated into the internal normative document that details the Knowledge System of the Vice Presidency for Sectors and Knowledge of the IDB Group. Resources are used more efficiently as the process has enhanced productivity, collaborators across the organization do not waste time searching for information or recreating information that already exists within the organization.