Users tell us: How the GGKP can design a better way to share green growth knowledge

The GGKP’s Knowledge Management Officer, Rachel Waddell, shares highlights from the GGKP’s recent user needs analysis, which will lay the foundations for the design and development of the GGKP’s new web platform.

Heeding the wise words of CDKN’s Geoff Barnard, who had, through the Climate Knowledge Brokers Group coined the phrase ‘portal proliferation syndrome’; the GGKP Secretariat set out earlier this year trying to understand where and how exactly the platform could add real value on green growth knowledge management and knowledge sharing, building on the existing work and web platforms of other organizations and institutions and drawing these together to create something additional, something offering substantially more than the sum of its parts.

With the support of a great informal group of knowledge management advisors, the GGKP embarked on a period of intensive user outreach and user needs analysis to lay the foundations for the design and development of the Green Growth Knowledge Platform.  Through an online user survey we have begun to build a picture of the knowledge habits and knowledge needs of the Green Growth community and hence start to plot the framework for the GGKP web platform.

With thanks first off to many of you for taking the time to input into this survey, we’d now like to share with you some of the highlight results – in the hope that these will both prove of interest and of broader use in our collective efforts to drive forward this agenda:

• 117 people responded to the survey in total from across all target user groups (including researchers, policy makers, practitioners, activists and the private sector) and from 31 different countries, including 19 developing countries. When asked about the sources most frequently used to find knowledge relevant to their work, 94% responded that they use Google or other search engines and 88% of respondents use the websites of research institutions or international organizations / NGOs either regularly or very frequently. In contrast only 17% of respondents said that they currently use webinars and on-line training forums regularly or very frequently. 
• Interestingly, 74% of respondents use online knowledge platforms and portals regularly / very frequently for their work, with the UN Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform being rated as used most frequently from a selection of 15 of the most well-known climate change related portals. 
• The importance of linking our online efforts to existing social media sites was also made clear with 47% of respondents saying that they use LinkedIn more than once per week for professional purposes. Similarly 36% of respondents use Twitter and 31% use Google+ more than once per week for professional purposes. 
• Regarding the proposed functionality for the GGKP site respondents prioritized primarily: a repository of green growth tools and data, a library of technical and policy resources from leading institutions, a list of leading institutions and experts and the ability to view their outputs and contact information and a database of international / national/ regional and local green growth projects.

These results highlighted to us at the GGKP Secretariat more then ever the importance of collaboration and cooperation in the development of the platform; drawing content from existing platforms, utilizing cutting edge technology such as API Tagging and Linked-Open data to build on this and foster effective knowledge management, sharing and generation in the spirit of another concept adopted by Geoff and the Climate Knowledge Brokers Group of ‘Constructive Co-opetition’.

With the ongoing support of GGKP Knowledge Partners and the broader Green Growth community we continue to lay the foundations of a platform designed to build on rather than duplicate existing initiatives and respond to the ambition of recurring themes from survey respondents when asked about the main added value of the GGKP Platform, including:

• ‘Consolidation of fragmented information’,  
• ‘Single point of access to relevant information’ 
• ‘Well-curated, well-organised content’,
• ‘Aggregation of tools, resources and data’, 
• ‘Authoritative Source of Quality Information’

We look forward to sharing with you further results of our ongoing outreach and in the meantime, as always, welcome you thoughts and feedback.

Full details of the survey can be obtained by contacting Rachel Waddell – Knowledge Management Officer – GGKP r.waddell@gggi.org.