Cooperation programmes of the European Commission involve staff, partners and expertise across the world. Sharing their capacity and knowledge is an investment to make the organisation more efficient and effective in meeting its development mandate, said DG EuropeAid Director Klaus Rudischhauser, who urged staff to use capacity4dev for collaboration and exchange.
Speaking at his office at DG EuropeAid headquarters in Brussels, Mr Rudischhauser, who is Director for Quality and Impact, urged staff and expertise involved in EU programmes to help build our collective capacity and institutional memory by sharing knowledge and engaging on capacity4dev.
“The message is very simple,” said Mr Rudischhauser. “Rather than keeping the information on your desk or in your computer, share it by putting it on one of the accessible sites and capacity4dev is one of the best ones for that.”
“Clearly at the moment knowledge is spread over our delegations and over colleagues at headquarters and,” said Mr Rudischhauser, “all the other partners that we work with, because we work with an incredible number of partners.”
What makes capacity4dev.eu different from many other institutional sites is the fact that non-EC staff can join the discussion, ensuring that knowledge can be shared not only within EC structures but also with partner countries, other donors, civil society organisations, private sector, and individual experts.
“For an organisation like ours, a big organisation, which is also distributed over 140 places in the world, knowledge management and knowledge sharing is extremely important because it is one of the key factors for the efficiency of the organisation,” he said.
DG EuropeAid launched capacity4dev.eu some three years ago and in that time it has grown to become the second most consulted website of DG EuropeAid, after the official site. Built specifically for development professionals, capacity4dev.eu has pulled together an online community of approaching 5,000 members who share their experiences through the ‘Voices & Views’ section of the site, or collaborate and share knowledge through online groups.
To find out more about the full array of knowledge sharing tools available on capacity4dev, click here. For support and guidance or further information on how to use capacity4dev.eu in your work, consult the help and guidance group on capacity4dev or contact the Coordination Team.
Moving to a culture of sharing and transparency is not without its challenges, especially in large international organisations and corporations. However, Mr Rudischhauser believes it is worth our investment of time and energy.
“To share that knowledge, to make it accessible, would have a huge impact on the efficiency of our institution and on the quality of our programmes, which in the end will have an impact on what comes out of the project, ” said Mr Rudischhauser, “What we get in terms of lasting results.”
This collaborative piece was drafted with input from Klaus Rudischhauser with support from the capacity4dev.eu Coordination Team.
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