K-Link
Linking knowledge
Sharing and Managing
information

What is K–Link

K-Link is a knowledge management initiative in the framework of International Development Cooperation. It was created and piloted in the domain of Sustainable Land Use and Climate Resilience with the support of the regional programme on Sustainable and Climate Sensitive Land Use for Economic Development in Central Asia.

The initiative aims at improving information management and sharing between different stakeholders through ICT solutions and capacity development.

Sharing without losing ownership
Managing without imposing external models
Disseminating without forcing to share

Why K–Link

Successful project implementation includes enhancing cooperation between partner institutions and developing organizational capacities. Fragile institutional memories and partners’ reluctance for sharing are common challenges that result in loss and unreachability of information.

Lack of information, as well as information scattered across online platforms often lead to negative consequences for project planning, implementation and monitoring.

The K-Link provides a solution for an accelerated search and access to public information of connected platforms in a decentralized manner.

 Have you ever been advising an organization in partner countries with fragile institutional memory, where key documents were exclusively stored on individual PCs and exchanged using portable devices and Email?

 Once your project has finished, have you ever been facing the challenge of making all experience, lessons learned and best practices easily accessible for target groups, national and development partners?

 Where political conflicts hinder change processes, would you be interested to enrich your classical Capacity Development toolbox with IT solutions to stimulate cooperation between countries, sectors or organizations?

K–Link approach

By providing partner organizations with a document management system (K-DMS), hosted by a dedicated institution’s server (K-Box), data ownership is preserved. Each K-DMS is tailored on the specific needs and organizational capacities of each partner institution in accordance with results of requirement analysis with end users. Training and help desk capacity development measures strengthen organizational culture while respecting knowledge management as an integral part.

Based on the use of a distributed network (Klink network), information sharing among different K-DMSs is allowed without the need to create a central hub.

For institutions with pre-existing content management platforms, a plug-in adapter can be developed to enable use of the K-Link Network services. Hence the K-Link extends these platforms with information retrieval, management and sharing features, paving the way to creation of international knowledge bank.

How K-Link Works?

Added values

K-Link is a locally rooted initiative with the objective to achieve sustainable impact in the fields of natural resource management and climate change.

Organizational capacity building

K-Link fulfils the very needs of participating local stakeholders. It helps to improve internal management processes, for which many of the stakeholders have already reimbursed external providers. Local training and management consultancies are involved in the development of support services in order to develop a better product adapted to local market needs.

Sustainability through capacity building for local software houses

Long-term sustainability is reached through involvement and capacity building of local software companies. These companies are able to develop new skills, linked to their core businesses, that are highly demanded on an international level.

Dissemination of best practices to local communities

Special services for local communities (e.g. farmers) and stakeholders, working at local levels, can be distributed through the system. One way to achieve this is through dissemination of videos, that address concrete and relevant problems, through a mobile application.