KMTALK ASIA

KMTALK recently had a brief chat with Dr. Altaf Abdul Gaffar from the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on the importance of managing knowledge in his institution and in the development sector as a whole. Dr. Altaf has been working in the Operations Planning & Services Department of IDB for the last 4 years.  The Islamic Development Bank is a Multilateral Development Bank works towards fostering economic development and social progress in the Muslim world. It has a number of 1000 staff from 63 different nations.

Our first question to him was- How do you see the importance of technology in a development organization like yours?

Altaf: Information Technology (IT) is a key to the operation of a development finance institution. Given the multi-national nature of these institutions, there is a significant IT requirement.

Do you think there is a need to professionally manage staff knowledge in your Bank – in terms of creating new ideas, research findings, reports to sharing knowledge in an organized way through community of practice or teams?

Altaf: Yes, there is a growing need to collect, manage and disseminate knowledge within the Bank in an efficient manner. With the growth in the organization in terms of its size and number of projects, the previous methods employed to manage and disseminate knowledge have become inadequate, therefore a new thinking on how best to address this issue is urgently required. Development of Communities of practice within the Bank would certainly address some of these KM issues.

What could be the major obstacle to implement a proper knowledge management program in your Bank?

Altaf: Good Knowledge Management requires a culture of openness and co-operation between the employees of an organization at all levels both horizontally and vertically. Unfortunately this is not the case currently, where the “Silo Mentality” prevails within the organization. A move aware from the later to the former is a pre-requisite for KM to work here.

Are you currently using any web 2.0 tools or other knowledge management platform to capture and share knowledge?

Altaf: Yes, Wiki’s, Team-Rooms (Online forums), File / Data Sharing tools (Sharepoint) etc.

Do you see the necessity of having industry wide collaboration (i.e. with other development organizations, United Nations, NGOs) specially in the area of human development (from project financing to knowledge advisory services to least developed countries)?  If yes, how that can be facilitated?

Altaf: Yes, Industry Wide collaboration has great benefits for all who participate. In this regard there are a number of initiatives in place already. The Common Performance Assessment System (COMPAS) is one such initiative which tries to harmonize the development KPIs between the different MDBs, this exercise has resulted in a great deal of Knowledge Sharing between the MDBs. The use of open disclosure policies by the MDBs also helps in this regard, ex. Include those adopted by the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank.