Taking Information to another Level

In every organisation, the flow of information is everlasting. And having this information being shared amongst each organisation; are they managed properly? Or do they share some sort of knowledge within the process? Yes and No. It’s a total different level when it comes to managing existing information and trying to develop them into knowledge. The European Union (UE) supported Pacific Agriculture Policy Project (PAPP), implemented by the Land Resource Division (LRD) of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), with the assistance of Technical Centre of Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) facilitated a training and awareness workshop in port Vila, Vanuatu for Information and Knowledge Management (IKM). It was said to be the first ever training been held for the Pacific region, as it was firstly introduced back in the Caribbean region.

What KM is looking at achieving?

The workshop was chaired by CTA’s knowledge management coordinator Mr. Krishan Bheenick, where he shared his expertise and experience for everyone to learn from. Mr. Bheenick constructed a poster form of a tree as an illustration for the cycle of information flowing for organisations to follow. The tree itself shows how the roots represents the base of the organisation, so as the other parts of the tree (trunk, branches, leaves, flowers and nutrients). Participants from all around the Pacific region shared each of their countries organisations status and level in regards to knowledge management. Every country present at the training all had different perspectives and views on KM and how they are carried out for each organisation.

According to SPC – PAPP project team, the Information and Knowledge Management (IKM) strategy (2015 – 2017) has been implemented as a guide to show how SPC can maximise delivery and uptake of relevant existence and deliver new knowledge products and services for the benefit of all member countries. It is indeed something very crucial for the Pacific region to look at, because the objectives of the workshop was mainly focusing on raising awareness of the importance of knowledge management to agricultural and forestry stakeholders; helping to identify knowledge management process at national level (organisation, network) and plan development of a KM action plan; and also exploring the opportunity of a steering mechanism to promote knowledge management.

Benefits of introducing KM strategy

After a long week on learning the different concepts about knowledge management, all participants present at the training had a great overview. Also a great point to consider by individuals was that efficient information sharing between stakeholders and organisation partners can only be achieved if information is collected, stored, shared and is managed to produce knowledge. Without this process, information is not efficiently shared through to channels required by organisations. 

Although some of the countries in the Pacific region do not have active usage of such method, PAPP and CTA are trying to get everyone to introduce this particular method for all member countries in SPC so that everyone can get access to Information and Knowledge Management. The strategy does not specify for agriculture related organisations alone, but it can be also applied unto different organisations within each countries.

Photo Credit: Deff Thompson

Blogpost by Tom-Vaitolo Vaha, Livestock Officer,

Department of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries.