The GTZ Knowledge Management Program for the water supply and sanitation sector is a practical and participatory approach to implementing the principles of Knowledge Management. It deviates largely from the theoretical complexities and costly designs most Knowledge Management projects are at present.

The program facilitates in achieving the vision of our partner agencies on the best but simplest strategy to document information that is useful to their organizations and capture the knowledge that can be shared within and outside the sector.

The KM project under the GTZ Water Program has ventured initially on creating a central database for two of its major partners namely, the Department of Interior and Local Government-Water Supply and Sanitation Planning Management Office (DILG-WSSPMO) and the National Anti-Poverty Commission-Water Supply Coordinating Office (NAPC-WASCO). It is a collaborative effort among partners to which the GTZ Water program provided the technical expertise and physical development of the database based on the agencies’ information and knowledge requirements.

One of the main concerns of the partner agencies is the lack of a monitoring and evaluation tool for projects and programs. Specifically, the DILG-WSSPMO needed a central database to establish and unify a single monitoring system for their on-going, completed and multi-donor funded water and sanitation (WATSAN) projects.

For the NAPC-WASCO, a functional database is likewise needed to support the implementation of the President’s Priority Program on Water, otherwise known as the P3W. This includes the president’s priority list of waterless baranggays across the country. This will also serve as a monitoring tool to ascertain the progress of project implementation.


Setting the Systems in Place

As a result of the Water Program’s intervention, the Project Tracking and Management System (PTMS) was developed, which was based on the specific information and knowledge requirements of the DILGWSSPMO and the NAPC-WASCO.

The PTMS is an intranet web application system that keeps track of all ongoing project implementation based on project targets, and document all completed water supply and sanitation projects-both can be generated to various types of reports needed by the agencies and its clientele. The PTMS is now fully operational in the DILG-WSSPMO and was also installed at the NAPCWASCO.


Initiating Sector Collaboration

The GTZ Water Program together with the DILGWSSPMO initiated a collaboration with other relevant agencies in the sector to establish a Knowledge Management Portal for the Water Supply and Sanitation Sector (KM Portal).

The KM Portal for the watsan sector is a virtual platform where relevant agencies can mutually exchange, use, and effortlessly make accessible valuable information in the web. The proposed KM portal was well-received by the sector’s agencies in a presentation workshop conducted in April 2006 at the EDSA Shangri-la Hotel.

And to make the collaboration formal, a Memorandum of Agreement has been drafted and is currently in its final stages of review by the agencies. This is being led by the National Water Resources Board (NWRB), with the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), Department of Health (DOH), Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Department of Interior and Local Government- Water Supply and Sanitation Planning Management Office DILG-WSSPMO), and the National Anti-Poverty Commission-Water Supply Coordinating Office (NAPCWASCO), as its major partners.


Taking the KM efforts further

To sustain the entire KM project in the future, hands-on technical trainings on systems management are being provided to the agencies’ project teams. A series of these related trainings have been conducted in June and July 2006. The goal is to equip each project team the necessary skills and knowledge to independently enhance the existing systems should there be a need to expand sector coverage where new sets of data requirements will be needed.

But a critical challenge to any KM undertaking is the ability of an organization to manage the process of getting information from the people within. It is a common mistake that once systems are in place, KM is guaranteed for the future.

The GTZ intervention on Knowledge Management highly acknowledges this special and difficult task. This is why during the project’s conceptualization, the participation of the partner agencies was ensured.

Knowledge needs to be volunteered and this successfully happened when the partners themselves were the primary movers to the system design drawing from their own information and knowledge requirements.

As a result, this does not only represent a list of data to be encoded but it shows their knowledge on what will assist them to better their work, and in understanding their functions better. For the DILG-WSSPMO, it provided them a tool for integrating scattered individual databases and is now able to monitor their projects in relation to other sector projects being implemented. As a further result, the PMO are now able to provide their internal (within DILG) and external clients e.g. the National Economic Development Authority, NAPCWASCO, and other concerned agencies updated data and information on time that can facilitate and influence policy and decision making for the sector in the future.

Reine Borja-Reyes
GTZ Expert
DILG-GTZ Water & Sanitation Program
Tel No.: ++63-(0)2-927 1875; Telefax: ++63-(0)2-927 1884
email: reine.borja-reyes@gtz.de
www.watsansolid.org.ph