Knowledge Management in Development Assistance

The United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) is the project management arm of the United Nations. It operates in every field where the UN has a mandate - from land mine awareness to public sector reform, from informatics solutions to eradicating poverty. Given the dynamic and complex environment of development assistance and peace keeping operations, UNOPS faces continuous need for up-to-date information. Such scanning is necessary in order to be effective in project execution and to identify new business opportunities. The Capstone team engaged in developing a capacity tool to provide UNOPS the means to assess its environment. The team developed a framework to structure external knowledge flows to be incorporated in UNOPS’s intranet tool across all its offices. Specifically, the Capstone team established analyses on four broad areas: latest news and trends in development assistance; statistics on aid for development and emergency assistance; business analysis of similar project management agencies; and key policy issues.