The UNDP Wiki is a prototype of online knowledge base (wiki) aimed at supporting UNDP’s internal communities of practice for exchanging comparative experiences, lessons learnt and best practices around policies, programmes and projects of the organisation. Wikis are collaborative sites that allow users to create, edit and organize content to be shared online. This prototype has been developed and presented to the UNDP Knowledge Management team in 2009.

1. UNDPWIKI
A wiki as a collaborative tool for UNDP

2. UNDP Organic
Several thousands of employees
Operating in 166 countries
Main areas of work:
Democratic Governance
Poverty Reduction
Crisis Prevention and Recovery
Environment and Energy
HIV/AIDS
“rain” of knowledge

3. UNDP Knowledge Management strategy
How UNDP manages shared knowledge
One Community of Practice for each area of work
Two facilitators for each CoP
Tool: mailing lists
Core product: Consolidated Reply

4. Consolidated Reply
Consolidated Replies are a synthesis or summary of responses to a member’s query
and are also supported by country experiences and researched materials. They
provide a comprehensive summary of responses to any given question, query or
discussion that takes place on the Communities of Practice, in a user friendly format
designed to make key information available at a glance.

5. 1. A network’s member asks a question

6. 2. Individual replies are gathered from the network
1. A network’s member asks a question

7. 2. Individual replies are gathered from the network
1. A network’s member asks a question 3. Facilitator prepares the Consolidated Reply

8. 2. Individual replies are gathered from the network
1. A network’s member asks a question 3. Facilitator prepares the Consolidated Reply
4. The Consolidated Reply gets sent back to network

9. Limits
1. What happens to old Consolidated Replies?
how to handle revisions and updates?
can old CRs be found and used again easily?
2. Where is the community?
who are my networks's mates?
how can I find someone with the skills I need?

10. Solution: wiki integration
A wiki is an editable website.
1. Unlike mailing lists, it’s a place where content is organized
categorize pages and make them easy to find based on custom criteria
(countries of relevance, topic areas, contributors…)
2. Unlike traditional websites, it’s dynamic: pages are extremely easy to update
change each page's content without having to log into a content
management system like WordPress or access the server via FTP or
other means: you just hit the edit button.

11. Solution: wiki integration
A wiki is an editable website.
3. It’s expressly conceived for co-authoring
keep track of a page's authors and edits, and revert edits if needed
per page discussions
4. It makes it possible to upload and share files on wiki pages
5. It’s a social platform
categorized profile pages

12. Choosing the right wiki engine
MediaWiki = stable + extra features
With many options available in the web, MediaWiki is likely the most advanced, feature-rich, free
wiki package available.
MediaWiki's main strengths:
stable: being originally written for use on Wikipedia, it’s constantly maintained and
developed by thousands of developers.
extendible: with 1300 and growing extensions, it makes it very easy to integrate the wiki with
additional features
customizable: it’s open-source

13. UNDPWIKI
How It Works
For each network, the wiki stores the complete archive of Consolidated Replies.
Each Consolidated Reply is categorized and therefore made searchable by:
networks
regions / countries of relevance
topic areas
country office formulating/contributing to the query
person formulating/contributing to the query
date of issue
custom keywords (optional)

14. UNDPWIKI
How It Works
Region pages:
graph displaying
distribution of CRs
within the region's
countries
automatic list of
most recently
posted CRs related
to region

15. UNDPWIKI
How It Works
Country pages:
list of CRs related to
the country
list of Country
Experiences on the
country

16. UNDPWIKI
How It Works
Country Office pages:
list of queries asked by
members of CO
list of CRs contributed by
members of CO
list of profiles from the country
office

17. UNDPWIKI
How It Works
Topic pages:
list of CRs related to specific topic

18. UNDPWIKI
How It Works
Profile pages:
optional picture and professional/contact details
list of queries asked by member
list of CRs contributed by member

19. UNDPWIKIS.ORG
How It Works
Country Office pages:
list of queries asked by
members of CO
list of CRs contributed by
members of CO
list of profiles from the country
office

20. UNDPWIKIS.ORG
How It Works
Region pages:
graph displaying
distribution of CRs
within the region's
countries
automatic list of
most recently
posted CRs related
to region

21. UNDPWIKIS.ORG
How It Works
Topic pages:
list of CRs related to specific topic

22. UNDPWIKIS.ORG
How It Works
Country pages:
list of CRs related to
the country
list of Country
Experiences on the
country

23. UNDPWIKIS.ORG
How It Works
Profile pages:
optional picture and professional/contact details
list of queries asked by member
list of CRs contributed by member

24. UNDPWIKI
Extra Features
Maps: pages can be geographically tagged and a map with placemarks representing the
tagged pages gets automatically created

25. UNDPWIKI
Extra Features
Forms: users can create pages using user-friendly forms instead of using the wiki markup,
for an easier editing experience

26. UNDPWIKI
Extra Features
Tag Clouds + Multicategory Search: users can browse the wiki filtering by one or more
categories at a time

27. UNDPWIKI
Extra Features
Offline Edition: an offline edition of UNDPWiki is automatically created, updated and made
available for download, to allow users to access the content of UNDPWiki from DVD / USB
key or any computer without the need of Internet access.
Single networks can have their own customized offline editions including just Consolidated
Replies relevant to their own community of practice.

28. UNDPWIKIS.ORG
Extra Features
Maps: pages can be geographically tagged and a map with placemarks representing the
tagged pages gets automatically created

29. UNDPWIKIS.ORG
Extra Features
Forms: users can create pages using user-friendly forms instead of using the wiki markup,
for an easier editing experience

30. UNDPWIKIS.ORG
Extra Features
Tag Clouds + Multicategory Search: users can browse the wiki filtering by one or more
categories at a time

31. UNDPWIKIS.ORG
Extra Features
Offline Edition: an offline edition of UNDPWikis is automatically created, updated and made
available for download, to allow people to access the content of UNDPWikis from DVD / USB
key or any computer without the need of Internet access.
Single networks can have their own customized offline editions including just Consolidated
Replies relevant to their community of practice.

32. Achievements
1. Adopted web 2.0 platform for online collaboration as a basis that enables further
development and extension in terms of both reach and features
2. Increased visibility and therefore extended benefit from old Consolidated Replies
3. Added a social element to the CR system: benefit extended from access to information
(CRs) to access to knowledge (people)
4. Knowledge capture and mapping:
Enabled visualization of geographic and thematic distribution of knowledge
exchanges
Enabled automatic highlights of most active contributors

33. Next Steps
Possible implementations for future development:
page ratings
upgrades to profiles: making them searchable by skills and other criteria
(LinkedIn)
pdf export of wiki pages
internationalization
google-like search engine
integration of new kinds of contents (research papers, reports...)

34. Credits
undpwiki has been designed and developed by:
Davide Piga: knowledge management specialist
davide.piga@unep.org
Giovanni Savastano: it manager and web-designer
gsavastano@gsavastano.com
www.undpwiki.pdavide.me