Maximizing RUFORUM’s Knowledge Management and Outreach

Knowledge management and information dissemination are major components of RUFORUM’s mission of improving postgraduate training and research in the institutions where RUFORUM works. RUFORUM asked for assistance in: 1) Planning and implementing an online institutional repository. 2) Conducting a critical review of the RUFORUM website. 3) Recommending changes to the website to enhance RUFORUM’s information sharing and knowledge management activities. 4) Helping to implement website revisions. RUFORUM had two overarching goals in requesting this assistance. The first was to help RUFORUM create a more targeted strategy for knowledge management and information dissemination in order to serve the needs of its constituency. The second goal was to use the institutional repository to ensure that research conducted within the RUFORUM network becomes a part of the global knowledge pool and,thus, more visible to the world. In addition to extensive desk research and email exchanges with RUFORUM staff and other experts in the field, I visited RUFORUM in October 2012 to discuss the institutional repository. A second trip is scheduled in mid-February 2013 to lay out a logic model for website revisions, based on chapter four of this report and appendices three-eight. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation covered the costs of this consultancy.