Following a review of Global Knowledge Partnership's strategic direction from mid 2009 onwards, the GKP Executive Committee, during its meeting held on 22-24 March 2010 in New Delhi, India developed a new strategic framework for the Network as follows. This GKP3.0 Strategic Framework replaces the GKP Strategy 2010 Programme Framework (1) as the underlying guidance for GKP activities from the year 2010.
A softcopy of this Framework is available for download publicly (
, 77KB)
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
THE GKP3.0 STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK
Final Draft – accepted at GKP EXCOMM Meeting
New Delhi, 22-24 March 2010
Preamble
The GKP Executive Committee (EXCOMM), at its meeting of August 2009 in San Jose, Costa Rica, had taken into consideration the recommendations and annexes of GKP3.0 Task Force and, further EXCOMM deliberations have defined the following strategic framework and roadmap for the Global Knowledge Partnership for year 2010 onwards (a phase known in short as ‘GKP3.0’).
Vision
A world of equal opportunities for all people to have access to and use knowledge and information to improve their lives.
Mission
As an evolving network of public, civil society, and commercial organisations, GKP provides members access to global knowledge and innovation; links with organisations within and across regions; supports capacity development and provides opportunities for resource mobilisation to advance development.
“One sentence” for Members:
Access to global knowledge flows and innovation; links with organisations within and across regions, and support for capacity development – towards a world of equal opportunities.
Value Add for Members:
- Learning services through GKP’s virtual presence and peer-to-peer interactions, including meetings and conferences to help build members´ capacity both technically and institutionally.
- Forming linkages for Resource Mobilisation purposes to serve the members.
The GKP3.0 Strategic Framework aims to draw upon from these guiding principles and define a Roadmap for its implementation.
Perspectives and Core Offerings by GKP
A quick scan of investor priorities carried out by the GKP 3.0 Task Force clearly demonstrates that development funding has moved away from standalone ICT4D programmes, toward investments in key sectors such as education, health, agriculture/food security and climate change – and in many cases through increased direct budgetary support to governments in developing countries. At the same time, there is distinct recognition that knowledge and information have a fundamental role to play in development efforts of improving agriculture productivity, expanding livelihood opportunities, delivering basic healthcare and quality education, and accelerating response to the challenges of climate change. During the past decade ICTs have evolved considerably and as has its outreach, especially through mobile phones, has improved significantly in emerging and developing countries.
Given that a much higher proportion of the poor and marginalised people now have access to at least some form of ICTs, governments and civil society in developing countries are now going beyond the knowledge facilitation role of ICTs, and exploring deployment of ICTs for more effective design, roll-out and monitoring of development programmes and their scaling. This has resulted in unprecedented demand for advisory and deployment of ICTs in development programmes. Simultaneously and as an example, most of the big ICT & Telecom industry actors – both national and trans-national - have been adapting their technologies for the 'Base of the Pyramid' (BOP) market; and as part of their CSR initiatives have also been ramping up their support for developmental efforts in partnership with grassroots and civil society organisations and the government. GKP’s niche to foist, spearhead and nurture such partnerships, anchored through its members, offers significant opportunities for the Network.
These also mean that the new GKP strategy would need to focus less on advocacy for ICT4D and more on supporting development practitioners and community interlocutors with the ICT & KM interventions they need to improve the quality and efficacy of their development programmes; and consequently the lives of poor and marginalised people they serve. In terms of actual programmatic engagement, this might translate into:
a) Identify and incubate ICT related innovations in development efforts in specific sectors and areas.
b) Facilitate peer-to-peer dialogue on issues and themes at regional and global level; help establish members’ linkages for programme/campaign specific partnerships
c) Market and deliver targeted professional advisory and consulting services through Members – primarily to developing country governments and corporate partners.
Sectoral Focus
GKP would need to align itself with emerging development efforts and priorities and champion KM4D and ICT4D innovations within these sectors:
- Agriculture productivity and food security
- Enhance access, quality, relevance and efficiency of education systems providing skill enhancement for livelihoods and economic well being for all
- Enhance access to quality healthcare for all
- Response to climate change challenges and disaster risk reductions
- Engendering development and enabling human rights for all
- Public accountability, transparency, inclusive governance and cyber security
Organising the Network
The internal scan done by the Task Force clearly stated that the multi-stakeholder partnership element is very important to GKP Members. Retaining this key element would also imply that GKP should be able to influence, leverage and create synergies between Members’ work, facilitate linkages for mobilising resources on their specific projects, programmes or policy related work – and at the same time build coherence in strategies that is common to all Members.
This is not an easy effort, and would call for democratic delegation of roles to Members. In practical terms, this would mean keeping the ‘centre of gravity’ low and define sub-unit based strategies. This can be accomplished with a light-weight Secretariat with fairly autonomous and membership driven programmatic/ policy advisory/ advocacy efforts. However given that Regional Networks do exist within GKP, creating thematic sub-networks within each Region may be considered. These regional thematic sub-networks, anchored by a Lead Member would engage with their counterparts in other regions to enable exchange of knowledge and expertise for developing programme and delivering services to Members and/or other targeted recipients. These thematic sub-networks together may also consider driving global action / campaign on issues impacting their themes, collaborate with similar Global Action Networks and may also consider raising resources collectively for that purpose. The need for ‘coherence’ would however demand that such action/ campaign on specific issues and themes be evaluated and endorsed a priori by the EXCOMM.
Institutional and Governance Mechanisms
To support the continued operation of the Network and implementation of the GKP3.0 Strategic Framework and Roadmap, it is recommended that GKP adopt the following principles and/or actions:
- Legally register as an international non-profit entity – preferably in a country with robust legal & regulatory framework that is conducive to non-profit activities.
- Retain the present architecture of an organisational membership-based Network and to continue to grow the membership at global scale; with new members’ admission to be proposed within agreed criteria and subject to their meeting a defined eligibility matrix.
- General Council of Organisational Members with over-riding authority on all aspects related to the Network.
- Democratically elected EXCOMM with fixed tenure. Representatives from unrepresented thematic sub-network may be co-opted as non-voting members.
- Light-weight Secretariat for operational and programmatic support; hosted for a tenure of up to 5 years by a Member organisation selected by way of open call for proposals to provide Secretariat Services as defined by EXCOMM.
- The GKP Executive Director is appointed by and reports to EXCOMM; would be accountable for executive, fiduciary and representative role for GKP.
- The GKP Executive Director is Secretary of EXCOMM; and in that capacity becomes a non-voting Member.
Fund Raising
GKP would have to raise additional resources, over and above the Membership Cash Contribution. This is essential for funding programmes of Members in the field. Development of the fund raising strategy shall take into account key aspects of the GKP3.0 strategy.
________________________________________
(1) The Strategy 2010 Programme Framework which was adopted by the GKP Network Annual Members’ Meeting of 10 May 2006 in Colombo, Sri Lanka, had acted as the underlying guidance for GKP activities up to the year 2010.
