Documenting UNICEF’s response to COVID-19: applied tools and practices
Keywords:
UNICEF, United Nations, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Exchange, Lessons learned, COVID-19, Evidence GenerationAbstract
Learning from experience has been recognized as an essential source of organizational growth, particularly for the multilateral organizations working on development issues across the globe. Within these organizations, collective learning happens when their members: (a) understand the strategic value of documenting lessons, (b) share the lessons widely within and beyond the organization, and (c) invest in incorporating and using the lessons in future situations. Keeping these three principles in mind, this case study explores key practices and challenges from UNICEF’s effort in documenting its response to COVID-19 and seeks to contribute to the global dialogue on organizational learning.
References
Andrade, J., Ares, J., Garcia, R., Pazos, J., Rodriguez, S., Rodriguez-Paton, A., and Silva, A. (2007). Towards a LL system for critical software. Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 92, pp. 902–913
Bell, L, and Miller, L. (2017), Documenting, Validating and Sharing Good Practice in Europe and Central Asia (UNICEF internal concept note
Dreesen, T., Brossard, M., Akseer, S., Kamei, A., Ortiz, J., Dewan, P., Giraldo,JP., and Mizunoya, S. (2020). Lessons from COVID-19: Getting remote learning right, UNICEF Blog
Desai, V. (2008). Constrained Growth: How Experience, Legitimacy, and Age Influence Risk Taking in Organizations. Organization Science, 19(4), 594–608
Disterer, G. (2002). Management of project knowledge and experience. Journal of Knowledge Management, 6(5), pp. 512-520.
Duffield, S., Whitty, S., (2015). Developing a systemic lessons learned knowledge model for organisational learning through projects. Int. J. Project. Management. 33, 311–324.
Fallah, N. and Addai, E. (2017) Creating a culture of knowledge exchange within and beyond UNICEF: Case of programme monitoring and response initiative, Knowledge Management for Development Journal 13(3): 88-99
Gill, M, Bueno, O. and Oduma, L, (2020) Making sure the most vulnerable children are heard during COVID-19: 5 lessons on data collection from Somalia, UNICEF Blog by
Greer, S. (2008). A Lessons-Learned Knowledge Management System for Engineers. Chemical Engineering, 115, 8, pp. 50-53.
Labib, A., Read, M., (2013). Not just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic: Learning
from failures through Risk and Reliability Analysis. Saf. Sci. 51, pp397–413.
Janus, S. S. (2017). Capturing Solutions for Learning and Scaling Up: Documenting Operational Experiences for Organizational Learning and Knowledge Sharing. World Bank Publications.
Kotnour, T. (2000). Organizational learning practices in the project management environment. International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management, 17(4/5), 393- 406.
Magoula, A., and Benevento, G. (2013). An approach to collect and share Lessons Learned in order to improve Knowledge transfer across New Product Development projects: A case study in a Swedish company. Dissertation). Retrieved from http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-21473
McClory, S., Read, M. and Labib, A., (2017). Conceptualising the lessons-learned process in project management: Towards a triple-loop learning framework. International Journal of Project Management, 35(7), pp.1322-1335.
Millar, (2019). A Matter of Facts: The Value of Evidence in an Information Age
Milton, N., (2010). The Lessons Learned Handbook: Practical Approaches To Learning from Experience. Chandos Publishing, Oxford, UK
Rossel-Cambier, Olsen K. T. and Pourzand N., (2007). Investing in knowledge for evidence-based social policies for children: Two case studies of knowledge dissemination initiatives in the Eastern Caribbean. Knowledge Management for Development Journal 3(2-3): 74-84
Shusterman, J. (2019). Method in the madness? Some new ways to learn from staff experiences in humanitarian crises: the historical case of UNICEF. Knowledge Management for Development Journal 14(1): 67-82
Skinner K. (2007). Developing a tool to measure knowledge exchange outcomes. Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, 22(1), 49-73.
UNICEF, (2009) Best practices and lessons: UNICEF Myanmar’s response to Cyclone Nargis
UNICEF, (2010). Synthesis of Lessons on the Tsunami response, UNICEF EMOS/PD
UNICEF, (2015), Knowledge Exchange Toolbox
UNICEF, (2017). Evaluation of UNICEF’s response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa 2014–2015,
UNICEF, (2020). Child Protection Learning Brief, August
UNICEF, (2020). Global Knowledge Management Strategy (2020-2021) – Internal document.
UNICEF, (2020) Video: Impacts of Pandemics & Epidemics on Child Protection: Lessons learned from a rapid review, Office of Research
UNICEF, (2020). Research Brief: Impacts of Pandemics and Epidemics on Child Protection: Lessons learned from a rapid review in the context of COVID-19, by Shivit Bakrania; Ramya Subrahmanian
UNICEF, (2021). Update on UNICEF Humanitarian action: the COVID-19 pandemic
UNICEF, (2021). UNICEF Humanitarian Action for Children 2021 – Overview
UNICEF, (2021). West and Central Africa Key Results for Children Accelerator Practices: COVID-19 response, June
UNICEF, UNESCO, and the World Bank (2020) What have we learnt? Overview of findings from a survey of ministries of education on national responses to COVID-19
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Nima Fallah, Ivan Butina, Sailas Nyareza
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The copyright of the articles published in this journal remains the property of the authors. For liability reasons, the title belongs to the Foundation for the Support of the Knowledge Management for Development Journal. The journal is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License. This journal is currently an open access journal as it has a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. From the BOAI definition [1] of "open access", we support the rights of users to "read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles." However, some of the content (2009-2012) is only available on the Taylor and Francis website. Within the next few months, this issue too will become available on the OJS. [1] http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#openaccess
