2. Case Study
Overview
United Nations Development Program (UNDP) was started in 1965 to combine the Expanded Program of Technical Assistance and
the United Nations Special Fund.
UNDP is the UN's global development network, an organization advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge,
experience and resources to help people build a better life. It is on the ground in 166 countries, working with them on their own
solutions to global and national development challenges.
Quick Facts
When UNDP decided to build a Knowledge Exchange Platform to leverage on the knowledge
and experience of its development practitioners towards achievement of UN‟s Millennium
Development Goals (MDG), it turned to InfoAxon. We helped them create „Solution
Exchange (SE)‟ to connect broad range of stakeholders with common interests and tap the
vast knowledge pool to address development challenges at the grass root levels.
SE has proven to be an effective way for development practitioners to avoid reinventing the
wheel, for decision makers to get feedback on policy design and programme
implementation, and as a source of reliable referrals, of good practices, and of business
opportunities.
SE has resulted into increasing the development effectiveness.
Business Need
UNDP is the UN's global development network, an organization advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge,
experience and resources to help people build a better life. UNDP has offices in over 166 countries globally.
Over the years UNDP felt the need to develop and share knowledge from its previous experiences among its country offices and
headquarters, so as to reap the benefits of the development work that it carries out globally. UNDP also realized that the
knowledge should be shared on a large scale across people ranging from the policy makers to the field workers. It also felt that
some of the problems that it encountered in one developing country were similar to the problems it faced in other developing
countries.
UNDP felt the necessity to promote and facilitate Knowledge Exchange not only within all its programs but also at the national and
international levels to encourage development and contribute in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
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3. Case Study
Knowledge Exchange Portal – ‘Solution Exchange (SE)’
InfoAxon leveraged its Open Source Platforming expertise to integrate
open source products and frameworks together into an integrated
Platform, to create a Knowledge Exchange Platform for UN known as
„Solution Exchange (SE)‟. SE provides a collaborative platform to bring
together development practitioners with similar interests („Communities of
Practices – CoP‟) and help them connect, collaborate and share knowledge
and experiences for attaining United Nations‟ Millenium Development
Goals (MDGs) – on time and on target. SE connects development
stakeholders from Government, NGOs, private sector, donors and
academia as Communities of Practices (CoP) organized around thematic
areas of the MDGs such as halting the spread of HIV/AIDS, providing
universal primary education etc. to solve complex problems.
At the core of SE is an e-mailing list application which acts as a backbone
of each community where members connect and build professional
relationships. The emailing list is further enhanced and integrated with a
centralized knowledge repository coupled with content management & collaboration tools to enable moderators create and share
knowledge assets such as Consolidated Replies (CRs) along with other knowledge.
The heart of SE is a powerful search engine which provides advanced Contextual Search enabling discovery of relevant information
within a specific context with additional rich information such as Cross References, Hits, and Comments etc. in every search result.
The Search also offers multiple Filters such as categories, members, location, community, thematic area, language, knowledge
products, resources etc. to drill down deep into search results and zero-in to the specific information.
System Usage Reporting & Analytics
The integrated reporting framework generates rich data around some of the following key performance indicators:
Performance
Increase in no. of members in each community, no. of queries responded, time taken on an
average to respond to a query, user satisfaction levels.
Impact
No. of Impact Stories, Case Studies and Testimonials.
Concept Replication
Requests from other UN country teams or national organizations for technical support to set
up their own SE.
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4. Case Study
The SE Platform allows following ‘Knowledge on Demand’ services to be offered to its members:
• Increase in no. of members in each community,
Collaboration & Knowledge Sharing no. of queries responded, time taken on an average
to respond to a query, user satisfaction levels
• No. of Impact Stories, Case Studies and
Query Service Testimonials
• Requests from other UN country teams or national
E-consultations organizations for technical support to set up their
own SE.
• Discussion on priority topics and publish insights
E-discussions on issues of concern.
Distinguishing Features of Solution Exchange
Solution Exchange represents the next stage in UNDP‟s Knowledge on
evolution as a „knowledge organization‟, which is „not based Demand
on delivering programs‟. Rather, it is based on leveraging
the UN‟s position as an „impartial knowledge broker‟
between multi-sectoral stakeholders in the development
project. It means bringing together otherwise disconnected Enhanaced
stakeholders from donor agencies, governments, research Transferability Mailing list
Value
institutes, and civil society organizations, who share
common interests and concerns so they can assist each
Solution
other in their daily development work. Exchange
At the core of Solution Exchange is a focus on Facilitation
Team dedicated to facilitate sharing of experiential
knowledge for people at all stages of the development
process for achievement of development results. Consolidated
Cross Posting
Reply
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5. Case Study
Some of the distinguishing features of Solution Exchange are:
‘Knowledge on Demand’: SE provides a searchable ‘Knowledge Repository’ providing access to both documented and
tacit knowledge in form of consolidated responses, comparative experiences, postings, documents, links, expert emails etc.
Enhancing the ‘Value’ of Mailing Lists: Solution Exchange does not replace existing email lists but adds value to them. By
integrating the mailing list with a centralized repository and making them searchable, Solution Exchange generates valuable
connections, valuable content and put these to use for solving development challenges.
Creation & sharing of Knowledge Product ‘Consolidated Reply’: Solution Exchange enables generation of Knowledge
Product „Consolidated Reply’, which is a brief but comprehensive composite of all available documented and tacit
knowledge, experiences and resources (links to experts, organization, documentations, websites, expert emails etc.) on a
topic.
Cross Posted Query: In Solution Exchange, the „cross posted‟ query, poses the same question to more than one community,
offering exchanges between the communities on how to best address the issues / problems and mitigate risks.
A Platform enabling Transferability: SE is not a point product but a Platform which is readily configurable to enable any
country where development practitioners are interested in improving their individual and collective effectiveness.
Technology Stack
OSS Components Details
Platform Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Presentation Liferay Portal Framework
Content Repository Alfresco ECM Framework
Mailing List Manager Mailman
Web/App Server Apache Tomcat
Development Tools Eclipse, SVN, Tortoise
Programming Language JAVA, J2EE, JSP, Servlet
Source Code & Configuration SVN, Cruise Control, Ant
Custom Exception Handling, Logging
Frameworks
(using Log4J), Custom Audit Framework
Database MYSQL
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6. Case Study
Value Delivered
Solution Exchange was successful in encouraging knowledge sharing by bringing together the frontline workers, the experts, and
also to stakeholders like donors, policy makers, governments. It also helped implement programs at the ground level.
Solution Exchange is currently aimed for 20 Asia Pacific countries with countries like India, Bhutan, Thailand, Cambodia, and Pacific
Island already on board. Bangladesh and Philippines are in launching mode.
SE is delivering following benefits to its members and stake-holders:
Community Knowledge Products and Collaborative efforts have a demonstrable impact on MDG and national development
targets.
Moderators can now build and generate communities of practices in minutes which earlier take several hours.
Expands the pool of knowledge on development related topics beyond expert knowledge, to capture „experiential knowledge‟
not typically documented.
Provides enhanced access to relevant international and local best practices and lessons learnt through community member
recommendations.
Engages a broad range of stakeholders including policy makers, donors, NGOs, government, private sector as well as North-
South and South-South collaboration.
The members communicate to each other using standard mailing list and email clients. The messages are accumulated into
the repository, thus building the knowledge bank automatically.
Search of knowledge items and products made effortless for Solution Exchange users and members which earlier were not
possible.
Building the cross connection between several products, assets, members which was not feasible in earlier mailing list based
model.
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7. Case Study
Our Customer Showcase
Government & International Development
BFSI
Retail & Media
ISV‟s & Others
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8. About InfoAxon Technologies
InfoAxon is a leading provider of enterprise services and business
solutions powered by open source. We design, architect and support
complete “Enterprise Solution Platforms” using Open Standards, Web 2.0
next generation technologies and Open Source Frameworks providing
end-to-end solutions to business problems.
India‟s First Global Open Source Integration Company
We are India's First Global Open Source Integration Company providing
business solutions in areas of Content & Knowledge Management,
Web2.0 Collaboration and Business Intelligence powered by our
unique open source „Platforming‟ expertise.
INDIA OFFICE: UK OFFICE:
InfoAxon Technologies Ltd. InfoAxon Technologies UK Ltd.
H-189, Sector-63, Building A, Trinity Court,
Electronic City, Wokingham Road,
NODIA-201307, U.P Bracknell, Berkshire RG42 1PL,
India United Kingdom
Phone: +91 120 4798937 Phone: +44 1344 668000
Fax: + 91 120 4350065 Fax: +441344 668148
Website: www.infoaxon.com | Blog: http://blog.infoaxon.com | E-mail: contactus@infoaxon.com
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