Knowledge Management
Democratic and Economic Governance (DEG-KM)
Water Supply and Sanitation

The UNDP Water Governance Facility at SIWI implements the knowledge management (KM) system for the documentation, analysis and dissemination of innovations and lessons learned from MDG-F Joint Programmes in the thematic area of Democratic Economic Governance - Water Supply and Sanitation.

Download DEG-KM programme brief here.

The MDG Achievement Fund (MDG-F) was established in 2006 with a contribution from the Government of Spain to the UN system, with the aim of accelerating progress toward the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) worldwide. The work is grouped into eight thematic areas. The Democratic and Economic Governance (DEG) theme aims to democratise access to utility services and to improve the governance in the water and sanitation sectors. In the DEG thematic area there are eleven country programmes (JPs).

One way of managing the knowledge of these programmes is to collect their valuable experiences (previously 'useful experiences'). These are the bases for direct knowledge sharing between the programmes, and for further documentation and analysis of approaches and practices employed in their work.

Water governance is the set of social relations or system that determines who gets what water/services, when and how. 'Good governance' in the water supply and sanitation sectors is thus crucial for improving access to water and sanitation services.  

The DEG-KM programme started in October 2010, and organised its first knowledge management workshop in Manta, Ecuador in March 2011. The collection of valuable experiences from the work of the JPs is central to the DEG-KM work, and at least one valuable experience from each JP was shared and elaborated upon at the workshop.

A review of how case studies, lessons learned and best practices are made available over the Internet has been conducted. The review is partly groundwork for upcoming knowledge processes relating to internet-based platforms and dissemination strategies, and partly a scoping exercise to see what is available to learn from. A draft version of the review is available here and open for comments, suggestions/corrections, which can be e-mailed to moa.cortobius@siwi.org. A draft review of spanish sites can be found here.