Recently we launched the new version of the Knowledge Management portal in NISR named ‘Knownet’. It has evolved from – an almost year-old version of the portal and builds upon the feedback and suggestions from the staff.
One of the major shifts has been adopting the “Web 2.0” technologies in the new portal. Blogging, microblogging, social tagging, social bookmarking, shared calendars, content sharing, etc., have been made an integral part of the portal.
I had used the free and open-source CMS, Drupal, to build the initial version from scratch; therefore, when we embarked on upgrading it, we decided to keep the CMS same to build on knowledge gained around it. Axis – a software organization, based in Rwanda, developed the new version with Drupal.
It is a significant shift because, earlier, the only way the information was expected to flow was from top to bottom or, in some cases, one to one (think e-mails). Now, it is designed so that the flow of information shall happen in all directions (and more often).
Ensuring that colleagues see the value and use it will be the next BIG step.
The ‘Knownet’ is developed using open source and the contribution back to the community has been made by releasing the source code on Github here: https://github.com/axisrw/knownet