View source for Knowledge surveys – Questions to be asked within organisations

== Initiator ==
Maarten Boers

== Participants ==
* Maarten Boers
* Allison Hewlett

== Key points ==
Surveys about the state of the art of available knowledge within an organisation can be useful for several reasons e.g. to create a baseline for monitoring (progress on) KS, to asses what external knowledge / information is (still) needed, to design a KS-programme and activities. However, experience shows that people are disinclined to participate in such surveys, because of time restrictions and/or reluctance to "advertise" their (lack of) knowledge / information.

'''Ways of gathering such information can be:'''
* (on-line) survey's – response very low (10 to 15% ?)
* informal chats by surveyor - time consuming 
* (inspiring) workshops on KS in an explicit way – need of getting people together
* ……
* ……
* Just accepting that it is impossible to get a complete survey done! ;-)

'''Useful tool'''

A simple tool, developed by Bruce Britton, who then was with INTRAC (and used in Helvetas and ILO) can be found at the [http://www.helvetas.ch/wEnglish/competencies/Knowledge_and_Development/Working_Material.asp?navid=19 Helvetas Homepage] in the section "The learning organisation".

It is a package with all the background information, the questionnaire (including an excel version which gives some direct analysis of the individual respondent - but not from the aggregated group – this must be done manually). Thanks to Marc Steinlin!