ACIAR builds on firm foundations
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Joanna Hicks, Knowledge Manager at the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).

The ACIAR is a federal government statutory authority that works with developing nations to fund research projects. It has around 60 – 70 staff, with most in Canberra and up to 10 located overseas.

ACIAR is using SharePoint for its intranet, collaboration and TeamSites, while a public-facing Web site is built on Drupal and the Meridio platform is also used for electronic document and records management. A project management system has been built on Lotus Notes.

Like any organisation with a diversity of IM platforms that have evolved over time, this disparity does lead to governance challenges.

For ACIAR, this occurs with the relationship between the Meridio EDRMS and project databases, in particular setting permission levels and access.

Hicks recommends having a strong platform in place before implementation.

“Ensure you get the structure, permissions and content determined and established before you roll it out to staff.”

“Try to gain small wins, make their jobs easier, fix problems and hope they find some benefits to sharing their work and get on board.

Dealing the challenge of user adoption is easier for a smaller organisation, when one on one meetings are still practical to ascertain what barriers exist and how to help.

Developing SharePoint as a knowledge ,management platform at ACIAR is eventually planned to incorporate communities of practise (CoPs), working groups, and internal social media.

However the challenges remain in getting involvement from key knowledge holders, who have time constraints, getting technologies and training users on new systems.

“We have just started adding presentations to SharePoint, as well as Working Group pages, and an announcement board, discussion boards etc. This hasn’t translated to subject experts capturing their knowledge yet,” said Hicks.

“I am hoping by adding value to the Intranet (SharePoint) others will learn it is the place to find information and people. Also adding presentations, calendars, key agency documents and news, eLearning solutions, collaborative workspaces etc. hopefully it will be the place to gain knowledge and increase learning.

“I don’t think you can ever eliminate traditional file sharing, but I can encourage announcements instead of e-mails with attachments!”