COVID-19 KMOL Review Summary

USAID's Knowledge Management and Organizational Learning (KMOL) team conducted a review of development organizations' practices and experiences in managing knowledge during the pandemic. The review aimed to inform USAID's COVID-19 response and provide insights for similar efforts worldwide. The review identified key findings in managing emergent information, including the collection of information from local communities. Organizations relied on infrastructure built up to engage communities safely and effectively, utilizing digital resources such as telecommunications and virtual video conferencing when in-person contact was not possible. BRAC Bangladesh conducted a 64-district level survey, combining in-person and phone interviews, to assess local economic impact and identify major issues in communities, including food insecurity, gender-based violence, and health concerns. Disinformation emerged as a major concern, spreading quickly among communities via the internet and affecting development organizations' response strategies. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) addressed disinformation through webinars and articles, highlighting its impact on communities and development organizations' response efforts. The Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) case study of Vietnamese wet markets demonstrated the importance of developing COVID-19 response strategies with relevant evidence to avoid ineffective measures. Organizations also emphasized the importance of brokering and incorporating local and organizational knowledge. Digital workspaces and COVID-19 "learning hubs" evolved to disseminate information collected across organizations and within local communities. The Africa Center for Evidence's repository of COVID-19 learning hubs and the Southern Voice's knowledge hub, which compiles research from 51 think tanks across the Global South, exemplified this approach. Collaboration and engagement were critical components of organizational programming during the pandemic. Digital infrastructure, such as work-sharing platforms and video-conferencing applications, facilitated a collaborative approach. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) released a learning note on "Remote Supervision," highlighting the opportunities and challenges faced under remote programming. Organizations also emphasized the importance of applying local knowledge to COVID-19 response efforts. CARE International's report "She Told Us So" provided a comprehensive understanding of what was working and what was not, using gender-based knowledge from multiple stages of the pandemic. Strategies such as the After-Action Review allowed organizations to learn from prior programming activities and adapt current programming following lessons learned. Engagement with local stakeholders was facilitated through the distribution of information at the local level, in-person, and through digital platforms. Traditional forms of information sharing, such as IFAD's use of radio in Nepal, allowed organizations to engage community members without access to virtual resources. The multi-partner Food Systems Dialogues were summits aimed at engaging a diverse set of stakeholders on their progress towards the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, with a recent focus on COVID-19 response efforts. Lessons learned from the pandemic and other crises highlighted the importance of capturing learning to ensure that program responses are guided by the most relevant and effective knowledge. Organizations turned to prior crises, such as the Ebola epidemic and armed conflict events, to apply lessons learned. The World Bank's reference guide provided relevant reports for comprehensive knowledge collection from prior evaluations. Organizations also developed internal strategies to capture and document lessons learned, such as UNICEF and Global Affairs Canada's working groups that brought together experts from developing country communities to understand the impact of response efforts and identify areas for improvement. As development organizations prepare for future crises, they are seeking to build up digital capacity and leverage organizational learning and knowledge sharing at every level of response. The research summarized in this document can be leveraged to identify gaps and highlight future questions to be asked, adding to this work and other related projects. The knowledge within the report can also be leveraged during future crises to understand the successes and challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic.