ICTs in knowledge management: the case of the Agropedia platform for Indian agriculture

Authors

  • Kiran Yadav
  • Rasheed Sulaiman V
  • N.T. Yaduraju
  • Venkatraman Balaji
  • T.V. Prabhakar

Keywords:

knowledge management, agriculture, information, ICT

Abstract

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are increasingly used for knowledge management (KM) currently. However the full potential of ICTs are yet to be realized due to several challenges. This paper explores the challenges in using ICT for KM using the case of Agropedia, an ICT mediated knowledge management platform for Indian agriculture. The paper argues that KM is no longer a technical challenge but is rather constrained by social and organizational barriers. Without initiating institutional and policy changes to address these barriers, ICTs cannot contribute significantly to KM. By March 2014, Agropedia had close to 8500 registered users and 33,062 published nodes solely dedicated to agriculture and 24 crop knowledge models. A total of 35 institutional Agropedias and a mother Agropedia were created for a better content management system. In conclusion, the deployment of ICT in agriculture is found to be a socio-technical process, facing social and organisational challenges. Against this background, knowledge sharing needs to be incentivised.

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Published

2016-01-03

Issue

Vol. 11 No. 2 (2015)

Section

Papers

License

The copyright of the articles published in this journal remains the property of the authors. For liability reasons, the title belongs to the Foundation for the Support of the Knowledge Management for Development Journal. The journal is published under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License. This journal is currently an open access journal as it has a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. From the BOAI definition [1] of "open access", we support the rights of users to "read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles." However, some of the content (2009-2012) is only available on the Taylor and Francis website. Within the next few months, this issue too will become available on the OJS. [1] http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#openaccess