For the first half of the event, speaker Fred Carden, a senior research governance specialist at RTI International, shared his experience of building a knowledge sector within Indonesia through the recently launched Knowledge Sector Initiative (KSI). This joint project between Indonesia and Australia focuses on strengthening research institutions and the use of research in public policy. The project works with four intersecting components: 1) supply (research institutions); 2) demand (governments); 3) intermediaries (knowledge delivery channels), such as journalists and advocacy organizations; and, 4) the enabling environment. This will be a long-term effort lasting 15 years. The work will be broken into three five-year phases, with the first phase largely focusing on the supply side. Following this, the second phase will build the other three components of the project and the third will work to consolidate and institutionalize the changes. The importance of the project taking on more of a facilitator role was mentioned throughout the event. Many of KSI’s activities that Carden highlighted included building the organizational capacity of research institutions, supporting networks, helping to map interests, collaborating with stakeholders from the beginning, and diagnosing key intervention points.
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Topic : public policy, collaboration, research
