Lack of a dedicated institution to measure economic gains due to ICT, KM and KE
The dearth of documented evidence on the economic achievements attained by the mass development and implementation of ICT in the country is a problem. The reason for this scant evidence is because there is no institution that is dedicated to measuring the gains. Also, information has not been used widely to generate economic gains in the past.  As a result, it is not clear to most South Africans whether the investment made in information creation, ICT and KM have shown any tangible social and economic gains.  KM is new and emerging in South Africa, perhaps as a result of the global influence surrounding the knowledge economy.  KM is recognised as being key to economic development, but there is no standard definition of the concept – maybe because KM is such a new discipline. In South Africa, knowledge assets  lack coordination.  It is this gap that the centre proposes to address.

The concept of "informatics" is inherent to KM.  Informatics is the term that is used to explain the connection of "technology" with information, creating much synergy. Information is the foundation of knowledge creation – very little knowledge can be created without information. Knowledge is the combination of "book knowledge" with what is "in the environment" or "in people’s heads" and not research information only. 

Informatics
Informatics is the science that studies the collection, collation analysis, use, flow and processing of data and information and the development, implementation of ICT-related systems of information that is applied to medicine, health care,  public and other sectors.

Knowledge Management   (KM)
Knowledge management can be defined as the capturing, organising, packaging, disseminating, knowledge asset development and storing of rule-based knowledge and experiences of individual workers and groups (tacit knowledge) within an organisation and organisations; making this information available to others in general public organisations and using its knowledge product for economic purposes.  KM is used for: process management, organisational management and product/asset development leading to economic development.