The Governance Knowledge Sharing Program originated with the perception of the Dutch Government about the poor track record of technical assistance provided by donors to poorer countries.

Technical Assistance is essentially an instrument to promote local development capacity, especially government capacity. The problem is that donor efforts to improve public-sector capacity have, in general, not been successful. However, donors could improve their track record if there are more effective ways of promoting and sharing knowledge that would improve public-sector performance (in both its efficiency and accountability aspects) in developing countries.

GKSP's primary objective is to promote techniques for more effective mobilization of the knowledge in developing countries on governance and public sector reform, i.e. to deliver knowledge, as well as generate it. This will enable those countries to better use donor assistance - and, where necessary, to better challenge it - in the pursuit of effective governance reform solutions.