Review of Progress and Prospects
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- 1. INTRODUCTION
EXECUTIVE SUMMARYThis Expert Consultation brought together key stakeholders in at least two separate initiatives to address the goal of developing coherence in international information systems for agricultural science and technology. This goal is set in the context of increasing inequity in access to agricultural information, and the emergence and adoption of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) which are reducing costs and catalyzing a migration of content to digital formats. Firstly, the Consultation formed part of a series of meetings from 2000 onwards in the context of “Coherence in agricultural information”, which comprised representatives from key organizations providing information services in the field of agriculture, natural resources and rural development. Secondly, the Consultation built on the findings of a series of regional and inter-regional meetings in 2003/04 within the framework of the GFAR “Global.RAIS” project. These meetings were attended by representatives of national agricultural research systems and their regional fora/associations. Four objectives were formulated before the consultation in relation to the outcomes of previous meetings, and covered institutional networks, open access publishing for agriculture, capacity building, and data exchange standards. The Consultation opened with a series of keynote presentations and general discussion. Participants then divided into two groups, whereby Track 1 addressed institutional issues in “Networks, Capacity Building and Governance”, and Track 2 addressed technical issues in “Standards, Technologies and Protocols”. Participants from the two tracks then reconvened to report on and discuss the findings of the working groups and to agree on collaborative actions. Participants agreed that their collective goal was that stakeholders in agricultural science and technology should be better informed so that they make better decisions (researchers, extensionists) and develop policies based on evidence (policymakers), leading to the economic and social enhancement of rural livelihoods of the poor. A set of outcomes was agreed that should emerge from follow-up to the Consultation:
The Consultation participants attributed high priority for intervention to three major areas, namely “Advocacy”, “Capacity building”, “Content Management”, recognizing that in fact they are closely inter-related. For each of those action areas, participants identified opportunities and constraints, and then moved on to highlight proposed actions. For Advocacy, priority action areas were identified as development of consultation mechanisms, identification of champions and key events to support an advocacy plan, gathering of evidence of the development impact, and development of training materials and courses for advocacy. For Capacity building, priority areas of action were agreed to be coordination of institutional support through regional clearing houses, partnership with professional associations for information specialists, prioritization of key training targets and formats, and more active collaboration with existing initiatives producing training resource materials, especially the Information Management Resource Kit (IMARK) and ITrain Online. For content management, participants identified four priority areas for action, namely development of the Agricultural Information Management Standards (AIMS) Web site as a shared resource, development of systems for Project-related information, development of public domain software tools and applications, and development of electronic repositories in “Learning Resource Centres”. Participants also formulated “demonstration projects” in three areas to show the benefits of cooperation on content management, namely a common metadata exchange format, a community directory for information on organizations and for news-feeds/RSS, and Multilingual ontologies. The Consultation generally recognized that new institutional partnerships and operational mechanisms are required to maximise the potential of recent technical advances. Extensive discussion on participants’ experience in organizational networks produced a detailed analysis of strengths and weaknesses of such networks and mechanisms of collaboration. Participants agreed that a more structured global partnership was required to bring together the existing range of initiatives into a more cohesive alliance that would increase the chances of enhancing information management in agricultural science and technology. It was felt strongly that this partnership should not take the form of a new organization, but rather should be formulated as an initiative supported by an alliance that focus on clearly identified high priority issues. Governance of the partnership was foreseen by a Steering Group lead by one or more of the organization(s) that had convened the Consultation. Responsibility for activities would then be attributed to specific interest groups, or Task Forces, of organizations within the partnership, which were foreseen for “Advocacy”, “Capacity building”, “Content Management”, with the potential for a group on “Evaluation”. A portal website would be developed to provide a gateway to the various resources and a repository for case studies of experiences at regional and national level. 1. INTRODUCTION1.1 BackgroundThe Expert Consultation brought together key stakeholders in at least two separate initiatives to address the goal of developing coherence in international information systems for agricultural science and technology. This goal is set in the context of increasing inequity in access to agricultural information, and the emergence and adoption of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) which are reducing costs and catalyzing a migration of content to digital formats. Firstly, the Consultation formed part of a series of meetings from 2000 onwards in the context of “Coherence in agricultural information”, which comprised representatives from key organizations providing information services in the field of agriculture, natural resources and rural development. Secondly, the Consultation built on the findings of a series of regional and inter-regional meetings in 2003/04 within the framework of the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) “Global.RAIS” project. These meetings were attended by representatives of national agricultural research systems and their regional fora/associations. The following objectives were formulated before the consultation in relation to the outcomes of previous meetings.
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