Review of Progress and Prospects

5.1 Analysis of existing partnerships

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  Existence of a clearly defined strategy and objectives;
  
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  Tangible commitment to the strategy from the range of major players and
  
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  Explicit support from government;
  
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  Assurance of adequate funding resources for the network members;
  
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  Strong but sensitive leadership provided by a national focal point;
  
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  Participatory approach in the national network with appropriate recognition of all partners;
  
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  Development of information repositories such as national databases, either (a) metadata, (b) abstracts or (c) full text, of documents such as reports, theses, journal articles, and conference papers, and people/organizations/activities;
  
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  Adoption of a single model for information management based on common formats and standards;
  
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  Focus on content quality;
  
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  Focus on development of human resources.
  

The critical success factors for regional networks were seen as being:

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  Existence of a regional information strategy;
  
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  Development of a Secretariat role for regional activities;
  
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  Focus on capacity building at national level;
  
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  Focus on the human dimension amongst the information specialists and development of a sense of collective action and support;
  
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  Raising awareness of the issues at political level
  
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  Formation of strategic partnerships amongst the major stakeholder organizations
  

5.2 Motivation

This important area was analysed further to define the expectations and benefits of partnership at national, regional, or international level as perceived by the stakeholder organizations represented at the Expert Consultation.

Expectations. It was recognized that organizations would have certain expectations from a major partnership, which were grouped into the principal areas of “Values”, “Complementarity” and “Increased Impact”. The first of these related to the need for a shared vision related to information management and a common set of ethics (e.g. openness, participation, informality, opportunism, strong commitment, and accountability), with buy-in to each others’ initiatives which would lead to tangible benefits to each organization’s shareholders. The second area was based on the need to complement existing strategies and priorities of the partner organizations, which should then provide a synergy derived from common objectives and a focus on common thrusts in information-related activities that would exploit the complementarities between the organizations’ expertise, resources, and experiences. The collaboration should also provide each partner with access to new information resources and a recognized role and influence within the partnership, with opportunities for leadership based on comparative advantage. The expectations on outcomes related to “Increased Impact” based on the ability to leverage support from a range of donors and resource agencies from other sectors into agricultural Information world through advocacy, and on concrete actions leading to tangible outputs, with benefits to all parties and stakeholders.
Benefits. These were seen to fall into three principal areas. The first area related to “Values”, where encouragement and support would be derived for shared elements of visions and strategies for information agricultural management at national, regional and global level. Under “Complementarity”, the partnership should provide a stronger advocacy platform and encourage collaborative activities, while providing a platform for peers to interact. The last area of benefits, “Effectiveness”, related to areas such as wider impact of their own work, cost-sharing, economies of scale, and sharing of resources such as information content, technical expertise, and capital. Organizations would look to increase productivity in information management and exchange, and to overcome their own weaknesses by access to complimentary expertise. At a technical level, effectiveness would be enhanced by development and application of common standards, methodologies and tools for agricultural information management.

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