During the first six months of this year, the Program spent much time benchmarking the availability and accessibility of the outputs of CGIAR research, among other activities. This is reflected in the number of stories devoted to the same subject in this issue of ICT-KM News. We also highlight the importance of social media in sharing information, and look back on the second chapter of one of our more popular projects.
During the first six years of the Program ... well, that's a completely different story. After six years, it's now time for a check-up. We need to find out if we're still relevant and if we're as efficient and effective as we set out to be. We also need to assess our opportunities to learn and adjust, and examine the possible future directions of the Program in the context of global challenges, the on-going CGIAR reform efforts and the anticipated new Consortium of CGIAR Centers.
To assist us towards this end, two notable external reviewers will carry out a survey, and conduct telephone interviews and face-to-face meetings with many Program stakeholders, both internal and external.
To find out how we're faring, look out for our report in the next issue of ICT-KM News!
As I write this, I'm participating in a CGIAR senior leadership course at IMD, a leading business school in Lausanne, Switzerland. Read my notes on this interesting and fun course on the ICT-KM Program's blog.
Enrica
Leader, ICT-KM Program and
Chief Information Officer, CGIAR
Main News
Reinventing Agricultural Science
The recent Science Forum 2009, held in Wageningen, the Netherlands, discussed how ICTs, including technologies, communication practices, information management, collaboration, etc., can help improve the way we do research. CGIAR CIO Enrica Porcari, who co-wrote a paper presented at the event, had this to say afterwards: "My main take home message from the workshop: ICTs are now in the forefront, given a legitimate seat in the research agenda, as enablers of a more effective way of doing thing. Or as Professor Adel El Betagy, Chair of GFAR, put it ‘they are indispensable tools'. He threw a challenge to the CGIAR to take this opportunity and to take it now! It's up to us now!"
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Finding the Right Pathway
The ICT-KM Program Office has been actively benchmarking the availability and accessibility of research outputs in several CGIAR Centers. In doing so, it has suggested certain pathways or processes that Centers can adopt to make their research more accessible. Such pathways will help researchers identify a publisher with flexible policies on open access, so they do not have to sign away all rights to their journal articles.
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Talking About Pathways ...
A recent issue of Rice Today contains a great article about rice science in the digital age. The story essentially introduces some of the pathways used by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) to maximize the accessibility of its research outputs. These include the adoption of a creative commons license and the publishing of information products, photos and videos on platforms such as Google Books, Flickr and YouTube, respectively.
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Social Media Kick-off at CIAT
CIAT's annual Knowledge Sharing Week saw the Center's Communications Unit using a number of social media tools to document the event. From photos, to video interviews, to a blog ... KS Week was covered in a way never seen before. ICT-KM Program Leader Enrica Porcari was also on hand to promote the availability and accessibility of research results - see this issue's story "Finding the Right Pathway".
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Knowledge Sharing: Chapter Two Comes to a Close
The Institutional Knowledge Sharing (IKS) project recently completed its second phase. For more than two years, the project has organized activities that have involved the CGIAR at three different levels (System, Center, and community), made its presence felt at many international events, and generally promoted collaborative learning and innovation to help increase the CGIAR's effectiveness. Lessons learned have been documented and future possibilities explored.
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Don't Get Left Behind!
Social media - everyone's talking about, everyone's using it. Well, not quite everyone. But if you want to have an advantage in the workplace, social media is the way to go. Our recently concluded online Social Media Workshop introduced participants to an array of social media tools and showed how they can be used to support knowledge sharing goals and strategies.
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And Then There Were Ten ...
When we began our blog series on Social Medial Tools two months ago, we had no idea how successful it would be. Feedback from readers has been positive and encouraging, so much so that Meena Arivananthan (who has written the series with input from Antonella Pastore and Simone Staiger-Rivas) finished the tenth post on these tools a few days ago. And there's no stopping her.
For easy reference, we have assembled the various links to these mini tutorials on one page, so you can now tell at a glance where to get help on newsfeeds, wikis, microblogging, and much, much more.
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Hackers in the House
Somewhere in CIP's busy IT department lurk four hackers, dedicated men who know how to infiltrate the Center's IT security protocols and bring the department to its knees. But these are no ordinary hackers; they are hackers with ethics.
"Hackers with ethics?" you might be thinking right about now. "Isn't that an oxymoron?"
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We welcome feedback on the ICT-KM News, so please feel free to contact us at ictkm@cgiar.org