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1st Quarter 2008


Snippets

Advancing Agriculture in Developing Countries through Knowledge and Innovation
The International Food Policy Research Institute's ISNAR Division held an international consultative conference in Addis Ababa at the Hilton Hotel April 7 – 9, 2008 on "Advancing agriculture in developing countries through knowledge and innovation." Scholars, policymakers, and practitioners from a wide range of sectors came together to exchange ideas and experiences (positive or negative) on how knowledge and innovation (technological, organizational, and institutional) are affecting agricultural advancement. The conference showcased innovative research in the field and provide a forum to identify further areas for research and cooperation.

The ICT-KM program is a sponsor of this event and delivered a paper to the conference and will be contributing a chapter in the resulting book on knowledge and innovation experiences for improving developing-country agriculture. The book will show knowledge and innovation frameworks, applications, methods, and empirical research results.

ESA training meeting and workshop and wrap up meeting
At the end of 2007, the ICT-KM program entered into agreement with CIP to take leadership of a project for the Americas Centers (CIAT, CIMMYT, CIP and IFPRI) that focuses on enterprise security activities for these Centers. These activities have included improving the security of Centers network infrastructure; fortifying the CGIAR global network security by including analysis of the CGNET NOC; securing intellectual property, and training information systems security personnel.

One of the key components of this project is the ESA training meeting and workshop and wrap up meeting being held in Lima from 31 March through 11 April. Participating are two participants from each of CIAT, CIMMYT, IFPRI, plus guests from Bioversity, ICARDA, WorldAgroforestry and ILRI (total 10). This packed ten days will include a CISSP (Certified Information Security Systems Professional) certification preparatory course; a CEH  (Certified Ethical Hacker) certification preparatory course; a ESA project review which also benefits from the guest participants in pulling together the threads of the ESA project with a similar global project (Enterprise Security and Business Continuity Project) that wrapped up in 2007.

Latest word from Anthony Collins, the ESA project manager is that the consensus view emerging from the meeting is that the ESA group will be forging ahead in stimulating the establishment of a base-line of agreed best practices on information systems security and standards for the CGIAR.

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Collaborate, Create, Communicate...

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the ICT-KM Program's first quarter newsletter for 2008.
In our last newsletter of 2007, I noted that one thing that I see as constant is change and as we move forward on the numerous ICT-KM activities with the centers in 2008 this takes on even more meaning.

As reported in this newsletter, the EasyMTP software has now been installed in 13 CGIAR centers and is poised to make a huge difference in the way the Medium Term Plans are developed and submitted. Training of CGIAR staff in the use of the software has already started and our team is pleased with the responsiveness and interest shown in the software. Once the MTP information is uploaded and reviewed by the Science Council it will become fully analyzable via the new Medium Term Plan Analysis Program (CGMap). This marks a great breakthrough in enabling availability and access to the important information contained in the CGIAR Centers' MTPs.

One of the ICT-KM Program's key investments in improving CGIAR effectiveness has successfully launched a blending learning exercise in Knowledge Sharing. This event, which combines both on-line learning with face-to-face interactions, has attracted a number of staff from the CGIAR as well as FARA and other partner agencies. The immediate feedback is very positive and as the course progresses through the year the team will be reflecting and learning and we will share these lessons with others.

The Program is preparing for two significant events that are happening over the next few weeks. One is a meeting of the CGIAR Consortium of Spatial Information (CSI) group. This meeting will be held in Nairobi in April and to me typifies the strength and commitment of a dedicated community of practice. This highly successful group has been taking stock of their activities and achievements and is now coming together to see how its effectiveness could be improved, including strategic opportunities for strengthening the ability of the CG system to serve its own growing needs and those of its development partners.

The other event, not originally on our horizon at the beginning of the year, is a workshop bringing together CGIAR staff interested in better research data management. To quote from Kwesi Atta Krah, DDG at Bioversity International, "how satisfied are we that our Centers have a functional mechanism for data management and storage, ensuring for instance, that data is not lost when scientists leave the organization?" There have been ongoing discussions on research data management at the Centers; there have been projects looking directly at this issue - two supported by the ICT-KM Program (one currently ongoing with IRRI & CIMMYT and the other conducted at Bioversity in 2005). It may be we are reaching the perfect time to benefit from greater system wide sharing on this very important issue.

There are lots of activities the ICT-KM Program is working on this year, some of which are recounted in this newsletter and others we will be sure to share with you over the following newsletters. We'll keep you posted but in the meantime feel free to send us your views, either by email or on the ICT-KM website via the ICT-KM blog.


Enrica Porcari
Chief Information Officer
CGIAR


Main News

Easy MTP has left the building...
The ICT-KM team is happy to announce the delivery to the CGIAR Centers of the exciting new tool that supports the creating, updating, submission and eventual searching and sharing of the information in CGIAR Medium Term Plans.
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Knowledge Sharing Workshop kicks off
The Knowledge Sharing (KS) Workshop organized by the KS Project of the ICT-KM Program has had a very successful subscription with its first introduction.

Forty people have joined this unique opportunity to explore and experiment with knowledge-sharing principles and methods in an innovative 3-phase workshop.

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A science week with a difference
The ICT-KM program has supported a number of exciting pilot initiatives to strengthen Centers' capacity to apply KS principles and methods. Successful interventions at CIAT, CIFOR, IWMI and CIMMYT in 2006 have led to further initiatives in scaling up knowledge sharing to support institutional innovation.
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Now we’re cooking! Good practices for managing research data
Most research conducted by CGIAR Centers depends on the collection of primary research data. Effective and efficient research data management requires special skills and experience, but there is seldom a systematic approach to teaching and training new staff to manage research data, or to update existing staff on new methodologies and technologies. Skills and experiences are often scattered among Center staff with different specializations. Good practices are often not recorded in the form of institutional guidelines and training materials of practical relevance for day-to-day research management work or the induction of new staff members.

One of the Institutional Knowledge Sharing pilot projects is taking on this issue. Thomas Metz, IKS pilot project leader from IRRI is working to develop, collect, record and apply good practices in research data management at IRRI and CIMMYT (http://www.ks-cgiar.org/images/stories/pdf/iks2_metz_irri.pdf).
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Ensuring Quality Training and Education in the CGIAR
As part of the portfolio of projects in 2004, the ICT-KM program supported the CGIAR 'Online Learning Resources' (OLR) project. This project encouraged an international capacity strengthening community of practice, interested in agriculture and natural resources management in the tropics, to enhance the quality of their teaching and learning, and to promote inter-Center collaboration in training, education and learning resources development and dissemination. The project resulted in the setting up of an Online Learning Repository on CGXchange containing learning resources and some courses from 11 CGIAR Centers.
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Consortium on Spatial Information (CSI): Stocktaking, strategic positioning and a new funding opportunity
The spatial components of the CGIAR research areas have grown exponentially in the last few years in line with the growing recognition of the importance of spatial information in CGIAR research activities. Where much of the CGIAR-generated geo-spatial information was, in the past, inaccessible or unavailable to the global research and development communities, the recent work of the CSI network, supported by the ICT-KM Program has provided a highly visible mechanism for promoting collegial information sharing, technical debate, and (formal and informal) data exchange. The CSI has also provided a single institutional entry point for donors wishing to promote and strengthen inter-CGIAR centre collaboration in the thematic areas of GIS, remote sensing and spatial analysis. For a quick update on some of the on-going activities of the CSI visit the web-site at http://csi.cgiar.org.
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ICT-KM Team News
Tania Jordan has been a stalwart of the ICT-KM program since October 2006 while based at CIAT in Colombia. Now in Rome for a period of 12 months, she has become a key member of the team for the analysis and testing of the EasyMTP software in addition to preparing the user documentation and providing the end-user trainings of EasyMTP.
Additionally the ICT-KM team is very pleased to announce the slightly early (2 January 2008) yet eagerly awaited arrival of Rashid and Samer.

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We welcome feedback on the ICT-KM News, so please feel free to contact us at ictkm@cgiar.org