Dear Colleagues,

Collaborate, Create, Communicate...

I am pleased to provide you with the second issue of ICT-KM Program monthly update.

ICT-KM PROGRAM UPDATE

I am pleased to report that the ICT-KM 2004 Investment Plan has been approved by the Center Directors’ Committee (CDC) and has now been submitted to the World Bank for final approval.We are hoping to receive positive news soon.

Taking advantage of this waiting time, we are planning for the next steps: preparing a time line, coordinate project meetings planning and so on.

PROJECT UPDATES

Collaboration Software

In the January monthly update, we had called for volunteers to join our Collaboration Software project.

A critical component of our ICT-KM 2004 Investment Plan and the new CGIAR way of doing business, is the adoption of collaboration software. We need a team to work on the software review.

I am pleased to inform that to date we have received feedbacks from few volunteers.

Should any of you be interested in joining the Collaboration Software team or should you know any suitable candidate, please send us an email.

Video Conferencing Facilities Survey

Last year we compiled an inventory of Video Conferencing facilities in each center. To ensure that the information we have is accurate and up to date, we requested the IT Managers to update us with the latest information in their centers.

Next month we will provide all with latest information on Video Conferencing facilities available in CGIAR centers.

Sun Micro to Set Up CoE at ICRISAT for E-Learning

ICRISAT has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Sun Microsystems to develop a center of excellence (CoE) to promote e-learning under the Virtual Academy for the Semi-Arid Tropics (VASAT) set up by ICRISAT. The collaboration would bring together the expertise of the two institutions to deploy e-learning services to anyone, anytime, anywhere and on any device.

ICRISAT will jointly work with Sun Micro to promote e-learning services to other CG centers. Both will work to build a network of learning portals with other institutes in India. This would facilitate mutual exchange of contents and services through an open architecture, leading towards the development of an e-learning hub in India. Together, the two institutions will explore projects on the convergence of e-learning along with the creation of a digital library.

If you want to know more about this initiative, you may do so by contacting V Balaji, at ICRISAT.

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RECENT MEETINGS AND INITIATIVES

ICWG-GR Meeting

The annual meeting of the CGIAR Inter Center Working Group on Genetic Resources was held at WorldFish Center, Penang from 2 to 5 February. The meeting was attended by a total of 25 participants from most of the CGIAR centers and FAO.

I was invited to give a presentation on ICT-KM Program activities, 2004 Investment Plan and on support to Global Public Goods project (phase 1 and 2) on 3 February. Samy Gaiji from SINGER who is the project coordinator for “Data Standards and Exchange (Building a System-wide Portal to CGIAR scientific databases)” project gave a presentation on his project.

This meeting was an excellent opportunity to meet the scientific community and I had the pleasure to meet a number of the Heads of Genetic Resources units from various centers. The discussions on ICT-KM Program and global public goods were very stimulating and productive.

Global Public Goods 2

Following the ICWG-GR Meeting, at the request of members of the CDC, I prepared a concept note for Global Public Goods Information Systems Rehabilitation - Phase 2 Project which was submitted to Center Directors' Committee for review. The CDC approved the concept note. I am currently working collaboratively with the focal points from CG centers on developing the concept note into full proposal by 31 March for consideration by CDC for funding.

Good Practice Notes

On 23 February we held discussions with the CGIAR System office Internal Audit Unit representatives, John Fitzsimon and Virginia Maria Salazar, to plan the development of another series of 4 good practice notes this year. In the coming year the Program plans to develop notes on system security, system development, IT support to challenge program and IT infrastructure and support in common premises. These notes are useful to help avoid unnecessary duplication and for encouraging the adoption and adherence to best practices, standards, policies and procedures.

If you have any comments, suggestions or inputs which you would like to share with us, please send us an email.

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TECHNICAL CORNER...

Active Directory Project

ICRAF, ICARDA and IFPRI are in the process of joining the CGIAR Active Directory forest this month. IWMI is currently preparing for the joining to the Active Directory in March 2004 and WARDA has scheduled to join the forest in May. IITA has indicated that they are ready to schedule a date for their Active Directory upgrade.

We now have 9 sites on the Active Directory system, 3 sites in the migration phase, 3 sites in the queue and 1 site to plan for.

We are compiling the feedbacks from centers already migrated to the Active Directory forest on the benefits and value of migrating to Active Directory. Once this is compiled, the consolidated inputs will be made available to all IT managers for use in presentations.

Reminder: weekly updates on the Active Directory project are posted on the IT collaboration site at http://forum.ipgri.cgiar.org/cg-it/. IT Managers can log on to the website for details.

Exchange 2003

A contract with CGNET for supporting the migration of the CGIAR centers to Exchange 2003 within the current Active Directory and NT infrastructure was signed on 12 February.

The total amount for the contract, USD 40,000, is divided equally among 15 participating centers. I am pleased to announce that CGNET has agreed that should all centers migrate to Exchange 2003 by March 2005, a credit of USD 10,000 will be granted back to us. We hope this will be an extra incentive for us to start reaping the benefits of adopting this new technology.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all IT Managers for their contribution to the preparation of this contract document

CGNET Contract

A 3-person contract negotiation team (Ian Moore, Head of Information Technology Services from ILRI-ICRAF, Nancy Walczak, Head of Computer Services from IFPRI and myself) has been set up to work with CGNET on the renewal of the contract. The IT managers and the Web administrators are contributing to a list of improvements to be proposed to CGNET. We aim not only reducing at prices but at enhancing the portfolio of products while striving for more competitive prices.

The contract negotiation team held a teleconference on 11 February. The team had finalized the responses and a counterproposal was sent to CGNET. Another teleconference session is scheduled between the contract negotiation team and CGNET representatives on 5 March when Ian Moore will be at WorldFish Center.

Once the team obtains the comments from CGNET, a list of 'major decisions' will be compiled and sent to the IT and web manager communities for their comments.

CDW

As you may recall, in year 2002 we reached an agreement with CDW to purchase hardware and software products which brought considerable savings to various centers, especially for the purchase of Microsoft Software. To date, 13 centers (CIAT, CIFOR, CIMMYT, CIP, ICARDA, ICRAF, IITA, ILRI, IPGRI, IRRI, IWMI, WARDA and WorldFish) have benefited from this arrangement. Some centers have even managed to leverage this new opportunity to obtain considerable discounts locally. The overall expenditure in 2003 totaled over USD 370, 000. We hope you benefited from this arrangement. If you have any queries or feedbacks, please let us know.

Clean up our GAL

Have you ever received an e-mail that was not meant for you….or mistakenly sent an e-mail to the wrong address? The CGIAR Global Address List (GAL) includes not only members from within the CGIAR, but also from other organizations we do business with, such as FAO, ADB, FHI, Ford Foundation… Most believe this is a valuable tool…but to benefit from this we have to:

1. Pay extra attention to selecting the right recipient
2. Keep our GAL clean, by removing entries of colleagues who are no longer with the CG, by timely re-creating entries when colleagues move form one center to another and by fully complying with the CGIAR E-Mail Naming convention.

The IT managers are about to start a new "Let's clean the GAL" campaign to address this second point, we look forward to the results of these efforts.

Spam Messages Removed

Without filtering or taking measures to reduce spam, we could be receiving lots of annoying spam emails that choke our email accounts ….. more than we do now!

Below is the list of the number of spam messages removed by the corporate Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail software at the central mail server in CGNET from October 2003 to February 2004.

We will be looking into ways to reduce them even more... to the point of eliminating, those annoying e-mails...

TECHNOLOGY WATCH

In the last update, I introduced this column to keep a regular watch for emerging ICTs of potential interest to the CGIAR and inviting potential candidates to join our roster of consultants.

I am pleased to inform that Dario Valori (IPGRI) had provided us with the name of a potential consultant. This candidate is an expert in Software Engineering with good experience in web programming (ASP, Php), strong competence in database analysis (SQL Server 2000, MySQL, Oracle) and good teamwork experience in international environments. If you are interested in receiving more information, please contact Florine Lim or Dario Valori.

If you come across any potential candidates please forward their CV or credential to us. Or if you have heard about any new technology that is applicable to CG and we can learn, please share this news with the whole community.

Meanwhile, we have been working with 80-20 Retriever Enterprise on other services and products that they can provide. Below are some of the services proposed:

1. Corporate Governance - Providing a solution for the management and access of information for the various boards and committees that are part of the CGIAR group. This is a tool used by some of the largest corporations and semi-government organizations in the world. Given that the CGIAR is so globally dispersed it could deliver good value.
2. Extending the current 80-20 Retriever personal search capability to incorporate access to file shares and intranet sites globally. Such a facility could provide every individual across the CGIAR with the ability to access information that  only they are allowed to see without the need to know where to go to find the information.
3. Providing a framework for document and records management globally, enabling each group within the CGIAR to develop a framework for their corporate repository. Such a framework can then be either incorporated into the existing intranet and/or Sharepoint portal environments.

A demo will be organized shortly. If you are interested, please let us know.

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COMING UP

Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (SAKSS) Meeting

I have been invited by FAO and IFPRI to attend the Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (SAKSS) Meeting in Tivoli, Rome, from 8 to 9 March 2004 and to give a presentation on the basic principles of designing decision support systems.

The meeting which is co-sponsored by FAO and IFPRI will focus on the design of a Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (SAKSS), to build knowledge base and capacity to achieve more effective rural strategy processes in Africa. This initiative is supported by the US Presidential Initiative to End Hunger in Africa (IEHA).

Interesting reading...

Just before you close this e-mail you may want to read the attached article that Raj Nellooli, from the CGIAR HR services has shared with us. It is comforting to learn that our approaches are validated … as the article reads: […organizations must start managing their knowledge more effectively to put themselves in a stronger position to do more with less.]

Collaborate, Create, Communicate...

this is the motto of the ICT-KM Program. We believe that by expanding the CGIAR's opportunities to work together and communicate we will produce better science to help poor in developing countries, and we will get that knowledge to them.

Your comments are especially welcome. Please visit the Website, http://ictkm.cgiar.org/ or write to ictkm@cgiar.org with comments and/or ideas for the next monthly update.

Working together for a better future,

Enrica