About Us

The ICT-KM Program of the CGIAR promotes and supports the use of information and communications technology (ICT) and knowledge management (KM) to improve the effectiveness of the CGIAR System's work on behalf of the poor in developing countries.

The Need

The world is undergoing profound economic, technological and social changes. In addition, scientific practices are becoming more and more information intensive and multi-disciplinary, requiring up-to-date communications infrastructure and information sharing practices. If it is to achieve its mission, the CGIAR must accelerate its efforts to generate, safeguard and share knowledge in new ways.

The CGIAR needs to develop a culture of active information and knowledge sharing. This will involve timely yet cost-effective multi-directional communications, the know-how to collaborate, and the tools to support multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural teams.

It is also imperative that the CGIAR System maintain its current knowledge bases, create new ones, add to their value on an ongoing basis, and enable our Southern partners to easily access these assets along with the more tacit knowledge that CGIAR workers possess.

Program Response

The ICT-KM Program will address these needs by supporting champions of these changes throughout the System, exploring and encouraging incentives for change, and sponsoring projects that show demonstrable value and impact.

The Program's first goal is to transform how the CGIAR System works in order to preserve, produce, and improve access to the agricultural global public goods needed by the poor in developing countries.

Its second goal is to establish the CGIAR System as a leading knowledge broker, bringing together all the players in an open, inclusive community for global public goods research, with development as the ultimate goal.

Program Structure and Delivery

The ICT-KM Program is managed by the CGIAR Chief Information Officer out of Bioversity International in Rome, Italy. During its first three years, the Program was guided by a three-year ICT-KM Strategy, which was developed through broad consultations with the assistance of an Advisory Group representing most of the CGIAR's 15 Centers and functional levels.

Now in its second phase, the Program continues to be delivered primarily through a series of projects managed by specific Centers. These investments, which are coordinated by the CIO office, are complemented by other program activities, which include the nurturing of communities and connections, negotiating economies of scale across Centers, and ongoing evaluation and learning.