Message from CIO

New! - updated on April 8, 2009

The CGIAR is an organization in transition. Over the next year or two, we will no doubt witness radical changes in the System that will have far-reaching implications. No stranger to change myself, I believe the new CGIAR will impact all of us: staff, partners, donors, and the world’s poor, the ultimate beneficiaries of the good work of the organization.

With the establishment of ICT-KM Program in 2003, the CGIAR began investigating ways of integrating IT with the innovative application of knowledge sharing tools and technologies that would help build the capacity of staff to meet the challenges of change. We hope to continue this work.

As the new CGIAR is formed, the Program is offering help support both the transition and the new shape the CGIAR is taking. We’re part of the change process: we’re supporting communities and positioning ourselves to help the CGIAR stay in the forefront and help it to able to do the good work that it does. We are not taking any credit for the good work; we are just supporting it.

The hard work of our team and the many communities we nurture are helping the Program meet expectations in contributing to the CGIAR as a unified system and a leading knowledge organization. If I were to identify just a few areas that illustrate how we add value to the System, they would include:

Mapping our Research
The ICT-KM program, working with internal and external groups, developed EasyMTP, an application to guide the completion of Medium Term Plans. CGIAR Centers compiled their 2009-2011 MTP in a standard format and the data was uploaded to the CGMap, thereby providing a window on CGIAR research plans that facilitates cross search and analysis while increasing transparency and accountability.

Availability, Accessibility and Applicability
Research-oriented organizations cannot be satisfied just knowing they have produced high quality science. It is essential that the outputs of research are communicated and put to use in the village, on the ground, in the lab, or across the negotiating table. The CGIAR is no exception. We are developing an AAA framework (Availability, Accessibility and Applicability) to measure and improve availability and access to CGIAR research outputs.

Consortium for Spatial Information
The livelihoods of poor farm households are highly conditioned by geographic location in general. The CIO office was recently selected to manage a new initiative that promises to place the CGIAR’s Consortium for Spatial Information in a strategic, leadership role in helping realize the promise of geospatial technology in cutting poverty and hunger. This initiative will allow the CSI to fully participate in the design and implementation of a new program on Geospatial Technology for Agricultural Development to be funded by the Gates Foundation.

Knowledge Sharing Projects
These projects have been engaged across the CGIAR System and requests for involvement, assistance and partnership are expanding. They are contributing to Program goals and the System through the KS Toolkit; workshops on KS in Research strategy planning; research data management; research communication and KS approaches and strategies, to name just a few. If you would like to know more about the Program or join us in our efforts to improve international agricultural research on behalf of the world's poor, please write to us.

Collaborate, create, communicate... this is our motto, and to show that we practice what we preach, we have a very active blog and you can follow our activities on twitter.

Enrica Porcari
CGIAR Chief Information Officer
Leader, ICT-KM Program