Towards a CGIAR without Boundaries

Transcription

1 Towards a CGIAR without Boundaries A report from the Information and Communications Technology and Knowledge Management (ICT-KM) Program of the CGIAR May 2005

2 Introduction A valuable and growing network of global public goods The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research the CGIAR has, through the work of its 15 Centers and many partner organizations, built up an enormous store of global public goods over more than four decades. Individually the research Centers, some of them founded well before the CGIAR itself in 1971, is responsible for a valuable and growing collection of scientific knowledge and information, tools and techniques, field and laboratory experience, germplasm and data. While many of these assets are stored in computers, printed publications and seed banks, a good proportion of the accumulated wealth resides in the heads of individual researchers. Sharing, building on, and protecting this rich intellectual heritage are moral and business imperatives. But they also pose complex logistical challenges that must be addressed with intelligence, creativity, technology, long-term resources and, above all, commitment on the part of both sources and users of this knowledge. It has long been recognized that to exploit existing CGIAR global public goods effectively on behalf of the poor, and to continue to produce such goods in future, the research Centers need to function more as a single system. They should run less like individual trains or buses or planes, often headed in different directions, and more like a coordinated transportation network, to use a transportation metaphor. In this context, the Information and Communications Technology and Knowledge Management (ICT-KM) Program of the CGIAR is one of several relatively recent initiatives intended to help the Centers evolve into such a system. Apart from promoting better research and greater positive impact on rural livelihoods through more effective flows and use of CGIAR information and knowledge, the ICT-KM Program also allows for significant economies of scale. In other words, it is a way to boost the efficiency of the substantial annual investment in 2004 it was US$428 million that member countries and organizations make in support of international agricultural research and development for the developing world through the CGIAR. The ICT-KM Program, while keeping its partners in mind, is pursuing this goal of integration at multiple levels within the CGIAR. These range from senior Center management, right through to work units in individual Centers and the dozens of communities of practice (CoPs) in which researchers and other professionals learn from their peers across oceans and disciplines. The Program s task is much more than putting the latest ICTs on people s desks. Rather, it involves sweeping changes in the way information is captured, catalogued, manipulated, shared and used, and, perhaps even more important in the long run, changes in people s attitudes and behavior toward working together and sharing knowledge. 2

3 The Program: One vision, five pillars The vision of the ICT-KM Program, set out in a program strategy designed in 2003, is that of a CGIAR without boundaries, an internationally distributed, unified and open-knowledge organization. In this vision, CGIAR staff around the world collaborate on their research using high-capacity computing and communication and the global public goods created and managed by the CGIAR are safeguarded and made accessible to all stakeholders. 3

4 The ICT-KM Program can be illustrated through the following schematic: ICT-KM Program at a glance 4

5 Realizing this vision of a CGIAR without Boundaries depends on achieving success in five pillars or major areas of work. First, a Management Framework (including Governance, Advisory and Management elements) must be in place to stimulate, support and shepherd the process of change. Second, CGIAR staff, whatever their latitude and longitude, must have at their disposal a robust and reliable Connectivity infrastructure for communication and collaboration. Third, ensuring CGIAR data and information remain openly available and are safeguarded requires effective management of Content. Fourth, the prevailing Work Culture should be one of collaboration and knowledge sharing, both within the CGIAR system and between the system and its partners. Finally, Coordinating Actions between and among Centers, staff and resources can yield economies of scale and better business practices for the operations of the CGIAR. The ICT-KM Program is delivered through two channels: a set of programwide activities (Coordinating Actions) and a portfolio of projects, funded under the 2004 Investment Plan, around Connectivity, Content and Work Culture. Each of these four pillars has associated objectives, and activities or projects. Much has been accomplished during this critical startup phase. A management structure, strategy and work plans are in place; a diverse but cohesive portfolio of 14 projects has been successfully launched; and the Program has already achieved notable cost savings for the CGIAR. A global knowledge program: The big picture Governance, management and advisory framework The first planned outcome, creation of a Management Framework for the Program, has been achieved. This structure is designed to respond to learning within the Program and to adapt to changing needs and circumstances. It is governed by the Alliance Executive through the Director General of the WorldFish Center and the Director of the CGIAR. The Program receives advice from and has active two-way communications across the CGIAR through an Advisory Group consisting of 16 senior scientists, research managers and information professionals representing multiple communities and functional levels in the CGIAR. A three-year ICT-KM Program strategic plan was drafted in 2003 with the active participation of the Advisory Group. Together with the 2004 Investment Plan, the strategy gives overall direction to the Program and has provided the necessary context for designing the projects currently in the ICT-KM Program portfolio. To obtain ideas for future programming, the Program staged an online consultation in March The more than 200 participants included CGIAR staff, partners and external experts. 5

6 The Program is managed by the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of the CGIAR, supported by a program associate and a program manager. During the current reporting period, two consultants were retained, one dealing with strategic issues and project coordination, the other with monitoring and evaluation (M&E). The CIO Office is hosted by the WorldFish Center at its headquarters in Penang, Malaysia. The 2004 budget for the CIO Office and program management was approximately USD 430,000. A significant accomplishment during the past year has been the integration of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) into Program management. This component ensures that the Program responds appropriately to a changing environment that it is able to make course corrections along the way. Thus, M&E is not just a mechanism of accountability but also an important learning tool. To date, 33 staff (Project Coordinators and others) have been trained in M&E methodologies. In addition to an initial workshop on M&E principles and practices, the ICT-KM Program continues to offer technical assistance on M&E matters to its project coordinators. As a spin off from the ICT-KM s M&E training efforts, two other CGIAR Programs (Gender and Diversity and Internal Audit) have adopted a similar methodology. Other programs and projects are following the example. The implementation of this plan led to the production of a detailed internal annual report written specifically for staff of the ICT-KM Program, project coordinators and contributors, and other stakeholders with a direct role in the Program. The current document is an abridged version of the internal, more learning focused report. Together, the two documents provide a baseline against which to track and assess the Program in the future. Coordinating Actions The Program delivers a number of Program-wide activities to promote economies through system-wide contracts, centralized project management and better business practices. During the reporting period, through cross- Center agreements for software licensing and electronic services, considerable savings were gained. While most of these system-wide arrangements were achieved through central coordination, Centers have also offered to share their deals with each other. In 2004, savings in this category amounted to approximately USD 520,000-20% more than the total ICT-KM Program Management expenditures for 2004! Additional savings were gained through the CGIAR library consortium which organizes joint subscriptions to many titles. The Program has provided centralized project management around several technology initiatives (Active Directory deployment and the Exchange 2003 update for example). The Program has encouraged the adoption of Project Manager, developed initially by CIAT, by seven Centers. Better business practices are being promoted by the Program. Two good practice notes (on Business Continuity Management and Formulating IT performance Indicators) were produced with the CGIAR Internal Audit Unit 6

7 and disseminated in the past year. Program Communication News, special reports, a quarterly newsletter and other information about the ICT-KM Program and projects are available to all stakeholders through a renewed website (ictkm.cgiar.org) launched by the CIO team in November Through the advisory group network, the monthly ICT-KM Program newsletter provides updates on projects and program activities for the CGIAR at large. The program has been featured in a number of journal articles relevant to Knowledge Management. A Global Knowledge Program: Project portfolio During the reporting period, professionals from across the CGIAR system designed and launched 14 projects covering a range of ICT-KM topics, all approved between March 2004 and January The map on page 11 indicates the locations of the project coordinators and some project activities. The projects are organized into three complementary thrusts: ICTs for Tomorrow s Science, Content for Development, and A CGIAR without Boundaries. These in turn correspond loosely to three of the Program s main areas of work, namely those related to Connectivity infrastructure, effective management of Content and a learning Work Culture. Six projects are working in the area of Connectivity infrastructure and scientific innovation: Global Advanced Research Networks (ARN) is helping additional Centers get connected to high-speed academic research networks (Internet 2). This small project hopes to initiate a multiplier effect through demonstrating the advantages of such connectivity Second-Level Connectivity is dramatically improving the Internet connectivity of many of the larger remote offices, especially those in Africa. Fifteen sites have been surveyed in preparation for implementation of connectivity, and service providers have been identified. Work on the ICT Briefcase, which will contain best practice guides, recommended procedures and processes, Operating System and freeware applications, is underway Disaster Resilience and Data Preservation was aimed at developing policies and pilot approaches for the preservation of mission critical data at the Center and System levels. This project is currently being reconfigured. Desktop Video Conferencing (VC) is demonstrating how affordable desktop video conferencing technology can enhance the work of communities of practice. Consortium for Spatial Information (CSI) is nurturing the evolution of the community of spatial information experts and is developing a suite of software tools for facilitating the handling of geo-referenced data. The CSI GeoPortal was created and has received 6,000 unique site visits since November Immediately after the 7

8 Asian tsunami disaster on 26 December 2004, the portal was called into service to provide a data dissemination platform for emergency response maps. Intelligent Information Systems is piloting the development of an expert system for plant protection. It was recently approved and held its start-up workshop. In pursuit of more effective management of Content, seven activities under the Content for Development project are working jointly to build a Virtual Resources Center (VRC) to be launched during The VRC, consisting of an Intranet, an Extranet and a Virtual Library, will serve as the common electronic venue for CGIAR staff and external partners to search for and obtain a range of information products and to collaborate on activities. The inter-dependencies and information flows between projects are represented in the schematic below. On the basis of prototypes produced and the results of studies done to date, final decisions on platforms, policies and procedures for the VRC and its constituent projects were taken at a meeting hosted by IPGRI in May Operational implementation will ensue in time for official launching of the VRC at the CGIAR 2005 Annual General Meeting in December. Two of the projects are examples of specific types of content, namely, training content. On-Line Learning Resources (OLR) is creating a portal for the CGIAR community for training specialists. Three test OLR sites were created to allow CGIAR Centers to discover and upload learning resources. And significant progress was made on standards for describing CGIAR Learning Objects. The Virtual Academy for the Semi-Arid Tropics (VASAT) is providing an electronic platform to support the information needs of downstream learning communities in semi-arid regions. The VASAT framework for ICT use is considered viable for tsunami relief and rehabilitation processes in India. Linkages with the OLR project and the Global Open Agriculture and Food University (Go-AFU), an initiative of the CGIAR, are being actively explored. 8

9 The Diagram below describes how the activities within the Content for Development project work to organize data and information from the 15 Centers and other sources. 9

10 Note that the CSI is listed on the Content schematic as an example of a different type of information that will be accessible through the VRC georeferenced data. While relevant to all projects and Program activities in one way or another, there is one project, Knowledge Management/Sharing (KM/S), that is working directly on influencing a learning Work Culture. The project has reviewed and shared past lessons related to KM/S within the CGIAR, completed one and started three other pilot projects aimed at building KM/S capacity at the working level as examples for replication, developed a tool kit of KM/S tools and approaches, carried out a study of relevant KM/S human resource policies within a subset of CGIAR Centers and held an extremely successful workshop to train CGIAR staff in facilitation skills. Projects in the Investment Plan spent approximately USD 1,200,000 in Stakeholder feedback Among the M&E tools used by the Program to track progress are annual Internet-based surveys. The initial set sought feedback from project coordinators, Directors general, human resources managers, and a sample of other stakeholders who are aware of the Program s activities or have shown an interest in them. The Project Coordinators were mostly positive with overall Program management and opportunities to influence the goals and direction of the Program. Timely decision making and provision of resources and provision of M&E guidance were also seen positively. Of the four sets of respondents, other stakeholders responded the most positively about Program performance, with the majority stating that they were somewhat or extremely satisfied with Program management and reporting, with the opportunities presented to them to influence program goals, and with the fostering of collaboration among Centers. The external evaluator s assessment of the results indicates that the Program is seen as having had a positive influence in its mandated area. However, familiarity with the Program and its achievements is still patchy. Some key observations and conclusions drawn by the external evaluator include the need for: more intensive dissemination of progress and achievements to key stakeholders; more proactive efforts to forge linkages across Centers and projects; more technical support to projects; and clearer, simpler reporting guidelines. A potential problem involving time allocation priorities between working for one s Center versus working for system-wide initiatives was noted. 10

11 Concluding note The ICT-KM Program and its pilot projects, along with other reform initiatives within the CGIAR, are working toward the common goal of transforming the Centers into a single, finely tuned system an organized concentration of intelligence, knowledge, creativity, technology and other resources that will allow us to do a better job of boosting food security and alleviating poverty in developing countries a coordinated transportation system. Given the integral role we have assigned to monitoring and evaluation in this Program, it should be clear that we are fully committed to accountability, open learning, and responsiveness to the changing global environment of research for development. Following these principles can only improve our chances of succeeding at the complex and, in many ways, risky task assigned to the ICT-KM Program. That task is nothing less than the metamorphosis of our knowledge-sharing habits and methods of collaboration across geography, disciplines and institutions. Although the ICT-KM Program is still in its infancy, we have come a long way in a short period. There is indeed much to celebrate and much to reflect on for the future. Progress to date has depended in large measure on the dedication and hard work of the project coordinators, their project teams, the advisory group and our governance members. The CIO Office thanks them all for their valuable contributions. While launching and guiding such an ambitious and geographically dispersed initiative has not been without its challenges, we believe the significant progress to date provides a solid foundation for our future plans. During the next phase, our program motto Collaborate, create, communicate will again be pursued with enthusiasm. In that spirit, we invite feedback from our many stakeholders. 11

12 The ICT-KM Program in Action 12