FAO’s Role in Information Management and Dissemination -
Challenges, Innovation, Success, Lessons Learned

Gauri Salokhe, Antonella Pastore, Barbara Richards, Sarah Weatherley, Anne Aubert, Johannes Keizer, Andrew Nadeau, Stephen Katz, Stephen Rudgard, Anton Mangstl

ABSTRACT

This article does not attempt to offer a complete description of FAO’s activities in the area of information management and dissemination. Instead, it tries to share some of the challenges faced in trying to manage the vast amount of information produced by FAO. This includes online publishing using current standards, ensuring information systems are driven by user needs and preferences, and facilitating information sharing. The paper presents lessons learned and goes on to present the idea of how the organization plans to move towards greater coherence, bringing standards, tools and methodologies for information exchange together under the auspices of an information management standards clearinghouse. The high costs of producing metadata systems is not new, the aim is to bring these costs down by reusing information management standards and reusing the metadata to provide users with new and better value-added services. Additionally, in response to the added requests for support at national levels for improving the information management infrastructure, FAO has responded with the first of a series of e-learning kits for information professionals to develop and improve their capacity to manage agricultural information.