Question 4: What actions should now be facilitated by the CIARD Task Forces?

Good morning everybody,

Important activities are already noted in the background document.

I would suggest, that we change the order: Priority at the moment, should have strategic actions, respectively to elaborate a clear-cut strategy, then intermediate actions may follow.

Framing the content and target groups has started, but needs to be finalized. Building up on that requirement on content and techniques can be listed. We should find out, which larger organizations would contribute data sets - if we want to benefit from those, we may have to take into account legal requirements as well, before we think about technical details.

I think in this period, it would be helpful if CIARD could carry out the coordination.

In terms of working groups - I think, it turned out during the last days, that we have experts in different fields, which could be brought together. Important are the interlinks between the working groups and sometimes it might be good to directly ask if organization could provide certains experts (e.g. IT-experts, legal advisors).

On long-term, I think could play an important role to find sponsors for the necessary infrastructure for the information sharing. Certainly, organization can provide experts and data and so on, but to involve rural stakeholders/ farmers externally financed capacity building will be necessary.

Yesterday I participated here in Brussels in an event "Open Government in Practice - Tapping the potential of Linked Open Data". Richard Cyganiak from DERI  (this is the guy whe "invented" the Linked Open Data cloud   cited in his presentation the   5 star rules given recently  in a talk by Tim Berners Lee:

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this is wonderfully summarized, what we have to do for efficient data sharing! Before that is the institutional and personal will to do so. Beyond this is the technology to use the data. 

I presented at the event  AGROVOC published as Linked Open Data.  We all agreed that standard vocabularies (on entities, metadata and content) are an important element for data sharing in an LOD environment.

As one follow of this meeting we are considering a workshop on LOD vocabularies in September organized by the EC (DIGIT-SEMIC.EU),  FAO (AIMS) and the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative together with DC2011 in September in Den Hague.  A very exciting prospective

Many of CIARD stakeholders who may be joinig the discussions after the final reminder has been sent to them might be asking themselves... okay, so what do I do with all this discussion now...

This section of the discussion is also aiming at that same question - what processes do the CIARD Task Forces have to facilitate for us to move the agenda forward? The categorisation of immediate actions and strategic actions 'immediately' makes one ask the question - 'Shouldn't there be something in between?' - at least that was my reaction; and I guess this discussion is about sharing our reactions to the questions!

I re-read Johannes' contribution and I believe the 5 stars approach, as well as the paragraph that followed are quite important. Let's start with what can and needs to be done at individual and institutional level (making information available so that people can point to it and adding the context) - this can be done at any level (instutional, national, sectoral, regional), but it makes most sense if these information resources can be linked to the CIARD RING.

As far as the other immediate actions mentioned (vocabularies, LOD etc.), even if it feels like it is not immediately feasible, at least, one can start a discusion at institutional level about it - and that could lead to concerted efforts along the lines of the CIARD principles.

Should we see 'tactical actions' being mentioned as the in between activities? Any examples come to mind? I believe that keeping the  issue of interoperability, data sharing alive at your workplace is a tactical action which keeps the item on the agenda. Maybe we should share such experiences more often among ourselves, not necessarily at global level, but among our national networks or regional networks, just to keep motivating our peers.

The technology and methods of implementation comes after you have been able to take the first step and got a few colleagues motivated to start this process of sharing information. Should you do it for them? You could, but you could be alone doing it.

As one of our participants at a regional workshop philosophically quoted last year: " if you want to move fast, charge forward alone; if you want to go far, its better to move together with others" - this is particularly relevant in the efforts we are embarking on, because its success depends on collective collaboration.

Having said all that, I am still asking myself, what is the first step? If you haven't done so yet, lets plan to revisit the CIARD RING together and have a conversation about it - perhaps we may be moving alone in our institutions but at least we know that we are not alone in this journey of implementing the CIARD! Is this an activity you think one of the Task Forces should be facilitating?

Krishan

I deeply agree with Krishan post and I would like to contribute to this discussion by pointing out a personal concern.

Embrapa is a great institution with 40 research centers distributed in Brazil. There is a centralized management at Brasilia, DF (Brazil´s Federal Capital) and many decisions have to be taken at that level.
 

Here in Campinas (State of Sao Paulo), where I work we are concerned to develop IT's tools to help organize and disseminate information. We have several initiatives (some already underway, others still being planned) that will meet the five stars mentioned by Johannes. But we need to complement our skills!
 

Our role is to develop projects of RD & I to support decision making processes. We participate as counselors members in various Embrapa´s work groups, but strategic and institutional  decisions are made by other levels and people.
 

I think that CIARD initiatives are a great opportunity to formalize formats of collaborative work between Embrapa and foreign partners. However, we must develop a work to facilitate Embrapa´s understandings  about the  importance of what we are discussing and help the decision to formally participate in this movement.
 

At this point I think CIARD could organize and help the institutions that are still on the sidelines of this issue to become better involved and to contribute in a future not too distant with their information contents. The first step would be to resolve some legal issues, signing cooperation protocols, e.g.

Dear Ivo,

I think, you are totally right - we all are able to act as person, but before most of us are allowed to act in the of the institute the information sharing project has to be institutionalized or at least have a clear frame - that is why I came with "legal issue" this morning right at the beginning.

Certainly, it would already be great if numerous individuals provide information, but the information (be it publications or expertise) of the staff of numberous institutions would be much better and that will only be possible if the institutions can assign responsibility for the information sharing project to certain actors.

I fully agree with Ivo, we must work hard and fast on the idea of better institutional understanding of CIARD. Indeed there is a mayor role for us international organization to "massage" the message so it becomes easy to understand to those side lined organizations.

Also I strongly believe that we need to put in practice what we preach so the first ones to have CIARD engagement shoud be our own institutions. Otherwise becomes pretty difficult to "sell" the idea to someone if you have not "eat your own dog food".

All the best,

Federico Sancho

Head of the Interamerican Information and Editorial Production Center for Agriculture

IICA

The five-star is  a very useful way to explain the various to open up data, "the stuff". Most of CIARD's  actions up till now do not concern "the stuff" itself, but the metadata that describes the stuff and makes it possible to discover "the stuff". If this is a new stage for CIARD, dealing with the stuff itself rather than its discovery and accssibility, this should be communicated in a clear way. Are all  stakeholders for this new phase on board?

Yes Hugo, perhaps the CIARD Initiative has actually matured to now start addressing 'the stuff' itself. Definitely, the metadata phase was and still is important. It also seemed to be a strategy not to fall into the trap of institutions spending time debating on whether they can actually share their information or not, but rather to meanwhile describe what it holds as information. The issue of sharing could come when the requests were coming in... So, for some of us, we are now having to cross this bridge, while for others (many others, like in Sub-Saharan Africa) we are yet to start the journey.

So, strategically, we need to continue with the efforts on the metadata phase, but in parallel start addressing the issue of information sharing with 'the stuff'. Hopefully, with such efforts on the latter, we will also be able to showcase how actions on the initial phase of describing 'the stuff' can eventually bring us closer to the long-term vision.

So, I would say that some of the stakeholders are ready to come on board, while others are still in need on mentoring (i will raise this issue of mentoring elsewhere)

The ranking system is a useful reminder that a lot of capacity still needs to be built in the  1-3 star range before many stakeholders can move on to address stars 4 and 5. I suggest that the strategy should include training and mentoring activities to help organisations at this level progress- eg. those that are just taking their first steps in web publishing or setting up their first OAI repository. 

Regarding groups ready to tackle more advanced issues such as LOD/RDF, it would be useful to develop documentation to guide people that are developing for or implementing these technologies. For example:

* Real world case studies of LOD/RDF/vocabulary usage in agricultural information systems / an agricultural context.

* Practical guidelines on LOD/RDF/vocabulary implementation and consumption in an agricultural information systems / an agricultural context.

The Open Archives Initiative did a great job with its OAIPMH implementation guidelines, it would be great to have similar guidance available for these too.

NACA: " I suggest that the strategy should include training and mentoring activities to help organisations at this level progress- eg. those that are just taking their first steps in web publishing or setting up their first OAI repository"

I fully agree, especially on the 'mentoring' aspect. Capacity-building is fine to upgrade our  understanding and skills, but is it enough to bring the 'capacitated institution' to action? This is where we need to learn from our colleagues in Advisory Services and Extension, because we are aiming for change in behaviour. This is a process that has to be spread over time and factored for in the capacity-development programming.

I am wondering to what extent we could describe the process of embarking on the first steps to actually being fully involved in CIARD-recommended practices in a series of phases. Once we have done that (albeit a rough scale), could we then identify mentors at each level who will coach someone else who has been at a 'lower' level? For those who have trained, you will appreciate that the best way to learn about what you do is to teach someone else how to do it - so the principle proposed here is the same - get those who have been able to go through one of the steps, to help someone else do it and so on. We could even organise it as a series of 'cohorts' or 'informal courses' that a few 'volunteers' would run for others. The only way you pay back for the skills you have acquired is that you need to demonstrate that you have been able to help someone else.

Have we ever tried to quantify the number of people the CIARD should be touching directly and indirectly? Are the numbers from the regional consultations an good indication? Can we make a good estimate so it helps us quantify the amount of resources we need (or we have to source ourselves) to acheive our goals? Such an exercise may be helpful in attracting funds for our activities.