The Forestry Department of FAO presents forest and forestry information through its website (www.fao.org/forestry). Under the Country navigation tab, all countries are presented as to its forest resources, forest management and forest products and trade (Figures 1 and 2). Furthermore, contact information and links are given by country. The country information system addresses a central task and mandate of FAO - to provide accurate and recent information to its member countries, international organisations and the public at large.
Figure 1. The world navigation page on the FAO Forestry website (http://www.fao.org/forestry/fo/country/nav_world.jsp).
The forestry country information site covers a broad set of subjects and involves most units at the Forestry Department. At the moment, the main driving force behind the development is the Global Forest Resources Assessment 2000 (FRA 2000) for which information is collected and organized for all countries at the year 2000. Another major information effort is the collection of forest products and trade statistics (FAOSTAT) which has been done for more than 40 years. The purpose of the country information presentation on the web is to give a comprehensive profile of the forestry sector in all countries.
The country information site is built for expansion. For the time being, about 30 different pages have been identified, and only a few countries have more than 10 of these published. The intentions are to (a) gradually and continually increase the number of published pages for each country, (b) to identify and add more pages to the table of contents over time, and (c) to translate contents into the FAO official languages (English, French, Spanish, Chinese and Arabic).
Figure 2. Example of a country page. Note the table of contents to the left for navigation between pages within the country.
One of the major challenges with information systems is maintenance. With several thousand pages already published, and many more to come, it is obvious that a number of persons must have access and tools to add and update the forestry country information. The data ownership must be decentralised and, given the global approach, the maintenance must be possible to carry out from any part of the world.
This paper is a manual for maintenance of texts in the country information system, using the web browser interface developed for this purpose.
