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The Digital Services Portfolio (DSP) is a digital platform that delivers text and other multi-media messages directly to the mobile devices of consumers. The DSP has been primarily used by FAO to deliver country-specific advisory messages (both manual and automatic) to farmers and other stakeholders in the food and agriculture sector, but it can be configured to support broader contexts as well.
The DSP delivers any type of multi-media message that is created manually by a designated message creator(s), or automatically through direct integration with an underlying information system. Messages are subsequently delivered directly to the mobile devices of users over the internet, or via SMS.
Additionally, the DSP enables message creator(s) to group messages into any number of thematic areas. Thematic areas address a unique subject matter (e.g., nutrition, livestock) and can blend messages originating from global and/or regional to local sources, therefore providing a tailored experience to address a wide range of needs.
For example, the first country rollouts of the DSP included themes for Weather and Crop Calendar, Livestock, AgriMarket Place, and e-Nutrifood. Subsequent country rollouts added themes for Citrus Production, Date Palm Production, and a Covid 19 food safety theme following the onset of the 2020 pandemic.
The DSP’s stakeholders include FAO as the platform’s creator, owner and operator, a project leader and related partners who are responsible for planning and executing the rollout of a new instance of the DSP through a new or existing FAO project, a business owner, including one or more message creators, who is responsible for all content and promotion of their instance of the DSP, and finally the end-users, who will consume messages.
The scope of a new DSP rollout is usually at the sub-national level and can scale up to the national level. In most cases, this level also represents the maximum scope for a message to be useful. A DSP instance has the potential to be used more widely thanks to its underlying platform technology, which is based on the globally available Google Cloud Platform.
A DSP rollout requires a fixed one-time investment (funded by a FAO project) to make it available to intended beneficiaries, as well as an ongoing yearly investment to cover overall maintenance, message creation, and other activities required to keep the DSP instance fit-for-use and purpose.
Regarding the fixed investment, project leaders will need to budget the cost and effort required to rollout a new instance of the DSP through a FAO project. The amount of these costs will depend on many factors , for example – the local conditions in the case of a country rollout or the need for inception phase activities to train and promote the relevant stakeholders in the operating organization.
Regarding the ongoing yearly costs, some corporate costs are required to keep the core DSP platform operational across all instances, as well as satisfying unexpected increases in demand for messages from any one DSP instance. These costs are incurred by backend components hosted on the Google Cloud Platform, and by network providers along the path from DSP to a user’s mobile device. These corporate costs may be back charged to business owners in the future, particularly for those DSP instances that experience significantly greater utilization of the core platform’s computing resources.
Manual messages are created on demand by anyone who has been entitled to create messages by the organization who is acting as business owner. In the case of a country rollout, for example, message creators may include FAO colleagues, officials from the ministries and/or local authorities, or members of a partnering NGO. Message creators are given exclusive access to DSP’s easy-to-use and flexible features for authoring messages and configuring their delivery options.
Automatic messages, on the other hand, are generated by a trusted underlying information system that has been previously integrated with a DSP instance. All DSP instances benefit from out-of-the-box integrations with a catalogue of prominent FAO information systems that includes the FAO Water Productivity Portal (WaPOR). Data from this catalogue are made available through an open content licensing model.
In a normal DSP rollout, for example at the country level, the activities spanning the four steps below will need to be integrated into the relevant phases of a new or existing FAO project. The cost and time required to perform these activities will vary depending on the country’s needs.
Step 1: Agree on Scope, Objectives, and Commitments
Project leaders and related partners will need to agree on scope, objectives and commitments for their DSP rollout in the broader context of the executing project. Any assumptions and limitations (e.g., country capacity) will need to factor into decisions taken in this first step.
Step 2: Build Costed Implementation Plan
In step two, project leaders and partners agree on the time, scope and cost of their DSP rollout and integrate the resulting plan into the relevant phases of the funding FAO project.
Step 3: Build the baseline capacities and DSP data
During step 3, project leader and partners execute the rollout plan. At this stage, relevant personnel may need be hired to configure the DSP’s baseline features as well as to prepare the required data and content for delivery.
Step 4: Promotion and outreach
By this step, the new DSP instance has been created and configured, and control and responsibility are handed over to the business owner who will focus on promotion, outreach and monitoring operations. If a country is acting as a business owner, then FAO’s involvement in this step may stop at the pilot phase of the rollout.
Questions regarding the core DSP platform, and all related information technology dependencies should be sent to FAO’s Digitalization and Informatics Division (CSI), at [email protected]. FAO Division of Digitalization and Informatics I can provide information on previous deployments; review planning proposals; shall provide technical support for the platform during rollout and operation.