Value Added Services

(Facilitator's note: I was going to save this one for later in the week, but a post by Gurusamy Gandhi in another area related to this, so I thought I'd go ahead and put it up and move his post here!) Value added services is an important part of the strategy. How can we make data work for us in more ways? What "value added" services can help us do that? Here is what is in the strategy: [quote]Activities addressing this component will be refined and informed with inputs from the user study proposed in Section 3.1. Coordinated activities designed for the creation of value-added information products and services from CGIAR Centers and NARs partners could include: • Centers' research management, impact assessment and marketing people working together to define information products that can improve the impact and uptake of their research. A priority will be given to cross-sectoral, cross-regional activities that are sustainable and bring together two or more CGIAR Centers and NARS partners. • Creation of CGIAR System or theme-level information products and services designed to inform and influence boundary partners to take action. • Creation of information products and services that synthesize and combine information from across thematic areas or regional priorities, involving several Centers and national partners, e.g. through using GIS technologies. • Joint CGIAR/NARS information products and services designed to provide information to support the NARS rural development agenda. • Innovative information activities or campaigns that encourage change in practices, scaling up of technologies and ideas. • Strengthening of information intermediaries to leverage and transform GPGs for other audiences (such as extension workers [in the case of farmers] or journalists [in the case of taxpayers and decisions makers in developed countries] • Identification and sharing of lessons learned through analysis of selected value-added products: the way they were created, the networks that were involved, their impact, and the actions needed to promote and increase their use. • There is a large number of software tools developed by the CG Centers which could be made available to the NARS on-line and which could provide a very important pathway to them to manage and analyze their data.[/quote] Which of these is most relevant to your context? What is least? What is missing?