Allow me to summarize a few questions and answers from the webinar session. 

Do you have some suggestions on where the AgPack system could be housed institutionally in a country and how to approach the capacity building needs in small developing countries? 

The challenge with agriculture is that there is so much information that is relevant but it is dispersed among different Ministries and offices. There needs to be a strong actor or agency that should be willing to implement an Open Data Strategy. It can be the Ministry of Agriculture, but often we see that it is the Presidents Office that takes the lead, coming from their overarching role. It depends from country to country and the people working in the different institutions.  It is a complex process with many actors so it needs strong leadership.

GODAN is working on the need for capacity building work. The concrete action linked to this is start of a capacity building working group.The working group is currently working on a online curriculum and every month webinars are organized within the frame of Open Data, Agriculture and Nutrition. 

Collecting of data involves resources. How can we persuade people to publish their data? 

We need to look into "what is there for them?" if we talk about publishing data. That is the key question that is relevant as well for the public sector as for the private sector. There is not going to be a clear momentum if there is no actual interest in publishing open data. Publishing data can show which expertise you have as an institution for example. AgPack wants to encourage Governments to open up data and think about what that can mean to them, and this can also apply to the private sector. Syngenta is, for example, working on a publication of data about sustainability of different projects they run. Open data is part of their strategy of being transparent and gaining trust from the consumers.  There is an interest for them, a reason behind it for them to publish data openly. If we can pinpoint where the interest is we can come to a sustainable open data model.

What is the complementarity with ReSAKKS from IFPRI? 

CAADP indicators are indicators that are agreed upon by the countries of the African Union upon to monitor indicators related to regional food security programmes. RESAKKS is the statistical framework in which this has happened. There are a couple of linkages tot the AgPack would be that if you are doing the monitoring anyway, and you are collecting findings and information, don’t make it only available at the national level, but make it available globally, and do not only make the statistics available but also the data behind them, so they can be re-used for other purposes.

The application of data goes beyond the evaluation of policies. You can turn it around. Here are the data and how are you going to use them to implement your policies. What applies to ReSAKKS and the CAADP indicators can also apply to the monitoring of the UN Development Goals – if we take the efforts to closely monitor towards the goals, why don’t we make the data  available so we can re-use them.

Would the most interesting data not be confidential data from the private sector?

The private sector has very interesting data. But what AgPack tries to do is to convince people with interesting data to publish it. AgPack has Governments as an audience and encourages them to publish data and they have. Both the public as the private sector have to take into account confidentiality and privacy issues. It is often more delicate in the private sector. Public sector often also has a business model behind their data – for example selling data on weather. Again it is looking at what we can gain from making data publically available.

Open Data hurdles are often linked to archaic copyright laws in developing countries. Does the AgPack address legal issue in the path towards opening data?

AgPack does not address the laws and regulations on open data directly. It does not solve the problem. The progress in open data is indeed hindered by laws that were not initially designed to deal with open data issues. There is space where data governance and laws could be developed more and model regulations could be proposed so different governments could use them for inspiration. There is a need in the wider perspective but AgPack does not solve it directly. It could be interesting to look at this and there is a possibility to add and refer to the existing resources, so please share them on the forum if you have any.

Examples of use of (open) data shared in the discussion after the presentation: 

1. Junta de Andalucía Observatorio de Precios (Price Observatory)

2. Gro-Intelligence (www.gro-intelligence.com) – only available for subscribers

3. AgrIinsight (www.agriinsight.com) 

For those who have missed yesterday's webinars, you can still catch up and watch the recording of Andre Jellema's presentation of the Agricultural Open Data Package. 

Thank you for your questions.

The forum page was intended to be a publicly accessible page for people to ask questions regarding the call for good and promising practices - on methodology - practical issues -or issues they encounter when they started documenting their experience. This particular forum page is for Questions and Answers - other forums are discussions. 

So far people prefered to ask their questions per email rather than on this forum page.

At the bottom of the forum page you can see who is connected at the same time as you are

Under http://www.e-agriculture.org/members you can connect with other members. You can search for people and connect with them through the platform sending them private messages. If you want to connect with someone on the forum page - you can click on Send PM under their picture. 

I hope this answers you questions! 

Thank you all for your contributions! We are hoping to read more during these two last days of the forum before we wrap up. The results will be publised after the forum in a policy brief. We will keep all contributers informed.