Stephen Rudgard
| Organization | FAO |
|---|---|
| Organization type | International Organization |
| Country | Italy |
Stephen Rudgard is the Chief of Knowledge and Capacity for Development at FAO in Rome. He heads a global team which develops global standards for agricultural information management, he manages programmes aimed at strengthening capacities of institutions and individuals to manage and share information and knowledge, including coordinating the e-Agriculture community, and he facilitates several global partnerships that provide access to agricultural information. He also manages a team that coordinates FAO’s work to enhance its impact on all aspects of capacity development in agriculture. He joined FAO in 2000 after ten years at CAB International (CABI) as a Director in its Information for Development Programme. He has a PhD in Plant Pathology and worked for 10 years on cocoa disease management in Brazil and other countries in the Americas, before moving into agricultural information.
This member participated in the following Forums
Forum Forum: "Using ICT to enable Agricultural Innovation Systems for smallholders" September, 2012
Question 2 (opens 19 Sept.)
Submitted by Stephen Rudgard on Fri, 09/21/2012 - 17:56
FAO co-organized a regional consultation in 2012 that brought together senior officials from agricultural ministries of 12 countries in Asia, representatives of the private sector, and experts in Mobile Agriculture Information Services (MAIS). The main objective of the meeting was to explore the role of public sector in delivering MAIS and to examine the factors affecting sustainability based on examples from the region. In summary, the main findings that emerged were:
- Clear policies need to be formulated by governments and the public sector which define the principles for their involvement in the development of MAIS, that also take account national communication policy or ICT policy. This will require collaboration between the agricultural and telecommunications sectors of government.
- Partnership with the private sector has been shown to be an essential mechanism for the public sector to develop enhanced MAIS in a sustainable way. The roles and responsibilities for public and private sectors have to be clearly defined in each particular case, noting that the most frequent split of roles is that the former provides the content and the latter provides the delivery mechanism.
- Trustworthiness/Reliability of the public sector information/advice delivered through MAIS is of paramount importance to the people whose livelihoods depend on actions influenced by the information received. In this context, clear policy guidelines should be formulated to ensure validity and accuracy of the technical information/advice provided.
- Accountability for the quality (correctness and accuracy) of technical information/advice delivered through MAIS should be formally recognized by the respective public and private sector actors involved. This accountability should be defined in any partnership agreement between the actors in MAIS.
- Ideally, agricultural information services should be platform-independent, given that technology-specific services impose requirements on potential audiences and can greatly limit accessibility.