The Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) in collaboration with Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) organized “Refresher Training of Focal Points on the CountrySTAT/FENIX System” from 24-28 July, 2016 at the ECO Secretariat, Tehran. Representatives from Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Islamic Republic of Iran, Kyrgyz Republic and Republic of Tajikistan attended the training. After five day’s hectic discussion the workshop came up with following conclusions/recommendations:

Feedback

• The participants expressed appreciation for the efforts made by the ECO Secretariat for hosting the event and expressed hope to work in collaboration with the ECO Secretariat more frequently in future
• The general impression about the new system is very positive; it is evaluated to be userfriendly and easy to handle
• The audience agreed that the FENIX system would facilitate data dissemination among various institutions of a country as well as with other partners
• It includes interesting features that may help facilitating data sharing and encouraging national organizations to overcome the challenges related to restrictive data policies
• It might be instrumental for decreasing the work load required for creating reports
• The system would help reducing printing and distribution costs of publications by availing those data and documents on the web downloadable from the site

Recommendations

• It would be important to nominate managerial and technical focal points in each country who would communicate with each other and exchange ideas, experiences and other information to coordinate the implementation of the regional network. FAO and the ECO Secretariat are requested to facilitate the establishment of this institutional structure
• FAO to create a demo instance of FENIX to be accessed by the ECO countries to show and promote the system at national and regional level. The demo sites will have to include tools that expose the most meaningful functionalities and modules of FENIX
• It is recommended to include the link of CountrySTAT in the Government websites
• Explore ways to connect FENIX with other systems collecting data via mobile devices (E.g. the data collection system of Kyrgyzstan)
• FAO should contact the heads of statistical organizations (NSO) and Agriculture Ministry to discuss the future of CountrySTAT and its implementation and establish a Team Working Group
• Ensure that the technology implemented by CountrySTAT will allow access and download of satellite images relevant for estimating crop yield and for missing data FAO to create an RSS feed to allow registered users to receive information (alerts) about new CountrySTAT events and meetings 
• More regional meetings need to be arranged, at least twice a year
• Reduce hours for theoretical training and increase time for practical sessions on the use of data uploading
• All documents related to the training should be shared at least one week before the event (earlier on the website) to allow participants to become familiar with education material
• In the future arrange technical training about the FENIX system in detail to explain the basis of the software architecture
• Include functionalities in the FENIX platform to export data as maps that can be downloaded in different formats (e.g. .jpg format)
• It is recommended that further training sessions will be attended by the same participants in order to ensure continuity of the activities and build on existing knowledge.