Presentation by Dr. Stephen RudgardChief, Knowledge and Capacity for DevelopmentFood and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

III Conferência Internacional sobre Inclusão Digital e SocialBrasilia, Brasil. 16-19 Novembre , 2010

Bridging the Rural Digital Dividethe value of a global community of practice

An international initiative that aims to reinforce the value of global dialogue and cooperation to address emerging issues around the role of ICT as an instrument of sustainable agricultural and rural development.

The e-Agriculture Community of Practice

The e-Agriculture Community of Practice is active on three levels:

• Virtual web-based platform (www.e-agriculture.org)

• Face-to-face meetings and events

• In-country interventions through partners

• Community members interact with each other and contribute a range of resources in the form of case studies, good practices and lessons learned, documents, publications, links, learning resources, news and events information.

The e-Agriculture Community of Practice

Over 7,000 members

from + 150 countries

Visits to www.e-agriculture.org (2009/10) N

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The Community includes:• policy makers• rural service providers• development practitioners• farmers• NGO and CSO staff • researchers• information and communication specialists

in agriculture and rural development.

The e-Agriculture Community of Practice

KEY TOPICSImportant issues identified by the community:

1. Mobile telephony in rural development2. Public-private partnerships

Public-private partnerships in rural development

KEY TOPICS

• occur at community level providing information and advisory services addressing the needs of producers

• public sector mandates for provision of information and services are enhanced through local context in a commercial environment added by the private sector

Agricultural Research Information for Development

A Global Community

ARE THEY TRULY ACCESSIBLE FOR ALL?

AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH OUTPUTS

Content in Google from universities

Graph by FAO. Source data from www.webometrics.info (Webpages from universities. January, 2009)

Network of collaborationCluster of countries with strongest partnerships (by papers)

Source: Thomson-Reuters (April, 2010).

Nov-2010

Open Access Repositories

Source: Repository Maps - repository66.orgPowered by Google

World Research Outputs (share growth)

Source: Thomson-Reuters (April, 2010).

Brazil: Research Outputs“Natural knowledge”

Source: Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico and Thomson-Reuters.

Accessible information

• Advocacy/Policy for Open Access

• Open Access projects and products:

- Dialogo Cientifico Project (DiCi)

- Brazilian Digital Library of Thesis and Disertations (BDTD)

- Sistema Eletrônico de Editoração de Revistas – (SEER),

- OASIS.br , etc.

Accessibility of research outputs in some International Centres

Centre A Centre B Centre C

BibliographicReferences

Full Text Resources Search Engines

Graph by FAO. Source data from Agricultural Information Worldwide. Vol. 3. No.1 (2010)

Global and Local Challenges in Research Communication

• Capacities– Lack of institutional policies to enable research communication– Lack of specialized skills in complex digital technologies

• Diversity of Responses– Customized Information/Knowledge Systems – In-house IKM Programmes– Institutional Networks– National Initiatives– R&D Community Forums/Platforms– Virtual and Web2.0 tools for Participation/Interaction

A new way forwardCoherence in Information for Agricultural Research

for Development

A new partnership for truly accessible information

CIARD - new global movement formed in 2008 building on consultations

in 2005 and 2007to provide a platform for coherence

between information-related initiatives

Founding Partners

112 partners and growing…..

The Community

CIARD Consultations - 2009 Country representation

1st Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD), March 2010 Recommended that:

Stakeholders use the potential of multi-partner initiatives such as CIARD to facilitate availability and access to information and knowledge in innovative ways.

5th General Assembly of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), July 2010

Recommended that CIARD should:

advocate for more coherent approaches to knowledge sharing and communication of the outputs of agricultural research support development of national capacities for all types of stakeholders

Endorsement of

“To make public domain agricultural research information and knowledge truly accessible to all”

• All organizations that create and possess public agricultural research information disseminate and share it more widely

• CIARD partners will (a) coordinate their efforts, (b) promote common formats, (c) adopt open systems

• Create a global network of public collections of information

The Vision and Manifesto

To increase the benefits from investments in agricultural research and innovation for development,

the partners in the CIARD initiative have agreed to make research outputs truly accessible, based on a

common set of values:• Advocate effective investments

• Establish coherent systems and services• Communicate content

• Develop and strengthen capacities

The Values

CIARD: Benefits to Institutions

• increased national/international visibility and use of their research output and content services

• increased exchange of information content between their system(s) and others

• increased awareness of other research outputs through information content and services

• increased access to specialised expertise and knowledge and other partners’ proven solutions

CIARD: Institutions’ Contributions

• promote and implement the CIARD vision and objectives

• register products and services on research outputs through the CIARD RING

• adopt/promote international standards related to digital research outputs

• register institutional profile on Checklist

• share lessons learned and experiences

Advocacy Task Force

Capacity Building Task Force

Content Management Task Force

Developing Institutional Readiness

Introduce and gain support for the CIARD Manifesto and Values in your institution

Have your institution recognised as a CIARD partner

Adopt a formal institutional information/ communication strategy

Develop the capacities of your institution to achieve the CIARD Checklist

Develop national/local partner networks to share resources and skills

Increasing the Availability, Accessibility and Applicability of Research Outputs

Ensure your research outputs are available digitally. Develop institutional or thematic information repositories of

your outputs as open archives. Use international metadata standards, data exchange

protocols, and agricultural vocabularies and thesauri. Develop a clearly defined licensing policy for your outputs. Optimize the structure and the content of web sites for

search engines. Share metadata by participating in international information

systems. Use ‘social’ Web 2.0 media and applications to share your

outputs. Build formal and informal networks to to repackage your

outputs.

Checklist of Good Practices

Pathways to achieve the Checklist

• Global registry of information sources and services in agriculture

• information providers register their services in various categories – e.g.– Documents repositories: 68– RSS feeds – news &events: 18

Routemap to Information Nodes and Gateways

http://ring.ciard.net/

III Conferência Internacional sobre Inclusão Digital e Social

IBICT. Brasilia, Brasil. 16-19 Novembre ,2010

Bridging the Rural Digital Divide:the value of a global community of practice

THANK YOU

for more information please visit

www.e-agriculture

www.ciard.net