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Minutes
of the First AARINENA-RAIS ICT Steering Committee Meeting
28-29
July 2003
Status of Implementation of RAIS
Reports
by Regional Representatives
Analysis
of Strengths and Weakness of Current Regional Situation
Review
of the RAIS Requirements, Strategy and Implementation
Development
of Implementation Plan of RAIS
Appendix
A - List of Participants
1. Members from, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, AOAD, FAO, GFAR, and ICARDA have attended the opening session. The members from Iran and Kuwait could not attend the first day of the meeting. Samhaa El-Beltagy from CLAES, Egypt was invited to attend the meeting. Appendix A includes the list of participants.
2. Dr. Fardous, as Chair of the Regional Forum, gave the AARINENA statement in which he emphasized the important role of the AARINENA-RAIS in strengthening and further developing the information systems of NARS in the WANA region. He also expressed his appreciation for the lively discussions being carried out among the Steering Committee members on the RAIS project. Dr. Fardous mentioned that this is the first official meeting for the newly elected steering committee, and wished the participants good deliberations. At the end, he thanked ICARDA for organizing and hosting the meeting and GFAR for sponsoring the national delegates.
3. Dr. Giovannetti presented GFAR statement and emphasized GFAR’s support for this regional initiative led by AARINENA. He underlined the importance of improved dialogue and communications at the national, sub-regional and regional levels and that RAIS could provide the forum for this. He also highlighted the opportunity of economy of scale and synergism through an inter-regional dialogue between all the RAIS. The GFAR Secretariat should reach this purpose through the Global-RAIS programme.
4. Dr Samir Ahmed conveyed to the attendees regards from Prof. Dr. Adel el-Beltagy, Director General of ICARDA. In his statement Dr Ahmed stressed the importance of improving the information systems of WANA NARSs and wished the Steering Committee successful deliberations.
5. Prof. Dr. Ahmed Rafea gave a brief description of the Steering Committee activities during the last three months and touched on the objectives of the present meeting.
6. The delegates elected Dr. Nihad Maliha, ICARDA to serve as the Reporter during the meeting.
7. The agenda, attached as appendix B, was approved after being modified as follows:
a. The program of Monday 28 July 2003 was changed due to the late arrival of both representatives Mrs. Taraneh Ebrahimi, AARINENA-RAIS Webmaster (Iran) and Mrs. Mrs. Tahani Hussain (Kuwait) to be Reports from representatives of the three sub regions Magreb, Mashreq, and the Nile Valley and Red Sea.
b. The program of Tuesday 29 July 2003 was changed to include presentations from the remaining two sub regions, (the Arabian Peninsula and Central and West Asia) and, a briefing on the latest developments in AARINENA Website.
8. Dr Ahmed Rafea presented a review on the latest developments of RAIS with a summary on all activities that took place after the Cairo meeting and the election of the Steering Committee. The report documenting these activities was sent earlier by email to delegates and hard copies were distributed as well. These activities included:
a. The preparation of the TOR of the committee and its approval by AARINENA executive committee
b. Drafting a framework of the collaborative program that included 6 projects
c. Collecting and classifying the comments received by the SC members on the collaborative program
d. Preparing a questionnaire on NAIS for NARS’s in WANA region
9. Ms. Ebrahimi gave a description of the present AARINENA website and touched on the issues of further improvement of the Web site.
10. The SC members commended Mrs. T. Ebrahimi for her efforts and dedication to improving the AARINENA Web site. She was requested by the committee to prepare a provision work plan for improving the Website, circulating it to the SC members for their input before producing a final work plan for implementation.
11. There were five presentations by the regional representatives of Mashreq, Maghreb, the Nile Valley, West Asia, and Arabian Peninsula on the present situation of ICT and information management capacities and tools that are used or developed in these regions. The presentations aimed at determining common areas of strengths and weaknesses of the present information systems in the three regions.
13. Morocco and Iran presentation showed that there were efforts in building similar systems and Dr Rafea suggested that there is a need to assess these efforts in order to take into consideration while developing their NAIS.
14. Only one country that is Egypt has filled and returned the questionnaire that was distributed by the Chair of the Steering Committee. There was a suggestion to modify the present questionnaire by extending its coverage to include other areas.
15. There were two other short presentations by FAO on the Newly developed Resource Kit for training on Electronic Management of Agricultural Documents and by ICARDA on a new tool that was developed for ESCWA to collect data on experts that are interested in reconstructing Iraq.
16. The following areas of strengths were identified:
a. Egyptian experience in developing some very useful tools for information
b. Experiences in using the FAO’s AGRIS and CARIS tools (most countries of the region)
c. The efforts exerted in Morocco and Iran in the past
17. The following areas of weaknesses were identified:
a. Lack of well qualified human resources
b. Lack of national policy on information management
c. Language barriers (need multilingual system)
d. Poor communications at the sub-regional level
e. Poor communications infrastructure in some countries (bandwidth)
18. The following remarks were made by the participants
a. Sub-regional coordinators belonging to the RAIS Steering Committee will work with all member countries in their sub-regions to ensure better communications and participation in this exercise.
b. CLAES presented a new system with several tools that is in line with the RAIS system.
c. All participants agreed on the importance of the FAO training resource kit and regarded it as one of the tools that could contribute to improving the IT abilities of those who are involved in agricultural information management activities.
19. There was fruitful discussion on human resource development in the domain of managing agricultural information and electronic documents. It was agreed that AARINENA should capitalize on AOAD, FAO, and ICARDA long-term experiences in this area. To evaluate the actual situation of HR in the region, Mr. Magdi Latif (FAO) volunteered to prepare a draft questionnaire to be circulated to the SC members in September 2003 before producing a final version. The questionnaire will be distributed to all concerned institutions of the WANA region through the SC National representatives. A preliminary evaluation will take place during the Annual Training Workshop that will be carried out at ICARDA in October 2003, in collaboration with AOAD and FAO.
20. Dr Rafea presented the framework of the collaborative program of the RAIS system that has been distributed earlier by email to all members. The program was proposed to include 6 different projects namely:
a. Design of MIS Database
b. Design and Implementation of Experts Information System
c. Design and Implementation of Institutes Information System (IIS)
d. Design and Implementation of Projects Information System (PIS)
e. Design and implementation of Research Outputs Information System (RIS)
f. Electronic Forum for discussion,
21. The different projects were carefully reviewed by the delegate, the functional requirements were discussed, and some suggestions were made:
a. The gateway function that has multi-host database search engine, must be included as the seventh project
b. Adding Question-and-Answer service in Project 6.
c. Change the name of Project 1 from MIS to National Agricultural Information System (NAIS).
d. The need for Ontology (classification system, e.g., AGROVOC) should be explicitly (project 1)
e. How to avail, through the web, national information that are maintained and managed by national people taking into consideration that NAIS in each country may be implemented using different platforms and tools (project 1)
f. Virtual Library of research outputs should be included (project 5)
g. Several discussion forums are already in existence, we should look at the possibility of adopting one of them (project 6)
22. The following comments were raised related to the strategy that should be considered in the collaborative program and system implementation:
a. Special consideration should be given to different tools that have been developed in the region, in other regions, and elsewhere. For example, FAO has developed AGRIS and CARIS systems and there is a need for us to revisit these systems and see how we can improve them.
b. Have a look at the new AGRIS strategy
c. Emphasis should be placed on Content Management rather than on technology
d. There is n need to build the system from scratch if it contains the basic dataset that will be identified in project 1 and a wrapper could be implemented to provide the needed information to the gateway function
23. Due to the late arrival of the Iranian and the Kuwaiti representatives, it was agreed to stretch this session to include couple of hours of the next days morning session after listening to the presentations by the two national representatives from Kuwait and Iran. Therefore, the discussions that were carried out during this session were combined with those of the second day.
24. The morning session was started by a briefing given by Dr. N. Maliha (Rapporteur) on the first day activities and discussions made followed by comments by Drs. A. Rafea and JF Giovannetti:
- Urge the sub-regional representatives to contact representative of the countries who were present in Cairo meeting and try to contact representatives from other countries who were not present at that meeting
- Stress the importance of improving communications between the country representatives serving on the Steering Committee with all countries of their respective regions.
25.
The priorities were set as follows:
a.
RAIS phase 1 should include
Projects 1 and 6
b.
Remaining set of projects 2-5 and 7 will be implemented as second phase.
26. An action plan and its time frame were suggested as follows:
a. A draft project proposal will be developed by the end of September and will be circulated to different stakeholders to ensure exchange of ideas and experiences through inter-regional discussions (Drs A. Rafea and JF Giovanneti).
b. A final draft of the proposal and a concept note will be developed based on the feed back generated through the inter-regional dialogue (December 2003), after the other regional workshops expected to be launched by the GFAR Secretariat before the end of this year.
27. The project will be presented by AARINENA to donors for funding.
28. During this stage GFAR kindly offered to allocate some catalytic funds to speed up the initial process.
29. Sustainable funding strategy
- There is a need to ensure higher management buy-in and support, find means for staff motivation (AARINENA could play a major role)
- Phase 1 of the project should include financial requirements for the different modules that will be included in phase 2.
30. Dr. Ahmed Rafea, Chair of RAIS Steering committee presented a brief summary of the proceedings of the meeting, and the actions to be taken next:
a.
To ensure participation in various activities and improved communication
at the regional and sub-regional levels, AARINENA will be requested to support
SC sub-regional members in identyfying focal points for each country in the
region.(SC Members and AARINENA)
b.
To prepare a questionnaire to collect information about the current
system that are related to the proposed modules in the collaborative program in
the region, and distribute it to all countries in the region through the SC
sub-regional members. (Dr Ahmed Rafea) .
c.
To draft a project proposal
for Human Capacity Building based on NARSs actual needs. FAO will carry out the
need assessment study, by preparing a questionnair by end of September. (Dr
Magdi Latif)
d.
To prepare a provision work plan for improving the Website, circulating
it to the SC members for their input before producing a final work plan for
implementation.(Ms Taraneh Ebrahimi)
a. To draft a project proposal by the end of September and to circulate it to different stakeholders to ensure exchange of ideas and experiences through inter-regional discussions (Drs A. Rafea and JF Giovannetti).
32. Dr. Mohan Saxena, ICARDA’s ADG concluded the meeting by emphasizing the importance of information management and ICARDA’s commitment to improving the information systems of WANA NARSs and assured ICARDA’s full support to all AARINENA activities.
33.
Next Meeting of the Steering Committee will take place in IRAN, 10
February 2004. (This date has been changed to be 17 February 2004 while
preparing the minutes upon the request of Ms Taraneh Ebrahimi because there is a
national holiday in Iran on 10 February 2004. All members were informed with the
new date).
Appendix
A - List of Participants
|
|
Name |
Tel., Fax. and Email |
|
1 |
Dr. Abdel Naby Fardous, |
Tel: 00962-6-4725017 |
|
2 |
Mr. Raed F. Hattar |
Tel: 00249 472176 83 |
|
3 |
Mr. Robert Portegies Zwart |
Tel: +39-06-570-54347 |
|
4 |
Mr. Magdi Latif |
Tel.:
00202 3316148, 010 1772187 Fax.:
00202 7485981 e-mail:
Magdi.Latif@fao.org |
|
5 |
Dr.
Jean-François Giovannetti |
Tel: +39.06.57.05.56.98 |
|
6 |
Dr. Ahmad Rafea |
Tel.: 202 3317601,
3317602,6704727 Fax.:202 7617628 e.mail:
rafea@esic.claes.sci.eg |
|
7 |
Dr. Samhaa El-Beltagy |
Mrs. Samhaa El-Beltagy |
|
8 |
Dr.
Nihad Maliha, |
Tel.:+963
21 2213433 e.mail:
n.maliha@cgiar.org |
|
9 |
Mrs. Taraneh Ebrahimi AARINENA-RAIS Secretariat Tabnak Ave., Chamran Highway,
Tehran, Iran |
Tel: 9821-2402987 |
|
10 |
Mrs. Tahani Hussain |
e.mail: thussain@kisr.edu.kw |
|
11 |
Mr. Abdel Aziz AL-Louzi |
Tel.: 9962 6 4725071 Fax.: 962 6 4726099 e.mail: louzi@ncartt.gov.jo |
|
12 |
Mr. Abdelmajid bencherqi |
Tel: +212 037 775530 Fax : 212.37.77.40.03 |
AARINENA First ICT Steering Committee Meeting
28-29
July 2003
ICARAD, Aleppo, Syria
08:00
– 09:00
Arriaval in Tel Hadia / Registration
Statement by the Director General of ICARDA
Statement by the President of AARINENA
Statement by the Representative of GFAR
Statement by the Chair of RAIS Steering Committee
10:00
– 10.30
Coffee Break
Progress Report, Review of RAIS Strategy (Dr. Ahmed Rafea)
AARINENA-RAIS Web Site: Present Status (Ms. Taraneh Ebrahimi)
11:15
- 13:00
Reports by Regional Representatives
Arabian Peninsula (Kuwait Representative)
Mashreq (Jordan Representative)
Maghreb, (Morocco Representative)
Nile Valley and the Red Sea (Egypt Representative)
West and Central Asia, (Iran Representative)
13:00
– 14:00
Lunch
14:00 – 16:00 Analysis of Strengths and Weakness of current regional situation
·
FAO presentation on the progress on the Information Management Resource
Kit.
·
(Discussion on Strength points such as software tools, human resources,
and support by Organizations interested in the region. Weak points such as lack
of machines and basic software, lack of infrastructure, and trained personnel.)
16:00 - 16:30
Coffee Break
16:30
– 18:00
Review of the RAIS Requirements, Strategy and Implementation
(The discussion should start by discussing the basic modules suggested in the collaborative programs document. Then the functional requirements of each module are to be specified. The strategic issues are to be examined such as standards, basic data set. Implementation issues are to investigated such as what are the specifications of the tools to be used)
8:30
- 17:00
Development of Implementation Plan of RAIS
(Discussions
on: Setting-up priorities, action plan and time frame for implementation,
distribution of responsibilities (Who will do what), and financial needs and
sustainable funding strategy)
(Note:
We will break at 10:30, and16:00 for coffee and 13:00 for Lunch)
17:00
– 18:00
Closing Session
(Next meeting date and place are to be decided)