The ICT-KM Program of the CGIAR promotes and supports the use of information and communications technology (ICT) and knowledge management (KM) to improve the effectiveness of the CGIAR's work on behalf of the poor in developing countries.

The Need

The world is undergoing profound global economic, technological and social change. If the CGIAR is to achieve its mission, we must accelerate our efforts to generate, safeguard and share knowledge in new ways.

We must develop a culture of active information and knowledge sharing within the CGIAR. This involves timely yet cost-effective multi-directional communications, the know-how to collaborate, and the tools to support multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural teams.

Science's increasingly information-intensive practices require up-to-date communications infrastructure and information technology.

The CGIAR must maintain its current knowledge bases, create new ones, constantly add to their value and facilitate easy access for Southern partners to these assets and to the more tacit knowledge throughout the system.

The ICT-KM Program will address these needs by supporting champions for these changes throughout the system, exploring and encouraging incentives for change, and sponsoring projects that show demonstrable value and impact.

Imagine

• A common, advanced ICT environment across all centers, empowering researchers, managers and staff to achieve research and business goals through collaboration inside the CGIAR and with other institutes.
• New approaches to research, training and administration, made possible by advances in ICT and KM, which improve effectiveness, efficiency and the scope of CGIAR activities.
• Linkages among distributed human and information resources to exploit new techniques, from comparative biology to distance education.
• Vastly expanded corporate learning and a platform to make the CGIAR a leading provider of educational content.

This is what the ICT-KM Program strives to achieve.

Goals

Our first goal is to transform how the CGIAR works to preserve, produce, and improve access to the agricultural global public goods needed by the poor in developing countries.

Our second goal is to establish the CGIAR as a leading knowledge broker, bringing together all actors in an open, inclusive community for global public goods research for development.

ICT-KM Strategic Plan

The full version of the ICT-KM Program's Strategic Plan is available here.

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