ICT-KM Second Level Connectivity Project. Improving Communications and Access to Internet Resources for CGIAR Regional and Country Offices

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1 ICT-KM Second Level Connectivity Project Improving Communications and Access to Internet Resources for CGIAR Regional and Country Offices 1 st st April 2006 to 31 st March 2007 A Project of the ICT-KM Program Annual Report

2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY In the past year, the project has made notable progress in improvement of connectivity in the regional offices, though at a slower and cheaper rate than expected. Major activities included completion of site surveys in the sites that were pending and implementation in many sites. However, the project faced new challenges that led to delays in implementation at some African sites. Following the prioritisation exercise 42 sites covering 89 CG offices were selected for site surveys to be carried out. The following table shows a summary of the current status. Table 1: Status of Internet Upgrades Status March 2007 No. of Comments Sites No upgrade required 9 Offices closed or upgrade not required, Bangkok split into two sites Upgrade completed 14 4 upgraded following advice but no funds from the project Upgrade in progress 2 Lilongwe & Addis Ababa Upgrade approved but on hold 9 Original 16 sites condensed to 9 through collaboration Site Survey still to be carried out 2 Vientiane & Beijing Additional sites to be added 3 Where Centres have asked to change their original priority sites The audit of the CGIAR offices, carried out at the beginning of the project has been updated, using the information obtained from the site surveys. This has been used to update and add to the information on the map that is available on Cgxchange. The ICT Briefcase development is in its final stages; and we are relying on centres to provide information for populating the briefcase.

3 The design and implementation of the project has undergone several changes owing to the volatile nature of regional offices. The decision to obtain local individual solutions at each location as opposed to a single tender for satellite connection for the SSA region has proved successful and more locations have been upgraded in the past year. In SSA region, licensing issues have been on of the barriers to satellite implementation. Negotiating agreements between Centres with offices in the same location or between Centres and hosting NARS partners to share an installation has been another major barrier to implementation. There are many lessons learnt from the installations already carried out; and these will be invaluable to all future and in progress implementations.

4 PROJECT PERFORMANCE The current status of internet upgrades and installations is summarised in Table 2: Table 2: 2 : Status of Internet Upgrades Status March 2007 No. of Comments Sites No upgrade required 9 Offices closed or upgrade not required, Bangkok split into two sites Upgrade completed 14 4 upgraded following advice but no funds from the project Upgrade in progress 2 Lilongwe & Addis Ababa Upgrade approved but on hold 9 Original 16 sites condensed to 9 through collaboration Site Survey still to be carried out 2 Vientiane & Beijing Additional sites to be added 3 Where Centres have asked to change their original priority sites The detailed status of each site that forms part of the project can be found in Annex 2. Site Surveys and the Pre-implementation process The project started by Centres prioritising 42 sites that they considered to be in greatest need of improving their access to online resources. Site surveys have been completed at all but two (2) of these sites. Following the site surveys, Centres decided that they did not want to continue with upgrades at nine (9) locations. This was usually because the offices were being closed or the site survey showed that there were other issues hindering the use of online resources other than the internet connection. The decision taken by the host/lead Centre at two of these locations not to proceed with the installation needs to be looked at in more detail as they had a knock on effect on offices of other Centres at the same location. In Bangkok the decision of IWMI to close their office came after an arrangement had been made to connect the IRRI office in

5 Bangkok through the same internet connection. This was easily resolved by installing a separate internet connection at the IRRI office. In Nkolbisson, Cameroon IITA decided that the existing internet connection was sufficient (which is probably correct) for their requirements which are decreasing at that site. However, WorldFish and CIFOR, who are hosted by IITA are still not satisfied with the reliability and speed of the connection. In this case the project recommends that the hosted organisations arrange a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with IITA which sets the standards expected for the connection and IT support in general and the consequences of IITA not meeting the required performance. Similar situations have been seen at other locations and the SLA on its own may not resolve the problem and further negotiation between the hosts and hosted may be required. Three Centres whose office prioritisations have changed during the last 2 years have requested a change in their priority sites. The 3 sites that have been added to the list are IITA, Cotonou, Benin, where Bioversity and WARDA are also located; CIFOR Lusaka, Zambia and Bioversity, Tunis, Tunisia. Based on the site survey recommendations many Centres were required to complete one or more of the following tasks before the internet installation could begin: improve network infrastructure; improve local IT support; negotiate agreements with other CG Centres or hosting organisations. This part of the project always relied on the centres involved to lead and carry out the recommendations before the project can assist with implementing the improved internet connections and in many cases this has caused long delays. In fact, implementations at nine (9) locations are still on hold until this work is completed. To alleviate this situation the project will make available facilitators where negotiations are the main bottleneck to the installation proceeding.

6 Completed Internet connectivity upgrades In total sixteen (16) of the prioritised sites have completed or almost completed the upgrade of their internet connections. Two locations completed the upgrade of the internet connectivity in 2005; these are the CG Delhi office that hosts nine CG Centres and the IWMI office in Pretoria, South Africa. Communication and evaluation documents on the Delhi implementation have been produced and those of South Africa are in the production process. Important lessons learnt from these implementations have been invaluable in the preparation for other installations. In 2006 the project approved the plans for upgrading the internet connections in 10 locations. Those that have been completed are: Serdang, Malaysia; Accra, Ghana; St. Louis, Senegal; Kabul, Afghanistan; Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; Cairo, Egypt; Tashkent, Uzbekistan and Bamako, Mali. In Chitedze, Malawi and internet connection has been installed and staff at the campus are slowly being connected to the internet. The connection in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia is currently being upgraded following the commissioning of optic fibre gateway out of the country that has relieved contention and improved speed and reliability. A further 4 sites upgraded their internet connection at their own, minimal, expense following the site surveys and advice from the project. The 4 sites are Ankara, Turkey; IRRI Bangkok, Thailand; Zomba, Malawi and Anand, India. ICT Briefcase, Training Material and use of available resources. r The ICT Briefcase is an integral part of the project that aims to provide information and tools to help country and regional offices optimise the use of the improved connectivity and better manage and protect their data and information resources. CIAT staff have been leading its development; but we have been struggling to obtain relevant content from other CG centres in order to further populate the briefcase.

7 An excellent resource from BalancingAct-Africa ( consisting of a series of 4 CDs containing ICT Country Profiles for all African countries has been added to the ICT briefcase. This resource has been extremely useful in guiding sites in Africa as to the options that are available to them and regulatory environment that they have to deal with. Content also includes details of all software that is available through CGIAR level agreements, details on how to contact each Centres Helpdesk; documents on best practices and standards and some excellent training materials mainly provided by CIAT and IRRI. One of the project s aims is to improve the use of online resources available to the Regional and Country offices. Improving internet connectivity only guarantees that more resources are available to the offices and we need to do more to ensure that staff know how to use these resources effectively. The project is currently working on: 1. A survey of the regional offices will be carried out to determine their priorities in relation to use of available resources and additional resources that they require. 2. From the results of the survey additional information will be made available through the ICT Briefcase. So far the CG Centres have not been able to provide or recommend people to develop the required training materials. Therefore, the project will identify writer(s) of training materials who will be contracted to develop the material that we are unable to source from other locations. The CD version of the ICT Briefcase will be sent to all offices along with a book on Internet use. 3. A spin-off from the first phase of the project was the first comprehensive audit of CGIAR offices around the world. The audit has been updated with the latest information from the Centres and the project. This has been used to update and add to the information on the map that is available on Cgxchange. The project

8 will take the opportunity to redesign the map to make it more user-friendly and easier to view a Centre s sites and related information. 4. The project has contacted IT trainers with the view of contracting them to visit all sites to provide training to staff. This will include training in using the resources available on Cgxchange (ICT Briefcase, Vlibrary, journal access, shared workspaces etc), use of Communication tools (Office Communicator and Skype), responsible internet use, data management (including backup of data) and network security. The training will generate some additional customised training materials that will be added to the ICT Briefcase. ICT Support and infrastructure ICT support to regional and country offices is a challenge for many Centres. Centres HQ staff are often too far away to have a good understanding of the local IT environment or do not have the time available to provide support to both HQ and the regions satisfactorily. The project has identified four areas that the Centres should concentrate on to ensure that the Regional and Country office have an effectively ICT environment. 1. The provision of good quality and reliable IT support is essential. Depending on the size of the office and the situation of the office, this may be provided in various ways: the larger offices may employ a full time IT professional; share staff with other organisations at the location; use the staff of hosting organisations or IT professionals contracted from reliable local IT companies on a full-time or part-time basis. In each case if another organisation or company is involved a Service Level Agreement should be put in place. 2. A standard desktop and notebook configuration should be implemented with automated Anti-virus, Anti-spyware and security updates, clear procedures for data management and data protection. 3. Good, reliable internet connections can then be implemented and used to provide access to remote applications that include , finance and HR systems, intranet, project information systems, online backup facilities and many other online resources.

9 4. Finally in the larger offices there may be a need for a local server to provide local shared services. In this case the project recommends providing the equipment in a transportable rack with a standard configuration of UPS, server, router/firewall, monitor, keyboard and ISP equipment. This will protect the equipment, help keep the equipment and cabling well organised and can be easily moved if the office is relocated or closed down. The project has now provided transportable racks to 3 offices, Bamako, Mali; Lilongwe, Malawi and St. Louis, Senegal. Another failing that we have seen in several locations in the provision of IT Support is a lack of coordination between offices in the same locations. This has resulted in the duplication of support staff, infrastructure and internet connections. With better coordination and collaboration between CG Centres and offices they will usually obtain better quality support for the same or cheaper cost. It is for this reason that the project is recommending a pilot activity to coordinate and provide ICT support in a region. 1. The project will contract an IT Specialist for 1 year to coordinate and provide IT support in the Southern and East Africa region. The person will ensure that site surveys have been carried out at all offices in the region and that these are used to develop improvement plans for each office. They will identify good quality reliable local resources and ensure that local support is available to all offices in the region, that recommended standards and configurations are implemented, that infrastructure improvements are raised with the appropriate Centres and act as a link to the Centres in the region and HQ offices. 2. The pilot will be monitored and evaluated with a view to developing a model for providing IT Support that can be continued and expanded to other regions. Conclusion The project has been successful in upgrading internet connections in 16 sites and giving improved access to important resources both on the Internet and hosted within CG Centres. However progress has been slow. One of the major problems that regional and country offices face is that many of the Centres do not invest enough time and funds into providing the ICT services that they require to work efficiently. Those Centres that

10 do invest the time and funds, like ICARDA and IWMI, have seen major benefits in the way that the regional staff can communicate with others in the Centre and gain access to more and better resources. The project will submit a Request for Project Extension that will concentrate on 3 areas: 1. Complete the installation at the pending sites 2. Improve the knowledge and capabilities of the regional staff through better training materials and training courses 3. Provide improved IT support to the East and Southern Africa Region in a pilot project that will provide a framework for improved support to regional and country offices in other parts of the world. Annexes es 1. Annual Financial Report SLC Financial report March 2007.xls 2. Latest status of project installations SLC status March 2007.xls