USAID/Tanzania started in 2011 a partnership with the Tanzanian National Bureau of Statistics to strengthen agricultural statistics in the country. The project provided a $1.1 million grant to support conducting a Feed the Future baseline survey, and an additional grant to help finance a U.S. study tour for 11 statisticians to enhance their skills.

Access to innovative technology to collect data

To conduct the 2011 baseline agricultural survey, 120 enumerators throughout Tanzania received training and access to innovative technology. Prior to the use of this unique technology, all statistics in Tanzania were collected with pen and paper - the data could take years to aggregate.

As a result of the new technology, the data collected was more accurate, and much more quickly available to statisticians

Agropolis International, ADBS-LR et Doccitanist organisent une journée consacrée aux enjeux de l’Open Access pour la recherche. Cette journée se tiendra le lundi 17 juin 2013, à Montpellier, mais sera aussi retransmise en direct, en français.

The Department of Agriculture (DA) of the Philippines launched the Department of Agriculture Accountability Network (DAAN), an open data portal (in English). It is DA's answer to president Aquino’s call for transparency. Goal: to list down all DA's community-focused projects and make them available to the public.

The portal contains:

If you are interested to share your AIMS profile with AgriVIVO, the next import of data is going to take place next week (Monday 25 May 2013). You can create or edit your profile using the instructions available at "Are you an AIMS member? Then have your profile included in AgriVIVO".

The AIMS team is very pleased to invite you to participate in our User Survey 2013. We look forward to your feedback on your interactions with the AIMS platform and input regarding i) published content, ii) available services, iii) subscription to groups of interest and iv) the overall website design.

Your sincere responses will help us improve the AIMS platform, which seeks to maintain a leading role in supporting and advising information workers worldwide on agricultural information management, tools and services.

The survey will be open until Friday 31st May 2013. Completing the survey will require only 10 minutes of your time, and your response to every question is critical. We value your privacy and keep any identifying information confidential.  

The survey is available in English, French and Spanish. Please complete only one version following one of the links below.

AgINFRA and SemaGrow have been included in the European Commission Action Plan as part of the EC's commitment to deliver open access to publicly funded agriculturally relevant data for users in Africa and around the world. AIMS is involved in both projects.

'EC Action Plan' outcome of 'G-8 on Open Data for Agriculture'

The 'European Commission Action Plan' has been established during the 'G-8 on Open Data for Agriculture' which took place last week in Washington D.C.

The Open Access Thesis and Dissertations (OATD.org) is a discovery tool that focuses exclusively on open accessible Electronic Thesis and Dissertations (ETDs)and was launched this April. The service indexes over 1,5 million Electronic Thesis and Dissertations from over 600 participating universities in the world.

The aim of the service is to provide a global simplified search tool exclusively for Electronic Thesis and Dissertations (ETDs).The OATD.org indexes only graduate-level thesis and dissertations that are freely available for download.The OATD.org is led by Thomas Dowling, director of technologies at the Z.Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University.

As announced yesterday, the AgriVIVO 1.0 portal has been launched, take a look at the post by Valeria Pesce.

AgriVIVO & AIMS

The data currently collected in AgriVIVO are about people, organizations and events, linked with geographic locations and areas of expertise. AIMS is one of the participating communities and data providers (for a list of all the data providers currently contributing to AgriVIVO visit www.agrivivo.net/data-providers). The type of data that AIMS offers to provide is 'people', with other words 'profiles'.

This means that if you have a profile in AIMS, you now have the possibility to include it in AgriVIVO.