Feasibility study - Fair Access to Quality

Feasibility study
Sustainability Standards
Resource Center
January and March 2012
Michiel Schoenmakers (FAQ)
Angelica Senders, Marjoleine Motz, Renske Franken (FSAS)
Anneke Theunissen, Joyce Gema
Contents
Introduction .................................................................................... 4
Content report and methodology used ........................................ 5
Composition research team: ........................................................ 7
Commitment to and shaping of the Resource centre ..................... 8
Introduction .................................................................................. 8
Overall commitment ................................................................... 10
Services of the Centre................................................................. 11
Content needs and interests ...................................................... 13
Quality management and Standard compliance ........................ 15
Host and governance of the Centre............................................ 16
Willingness to share material ..................................................... 17
Conclusions: ................................................................................ 18
Existing websites, lessons learned from those sites and strategic
linkages.......................................................................................... 20
Introduction ................................................................................ 20
General observations.................................................................. 21
Website comparison ................................................................... 23
Platforms .................................................................................... 23
Portals ......................................................................................... 26
Libraries ...................................................................................... 27
Conclusions ................................................................................. 32
Conclusions and recommendations first phase feasibility study .. 36
Main conclusions regarding assumptions .................................. 36
Needs assessment amongst stakeholders .................................. 36
Recommendations ...................................................................... 37
Portfolio of services....................................................................... 39
One-stop library .......................................................................... 40
Library: filling and updating work flow ....................................... 40
Library: creating customized documents ................................... 42
Library: search functionalities, metadata and controlled
vocabularies ................................................................................ 44
Library advice .............................................................................. 46
Directory (Yellow pages) ............................................................. 47
Community ................................................................................. 49
Portal........................................................................................... 51
News service ............................................................................... 51
Q&A service ................................................................................ 52
Synergy between services and with existing internet services .. 52
Technical solutions ........................................................................ 54
Key 1: portfolio of services ......................................................... 56
Key 2: usability ............................................................................ 56
Key 3: sustainability of CMS ........................................................ 57
Key 4: strategic value .................................................................. 58
Tables
Key 5: Connectivity ..................................................................... 58
Table 1: response by type of organisation ...................................... 8
Governance and hosting ............................................................... 61
Table 2: response by geographic area of activities ......................... 8
Operational aspects of the Center ............................................. 61
Table 3: do you support a shared resource center? ....................... 9
Governance aspects of the Center ............................................. 61
Table 4: service interest overall .................................................... 10
Separate implementation from governance .............................. 62
Table 5: service interest by stakeholder category ........................ 11
Advice ......................................................................................... 64
Table 6: content needs and present use ....................................... 12
Business model and strategic alliances ......................................... 65
Table 7: quality management and standard compliance .............. 14
Strategic alliances ....................................................................... 65
Table 8: who should host? ............................................................ 15
Cost containment ....................................................................... 66
Table 9: production of own material and willingness to share ..... 16
Income generating activities ...................................................... 66
Table 10: attractiveness of sites by target group .......................... 21
Advice ......................................................................................... 69
Table 11: best scoring platforms ................................................... 23
Conclusions and recommendations second phase feasibility study
....................................................................................................... 70
Table 12: best scoring portals ....................................................... 25
Portfolio of services .................................................................... 70
Table 14: Type of material offered ................................................ 28
Technical solutions, supporting the portfolio of services .......... 70
Table 15: best scoring libraries...................................................... 29
Table 13: topics offered on libraries ............................................. 27
Governance and hosting............................................................. 71
Implementation .......................................................................... 71
List of annexes
Annex 1 List of websites scored
Annex 2 Criteria used for scoring portals, libraries and platforms
Annex 3 List of interviewed persons
Annex 4 List of respondents on the online questionnaire
Annex 5 Detailed interview reports
Terms and definitions
Introduction
There is a rapid increase in market shares of agricultural products produced
in compliance with voluntary standard systems. Yet many producer
organizations and agribusinesses lack access to generic management skills,
and find it increasingly difficult to comply with standard requirements.
Another key trend relates to the increasing interest of processors, traders and
retailers to develop direct trade relations with small scale producers.
Certification is an important element here too. But a precondition is that
producers are well-organized and able to run a professional operation. This
creates a growing demand for high quality and well-structured capacity
building materials and tools.
To a varying degree, the sustainability initiatives have built their own,
isolated compliance programs and support structures related to the content
of their standards. These programs, however, are geared towards
compliance, not business development. In a process initiated by ISEAL the
different sustainability initiatives agreed to collaborate on capacity building
in order to facilitate producer access.
Proposed is to initiate a shared resource center to facilitate access to the
preconditions for sustainability standards systems and their markets.
Services of the sustainability standards resource center
The proposed resource center consists of an internet platform with the
following services:
A one-stop-shop library, containing practical and copyright free tools like
training materials, templates for quality management and internal control
systems, management tools;
1. A moderated community rating / review scheme of available documents
mentioned under 1;
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2. A Community of Practice (CoP) portal for knowledge exchange and
(moderated) discussion of relevant issues ;
3. A Yellow Pages find & to be found place for providers and clients of
capacity building services;
4. An upload service for newly developed tools, that may complement the
documents under 1 after positive community review;
5. An interactive calendar for workshops and trainings;
6. Links to existing websites like the ISEAL library, the ITC standards
map, e-learning resources etc.
Target groups and continual improvement
The resource center focuses on sustainable agricultural production, and
agribusiness enterprises in developing countries and emerging economies.
Organisations in different development stages vary in needs. The resource
center will offer applied concepts and tools, based on the quality
management approach, adjusted to various levels of organizational
development (from low entry groups to advanced agribusinesses).
User community
As farmers and emerging producer organizations and enterprises will not be
able to access or use the resources on their own, the direct users of the
resource center will be local service providers such as business development
services (BDS), trainers, consultants and NGOs facilitating the development
and up-scaling of value chains.
The intention is to develop a community of practice that safeguards a
minimum quality of tools, trainers and workshops. Possibly a system of
train the trainers will have to be developed, or be integrated with one or
more existing trainer accreditation schemes.
Content report and methodology used
In order to decide on the feasibility of a resource center some research
needed to be done. This research was carried out in two phases.
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First phase was to find out whether there is an actual interest in the intended
resource center, and to verify its main assumptions. The first 3 chapters of
this report deal with these aspects:
 Chapter 1 looks at the overall commitment for the creation of a
Sustainability Standards Resource Center (SSRC), the capacity building
needs indicated by potential users and target groups, materials available
or needed and the kind of services people would use.
 Chapter 2 looks at a number of different websites and indicates lessons
learned in regards to the structure, type of services and technical aspects
of a future SSRC. It also indicates where potential strategic linkages
could be made,
 Chapter 3 gives recommendations to the Steering Committee on the
way forward.
The methodology used was first of all desk research, supported by a
questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. All these activities looked at
the assumptions indicated in the concept note and summarized in this
introduction as something that needed to be tested. It also allowed for
preliminary indications on technical aspects of the Center and the services it
should focus on.
Second research phase was to:
 outline the portfolio of services that the resource center should provide
for whom;
 have in-depth information on the different possible types of technical
solutions, including the identification of suitable ICT options/hosting, a
possible structure of the web platform and guidelines on the information
architecture;
 identify suitable institutional / operational setups of the center
(implementation, hosting, legal status, governance, contractual
relations), and their pro’s and cons;
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

To outline a realistic financial setup that allows the center to cover its
costs, based on an assessment of the willingness to pay of the different
stakeholders (both donors and users), and;
Suggest a strategy to ensure visibility so that the most important
stakeholders are aware of the center and its propositions
Composition research team:
The research team was led by Michiel Schoenmakers (FAQ), supported by
Angelica Senders, Marjoleine Motz, Renske Franken (FSAS) and Anneke
Theunissen and Joyce Gemma.
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Commitment to and shaping of the Resource
Center
Introduction
This chapter looks at two questions mentioned in the Terms of Reference:
1. To test / verify the main assumptions and to establish the basis for a
go/no-go decision;
2. To have a clear overview of the needs of the different stakeholders.
The questionnaire was sent to a broad range of organizations and individuals
from certification bodies / standard setters, producer groups, traders, service
providers, development agencies to several multi-stakeholder networks. We
received 104 responses on the questionnaire.
As several networks and organizations placed the link to the questionnaire
on their website, we are unable to trace how many people were ultimately
reached and can therefore not indicate the response rate. Placing the
questionnaire on several websites has led to a fair amount of respondents
from Latin America and Africa and a good representation of agribusinesses
and trainers (see table 1 and 2). We did look at how the questionnaire
outcome corresponds with the 26 semi-structured interviews held and
included that in the conclusions and where relevant in the recommendations.
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Table 1: response by type of organization
Table 2: response by geographic area of activities
All interviewees selected are key persons of each stakeholder group (see
annex 1 for questions addressed and annex 2 for interviewees).
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Overall commitment
Regarding overall commitment 71 out of 104 respondents on the
questionnaire said yes when asked if they would support the creation of the
Center (table 3).
This trend was confirmed by the interviews. IDH for instance indicated:
“Yes there is a clear need for (neutral) information on standards, on
training modules, on standards and easy access to trainers.” A
representative of 4C gave a similar comment: “4C sees a joint resource
center as a good tool for up-scaling. Industry is committed; we need to be
able to answer their questions!”
Others would say “Yes, but…” like Xiomara Paredes, the operational
manager of CLAC. “In case the platform is open to producer organizations
directly I think it has a great added value. In case it is only open to third
organizations that provide technical assistance and capacity building
services to the producer organizations, I think it has fewer added values. In
what I see from producer organizations, many members of the CLAC, is that
they have different certifications, not only FLO. It would be very interesting
to them to find information on all these different standard setters in one
single place in an organized way.”
31 respondents did not tick this box and are gathered under ‘no answer’.
Table 3: do you support a shared resource center?
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There were 2 no’s and both are worth mentioning. Cafenica: “I don’t really
think we need another platform. Cla@se can provide this service and even
then we still have the challenge to make people and organizations use the
tools.” Explanations on what Cla@se offers and how the Sustainability
Standards Resource Center might be connected to it, is described later in
this report.
The other negative reply came from the managing director of IFOAM.
Services of the Centre
Table 4 reflects the responses coming from the questionnaire. Services like
a library and portal (links to existing websites in the table) receive a high
score in all stakeholder groups and so do the upload service and the yellow
pages. Opinions are a bit more spread out on the other services. A
community of practitioners or moderated community rating seems to be
liked most by development agencies and standard setters / auditors.
Table 4: service interest overall
These outcomes are supported by the interviews. Especially networks or
associations like ISEAL are clear about the services: “As ISEAL we notice
that large businesses approach us for information on standards. That is a
relevant service to give, but also a very time consuming one. If we could link
our website to the Resource Center and direct businesses there, that would
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be useful. Also the connection to training programs, a training calendar and
service providers for instance, is of interest to us and probably also to the
businesses or government officials that approach us.”
IDH: “If the library – as part of the resource center – could support the
standardization of wording for instance through the indexation of
documents and training modules available in the library – it could work as
a catalyst for the standard setters to follow that logic.”
Utz Certified: “Unlocking training materials, with a clear indexation on
type of modules and target group, in combination with access to qualified
and experienced trainers, service providers, would be an added value.”
4C “sees a joint resource center as a good tool for up-scaling. Industry is
committed; we need to be able to answer their questions.”
EAFCA: “Accredited trainers will add value to the resource center”
Table 5: service interest by stakeholder category
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Concrete offers are done as well. Utz: “Utz has budget for 2012 to set up a
Yellow Pages service, and is interested in wider collaboration including
uploading of training materials.”
Content needs and interests
To measure content needs, the online questionnaire asked two questions:
1. What do you think are the 2 most important capacity building topics for
producer groups/agribusinesses? (tick maximum 2 options), and;
2. What training materials is your organization working with?
The questionnaire outcome gives a top 2 for most important capacity
building topics, being business planning (19%) and production techniques
(13%). Topics like financial systems (12%), management skills and
certification requirements (both 11%) are strong followers.
Table 6: content needs and present use
Several interviews give further explanations on the choices made. For
instance the Junta Nacional de Café Peru says: “Productivity is a very
important theme and it has not yet been fully integrated in the different
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standards. It is a necessity in the near future. So we might as well take it
into account straight away.”
Finlays: “The focus needs to be about quality management and then
standard compliance comes as a given. Too often the focus is on standard
compliance (passing the audit) and not on operating good business practice
as the foundation for sustainable operation.”
Twin: “Special focus would be needed on advice and support to improve
their financial administration, learn how to manage risks, support to
strategic planning, but surely also quality management and quality
control.”
The top 2 of topics people are currently working with (table 6) shows a
slightly different order. Here certification requirements and production
techniques come first, closely followed by product quality, quality
management and business planning.
The interviews give further details.
IDH: “Clear information on the content and scope of the different standards
would be helpful. The same can be said about new initiatives like GSCP or
networks set up by retailers or others. Information on topics dealt with, a
who is who and what is there mandate, would also help businesses and
producers to determine which platform to join, or which initiative to
follow.”
ISEAL: “As ISEAL we notice that large businesses approach us for
information on standards. That is a relevant service, but also a very time
consuming one. If we could link our website to the Resource Centre and
direct businesses there, that would be useful. Also the connection to training
programs, a training calendar and service providers for instance, is of
interest to us and probably also to the businesses or government officials
that approach us.”
Cafenica: “The added value I see would be one or several new training
modules on standards, quality management and others in the Cla@se
platform, to be publically available.”
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Quality management and Standard compliance
One of the assumptions in the concept note is that quality management and
standard compliance are closely linked and management skills should be a
focal point for capacity building.
The questionnaire included three questions on this aspect and the results are
clear. Large majority of respondents agree with the quality management
focus and support the idea that compliance with standards follows quality
management.
Table 7: quality management and standard compliance
IDH: “In general we support the idea that looking at and improving of
management skills is important. That it is often a more neglected aspect of
training programs.”
See also the earlier made comment by Finlays.
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Host and governance of the Centre
Regarding hosting the Centre the responses indicates a slight preference for
ISEAL over the NGO sector or an independent host. The questionnaire
indicates 24 votes for a completely independent host as well as for ISEAL
being the host (also 24), with development NGO’s as a good third (22). If
you look at the ‘possibly’ answers than the preference goes to ISEAL or the
NGO sector over the independent party.
Table 8: who should host?
The interviews indicate a similar preference with the additional suggestion
that the technical host could be separate from the governance structure.
Regarding the governance structure there was a clear preference for a multistakeholder approach to make sure that ownership is taken by the user
groups and oversight could be given by (original) funders.
Finlays: “It is important that an initiative such as this is inclusive of all
those involved in such activity or in need of further capacity building.”
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Willingness to share material
The questionnaire shows clear commitment to share and upload materials.
However, if you split the responses per stakeholder group and combine their
comments with some of the interviews, the picture gets more shades.
Table 9: production of own material and willingness to share
NGO’s and certification bodies are confident in sharing materials as several
of them claim that their material in practice is already public. UTZ certified
for instance indicates “We are surely willing to upload our materials as they
are already quite public.” Commercial parties like agribusinesses or
financial institutions that created training materials are more hesitant.
Finlays: “On sharing material: Maybe is the true answer, these are the
product of our own commercial activity and although in principle we would
be willing to share, producing these materials has a cost which has to be
recovered. If we made it available to all they can benefit and undercut our
prices putting our trade at risk.”
Twin: “Twin most likely would not have a problem uploading bulletins or
studies, but training material maybe not. Mentioning what kind of training
modules is available and how people can access them, probably. Tools are
partly made available via Cla@se for free to producers who are member of
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CLAC and partly used when Twin is hired as a BDS. More likely to create
link to Cla@se and want to be mentioned as service provider in the Yellow
Pages. The same is probably true for Root Capital as some of the materials
made by them are now part of the Cla@se library.”
Conclusions:
Research shows sufficient interest in and commitment to the creation of a
Sustainability Standards Resource Center as long as the Center is clearly
linked to specific content and services. Highest scores are for a one-stop
library and links to existing websites, closely followed by an upload service
and the yellow pages. The negative comment from IFOAM however might
need some further exploration as a) it contradicts statements given by others
within the IFOAM network and b) it is an important network to include in
the Center.
Half of the respondents indicated to be willing to upload materials amongst
which were leading standard setters and service providers. However, two
aspects need further exploration:
The first group would be libraries and materials produced by commercial
parties or owned by networks and used as member only. Exploring under
which conditions they are willing to participate more actively in the Center
is recommended especially as informally potential openings were given.
Secondly it is important to check the interest and commitment to the Center
by Solidaridad. Several field staff filled out the questionnaire, but their
responses could not be cross checked with the head office (did not respond
to request for interview nor filled out the questionnaire). In view of
Solidaridad’s link to several institutions and their development into a
service provider on a broad range of certification requirements, including
having training materials available, makes it important, in the opinion of the
research team, to cross check the interest.
One of the assumptions in the concept note was that producers are
struggling with standard compliance, and the improvement of management
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skills could support the compliance process. This is confirmed by the
outcome of the questionnaire and the interviews as meeting certification
requirements is not only indicated as an important topic, but also the number
one topic most people are working on. Furthermore, participants indicated
that quality management supports compliance with standards.
Some clarity around governance is given as most respondents prefer a multistakeholder approach, but hosting the Center needs further exploration. It is
in fact a draw and it is worthwhile exploring the pro’s and con’s in more
detail. Also cost implications of separating the host from the governance
structure need more work.
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Existing websites, lessons learned from those sites
and strategic linkages
Introduction
This chapter deals with question three from the Terms of Reference: To
provide an overview on what already exists in terms of resources, platforms
and capacity building programs, and how the resource center could be
linked.
In the desk study we looked at some 60 websites dealing with capacity
building and offering the following types of services:
1.
‘Platforms’ on which practitioners exchange experiences and
resources in an ‘online community’.
2.
Portals linking to external sites where materials can be found and
downloaded and or linking to Platforms;
3.
Library with downloadable or online accessible content;
Most sites carry a combination of 2 or sometimes even all three services.
Based on feedback from our online questionnaire and interviews, we made a
closer study of 35 selected sites.
For a unified approach, to stay focused, be able to compare sites, and to pick
the fruits of good practices, we developed a scoring form (see
http://fa2q.nl/webrank2).
All studied sites were scored on the following elements:
 Attractiveness to target groups (lay out, vocabulary, content):
 Target group focus
 Ease of searching content, and combination of search options
 Source, quality and currency of content.
 Platform:
- ease of use,
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

- quantity,
- variety and activity rate of participants
Portals:
- variety of content,
- quality of hyperlinks
Library:
- variety of content,
- types of content (documents, presentations etcetera),
- indexes in use
See annex 2 for the detailed list of scoring elements.
Most elements were scored on a scale of 0 to 3: No or not applicable (0),
Poor (1), Good (2), Excellent (3)
Some elements, like “indexes in use” and “types of content” were scored on
amount: 3 indexes in use = 3 points.
For a list of consulted websites see annex 1, or
www.fa2q.nl/all_sites_reviewed .
General observations
Some of the studied sites are very clear about intended target and target
groups, others not. Where the site owner was not clear about the intended
target group, we made an educated guess based on content.
Yet one thing became very clear, judging by content and vocabulary, the
majority of sites seem to focus on research or NGO community. The same
focus is reflected in the attractiveness for the different user groups. The
amount of sites attractive to farmers and farmers groups is rather low.
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Table 10: attractiveness of sites by target group
Very few sites offer a systematic quality management based approach for
continual growth, guiding their target groups through different development
phases.
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Website comparison
The three services, library, portal and platform, have different:
•
Objectives and content;
•
Target groups;
•
Requirements in terms of software, management and hosting;
•
Requirements towards user activity;
•
Indexing and search functionalities and needs.
Therefore the three services have been scored and compared in their own
categories, and are being dealt with separately in the sections below. If the
same site hosts more than 1 service, the site is taken into account in all
relevant categories.
Platforms
Most platforms aim at increasing interactivity amongst professionals. For
this purpose they use a variety of means to share experiences and
information; for instance blogs, news, events, photos and videos.
Other platforms involve members in generating content by using wikis.
Examples are: KM4DEV, AKVOpedia. The idea of a wiki is that anyone
can edit content. This requires a way of structuring the editing process
similar to Wikipedia. Wikis therefore are generally located at a central
place. It is, for instance, also the ICCO Alliance communicates with
partners.
Interactivity can also be stimulated by moderated discussions as is done by
the organic cotton platform (known by ICCO, Textile exchange, SECO and
Helvetas).
The last example mentioned is that of list-servers, used by Farmer Field
Schools and ISEAL. These allow participants to communicate via their
existing e-mail service with a wide audience on a variety of topics.
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Some platforms ensure that activities on their site can be followed via
twitter; the tweets can again feed into the platform (“leraar 24”), others use
Facebook and Hives and even YouTube and Flickr for the same purpose. As
this is still relatively new there is no hard evidence that it stimulates
participation and activity on the website, but it is clearly a growing trend.
Especially trainers and practitioners in the south seem to respond to this
aspect positively.
See http://fa2q.nl/platform for a list of studied platforms.
Platform scoring
15 platforms were scored, and scoring compared on:
•
Attractiveness of landing page;
•
target group focus;
•
Number and variety of users, user activity.
Microlinks, which has a combination of both library and platform had the
highest score, second is SEEP Network (www.seepnetwork.org) and FAO
(http://www.fao.org/corp/knowledgeforum/en/) came third.
Table 11: best scoring platforms
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Good platform examples
www.fao.org/corp/knowledgeforum/en/:
 Offers a very clear and well-organized landing page. From landing
page you can choose for knowledge networks, database/information
system, distribution list/newsletters (or combination).
 On selection of the knowledge center, one enters a different space
and layout (e-agriculture).
 Differentiation in lay out and content, not trying to put everything
together.
www.apf-kenya.ning.com :
 Offers
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Portals
See http://fa2q.nl/portal for the list of studied portals
Portals were scored on:
•
Attractiveness of landing page;
•
target group focus;
•
Variety and quality of content (variety of linked content, amount of
dead links).
Our top 3 for portals is (from first place to third); the standards map of ITC
(www.standardsmap.org ), Worldbank (www.wbi.worldbank.org/), and the
training platform of IFOAM
(www.ifoam.org/growing_organic/7_training/training_platform_MainPage.
html ).
Table 12: best scoring portals
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Some good examples in portals
www.imarkgroup.org (e-learning on managing information):
 Offers an ocean of information offered in a very clear way.
 Offers online learning with modules, offered in an attractive way.
 Is clear about what they offer and also recommend communities.
Libraries
Several libraries exist, offering downloadable material on for instance
certification, production techniques, and value chain development.
In our research we looked at 10 selected websites with library functionality,
offering the user a collection of downloadable materials in the form of
documents, audio visuals etcetera. We concentrated on those sites that offer
a range of downloads, indexed in one or more categories and/or search
functionality. See for the list of consulted libraries: http://fa2q.nl/libraries .
Some libraries offer certification compliance content only (4C, Rainforest
Alliance, Utz Certified). Several are member only: qualityxs.org; 4C,
Cla@se.
Some libraries have all materials available within their domain (4C, RA,
Utz, Cla@se, qualityxs), others offer an indexed search in public (academic)
libraries (CTA).
Search functionalities
Good search functionality is important for both portals and libraries.
Especially if the topic range is broad, it is important to offer the opportunity
to select a combination of criteria (language, topic, country, target group,
type of material etc.). Unfortunately, few libraries offer such combined
search functionality.
For training purposes there is much material on offer as well within the
viewed libraries. Indexation of materials is unfortunately scarce. A trainer or
BDS often wants to search for modules for a specific target group or
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training methodology. That is however rarely possible as search
functionalities normally work on topic or language criteria.
Quite a few libraries offer a mix of materials, from practical handbooks for
farmers to value link approaches and research papers. As mentioned earlier
site visitors unfortunately cannot search among these materials by target
group or typology index.
Limited indexing and search functionalities often result in long lists of
potential interesting material (for 90% documents only). To be able to judge
usability, the visitor will have to download materials one by one. Not a very
attractive proposition, and especially not for people with slow and erratic
internet connections.
Topics on offer
Biggest amount of topics in our 10 libraries are: production techniques,
followed by certification requirements and product quality.
Table 13: topics offered on libraries
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Libraries offering materials on certification seem to focus on standard
compliance only. Whether these materials can be combined with a more
integrated quality management approach is (yet) unclear. As mentioned
earlier searching for documents using quality management as a filter is not
possible.
Type of material offered
8 out of the researched libraries offered content in the form of documents.
Counting the total amount of publications on offer in the different libraries
was not possible, but we estimate that 90% of all material is in the form of
documents.
Table 14: Type of material offered
User rating
Online libraries or portals sometimes also create the possibility for
interactivity in the form of asking for rating (with 1-5 stars) and/ or writing
a review. A system used by on- line shops like amazon.com. This could be
well applicable for the Sustainability Standards Resource Center as a simple
and effective approach to rating materials offered.
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Only 1 out of 10 libraries presently offers this functionality (USAID)
Library scoring
Libraries were scored on:
•
attractiveness of landing page;
•
target group focus;
•
number of indexes in use and searchable;
•
ease and variety of search functionality.
Our top 3 for libraries is www.qualityxs.org, followed by www.claase.org
and the library of the 4C Association. All three libraries score high on
indexing and search functionality.
Sadly enough, all three are member only, and qualityxs.org is still in its’
pilot phase.
Table 15: best scoring libraries
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Some good library practice
Though not appearing in the top 3 of libraries because of limited search
options and the site being difficult to find, we want to mention the SAN
virtual library because:
 Content offered in many different languages. Yet some languages are
very limited in content.
 Very attractive layout.
 Categorization by region
 Interesting sub-categorization by type of content:
www.microlinks.kdid.org/
 Offering an interesting combination of materials
 Lots of different materials in a 'fun' way and still clear and easy to find.
www.organic-africa.net/oa-home.html
 FIBL's African Organic Agriculture Training Manual is setup in separate
modules.
 Content of the Manual, supporting materials and training methodology
are integrated.
On the negative side:
 The main goal seems to be the promotion of FIBL's African Organic
Agriculture Training Manual.
- Some parts of the module downloads are dead hyperlinks.
- Modules are not indexed.
- Entire manual is not downloadable in 1 go.
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Conclusions
Based on our online research and interviews, we see the following aspects
as key factors of success to a resource center in general:
 Site needs to be attractive and easy to use.
 Pictures on the landing page are appreciated; gets people in action
 Site needs to be a fast loader (light pictures (kb’s), stable
background)
 Target group and target of the site, needs to be clear
 Different user interfaces for different services bring clarity to the
visitor
 If the site offers different services (platform, library, portal, yellow
pages), target and target groups of each service needs to be clearly
stated.
 Be clear about site ownership, finance, and maintenance and
hosting.
 The resource center needs to be an appropriate answer to the
problem perceived. If this is an information problem, a library or
portal corresponds best. If there is a need to learn from experiences
and knowledge of others, an on-line platform is better.
 Consider starting with a regional focus, e.g. on Africa, and/or
product focus. The coffee sector, according to Utz Certified and 4C
associations, propose to take a head start.
 It needs a good combination of offerings like many different
materials, text files, video and audio, and if possible links to
communities
 The center should allow users to subscribe to newsletter and/or RSS
feeds.
 Make use of other websites; do not pretend to be unique.
 If southern organizations/service providers are a target group
organize local relevant information and news on the site; it increases
the attractiveness.
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
Be clear about copyrights and how to use materials.
Success factors for a library or portal:
 Needs to be a central place where you can find quality material on
topics you are interested in.
 Easily searchable and up-to-date.
 Needs to have different indexing options, to search for instance
material by topic, methodology, and target group.
 Be very clear about upload criteria for materials, and conditions of
use.
 Learn from existing initiatives, and copy success factors.
 If target group is practitioners and service providers than be careful
with filling the site with research and policy documents as it reduces
the usability
 Where possible, offer materials per language or region/sector.
 Quality check of materials offered is crucial. Standard or criteria
used for the selection needs to be clear from the beginning and kept
up to date
 In terms of information architecture (database setup, indexing), the
following site owners should be consulted: CTA, Anancy, KIT,
Qualityxs.org, ITC, Claase
 In terms of exchange of materials, the following institutions should
be consulted: 4C, Utz Certified, SAN, IFOAM, CTA, Anancy, KIT,
FAO, Organic-Africa.net, and Claase.
 For the Yellow pages, Organic-Africa.net, Organicstandard.com,
IFOAM, Utz Certified, 4C, SAN.
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Specific success factors for a platform or online community:
 People need to have something in common (a professional practice,
goal in their work, similar learning question)
 Facilitation is of crucial importance for a lively interactive
community.
 People will only visit an online platform if it helps them in their
work. If that is the case they will also contribute. A clear problem
tackled or question to be answered therefore helps.
 There has to be a balance in ‘bringing’ and ‘taking’.
 In smaller groups people exchange opinions easier, members feel
safer. On the other hand, smaller groups imply also less input. So
there needs to be a balance between a large community and work in
smaller groups.
 A resource center has to be owned by the users. If not, it can only
serve as a top down channel to provide information (e.g. from
specialists to practitioners).
 A successful community encourages horizontal linkages.
 On-line activities have to be complemented with meeting Face-toFace (F2F).
 Formulate rules for communication at the platform.
What should we NOT do?
 Do not attach this resource center to one of the Voluntary Standard
Systems. Linking it too closely to one or the other might jeopardize
the usability of the whole project.
 With regards to communities: don’t be technology driven. Often not
the technique but the community is the bottleneck of an online
resource center. Start small and build the technique and the
community simultaneously.
 Not keeping the site up to date: Outdated news (invitation to a
workshop held some time ago), dead links reduce attractiveness.
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





Avoid making combinations of commercial information, personal
opinions and poorly indexed public information, making it difficult
to judge impartiality of information.
Avoid building a resource base with many resources with a weak
search function and/or quality management.
Portal links to external site works extremely slow.
Unclear definition of words ('themes', ' books', 'collections',
'categories' 'regions')
Do not (only) rely on e-discussions which are (only) e-mail based;
they get lost in overloaded mailboxes.
Avoid news-sections; these make sites noisy and unclear. If you
want to collect and offer news or snippets, do that via RSS or
personalized newsletters.
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Conclusions and recommendations first phase
feasibility study
Main conclusions regarding assumptions
The feasibility study towards a Sustainability Standards Resource Center
was to verify the main assumptions of the concept note, and to establish the
basis for a go/no-go decision.
Our research shows sufficient interest in and commitment to the creation of
a Sustainability Standards Resource Center as long as the Center is clearly
linked to specific content and services.
Half of the respondents also indicated to be willing to upload materials
amongst which were leading standard setters and service providers.
One of the assumptions in the concept note was that producers are
struggling with standard compliance, and the improvement of management
skills could support the compliance process. This is confirmed by the
outcome of the questionnaire and the interviews as meeting certification
requirements is not only indicated as an important topic, but also the number
one topic most people are working on.
Furthermore, participants confirmed that quality management supports
compliance with standards.
Needs assessment amongst stakeholders
Second goal of this feasibility study was to get a clear overview of the needs
of the different stakeholders.
Interviews and online questionnaire indicate that a one-stop-library and
links to existing websites (portal) attract most interest amongst stakeholders.
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A material-upload service and yellow pages are also high ranking services
that stakeholders are interested in.
The questionnaire outcome gives a top 2 for most important capacity
building topics, being business planning (19%) and production techniques
(13%). Topics like financial systems (12%), management skills and
certification requirements (both 11%) are strong followers.
Recommendations
We recommend the Steering Committees to continue and allow us to work
on the second part of the Terms of Reference. In order to do so we would
appreciate feedback on the following aspects.
1. Consider starting the Center with a regional focus, e.g. on Africa, and/or
product focus. The coffee sector, according to Utz Certified and 4C
associations, is willing to take a head start and could be considered for
that role.
2. Consider starting the Center with the library and yellow pages service.
3. Connect the Center to existing sites with materials that are of interest to
the stakeholders.
4. Regarding the governance and hosting of the Center avoid attaching it to
one particular Standard System. Who could be the host and how to
organize the governance structure needs further discussion. Feedback
from the Committee, based on the indications given in this report, would
be appreciated. Also if different options could be developed and
presented to the Committee.
5. In terms of information architecture (database setup, indexing), make
use of existing experiences. The following site owners should be
consulted: CTA, Anancy, KIT, Qualityxs.org, ITC, Claase
6. In terms of exchange of materials, the following institutions should be
consulted: 4C, Utz Certified, SAN, IFOAM, CTA, Anancy, KIT, FAO,
Organic-Africa.net, Claase, otherwise the usability of the library
becomes too low.
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7. Regarding materials exchange and yellow pages service: please
remember comments made on the position expressed by IFOAM and
check with head office of Solidaridad.
8. For the Yellow pages, Organic-Africa.net, Organicstandard.com,
IFOAM, Utz Certified, 4C, SAN are good examples and consider using
the offer by Utz Certified to help develop this service technically.
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Portfolio of services
As mentioned earlier, the feasibility study indicated that the Resource
Center should carry the following services:
1. One-stop library: with resources (via n upload service) and links to other
libraries. Furthermore, a specific form of interactivity in the context of
the library will be the rating of resources by community members (with
1-5 stars) and/ or the writing of reviews according to a system as used
by on-line shops like amazon.com. Priority topics: business planning,
production techniques, certification requirements, financial systems and
management skills.
2. Yellow Pages: A directory of service providers (organizations and
individuals) relevant to the field of sustainable trade, as a way to present
themselves and be found. A system will be developed to increase their
position in search results based on active contribution to the community
(contributing material, participation in discussions and answers provided
to community members).
3. A Community of Practice: Within the community of practices (COP),
platforms per products and per region can be found including the
interface for e-discussions, information sharing and webinars on
overarching voluntary standards topics. To avoid duplication
connections will be made to relevant existing communities or fore. It
also allows users to move between communities and services offered by
the Center.
4. Portal with hyperlinks:
As a result of recent technical developments and based on further interviews
with practitioners, we think that the following services are of additional
value:
5. A news service: A collection of relevant RSS feeds recombined for
different areas of expertise, using search terms.
6. Q&A service
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One-stop library
The Document Library provides access to public materials that are relevant
to the selected topics (all linked to sustainable trade and certification).
Target group or principle users are trainers, advisors and policy makers
involved in the development and promotion of sustainable trade activities.
In the first part of our feasibility study, we identified the following success
factors for a library:
 Easily searchable and up-to-date.
 Needs to have different indexing options, to search for instance material
by topic, methodology, and target group.
 Where possible, offer materials per language or region/sector.
The sections Metadata and Controlled Vocabularies deal with these issues.

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



Certified, SAN, IFOAM, CTA, Anancy, KIT, FAO, Organic-Africa.net,
and Claase.
Sharing documents by users of the resource center;
RSS/RDF-feeds of existing databases (e.g. AGRIS) via a web based
news crawler.
An editorial team scanning the web using search alerts and RSS/RDF
feeds.
Uploading work routing
Proposed is to use the following work routine for uploading documents into
the library:
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A. Potential document becomes available via user or host, or found by
news crawler. Document is uploaded to not-public repository for review.
B. The resource center's automatic-tagging machine scans the document for
key-words, and compares often used words with controlled
vocabularies. Document and document sections are automatically
indexed.
C. Review team (with library skills) cross-checks automatic-tagging
results. This will likely only be necessary for the first 6 months, in order
to 'train' the automatic-tagging machine. Review team adds additional
tags that an automatic tagging machine cannot recognize, like workshop
target, target group, training methodology.
D. Connected to tags, document is offered to dedicated user group, for
systematic quality check. When deemed sufficient quality, document
gets available to the public.
E. Community of practice rates, and discusses the available documents.
They may come up with additional material, or advice to remove the
document because of quality concerns.
Library: creating customized documents
Over time the documents of the library will cover a wide variety of topics
and various sectors. The intended user target groups are primarily trainers,
advisors and policy makers involved in the development of sustainable
trade. These users look for materials to inform, train and influence their own
target groups.
To that end, they will want to customize their training content by selecting
and combining relevant material from different source documents, and
repackage it in applicable formats. This may be a training document, a
brochure, manual, a factsheet, a new report or a website on a specific issue.
Experience shows that building training material often requires multiple
downloads from different sources. Sometimes only a small section of
different documents is being processed. Downloading and scanning
different source documents is tedious work, and internet intensive (read:
42 | P a g e
There are many different metadata formats, some simple, and some very
complex. They can include information about many aspects of resources,
including:
 description of the item: format, size, etc.; its subject or topic; author,
title, publisher, date issued or modified, etc.; preservation or archiving
information; and
 access rights, copyright, etc.
The OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting)
gives a framework by which metadata for different digital libraries and
repositories can be combined and used together.
http://www.openarchives.org/pmh.
It is recommended to base the meta-data infrastructure of the resource center
on this OAI-MPH protocol, in order to allow for future exchange with
likeminded, complementary libraries.
Controlled vocabularies
Controlled vocabularies are a meta-data format often used as the basis for
(meta data) indexation of documents. They are shaped as closed lists of
named subjects (words and phrases) to help solve two main issues:
 the problem of two or more words that can be used to mean the same
concept, like Fishing vessels/Fishing boats or Health risks/Health
hazards; and
 the problem of two or more words that have the same spelling but
represent different concepts, e.g. vessel (blood)/ vessel (fishing) or Ling
(a heath plant)/Ling (fish of the cod family).
Controlled vocabularies support a specialized service such as:
 browsing by keywords;
 country of coverage;
 searching by type of Document (patent, books, etc.); and
45 | P a g e

limiting search results to one or more specific years or language or
semantic navigation within the result set based on keywords identified in
controlled vocabularies.
They also systematize:
 auto-tagging, as key words in a document are compared with terms of
the controlled vocabulary;
 hand-tagging, as the library team is forced to choose from the controlled
vocabulary. Thus spelling mistakes and the 'vessel- boat', a Babel-like
confusion, is avoided.
Library advice
In order to organize the library's content in a concise way, allow exchanges
with other libraries and facilitate multi-language access, the Resource
Center needs to be setup on a framework of existing and open metadatavocabulary, or so called Controlled Vocabularies.
Creating customized documents
Given the experience and techniques behind news-crawlers, document
splitting programs, combined with auto-tagging and deep-tagging programs,
a customized document service integrated into a content management
system will be possible. The required functionality is, however, not a
standard feature for open source content management systems. In the
starting up period of the resource center therefore human backup and quality
control needs to be available.
Metadata and controlled vocabularies
The thematic focus of the Resource Center is: agricultural practices,
certification, quality management and target group focus for training
purposes.
The Center should therefore minimally be built on 1 or more controlled
vocabularies:
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



For Quality Management terms, we are still looking for an existing
multilingual vocabulary. ISO 2 is such vocabulary, but is not freely
available in digital format and subject to copy rights. The
Resource Center may need to setup such vocabulary by itself for the
moment.
For agricultural indexing, it is advisable to make use of Agrovoc:
AGROVOC is the corporate thesaurus of the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations (FAO). It covers topics related to the
interest of FAO, including agriculture, forestry, fisheries, environment
and related domains. AGROVOC is a multilingual resource, available in
19 languages (translations into 5 languages is under development). It
contains an average of 40.000 terms in each of the available languages.
Agrovoc is OAI MPH compliant.
For indexing training material (with terms referring to target, target
group, methodology, type of training material) we have not found a
suitable controlled vocabulary either. This section also refers to training
material for certification. For this part suitable vocabulary probably
needs to be developed in house.
Directory (Yellow pages)
In view of the needs identified in the first part of the study and the proposed
integrated approach, 3i
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15 238.25 Tm(l )] TJETBT1 0 0 162.[(15 238.25 Tm(hiud)-1iopm)-3(ptria)n4(t t)-3(( de)49(e)4(l(s di(ur)3(e)5(c)4(por1812(y)20t otai9(ti)-tut t)-i2(ont and )] TJETBT1

(documents, articles/stories, forum messages) of a specific
user/expert can be shown in an overview.
create a link to the communities to stimulate discussion on
documentation available in the Center or services offered by people
mentioned in the Yellow Pages.
Yellow pages application and update routine
On the Yellow Pages, service providers should be able to post information
on their activities on institutional and/or personal level. It keeps the service
attractive and up-to-date.
We propose the following workflow:
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A. Applicant institution and/or individual expert completes a profile (online
form). Compulsory information includes:
a. Name and contact information Type of services offered Working
languages
b. Accreditation against which standards Area of activities /
methodology used Product scope
An example application form can be found by clicking here, an example
profile can be found here.
B. Information is cross checked by relevant stakeholders and references for
correctness.
C. Approved expert profile becomes publicly visible on the Yellow Pages
section of the Resource Center.
D. Expert starts contributing part to the Community of Practice on
voluntary basis, and with that enforces the Community of Practice, and
his/her own credibility. See 4. Portfolio of services, integrated solution.
E. Expert earns 'credits' dependent on his/her activity rate on the
Community of Practice. The more credits, the more prominent the
expert shows on the Yellow Pages.
F. Expert refreshes his/her profile on an annual base. Expired profiles stay
online for half a year before being removed automatically.
Community
In the feasibility study report, we identified several success factors for an
online community:
 People need to have something in common (a professional practice, goal
in their work, similar learning question) and the community needs to
help them in their work.
 There has to be a balance in ‘bringing’ and ‘taking’.
 Facilitation is of crucial importance for a lively interactive community.
 In smaller groups people exchange opinions easier, members feel safer.
On the other hand, smaller groups imply less input. A balance between
community sizes is recommended (see examples from Helvetas)
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

A successful community encourages horizontal linkages
Where possible combine internet communities with Face-2-Face
sessions.
Points of departure
The success factors can also be seen as push and pull factors. Also for
marketing reasons the resource center surely needs a push factor from the
beginning. Establishing intensive relations with users is one of those push
arguments.
There are also pull arguments to cherish good relations with users: the
resource center wants users to contribute material they have used (upload
service / library) and through the communities express opinions and debate
methodologies (maybe even use the rating of documents to topics discussed
in the communities).
The Center can play a role in peer assist and encourage interactivity not only
by rating and reviewing material but also by answering questions of peers
via the communities.
And last but not least the resource center can serve as a feedback channel
between service providers and certification organizations.
The resource center will develop (and ‘ own’) an interface on which
discussions and webinars take place on overarching topics related to
voluntary standards, production techniques etc., but should also link to
existing fora. Avoiding duplication is important and it encourages other fora
to visit the Center for its content.
Bringing and taking
As mentioned before a successful community encourages horizontal
linkages between members. To make this happen there needs to be a balance
in ‘bringing’ and ‘taking’. Therefore a variety of instruments to share
experiences and information needs to be used; blogs, news, events, photos
50 | P a g e
and videos. Especially among service providers the use of social media and
interactive methodologies is growing and should be included in the Center.
Facilitation
Facilitation is of crucial importance for a lively interactive community and
experience showed that one person or organization functions as a motor of
the community. As the resource center will not be in charge of facilitating
all communities the above needs to be applied to the overarching
community. It is important that the Center (facilitator) receives feedback to
adjust the service where needed. It is therefore recommended to connect
with experienced facilitators of communities like Helvetas and others not
only when setting up the Center, but also while running it.
Portal
The portal section hosts hyperlinks to external third party websites.
The Portal section serves as additional service to users of the Resource
Center, to quickly jump to other relevant sites to avoid duplication and
improve Synergy between services and with existing internet services. The
Portal section also serves to access websites with copyrighted documents
that cannot be included in the Center's library.
To host relevant links, the portal section:
 Needs to be easily searchable (clear selection criteria) and be kept up-todate; Needs to have different indexing options, to search for instance
material by topic, methodology, and target group;
 Be very clear about linkage criteria for materials; Lead to practical
external content;
 Where possible, offer materials per language or region/sector; Quality
check of links offered is crucial.
News service
In order to strengthen the relation between the different services offered and
attract users to the different services it is recommended to start a news
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service. It can be expected that at first users will primarily visit the center to
search documents or look for specific expertise. However, they are
probably also interested to know the latest developments for their particular
field of work.
This can be achieved through the use of RSS. The center should therefore
collect relevant RSS feeds and recombine the items for different areas of
expertise, using search terms. These RSS feeds should be displayed on the
website of the center. You can also offer the option to subscribe and receive
the results by email.
Additionally you can develop the option that users enter their own search
question. The results could be displayed in a new RSS feed or alternatively
automatically send to their email addresses. This is a personalized news
service which could stimulate people to use and visit the Center more often.
Q&A service
A Question and Answer service is different from a Community in the sense
that it allows (anonymous) users to ask specific questions, and get answers
from a team of experts. Even beginners questions can be dealt with in a far
easier way than in a community. The Q&A service will function in addition
to the 'reward' system for the Yellow Page advertisers.
Synergy between services and with existing internet services
Synergy between services
The experience with libraries and communities shows that people will only
visit a new site when the information provided is useful for them. If that is
the case the chance that users will also contribute to the further development
of the Resource Center grows significantly.
We consider the connection and interrelation between the services crucial.
The services support and strengthen each other and the interconnection is
the real added value to the Resource Centre project. A library by itself is just
another library. Even if that library contains a superior search and find
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function. The library in connection to an active community with discussions
on content, becomes an attractive place to visit. The community plays a
supportive role for the Yellow Page service as well. Yellow Page experts
may position themselves better through their activity in the community. If
people only post their profile, the Yellow Pages functions as advertorial
service only. The feasibility research indicated that the majority of Yellow
Pages on the internet is outdated and advertisers don't keep their information
fresh. When people on the Yellow Pages are stimulated to take part in the
community, they will be more inclined to keep their profile fresh. In turn,
the community of practice is strengthened by the library feeding into the
discussions, and the library facility to upload and exchange content (see
Library: filling and updating work flow).
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Synergy with existing internet services
Where the resource center's services should be integrated, the resource
center should avoid to be a standalone facility. Many communities already
exist, some hosting very lively and interesting discussions. The resource
center should be embedded and integrated with existing platforms, and a
place from where users can be redirected to external communities, or find a
quick overview over current discussions (portal function)
Below please find an overview of resource center services, interrelation
between services, embedding in the wider internet community, and internal
information flows.
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Technical solutions
In modern web-technology, web-content and web-administration are dealt
with in so called Content Management Systems or CMS. The majority of
available CMS's work online, meaning that the technical and content
management can be done from any place in the world and from any
computer that is connected to the internet.
There are about 1200, possibly more, CMS's to choose from to create an
online resource center. It is impossible to test and compare them all.
We therefore recommend the steering group to focus and decide on a couple
of key questions and key functionalities the technical solution should carry.
This narrows down the search and selecting the appropriate CMS becomes
feasible.
In our view the following five key factors are important:
1. Portfolio of services on the resource center: library, community of
practice, yellow pages, calendar, news server.
2. Usability: functional richness, robustness -e.g. simplicity of installation
and reliability-, user-friendliness, flexibility and/or use of openness to
global standards.
3. Sustainability: mandate and continuing presence of developer (onsite or
commercial) or development community (open source software); and
continuing availability of local technical support or pricing policy
(commercial solution).
4. Strategic Value: mandate of developer; foreseeable future of the
technology; nature of the user community and the user environment.
5. Connectivity: a substantial amount of potential users copes with limited
bandwidth and erratic internet connections.
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Key 1: portfolio of services
Library
Document repository software is the most common feature when setting up
a library. This type of software generally provides open access to scientific
research outputs and literature by creating document repositories. They are
mostly hosted and managed by libraries of universities, governmental,
international or research organizations and the main feature of this approach
is that they are OAI-PMH compliant
Community of practice, Yellow Pages, Calendar, Q&A service
Specialized document repository services are less relevant to the
Community of practice, the Yellow Pages and the Interactive Calendar that
the resource center aims to host. For ease of use of the administrators and
web managers and for unity in web-layout it is strongly recommended to
look
for one CMS that can host all required services.
News service
A dedicated news service minimally requires RSS based technology.
Especially in open source software groups there are interesting practices
found.
Key 2: usability
Usability relates to functional richness, user-friendliness, flexibility (=
usability experience for the end-users). Usability for administration
purposes relates to, robustness -e.g. simplicity of installation and reliability,
and use and/or openness to global standards.
For the end user, the following requirements are important (see feasibility
study):
 Easily searchable and up-to-date.
 Needs to have different indexing options, to search for instance material
by topic, methodology, and target group, language and/or region/sector.
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The usability for administrators seems less important on first sight, yet
determines to a large extend the willingness and enthusiasm with which
administrators will keep updating the resource center. It is very likely that a
larger international team will be administrating the center, because the
different services require different qualifications and language skills.
The cost structure and sustainability of the CMS is directly related to these
factors. Usability and sustainability are therefore strongly related.
For the library, openness to global standards refers to library requirements,
especially the use of OAI-PMH compatible metadata. Also for the Yellow
Pages and the News server, openness to global standards is an important
issue. Harvesting information requires the use of open global standards at
third party sites. But if the Resource Center truly wants to function as global
service center to other initiatives, the use of open global standards is a must
for the center as well.
Open global standards are imperative when seeing the fast moving
developments in Library and IT environments. See as well Key 4: strategic
value.
Key 3: sustainability of CMS
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FAO has
broad experience in CMS development and use for agricultural information
management. From their websites, we learn that the tools they created show
particular advantages and more importantly several disadvantages:
 CMS based on proprietary languages/platforms caused sustainability
problems (discontinuity of services as a result of major new software
releases, or collapse of software developer);
 CMS's written from scratch either in house or by consulting companies
created a dependency on these developers. It made maintenance and
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
improvements costly and lengthy. Dependency on developers is often
conflicting with Key 2: usability, and Key 4: strategic value.
CMS’ written on an ad hoc basis and for specific needs, tailored to
existing database standards, are not easily extendable to support open
global standards again causing maintenance, usability and sustainability
issues.
Looking at this experience and specifically looking at sustainability, the
preferred choice would be to select an open source CMS, tailored to the
needs, or have it tailored to agricultural, quality management needs and
sustainable standards.
Key 4: strategic value
Strategic value of the technical solution depends on a combination of
usability (nature of the administration and user community), foreseeable
future of the technology needed to support the portfolio of services, and the
user's IT environment as described under connectivity.
As all these values point in the direction of open source software and global
standards, it won't be a surprise that we advise the same under strategic
value.
Key 5: Connectivity
Taking into account the potential users of the resource center, a significant
number of them copes with limited bandwidth and erratic internet
connections. Especially in Africa internet connectivity is low.
The technical setup of the Resource Center has to take connectivity serious.
Experience with other libraries (KIT, FAQ, FAO) are good examples of the
difficulties faced. Interested users generally find the website, and may even
be able to select materials for download, but fail to perform the actual
download. Either speed of internet is too slow or bandwidth too narrow, and
connections are reset halfway a download. Or a power cut forces the user to
start the download process from zero again. Very frustrating, and after one
58 | P a g e
or two such experiences, the user will blame the website and will not come
back again for its services.
In Europe, the use of freeware and open source software is becoming more
and more common. Excellent and free virus protectors, firewalls and other
utilities are easy to download. Exchange of big files (movies, music,
software), is abundant. With special exchange software and a fast
connection, one downloads 4 Gig in half a day. For users with poor internet
connections it is almost impossible to experience these benefits.
The server setup of the Resource Center should anticipate this situation by:
 offering the best possible search and selection services.
 offering library splitting and combining services, and;
 offering downloads via alternative and stable low speed freeware file
exchange solutions. Connectivity issues require the use of open source
software, and free exchange software.
P2P software
There is quite some peer-to-peer (P2P) software available enabling
exchange files, movies, music etcetera. P2P networks are often used for
illegal (copyrighted) file transfers .
The same technology can be put to use by the Resource Center for legal
exchange of content. P2P techniques are very convenient as well in low
connectivity situations. P2P software on the supplier side (host server)
supplies files in the form of hundreds or thousands individual bits. These
bits are exchanged in random order, and 'glued' together again at the clients
computer. As bits are exchanged in random order, the exchange process can
deal with internet and power cuts. Once connection is established again, the
exchange continues from where it was interrupted. Dependent on document
size and quality of connection at the clients’ side, such file exchange may
take seconds, or minutes or days with or without several interruptions.
59 | P a g e
P2P solutions are most often op source, legal to install both on the supplier
side (the Resource Center) as on the clients’ side. User packages are
normally limited to a couple of hundred kb's, available for all platforms
(Windows, Mac, Android, and Linux), and install and function
automatically without difficult handling or installation instructions.
Examples are UTorrent and Bittorrent, Gnutella, eDonkey2000, and
Freenet. More information is available on Wikipedia.
For the Resource Center it is important to select a package that is
compatible with server configuration, CMS and IT policies of the
implementing agency.
60 | P a g e
Governance and hosting
This chapter deals with question 6 of the terms of reference: to identify
suitable institutional / operational setups of the Resource Center
(implementation, hosting, legal status, governance, contractual relations),
and where relevant their pros and cons.
In order to come to a suitable operational and institutional setup it is
important to first identify the different tasks and responsibilities involved in
the Resource Center, and skills needed.
Operational aspects of the Center
The main aspect is building the Center and all its functionalities and the
maintenance of the Center’s services. This requires not only specific
knowledge, but also experience with managing complex projects.
The setup should at least be able to:
 Carry out complex project management (responsible for drafting
implementation plan, oversee execution, organize accountability to
governing body, financial management, advice on further strategic
directions)
 Have sufficient and specific IT skills: the Resource Center is a web
based instrument and needs specific expertise related to website
development, content management, connectivity, community
development. Software knowledge especially related to library and
yellow pages function
 Experience with operating in multidisciplinary teams / use ad hoc and
longer term working groups
 Experience with multi-stakeholder setting
Governance aspects of the Center
From project idea to implementation is quite a step especially when dealing
with a multi stakeholder approach and setting. It requires a clear governing
61 | P a g e
structure that is representative of the stakeholders and users the Center plans
to serve.
The tasks of the governing body are:
 Supervising the implementation both on content and financial aspects
 Hiring the implementing partner or person
 Decide on proposed work plans and budget for implementation Strategic
management / decision making; both on content as finance Consultation
of stakeholders on strategic issues / further development of Centre
 Communication with multi-stakeholder / multiple user groups on
development of Centre
Governance in a multi stakeholder setting also requires specific
communication skills as people operate in a multi-cultural setting and
represent a variety of needs.
Separate implementation from governance
Taking all the above into account, it makes sense to separate the
implementation (hosting) and operational management of the Centre from
the governance.
Governance
Current donors / founding fathers of the Centre could join forces and set up
a separate legal structure that owns the Resource Centre. The structure
should have an executive board representing the donors and if possible also
a stakeholder representation, and could work with an Advisory Council. The
board hires an implementing agency based on a ToR (and tender) that
reflects the specific roles, technical skills and experiences needed to set up
and maintain the Centre. The implementing agency could be one party or a
coalition of organizations and could, over time, be transferred to a
commercial partner.
The Board watches over the process (implementation of the project/setting
up of center= approving annual work plan and budget prepared by
62 | P a g e
implementing agency; receive work updates to allow for
monitoring implementation) and decides on strategic development
of the Centre. The Board can use an Advisory Council to consult
strategic issues with a broad range of stakeholders / users of the
Centre.
To keep it workable we advise to create a relatively small board
with a maximum of 5 members. The members represent the
founding donors (SECO/Helvetas, IDH, Hivos?), Iseal as the one
representing standard owners, someone with IT / virtual library
experience (could be ITC) and a member representing service
providers. They could meet 4 x a year with the implementing
agency.
The Advisory Council could meet 1 - 2 x a year and deal with
strategic questions and, where needed, discuss encountered
bottlenecks. The Council is a broader group representing all
stakeholders involved in the Centre.
Separately the implementing agency can use small working
groups to get input on content questions, look for practical
solutions, test new aspects of the services etc. Advantage is that it
is quick, could stay rather informal, time bound and pragmatic.
For instance, a small group could support the implementing
agency in for instance developing and testing the controlled
vocabularies, or look into rating possibilities for the yellow pages.
Implementation
The table below lists the different roles that an implementing
agency should fulfill in implementing and running the Resource
Center. One person may perform multiple roles, and or different
organizations may work together in a joint venture.
63 | P a g e
Implementing skills and expertise
Ideally you want one institution or organization that can carry out all roles
and connect to the different stakeholders. Until now there is not one party
that logically represents all skills, expertise and network connections needed
and is seen as neutral by the different stakeholder groups.
ISEAL does represent part of the stakeholders and by many others is looked
upon as relatively neutral, has sufficient experience to govern a multi
stakeholder project, but lacks skills and experience with the technical
aspects of setting up and maintaining the Centre – especially as the different
services offered by the Center require an integral technical and content
management approach. Some NGO’s have good understanding of setting up
and using learning communities (Helvetas for instance), but lack some of
the other skills. Research institutions like KIT have excellent understanding
and experience with virtual libraries, knowledge of newest IT technologies
etc., but are not in the position to host the Center on all its aspects.
Another aspect is that in the beginning the Center needs funding by donor
agencies (most likely more than 1) and only later in ‘life’ can move to a
sustainable economic model (even if this means partly donor funded and
partly income generating) with a specific owner.
The technical hosting of the Resource Center could be taken up by an
alliance of organizations that combine rolls, skills and expertise. This could
work well, especially in the first implementing phase.
Advice
We recommend the Steering Committee to consider splitting the governance
from the technical hosting of the Resource Center. It will allow the Center
to reach the required independence and neutrality, ownership by
stakeholders while at the same time guaranteeing optimal technical solutions
for the identified services.
64 | P a g e
Business model and strategic alliances
Throughout the report we mentioned factors for success or failure for a
website in general, and for certain services in particular. Some of these
factors also have a bearing on the financial sustainability of the Resource
Center. To forecast the financial sustainability of the Center, however,
continues to be rather difficult. Experiences show that people do not easily
pay for services that they see as public goals for instance.
In this chapter we indicate a few possible routes, among which strategic
alliances, cost containment and income generating activities, that should be
explored to work towards financial sustainability of the Center.
Strategic alliances
Why start far away trying to find people who want to advertise or otherwise
financially support the Center, when you have several interested parties
nearby? Other experiences show that once a support base is created, several
of its participants are willing to invest time and money in building or
maintaining services. For the Resource Center you could say that both the
promoters (civil society, sustainable standard owners, possibly commercial
organisations), and potential users could form that support base.
The proposed governance structure should be used to lay the foundation for
a solid support base that is willing to invest in time and money in building
the Center. Furthermore, these actors can play a role in further promoting
the Center and its services. They can liaise with a user network and find new
contributors.
Looking at the proposed services, especially the uploading and indexation
(tagging) of document in the library will be a laborious task. A strategic
alliance with a group of interested standard owners may come in handy
here. Both from a point of view of distribution of tasks, as from a content /
language point of view. Ideally they would invest time in supporting the
65 | P a g e
Center's host in identifying and indexation of documents. Most standard
owners already have their own (limited and often standard focused) library
that should be used as first input for the Resource Center. Most standard
owners also have staff worldwide that may support the laborious indexing
exercise and point out particular language issues that need to be addressed.
Cost containment
After the first and costly establishment period, it will be a matter of keeping
running costs low, while generating income from other sources. The
Content Management System (CMS) largely determines the long term
running costs, as explained under Key 3: sustainability of CMS. It is
therefore advised to select an open source CMS, tailored to the needs, or
have it tailored to agricultural, quality management needs and sustainable
standards. This surely contributes to containing costs.
Strategic alliance forming may be another way of keeping running costs
low. Most labor-intensive parts of the resource Center are Library and
Community of Practice. As mentioned earlier, if standard owners, multi
stakeholder initiatives and network organisations are willing to put work
time in these services, it will reduce implementation costs, but also make the
services customer friendly. Furthermore, other tasks can be shared as well,
like co-moderation of Communities of Practice, quality assessment of
documents etc. and it will greatly enhance commitment to the project.
Another route is of course pursuing synergy between services and with
existing Internet services. Making the community co-responsible for content
and quality of content, and by building in incentives for active participation
of users, is the best way of improving effectiveness, while keeping costs
low.
Income generating activities
Although the resource Center is not for profit, and in first instance financed
from public resources, it is important to work towards financial
sustainability without fully depending on donor funding. You could say that
66 | P a g e
using public resources for public goals is justifiable, yet, the resource Center
operates in a commercial arena. Therefore, financial commitment of a wider
group of interested actors (commercial players, standard owners, multi
stakeholder initiatives, network organisations, certification bodies) should
be logical and welcomed.
Additionally, the Center may be able to raise income through commercial
activities. Below please find a table with potentially income generating
activities that could be tried when setting up the Center.
potentially income generating activities that could be tried when setting up
the Center.
Income generating activity
Pro
Con
 Allows smaller and
unexpected advertisers to
co-finance;
 May have a negative effect on lay
Google ads
 Allows for very specific
out and usability
regional and content
advertisements at no cost.
 Difficult to implement as online
bank payments and credit card
services are scarce in Africa;
 Market conform, user pays
User pays per download
 Will be an extra hurdle for
for what he needs
interested downloaders;
 Conflicting with open source and
creative commons
 Could also increase costs as this
would need a certain quality
control;
 Market conform, user pays
User pays for online advise
 Could be considered as working
for what he needs
against principle of working in a
community (questions and
answers are for all).
Standard owners co-finance
 Market conform, standard  Could jeopardize independent
67 | P a g e

Certification bodies co-finance

Traders, retail organisation (Ahold,
Coop) and/or trade organisations
(GlobalGap, BRC etc.) co-finance
Multi stakeholder initiatives (IDH)
and Network organisations
(Solidaridad, COLEACP) cofinance
Yellow Page advertisers pay annual

fee

Q&A service on behalf of standard
owners and/or certification bodies, 
with Q&A integrated in their
respective websites

News service for third parties,
hosted on respective websites

owners are interested in
wider market share
Market conform,
certification bodies are
interested in wider market
share
Market conform, these
actors are interested in
wider market share of
sustainable products and
cope with lack of
information
In conformity with market
status of the Center;

Could jeopardize independent
status of the Center;

Could jeopardize independent
status of the Center;

May favour Western or larger
consultancies
More efficient use of
existing services
Hosted on third party sites,
so not affecting independent
status
More efficient use of
existing services
Hosted on third party sites,
so not affecting independent
status
68 | P a g e
Advice
Our online questionnaire of 2011, and exploratory and informal discussions
over the past months with some of the actors mentioned in our table with
income generating activities show a keen interest in a Resource Center. Yet,
financial and/or in kind contributions are made dependent on many
conditions, conditions that most often cannot be met or proven upfront.
An informal collaboration between 4C Alliance, Rainforest Alliance, Utz
and FLO for instance, is talking about joining efforts to establish a Learning
Alliance. This Alliance may well make use of (some) of the services of the
Resource Center. Also here, clear commitment is made dependent on
choices that yet have to be made by the Center and level of service
performance that cannot be shown yet. To be more precise, demands are
made regarding choices that still have to be made by the current
commissioners Seco, Helvetas, IDH and Hivos.
It is therefore advised to establish the Resource Center as fast as possible
and secure funding for the first two years. Right from the start, the
organisations behind the Resource Center should actively pursue all options
for strategic alliances, explore the income generating activities and where
possible condition alliance partners to co-finance the implementation of the
Center.
For future sustainability a solid business plan needs to be made. It is advised
that after the public introduction, the Center's board and implementing
agency should work on establishing that business plan to make the Center
independent from its initial funders.
69 | P a g e
Conclusions and recommendations second phase
feasibility study
Below are the conclusions and recommendations as put forward for
approval by the research team. Most recommendations were taken over by
the commissioning committee of Hivos, IDH, Seco and Helvetas in their
meeting of April 5 2012. Deviating and additional decisions by the
commissioning team are in Italic.
Portfolio of services
Develop and promote synergies between the services of the resource center.
The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Consider the possibility of creating customized documents, through
automatic deep tagging techniques.
Technical solutions, supporting the portfolio of services
The Resource Center should be setup on a framework of existing and OAIPMH compliant metadata-vocabulary, or so called Controlled Vocabularies:
 For Quality Management terms, ISO 2; is such a vocabulary, but is not
freely available in digital format and subject to copy rights. For the
moment, the Resource Center may need to setup a vocabulary by itself.
 For agricultural indexing use Agrovoc.
 For indexation of training material in-house development is needed.
Make use of open source software, tailored to the needs, or have it tailored
to agricultural, quality management and sustainable standard needs.
For ease of use by the administrators and web managers and for unity in
web-layout it is strongly recommended to look for one CMS that can host
all required services.
Make use of peer-to-peer software exchange solutions.
70 | P a g e
Governance and hosting
Recommended is to separate the implementation (hosting) and operational
management of the Center from the governance.
Current donors / founding fathers of the Center could join forces and set up
a separate legal structure that owns the Resource Center.
To keep it workable we advise to create a relatively small executive board
with a maximum of 5 members.
The Executive Board represents the donors and stakeholders and could
install an Advisory Council for feedback on strategic issues from a broader
range of stakeholders. The Executive Board hires an implementing agency
based on a ToR (and tender) that reflects the specific roles, technical skills
and experiences needed to set up and maintain the Center.
The implementing agency could be one party or a coalition of organizations
and could, over time, be transferred to a commercial partner.
Comments and decision of the commissioning committee: Agreed is to opt
for one central organization (governance platform) responsible for delivery.
Central organization will commission implementation to an implementing
agency or implementing consortium.
Preference is to have 1 central organization hosting the center, with subcontracting dependent on services required.
Implementation
The Resource Center has unlimited possibilities and the services can deal
with a large number of topics, commodities, languages etc. This is a very
ambitious goal. Our study has shown a few conditions which we want to
highlight here:
 In order to ensure the link between the users and the Center it is
therefore important to launch with certain (controlled) minimum amount
of content. For the same reason it is important to start with several
71 | P a g e

services at the same time (library, yellow pages, community, portal and
news service) to allow for synergy.
In order to ensure a strong link between the users and the Center people
need to find information quickly, get clear indications of the scope of the
information available and be able to use all services. In order not to
disappoint first visitors in the setting up phase, we recommend to launch
the Center with all services but with a certain (controlled) minimum
amount of content and a clear plan for broadening the scope.
Decided is to invite all interested organizations (feasibility study) and
standard owners to share what they have. The focus of the resource center
is on quality management, and nót on a certain commodity or certification
service. If in practice it turns out that certain commodities move faster than
others, that is accepted.
The interest shown by the strategic alliance of 4C, Utz, RA and FLO is
welcomed. It doesn’t make sense to compete.
72 | P a g e
Annex 1 List of websites scored
(also online available allowing for sorting and filtering at www.fa2q.nl/all_sites_reviewed)
OWNER
ICCO, SECO, Textile
Exchange and
HELVETAS
4C
4C coffee association
Agricord
Agrinatura
AgriProfocus
AgriProfocus
Anneke Teunissen
Bas van Riet
Cordaid
CTA
CTA
CTA
EAFCA
FAO
FAO
FIBL
Gunnar Rundgren,
Grolink
IFOAM
International trading
Centre
ISEAL ALLIANCE
KIT
Michiel
Schoenmakers/FMS
ministerie van
onderwijs
Progreso
Rainforrest Alliance
SCAN
Seco, ITC, BSD
consulting, Leading
standards
SEEP
State Secretariat for
Economic Affairs
Switzerland
URL
www.organiccotton.org/
https://platform.4c-coffeeassociation.org
http://www.4c-coffeeassociation.org/
www.agricord.org
www.esfim.org
www.genderinvaluechains.ning.com/
www.apf-kenya.ning.com/
www.claase.org
http://www.dutchtrainingprofessionals.nl/
www.cordaidpartners.com/
www.cta.int
www.cta.esmarthosting.net/
www.anancy.net/
www.eafca.org/
www.imarkgroup.org/
www.fao.org/corp/knowledgeforum/en/
www.organic-africa.net/oa-home.html
http://www.organicstandard.com
www.ifoam.org/growing_organic/7_training/training_platform_Mai
nPage.html
www.standardsmap.org/en/
www.isealalliance.org/
www.portals.kit.nl
http://qualityxs.org/user/
www.wikiwijs.nl
www.progresonetworkenglish.ning.com/
www.sustainableagriculturetraining.org/virtual_library
http://www.sustainablecommodities.org/scan
www.kmu.kompass-nachhaltigkeit.ch
www.seepnetwork.org/
www.sippo.ch/internet/osec/en/home/import.html
73
Sustainable
Commodities Initiative
USAID
Utz and Solidaridad
VO Raad
Worldbank
http://www.sustainablecommodities.org/cosa/update
www.microlinks.kdid.org/
www.utzcertified-trainingcenter.com
http://www.prodocent.nl/
www.wbi.worldbank.org/
Other websites
URL
International ValueLinks
Association e.V
http://www.valuelinks.org/
Swiss Development cooperation
http://www.sdc-employment-income.ch/
USAID
http://agrilinks.kdid.org/
AKVO
Learning network on capacity
Development
http://www.akvo.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
Harvard university
http://www.ksgcase.harvard.edu/
Kennisnet
http://www.kennisnet.nl/
Leraar 24
http://www.leraar24.nl/home.psml
ambtenaar 20
http://www.ambtenaar20.nl/,
Dutch dev organizations
http://www.search4dev.nl/
Farmerfieldschools
http://www.farmerfieldschool.info/
ILEIA
http://www.agriculturesnetwork.org/
Change alliance
http://www.changealliance.org/
Change alliance
http://thechangealliance.ning.com/
Ontrack
http://www.ontrack.nl/
Bol
http://www.bol.com/nl/index.html
Itrainonline
http://www.itrainonline.org/itrainonline/english/about.shtml
IICD
http://iconnect-online.org/
ICCO
Knowledge management for
Development
https://compartnetwork.pbworks.com/
http://www.lencd.org/home
http://wiki.km4dev.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
74
Annex 2 Criteria used for
scoring portals, libraries and
platforms
3.2. Does the site take the needs of the target
group(s) in account?

Tone and manner of communication

Speed of use (big pictures, big
downloads)

Content (academic material, practical
material, variety of materials)
1. Membership

Open to all

Open with free subscription

Open with paid subscription

Available to members only

Other...

If access is limited upon conditions or
membership, please write which
conditions:
4. Quality and activity on the platform
4.1 What content is hosted on the platform?

News

Blogs

Forums

Links to resources

Member pages

Member profiles

Other...
2. Attractiveness
2.1 How attractive do you judge the site is
for:

Farmers

Farmer groups

NGO's

Trainers, trainer organizations

Commercial organizations
4.2 Ease of use

Is content categorized?

Can the user easily search for content
or categories?
2.2 Loading speed of landing page

Pop ups and other obtrusive elements
throughout the site

Ease of identifying the authority of
authors

Ease of identifying the currency of the
site

Ease of identifying the last update of
the site

Ease of identifying what was updated
4.3 Quality variety and activity rate

How do you judge the quality of the
content?

How (inter)active is the user
community?

How varied is the user community?
4.4 How many active users?

2-okt

20 - 30

30 - 100

100 and more
2.3 How up to date is the site overall?

How up to date are the hyperlinks
(check some 5 links)?

Can users take a subscription in the
form of an RSS feed?

Are newsletters offered?

Does the site indicate which target
groups are targeted?
5. Identity of users

The platform is used by a clearly
defined group of professionals

Professionals are known (Facebook
option) and/ or pages for members

Connected via LinkedIn

Professionals are identified via their email

Anonymous use is possible

Other...
3. Target group focus
3.1 What target groups are indicated or do
you think are targeted

Audit body

Agribusiness

Certification body

Development agency

Multi stakeholder forum

Processing and trade

Producer group

Standard setter

Trade Union

Trainer or training organization

Other...
6. What content is hosted on the portal?

Hyperlinks to other sites

Collection of content, content hosted
on other sites

Overview of (sustainability) standards
with categories

Other...
75
10. If there is categorized search
functionality, what indexes or categories or
labels are available?

Target

Target group

Content

Workshop methodology

Author

Publisher

Publish date

User feedback

Certification specific

Other...
7. What is the quality of the portal content?

Hyperlinks to other sites

Collection of content, content hosted
on other sites

Overview of (sustainability) standards
with categories

Search functionality

Possibility to compare search results
8. In case of a library, what downloadable
content is offered?

Production techniques

Product quality

Financial systems

Price setting mechanisms

Administration

Management skills

Market developments

Business planning

Certification requirements

Other...
11. Ease of search

How do you judge the search
functionality of the site?

Is content categorized?

Can the user easily make a combination
of categories?
12. Content Management

Who provides the content of the site?

Who safeguards the quality of content?
9. What types of content is offered for
download?

Documents (Word, Excel, PDF)

Presentation (PowerPoint)

Audio (Podcasts, Audio-CD, MP3)

Visual (Video, DVD, Screencast)

Other...
76
Annex 3 List of interviewed persons
PSO, The Netherlands
Rob van Poelje, manager PSO capacity building in developing countries
GIZ, Kenya, Nairobi
Joachim Weber, Technical advisor
Oxfamnovib, The Netherlands
Henk Peters, program coordinator food and income security South and South East Asia
Independent consultants, The Netherlands
Simon Koolwijk, consultant capacity development and learning
Joitske Hulsebosch, consultant on CoPs
Dominicus college Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Janus Kolen, ICT coordinator Alliance of 7 secondary schools in Nijmegen
Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation, Switserland
Frank Eyhorn, Knowledge manager
Andrea Bishof, facilitator CoP organic cotton
Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), Value chain portal
Hettie Verhagen head dept. Information and library service section information
products
Wiebe de Boer in charge of the portals for value chain development, rural information
and laboratory quality strengthening
ICCO and FSAS
Angelica Senders, consultant Capacity development and learning FSAS
Agri-profocus
Roel Snelder, network facilitator Kenya and Uganda
IICD
Saskia Harmsen, in charge of the program ‘I train online’
Twin/Cla@se
Anneke Theunissen, in charge of the Cla@se program and general producer support
CAFENICA
Martha Estella Gutierrez, executive director Cafenica and financial manager CLAC
coffee network
Junta Nacional de Café, Peru
Susanna Schuler, in charge of producer support program and SCAN Peru
CLAC, producer network Latin America
Xiomara Paredes, operational manager CLAC
77
ISEAL
Kristin Komives, monitoring and evaluation manager
Paddy Doherty, assurance code manager
IDH
Jordy van Honk, program manager tea and cashew
Matthieu Guemas, program director
Amanda Stone, senior program manager cotton
Utz Certified
Daan de Vries, field development
FLO Cert
Frank Brinkschneider, senior manager
Van Weely/Douque’s Koffie
Norbert Douque, owner – senior coffee trader
4C
Annette Pensel, director sustainability innovations
Lars Kahnert, support manager co-financing
78
Annex 4 List of respondents on the online questionnaire
Organisation
1iomara Paredes
4C Coffee Association
Agrorganics
Anchor-Consult
Asal Jaya, PT
Asociación Aldea Global Jinotega
Asociación de Cooperativas de Pequeños
Productores de Café de Nicaragua
(CAFENICA)
ASOCIACIÓN DE PRODUCTORES
CAFETALEROS JUAN MARCO EL PALTO
ASOCIACIÒN REGIONAL DE
PRODUCTORES DE CACAO TUMBES
Atlantic Commodities Vietnam
BCI
bio.inspecta AG
Business Watch Indonesia
CAFE1PORT
CENFROCAFE
CENFROCAFE
CERES GmbH
CETPRO LA FLORIDA
Civil Society Biofuels Forum
Name
1iomara Paredes
Jan van Hilten
Juan Matta
Annemieke Wijn
Hariyanto
Diédericks Gadea
Martha Estela Gutiérrez Cruz
Country of head office
El Salvador
URL
Germany
Indonesia
Nicaragua
NICARAGUA
www.anchor-consult.de
ITALO MONTENEGRO DELGADO
PERÚ
HELIO ALEJANDRO GUERRERO
ALBERCA
Jean-Christophe Mani
MURONGO MARIUS
Bernd Jauch
Nanang Christianto
FRANCISCO BUSTAMATE
Elmer Peña Silva
Victor Vásquez Gonzales
Albrecht Benzing
NATALIA ROJAS BALDEON
Marriot Nyangu
PERU
Coffee Management Services Limited
COLEACP PIP
Samuel Thuo
Jeremy Knops
79
Switzerland
ITALY
Switzerland
Indonesia
COLOMBIA
PERU
PERÚ
Germany
PERU
25 Zambezi Road ,Roma
Township,Lusaka Zambia
Kenya
BELGIUM
www.aglobal.org.ni
www.cafenica.info
www.ecomtrading.com
www.bio-inspecta.ch
www.fair-biz.org
www.cenfrocafe.com.pe
www.cenfrocafe.gob.pe
www.ceres-cert.com
WWW.CETPROLAFLORIDA.COM.PE
www.biofuelsforumzambia.com
www.coffeemanagement.co.ke
http://www.coleacp.org/en
consultancy
Consultor Independiente
Consultor Independiente en temas
contable financieros, organizacion,
planificacion, Auditorias, Proyectos de
Inversion, etc
COOPARAISO LTDA.
COOPERATIVA AGRARIA CAFETALERA
LOS CHANKAS SELVA CENTRAL
Cooperativa Agraria Cafetalera Valle de
Incahuasi
Cooperativa de Servicios Múltiples
CENFROCAFE PERU
COOPERATIVA SERVICIOS MULTIPLES EL
GORRION RL.
Cooperative
Corporacion de Productores CAfe peru
S.A.C.
Dakman Vietnam Limited
DE Foundation
Earth Net Foundation / Green Net
Eastern African Fine Coffees Association
El Castillo del Cacao SA
EMATER-Pr.
Envirocare
EQUANATIVA
FAIR TRADE ORGANIZATION OF KENYA
Fair Trade Original
rodney nikkels
Guillermo Saborío
Modesto Laguna Matamoros
netherlands
Costa Rica
Nicaragua
No aplica
Ninguna
CESAR AUGUSTO CORREA
CANDIANO
ORSI MARCOS QUISPE HUASCO
BRAZIL
WWW.COOPARAISO.COM.BR
Dante Muriel Palomino
Peru
www.cafeperu.org.pe
Teodomiro Melendres Ojeda
www.cenfrocafe.com.pe
FRANCISCA NEIDA UBEDA
HERRERA
Thomas Sproten
Juan Francisco Ferro
Ciudad de Jaén, Provincia de
Jaén, Departamento de
Cajamerca - Perú
NICARAGUA JINOTEGA SAN
SEBASTIAN DE YALI.
Indonesia
Peru
jonathan Clark
Don Jansen
Vitoon Panyakul
Filtone C. Sandando
Milton Fernández
Otávio Oliveira da Luz
Grace Murungi
ROBERTO JIMENEZ LOZANO
SOPHIE MUKUA
Connie Valkhoff
Switzerland (Volcafe)
Netherlands
Thailand
Uganda
Nicaragua
Brazil
Tanzania
ECUADOR
KENYA
Netherlands
www.dakmancoffee.com
www.defoundation.org
www.greennet.or.th
www.eafca.org
www.elcastillodelcacao.com
80
PERU
[email protected]
jappsa-coop.com
www.cafe-peru.com
www.envirocaretz.org
www.ftok.org
www.fairtrade.nl
Fairtrade International
federacion nancional de cafeteros
Finlays Horticulture
FLO International
FLO-CERT GmbH
FSC
FUNDEPPO
Green Home Organisation for Women
Development
HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation
Susanne Boetekees
Jhon Freddy Muñoz N
Chris Gilbert-Wood
Andreas Kratz
Frank Brinkschneider
Angeline Gough
Jerónimo Pruijn
Masereka sylvest
Germany
colombia
UK
Germany
Germany
Mé1ico
Uganda
www.fsc.org
www.yoursymbol.org
Frank Eyhorn
Switzerland
HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation
HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation
HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation
IDH The Sustainable Trade Initiative
IFOAM
IFOAM
Independiente
Joost Pierrot Consultancy
Junta nacional del Café
K.c.u (199) Ldt
Kenya Coffee Producers Association
KTDA Iriaini Tea Factory Co. Limited
Kuit Consultancy
Kyagalanyi Coffee Ltd., Uganda - member
of the Volcafe group
Landelijke Vereniging van Wereldwinkels
Leading Standards GmbH
Marine Stewardship Council
Martin Dietz
Lazare YOMBI
Riff Fullan
Jenny Kwan
Joelle Katto-Andrighetto
Markus Arbenz
Jorge Carpio Arce
Joost Pierrot
Susana Schuller
Edson Matiku
Charles Oyuga
Wanjiku Githaiga
Michiel Kuit
Anneke Fermont
Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland
Netherlands
Germany
Germany
Nicaragua
Netherlands
Perú
Tanzania
Kenya
KENYA
Netherlands
Switserland
www.helvetas.org;
www.organicandfair.org
www.helvetas.ch
Erika Spil
Heiko Liedeker
Yemi Oloruntuyi
Netherlands
Germany
United Kingdom
81
www.cafedecolombia.co
www.finlays.net
www.fairtrade.net
www.helvetas.org
www.idhsustainabletrade.com
www.ifoam.org
www.ifoam.org
No
www.joostpierrot.com
www.juntadelcafe.org.pe
www.kcpa.co.ke
www.ktdateas.com
www.kyagalanyi.co.ug /
www.volcafe.com
www.wereldwinkels.nl
www.leadingstandard.net
www.msc.org
Ministry of Agriculture
Nestle
Oxfam Novib
Organic Herb Trading
PELUM-Kenya
Elizabeth Kamau
Pedro Avila Orozco
Johan Verburg
Eileen Clark
Zachary Makanya
Kenya
Me1ico D.F.
NL
UK
Thika, Kenya
PELUM-Kenya Association
prodecoop, r. l.
Progreso
PSI
PT Neslte Indonesia
Rainforest Alliance
Rainforest Alliance
Rainforest Alliance, Programa Paisajes
Sostenibles Peru
react africa
react africa
RED CAFÉ de la Coordinadora
Latinoamericana y de El Caribe de
Organizaciones de Pequeños
Productores de Comercio Justo (CLAC)
Zachary Makanya
Reyno Elideth Meneses Acuña
Angel Mario Martinez-Garcia
Ian Finlayson
junda aulia
Edward Millard
Leif Pedersen
Gerardo Medina M.
Kenya, and Zambia
Nicaragua
Roundtable on Sustainabe Biofuels
Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels
SNV Netherlands Devt organization
SOLIDARIDAD
Solidaridad
SOLIDARIDAD
Solidaridad Eastern and Central Africa
Anne-Sophie Dörnbrack
Sébastien Haye
Jechoniah kitala
EZIO
Rajesh Dubey
www.kilimo.go.ke
www.pelum.net,
www.pelumrd.org,
www.pelum.net
www.prodecoop.com
UK
switzerland
USA
www.psi-advantage.com
Nueva York
www.rainforest-alliance.org
pamela
nairobi,kenya
[email protected]
Silvio Cerda Hernandez
En Nicaragua se ubica
actualmente la oficina de su
dirección ejecutiva,
trabajando de cerca con la
Oficina CLAC - El Salvador
Switzerland
Switzerland
Netherlands
holanda
India
PERU
Netherlands
www.clac-comerciojusto.org
Joseph Kamanu
82
www.rainforest-alliance.org
www.rsb.org
rsb.org
www.snvworld.org
www.solidaridadnetwork.org
SOLIDARIDAD.ORG
www.solidaridanetwork.org/ea
Solidaridad Ivory Coast
Solidaridad Network
Kadi
Julius Ssemyalo
Ghana
Netherlands
solidaridad-Nigeria
State Secretariat for Economic Affairs
SECO
Technical Assistance for Sustainable
Trade & Environment (TASTE
Foundation)
Tropical Farm Management
Twin & Cla@se
wale Awoyemi
Martin Peter
Nitherland
Switzerland
Luud Clerc1
The Netherlands
Jerida Sinange
Anneke Theunissen
Kenya
Inglaterra
UCPCO RL
Union Nationale des Producteurs de
Coton du Burkina (UNPCB)
van Hall-Larenstein University of Applied
Sciences
Volcafe
WOMENN AND LAW IN EAST AFRICA
TANZANIA
Zameen Organic
Jhyson Moreno
GUEBRE Georges
Nicaragua
Burkina Faso
Jos van Hal
The Netherlands,
Wageningen
Switzerland
TANZANIA
Mark Furniss
JOYCE MDOE SHAIDI
Gijs
83
www.solidaridadnetwork.org
<www.solidaridadnetwork.org>
and or <www.solidaridad.nl>
www.solidaridad.nl
www.fairtaste.nl
www.twin.org.uk y
www.claase.org
www.ucpcorl.com
www.unpcb.org
www.vanhall-larenstein.com
www.volcafe.ch
Annex 5 Detailed interview report
On the topics:
 The users of the resource centre
 The end users
 Quality control of resources
 Yellow pages
 Languages and regions
 Technicalities and variety of resources
 Cooperation
 Host and governing body
 Processes
The users of the resource centre
The end-users, farmers, are not likely to use an internet based resource
centre. For this reason the users of the resource centre will be the
consultants, trainers, advisor providing capacity building services to
farmers, often called Business Development Service providers.
 BDS providers are private companies; the resource centre must
provide these companies with practical and useful tools, which
create interesting business opportunities for the BDS provider.
 How to reach the envisaged target group of this resource centre?
Are their platforms of BDS providers? Not many are known. There
are examples of BDS platforms in specific countries see for
examples http://www.bds-forum.net/ (but these focus mainly on
BDS for SMEs).
 In practice labeling organizations have their preferred suppliers,
often staff on the pay-roll of an organization (e.g Solidaridad for
Utz), and do not hire private BDS providers.
 Rural BDS affordable for farmers is often lacking, many
development organizations try to support the development of this
type of BDS, but this remains difficult. Rural BDS development is
one of the topics of the AgriProfocus Agri-hubs, e.g. in Ethiopia.
 Formulate the target group of the resource centre broader then
BDS providers. If the target groups if formulated as ‘service
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providers’ this also includes NGOs and governmental extension
services. This enlarges the group of potential users of the
resource centre.
There are likely to be more channels to reach this broad target
group (e.g the APF agri-hubs, Farmer Field Schools etc.)
Find out what the problems are of professionals (follow (linkedin)
groups, Nings etc.)
Do not limit your self to the most important/ well known
standards as Fair Trade organic, Utz etc. Include all round tables
and sustainability initiatives (nicely mapped in the Standards map
of ITC)
Realize that there is a difference between standards for small
holders and for plantages (e.g. ISO 26.000) (are both going to be
addressed?)
The end users
This resource centre is a means to an end: increased production according
to voluntary standards ánd positive social and economic impact for
farmers (men and women) in developing countries. This implies the
resource centre needs to be an answer to the needs of these farmers in
order to be succesfull.
 What are the needs of the end-users of the resource centre, of the
farmers?
o They are not necessarily interested in getting trained for
one label, they might want to combine labels, or move
from one to another.
o They might be interested in sustainable agriculture to start
with and maybe later consider a label.
o They might not al all be interested in a label:
 Because they lack capacity (individual of
organisational)
 They are not sure the benefits exceed the costs
 They want to keep their freedom to sell to the
trader with the highest price
o Farmers might want to be assisted in making a good choice
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Oxfam Novib is even of the opinion that many labels are very close
to regular agricultural practice. Criteria on inclusiveness are
lacking (for gender and the poor).
Oxfam Novib also promotes less labels to reduce the jungle of
current labels
In order to be able to discuss this type of issues openly you should
be careful not to be identified too much with one label.
Quality control of resources
A central topic in the interviews was the quality control of the resources:
 How are you going to ensure quality control at the gate (what
resources do you include, what criteria do you use, who will
formulate the criteria, who is in charge of ensuring they are
applied?)
 How do you organize this ‘meta-dating’? For every resource you
should ensure that it is clear: for which target group, what are the
learning objectives, the language, concepts and theories expected
to be familiar, what skills are required.
 A central problem is the fact that a resource centre works
modular, while a training institute (or a labeling organization)
probably has organized a compete course. This is the problem also
in education, in stead of a complete geography programme for
children from 12-18, teachers nowadays combine own modules in
their own sequence. This creates specific problems on how to
combine modules in the best way.
 Quality management also implies that material which is taken up
is to be kept updated and actual, and that links are still working.
 Copyright is another important issue. Of all material sources have
to be mentioned and copyright checked (you are already in trouble
if pictures with copy rights are used). More and more material is
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published under Creative Commons 1 but often this is not
specified. The problem might not be that big as most development
organizations allow their publications to be used freely as there
production if paid from public funds. Also a portal providing links
to resources already in the public domain does not have this
problem.
A community based resource centre might have a review or rating
system to allow users to express their opinion on the quality and
usefulness of resources. Develop a system for users to evaluate
material (by means of a survey), ask them to rate (give stars) or
ask for a review (as for a book).
Community members might be encouraged to upload or propose
material. A system of quality control for this has to be designed. A
two-step system might be considered allowing community
members to vote (‘like’) for proposed material to be included in
the data base of the resource centre.
Yellow pages
Should the online resource centre for VSS include a system of Yellow
Pages, or even an accreditation system? Based on the reaction of the
persons interviewed this is an idea to be reconsidered.
 A system of Yellow pages is very difficult to maintain, even if you
make the persons concerned, the service provider, responsible.
The Creative Commons copyright licenses and tools forge a
balance inside the traditional “all rights reserved” setting that
copyright law creates. Our tools give everyone from individual
creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized
way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work. The
combination of our tools and our users is a vast and growing digital
commons, a pool of content that can be copied, distributed,
edited, remixed, and built upon, all within the boundaries of
copyright law.
1
87
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ICCO used to have such a system, it did not work and was closed
quietly.
IFOAM had a forum of consultants, which closed down for reason
unknown.
APF had this idea of a data base with projects of members, the
members did not manage to provide the information and/ or to
keep it updated.
Quote of a consultant: “It is my experience that I never get
assignment via the systems where I have posted my c.v.”
An accreditation will be a very difficult to manage, expensive and
heavy system
Suggestions:
o It might be a suggestion to link to Linked-in (make a group
and encourage to use the ‘recommend’ option)
o APF has a system of pages linked to Ning where companies
can make their own profile; it is the intention to develop a
directory for the search in these pages.
Languages and regions
 You will have to deal with languages, but avoid considering these
as separate. Better develop one community dealing with materials
in different languages.
 Moderating a community costs a lot of time, especially if this is an
international community with many languages
Technicalities and variety of resources
 When uploading e-courses take care that it is technically
compatible with different ICT environments.
 When developing a resource centre do not only limit yourself to
paper training manuals. Include audio and visual material as well
if you want to be a modern resource centre. Some techniques are
far more easily taught by means of a short film then in an article.
 Also think about the exchange of information on apps for mobile
phone; in some countries this type of apps is increasingly used to
support agricultural production
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For a platform is a ‘Ning’ very useful. It is much cheaper to use a
Ning than to make an own platform. The fact that it is not for free
anymore is an advantage, provides more reliability. Many
platforms we have looked at use Nings for their on-line community
(e.g. APF, Change Alliance)
A Ning is less useful for a library or a portal. On APF Nings
resources are shared using the social bookmarking tool delicious.
Tagged resources automatically feed to the Nings. ICCO does the
same for its community wikis. The continuation of delicious is not
guaranteed. ICCO experiments at the moment with Diigo,
http://www.diigo.com/
Cooperation
 In order to organize a resource centre well, there needs to be a
support base of a group of organizations willing to invest in the
organization of the resource centre.
 Distinguish between an inner - and a outer circle of organizations
involved. The first one in charge of the hosting and governance,
the latter other stakeholders (e.g all labeling organizations).
 Do not forget the need to establish relations of cooperation with
external organizations which can contribute to the development of
the resource centre.
 Be sure all organizations involved are on the same line, share the
same expectations (a common trap is that individual organizations
are very much attached to their own culture, there own way of
doing things; they might have a marketing purpose and fear
loosing their image by working together)
 Take time to get on the same line! If you do not do this it will fire
back on you.
 There also needs to be a support base at the side of the users; if
not the material in the resource centre will not reach the
intended users and establishment of the resource centre will be a
waste of money.
 These two support bases on the supply of demand side need to be
linked; avoid establishing a ‘supply-driven’ initiative.
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A support base also implies the willingness to invest in a project. It
is one thing to be interested in implementing a project for which
donor money is available, something else to be willing to integrate
this resource centre in the core business of participating
organizations?
Host and governing body
 Distinguish between the ‘host’ of this initiative and the governing
body. Governance ensures broad ownership, but one organization
should be in charge of the technical setting up of the system.
 The governing body should be composed of a limited number of
representative organizations steering the resource centre as a
project.
 It is accountable to a broader constituency of stakeholders.
 Criteria for a host:
o internationally recognized neutral institution which is there
to last;
o not a private company that runs it as a business because it
is about public goods;
o should have IT in house, the requirements to set up the
system;
o should be able to deliver
o be neutral (so ISEAL is not recommended by several)
 The host should NOT be:
o An aid organizations like HIVOS of Helvetas;
o one of the standards setters
o FAO, UNEP etc. too heavy, too slow, and too expensive
 Suggestion for a host: the International Trade Centre (ITC),
o ITC is linked to UNCTAD and thus neutral
o ITC has recently made the Standards map a capacity
building programme linked to it would be a natural follow
up step of this project
o But ITC (as UN organization) is also bureaucratic and
expensive.
 KIT might be a host in the Netherlands of the online library, they
run 4 own portals (they have offered their technical expertise).
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AgriProfocus is interested in partnering with this Resource Centre,
particularly on the interactive/ community part of it. They have
expertise in (on-line) network facilitation to offer and an immense
network in their Agri-hub countries.
A host not necessarily determines the presentation of the resource
centre or the platform. The resource centre can have an own look
and feel (landing page).
A host should be involved in an early stage to ensure ownership.
Processes
 Realize that setting up an online library or portal is a lot of work,
keeping it up to standard and managing it. (e.g. the person in
charge of the KIT portal on value chain development spends 450
hours per year on this portal).
 Facilitation of an online community also costs time, and is a
different specialization.
 Managing the organisational and cooperation aspects of the
project will also be time consuming and very important.
 Embedded learning from the beginning in the project is of major
importance; are we doing the right things and are we doing the
things right.
 Allow for adjustments based on the learning in the strategy, the
partners/ stakeholders, the steering structure, the working- and
the learning processes.
 Ensure linking of this resource centre with other initiatives (links
from other websites to the resource centre.
 Use Facebook, Twitter etc. to ensure that people know what
happens in your resource centre.
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Terms and definitions
A content management system (CMS) allows publishing, editing, and
modifying content as well as site maintenance from a central page. It
provides a collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a
collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computerbased.
Controlled vocabularies provide a way to organize knowledge for
subsequent retrieval. They are used in subject indexing schemes, subject
headings, thesauri, taxonomies and other form of knowledge organization
systems. Controlled vocabulary schemes mandate the use of predefined,
authorized terms that have been preselected by the designer of the
vocabulary, in contrast to natural language vocabularies, where there is no
restriction on the vocabulary.
Library: A library is a managed and organized collection of information
resources, of all kinds, with services provided so that the collection can be
used effectively”. This more general explanation shows that a library is not,
first and foremost a place: more importantly it is a collection which is
organized and managed for the benefit of its users. To allow the user to find
what he is searching for, libraries normally make use of so called metadata
and controlled vocabularies.
Metadata: literally 'data about data', is information about information
resources, including the contents of digital libraries. It takes the form of
structured records, in a consistent standard format.
There are many different metadata formats, some simple, and some very
complex. They can include information about many aspects of resources,
including:
 description of the item: format, size, etc.; its subject or topic; author,
title, publisher, date issued or modified, etc.; preservation or archiving
information; and
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access rights, copyright, etc.
OAI-PMH: Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting
developed by the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) is an applicationindependent interoperability framework based on metadata harvesting. OAIPMH distinguishes between two different elements:
1. data providers that expose metadata; and
2. service providers that build value-added services based on the metadata
harvested from the data providers.
The institutions that have adopted specialized tools such as document
repository services, have done so in order to benefit from the advanced
description, indexing and retrieval functions of these tools and from their
compliance with the standards that are relevant for the type of content that
they manage. This is therefore very relevant to the library function of the
Centre.
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