All formats used to explain or to manage the System must rest ultimately on descriptions of the work being undertaken by the System's centres. With most centres now featuring project-based management and the remainder moving in that direction, there is an opportunity to describe the centres' work in terms of projects.
At this stage of development there are differences among centres in the way projects are defined and described, as well as in how authority and responsibility are assigned, and budgets are framed. To some extent these differences will remain. Even so, the System will require a certain degree of standardization, e.g., in the definition of projects, in order that activities can be aggregated across centres. In any case there will be advantage in defining projects in terms of specific outputs, a time frame, likely implications for productivity and for poverty alleviation, and likely implications for the environment.
To simply convey some sense of what the added detail will permit, consider the case of germplasm improvement in Table 3. With information available in the past the total for the System can be disaggregated into each of the commodities for which germplasm is carried out. Table 5 presents an estimate of that information for 1996. Consider now germplasm improvement for wheat and focus on spring bread wheat. With its project based budgeting, CIMMYT now has information available at the project level. Adding an estimate of ICARDA's support for work on spring bread wheat for drier areas (some US$ 100,000), the projects seen in Table 5 reflect the CGIAR's investment in each of the projects dealing with germplasm improvement for spring bread wheat (see Table 5).
Table 5. An Illustration of the Linkage between Center Projects and CGIAR Programs (in $ millions)
Since early 1995 TAC has been interacting with the centres on their approaches to projects and project budgeting. In the course of the next weeks, TAC and the CGIAR Secretariat will move to establish the minimum degree of standardization required to meet the various needs at play. This effort will rest on several considerations. Among these are the requirements of the development assistance community, the circumstances of the centres, and the information needs of TAC and of the CGIAR Secretariat.
While the System as a whole has agreed to an emphasis on poverty alleviation and protecting the environment, it is still the case that many of its members have interests which are more specific. Some, for example, are more concerned with one set of countries or one geographic region than another. Some see one set of natural resources as of more interest than another. Some favour work on marginal lands over work for favoured environments and vice versa. Some are more, others less, concerned with the extent of basic and strategic research. Those with such interests will welcome the possibility of aggregating activities across centres in terms of their specific concerns. As it turns out, however.. accounting systems impose a limit on the number of such aggregations. TAC requires guidance from the System in identifying the most important of these considerations.
Over time, of course, centres will introduce new accounting and management formats that can more easily accommodate the requirements of the System. All of this suggests that the interaction of System and centre requirements will play out over time, but with every expectation that most of the requirements can be met in the near future. TAC will work with centres and the CG Secretariat to balance the various considerations and to add further improvements in definitions and budget formats.
Related to this theme, TAC requires guidance from the Group on a scheme for classifying projects in a way that will be manageable (TAC estimates that there will be over 500 individual projects) and revealing of those activities of most interest to the Group. At Lucerne, TAC framed a matrix in terms of five major undertakings. In Section Two, TAC described a matrix in terms of 12 activities -each a sub-set of one of the undertakings - and several Systemwide programmes. Perhaps the matrix of Section Two is adequate, perhaps a larger number of activities would be preferred. TAC now asks that the Group indicate its preferences.
Satisfaction of the needs of the System and of the centres will meet most of the information needs of TAC and the CGIAR Secretariat. From time to time, however, especially as new opportunities and strategies are examined, new sets of information will be required, pointing to the advantage of comprehensiveness in centre management information systems.
