(Prepared December 1997)
Suggest that the databases at IFPRI and other centers be made available for gratuate students thesis results.
Response. IFPRI is committed to facilitating the use of data by collaborators and graduate students to conduct research that is consistent with the primary mission of the Institute. IFPRI has guidelines for access to the Institute's data sets which clearly describe IFPRI's policies for issues such as unpublished proprietary secondary data, publicly available secondary data etc., and are available upon request. Numerous data sets have been made available to graduate students throughout IFPRI's study countries. For example, in Pakistan over 100 M.Sc. and M.Phil dissertations and 11 Ph.D. dissertations have been completed using IFPRI's data sets.
Suggests that, building on its experience, IFPRI consider opportunities for developing regional courses in collaboration with appropriate regional organizations, local, and leading foreign universities that could contribute to such courses and at the same time provide the continuity after IFPRI moves on.
Response: IFPRI, through its Outreach Division, has sponsored a number of short-term training courses in Sub-Saharan Africa (mainly Malawi, Mozambique, and Ghana). These courses have involved over 350 participants, many of whom are our research partners. In Malawi we have worked intensively with the Bunda College of Agriculture to implement these courses, in Mozambique we work with the Eduardo Mondlane University, and in Ghana with the University of Ghana. In Mozambique and Malawi, we also work with the Southern African Development Commission. The goal for these collaborative relationships is for IFPRI to work itself out of a job by building the capacity of these institutions to conduct research in food policy analysis. These courses offer quantitative methods in policy analysis, agricultural policy analysis, food and nutrition policy analysis, and environmental and natural resource policy analysis. The Institute has also developed and implemented a training of trainers course, designed so that its participants can return home and train other people in their home institutions. IFPRI has also made it a priority to develop training materials that are targeted to specific training audiences and that can be used by participants in their home offices.
In addition to the training activities that the Outreach Division undertakes, research divisions organize both formal and informal training in conjunction with their research projects. For example, in the rice market study project in Vietnam, the project team conducted four different training activities: a training in data collection and data entry, a course in food policy analysis, a course in the design and use of a computer model designed to simulate food markets, and a study tour of rice markets in Thailand.
Suggests that IFPRI set in place mechanisms for course evaluation by external experts and course participants.
Following each IFPRI training course, questionnaires are circulated to participants in order to evaluate the training course. We will consider assessing our training courses with expert evaluators in the future.
Suggests that IFPRI pay due consideration to the organization of regional workshops for assessing priorities for policy and management research.
In preparation for our medium-term plan, we conferred with over 300 organizations and incorporated the feedback we received into our plan. In addition, numerous regional workshops were organized as part of the 2020 Vision initiative to assess regional priorities for achieving food security. IFPRI facilitated the development of regional strategies in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. These regional strategies influence IFPRI's research and outreach priorities. IFPRI has received a number of requests from several countries to help them design and implement their own 2020 strategies through regional networks. This approach will lead to the development and use of better information for policy design and implementation. Networks are being planned in East and West Africa and possibly Southern Africa. Finally, many participatory workshops are held in conjunction with individual research efforts to discuss project plans and activities. For example, under the Macroeconomic Reforms and Regional Integration in Southern Africa project, a project advisory group with representatives from each of the partner countries was formed. The advisory group plays a key role in providing country-specific policy perspectives to the research being conducted and providing feedback to IFPRI on research methodologies and results.
IFPRI should devote some thinking to the issue of generic versus country-specific policy studies.
IFPRI (and other centers) continue to adhere to the principles of international relevance and strategic research, but that they seek ways to give greater country-level policy relevance to their research, in part as an instrument for institution strengthening.
The central focus of IFPRI's work continues to be the generation of international public goods. At the same time, however, IFPRI has been developing more specific, in-country expertise to strengthen its policy impact in collaborating study countries. IFPRI now has 14 senior and 1 junior staff members outposted - the highest number in IFPRI's history - to help achieve this objective. By outposting staff, we also increase the amount of networking and in-country partners, such as NGOs, universities, and government officials. The Office of Country Programs was established to improve the management of IFPRI's activities in focal countries, to improve linkages among individual IFPRI activities in a country, and to strengthen the quality of research and policy impact in the country. Although the generation of international public goods continues to be the overriding emphasis for IFPRI, we have increasingly realized the value of focusing on a specific country's food policy issues to strengthen the quality of the research and policy impact in the study country.
IFPRI's outposted staff be increased when consistent with key research projects, and when it enhances a center's policy research capacity.
When the Stripe study was completed in 1995, IFPRI had seven senior staff outposted. As mentioned above, we now have 14 outposted senior staff, which represents nearly 30 percent of IFPRI's research fellows, Rockefeller fellows, and post-doctoral fellows. Our objective is to keep at least the same percentage of outposted staff over the medium-term period.
IFPRI consider appointing research fellows to be liaison persons with specific centers with which it works.
IFPRI believes that effective working relationships with other CGIAR centers are best established by working on specific project activities. Having liaison persons for each center would add another level of bureaucracy to these collaborative relationships that could hamper their effectiveness. In fact, not having liaison persons has not slowed down IFPRI's collaborations with other centers; we now collaborate with all 15 other centers.
IFPRI assess feasibility, advantages, etc. of using Internet for interactive activities related to specific themes.
IFPRI held an electronic mail conference on gender and intrahousehold issues, which brought together participants from 30 countries, many of whom were from developing countries. Commissioned papers were put on the email conference site and discussed for one month, including a presentation of key issues by the author of the lead paper, commentary by two formal discussants followed by general discussion and replies from the paper's authors. At the conclusion of the conference in early 1996, surveys were sent out to all the participants and the response was overwhelmingly positive. The conference yielded four papers that will be published soon by the journal World Development. A proceedings volume of the electronic conference exchange has been distributed. This January, a new 3-month electronic conference will be launched on micronutrients. Every two weeks an issue paper will be put on the site and discussed.
In addition, IFPRI's Web site (http://www.cgiar.org/ifpri) was launched in 1995, providing a wide-range of information, including an overview of IFPRI, position openings, details about specific programs within individual divisions, and our publications lists. The Web site has been instrumental in dramatically increasing the number of publications requests IFPRI receives. IFPRI's work is also widely disseminated through other web sites.
IFPRI review and assess the proportions of project funding in the various programs of the Institute and their implications for program effectiveness.
In preparation for the IFPRI's 1998-2000 MTP, IFPRI senior staff qualitatively used the priority setting criteria to establish the relative proportions of funding that IFPRI's MPs and GRPs would receive. For example, although funding for Water Resource Allocation: Productivity and Environment Impacts was not receiving sufficient funding through restricted sources, given its importance to future poverty reduction, IFPRI decided to increase the unrestricted allocation to the program. There are other examples of this occurring, especially with newer and synthesis programs.
IFPRI review and consider the desirable level of involvement in policy science research and approaches through which policy science research can be pursued.
IFPRI uses the most appropriate scientific tools for the analysis required by a project. Our research is empirical and focused on specific policy problems. IFPRI does not feel it is appropriate to undertake highly theoretical research.
IFPRI should assess the extent to which IFPRI publications are cited by peers; and that IFPRI should analyze the feasibility of making available on-line more of its recent publications.
IFPRI recently began a bibliometric study or intensive literature survey to determine how widely our research and outreach results are used in other research efforts, and to assess where, how often, and by whom IFPRI is cited. Several other institutions in CGIAR network and one U.S. food policy research organization will be assessed for comparative purposes. The Institute for Scientific Information, publishers of the Social Science Citations Index, are conducting the analysis based on their bibliographic and citation records.
Shorter publications are available through IFPRI's Web site, such as research report abstracts, food policy statements, and 2020 briefs and syntheses. Readers can easily order the lengthier publications by sending an email.
