AMIS : The charter of users

Principles of Management Information System

Scope of the Charter

Terminology

Partners

Approach

Rules to ensure good quality information

Moderation

A charter is the definition of rules, principles and obligations on which the partners agree.

 

Principles of Management Information System

  • MIS [Management Information System] centralize, class and organize information so that everybody can find the information that would be useful to him.

  • It strengthens links between actors in agriculture and livestock in Rwanda.

  • It facilitates access to documentation, professional directories and to technicians in the sector.

Scope of the Charter

  • This charter concerns the management of information in the agriculture and livestock sector in Rwanda through a content management system (AMIS). The parts(parties) which make a commitment within the framework of this charter are the partners and the actors who use AMIS for the management of their information.

Terminology

  • AMIS: Agricultural Management Information System.
  • Article: Page of the site containing information and legible on the screen. An article can be printed.
  • CMS: Content Management System
  • Document:  The physical support of an information.Within the framework of AMIS; it is about electronic supports (files) downloadable , then legible on the screen and possibly printable (to create a paper document).The document format is generally PDF (Portable Document Format,  legible with for example Acrobat Reader, FOXIT Reader,...)
  • Forum: Web page of exchanges by means of messages.Visitors to the forum can engage in open discussions as "thread of messages" posted on the forum. The message history is visible.
  • White Pages: Directory of agricultural and breeding technicians of Rwanda [Page blanche in French]
  • Yellow page: Directory of the professional structures (companies, cooperatives ...) in agriculture and livestock sector of Rwanda [Page jaune en francais]
  • PDF: Portable Document Format. Legible with for example Acrobat Reader or Foxit Reader.Files in this format are usually not changed.
  • CMS: Content Management System. It is an interface for managing different types of content or information (documents, articles, directories, forum of exchange, ...). The content management systems are management information  systems (see MIS).
  • Dynamic website: Web site whose pages can be generated dynamically, that is at the request of the user.
  • Workflow: flow of information within a CMS, such as the transmission (automatic) of documents and approval steps.

Partners

The agricultural sector in Rwanda includes the public sector and the private sector. The part of the public sector tends to be reduced or at least to take a shape decentralized with autonomous agencies under supervision. The public sector includes:

  • The ministry: MINAGRI
  • Agencies: RADA, RARDA, RHODA.
  • Offices: OCIR Thé et OCIR Café.
  • Research: ISAR
  • Public education training: ISAE and NUR (Faculty of Agronomy)

The private sector also includes several categories and a wide variety of actors, which can be classified into different categories or clusters:

  • Production / processing coffee / tea (very little involved in federation, managed essentially by OCIR)
  • Production / processing rice, other cereals, potatoes, horticulture (fruits, vegetables, flowers)
  • Production / processing meat / milk / leather & skins
  • Fishing, beekeeping
  • Agricultural Intrants, marketing
  • Education, professional bodies: Chamber of Agriculture, support agencies: NGOs
  • Persons resources: traders associated with agriculture, technicians, engineers.
Outside the agricultural sector but have an influence on the sector or presenting an interest:
  • Districts (MINALOC dependent), other ministries: MINERENA (land management), MININFRA (roads and weather).
  • Public libraries, standardization institutes, ...

The agricultural sector responds or tries to meet the demands of the market inside and outside:

Internal Market: (list not exhaustive, non-quantitative)

  • Beer banana, cassava, potato, maize, sorghum, vegetables: tomatoes (including for industry) ... fruits: avocados, Marakuja, pineapple products, gathering honey, basketry material, meat, eggs, milk and derivatives, ...

External market:

  • Flowers, fruit (syrup ...), fresh fruit, coffee, tea, ...

Approach

Context and logic

The initial funding for AMIS is provided by the project of the Belgian Cooperation: "Support to the National Extension System Project" [PASNVA]. 'Projet d'Appui au Système National de Vulgarisation agricole' in the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources [MINAGRI].

Mutual obligations

  AMIS:

  • Provide a storage space of filing and sharing information.
  • Manage and moderate the contributions of partners, without bias.

  Partners:

  • Provide honest and fair information in good faith.
  • Update information.
  • Report errors.

Legislation and policy

  • Respect copyright
  • No illegal distribution of material protected by copyright
  • No invasion of privacy
  • No links from AMIS to illegal and harmful content.
  • Penalties incurred in case of non respect for the common rules: information deleted by moderators. In proven cases of recidivism, the user account may be deleted.

Quality of data / information

  Relevance of information

  • The interest of the information depends on the user. We can be or not interested in the beekeeping, everybody is not.
  • An obsolete information presents sharply less interest than an information of current events (so as to be interested in the story, for example, the evolution of the prices(prizes) of a product during the last 5 years).
AMIS will therefore do not judge the relevance of information but must demand quality information that will allow the user to judge himself relevance.

Documentation of the provided information.

Each published information needs to be documented

  • Description of the information or document
  • keyword (in 3 languages if possible)
  • Title, author, publication date, any date of validity,
This type of information is called "metadata"

see http: //fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata

 
Rules to ensure good quality information

 

Document size

Downloadable documents must be small in size. The smaller the better. If the document is larger than 3Mb (~ 3000 KB), should be considered to split into several sub-volumes or documents before loading it in the GSC.

Contact Information

Phone numbers: always with the prefix of the country (eg in Rwanda: 250 078 83 ...)

Full name: Name in capital letters, first name in lower case (first letter capitalized)

Published documents formats

Information can be in text form on the web page (it is also possible to add photos and documents)
Documents must be accessible to all without forcing anyone to buy a software or a specific application. This condition is fulfilled when the document formats are to meet international standards.

For example: everyone can read an HTML file with the program of his choice. Because an independent consortium has published the standards of HTML. Everyone can see an image in jpg format with the program of his choice, because jpg is a public standard.

  • The documents will be published in PDF format (which is not editable but widespread) and was the subject of ISO 32000-1
  • The documents must be editable in a format conforming to ISO 26300.

Licence of published documents

By publishing information, a report for example, the owner of the report wishes that it should be read and used for something, to go further, to advance knowledge of all by example. He does not want to necessarily mean that its report is published in the same way as another ...

see: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licence_ (Legal)

A license protects rights, which it allows to reserve for the author.. These rights include:

  • Authorship of a work;
  • The right to distribute;
  • The right to market;
  • The right to edit.

Between the copyright (all rights reserved = just right to read, just to mention that a short excerpt, not to make a copy ...) and the public domain (no rights reserved), there are a large number of limited licenses , which reserves a portion of those rights.

See http://fr.creativecommons.org/ for the types of licenses
or
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licence_Creative_Commons

The licenses must cover: 
  • Articles Online
  • Downloadable documents: reports, images, video, sounds, ....

But also:

  • Content of each page of the directory (yellow page)
  • Text news, etc..
By providing information to the community, the owner of the information does not waive its property. But accepts that the reader makes some uses.

Immaterial works, reports, designs, .... are like the light of a candle. When you allow someone to light a candle to the flame of your candle, he steals you nothing, he took nothing to you, you have so much light than before. And then, everybody sees more clear than before.

 

Moderation

MINAGRI, owner of the site, is responsible for the information published. As such, it appoints moderators, responsible for validating information provided by users. The information is only available online after validation (= moderation) by moderators. The user has no appeal to the decision of the moderators.