ASTI consultation round on supplementary indicators
Over the years, various stakeholders and users of the ASTI database have requested additional quantitative information that has not been covered by the ASTI initiative or similar projects. The ASTI initiative organized a consultation round to identify relevant supplementary indicators and decide which ones can be taken on under the ASTI umbrella (taking into account that ASTI is focusing on the R&D component of innovation systems). As a first step in the consultation process, the ASTI initiative held a workshop in Entebbe on 20-21 January 2009, which was attended by representatives from national, regional, and international stakeholder groups. The discussion during the workshop focused on the following five topics: (1) adopting an agricultural innovation system perspective; (2) deepening agricultural R&D input indicators (the traditional focus of the ASTI initiative); (3) agricultural R&D output indicators; (4) agricultural R&D process indicators; and (5) indicators beyond the national perspective.
With regard to the agricultural innovation system perspective, the outcome of the discussion was that the ASTI initiative should continue to focus on agricultural R&D agencies, but try to better capture the ‘embeddedness’ of those agencies in the wider agricultural innovation system.
Specific recommendations were made for agricultural R&D input, output, and process indicators, respectively. In all cases, additional requests for data should first be piloted. Moreover, it was suggested to differentiate between baseline data (i.e., necessary in order to produce regional and global aggregates and make cross-country comparisons) and supplementary data, which are only to be collected in case of a clear demand from policymakers, donors, or other relevant stakeholders. This requires a flexible survey instrument that can be tailored to the specific needs of the users of the data.
Three areas that could complement the national perspective were identified, namely: (a) international and regional agricultural research organizations; (b) donor support; and (3) agricultural R&D investments by multinational companies.
In addition to recommendations on supplementary indicators, the workshop participants also stressed the need for: (a) keeping the ASTI dataset more up-to-date; (b) improving its global coverage (in particular Central Asia and the Caucasus and the Middle East and North Africa are poorly covered); (c) mobilizing more capacity to analyze and use the ASTI data; and (d) capacity building at the national level.
The outcomes of the consultation workshop are in the summary report: (PDF 280K)
The ASTI team is seeking further feedback before developing the implementation plan to expand the program to include supplementary indicators. Please send your comments to ASTI@cgiar.org by June 15, 2009.
Thank you,
The ASTI team