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During FY2013, the PMO Knowledge Management team conducted a quick study to provide a needs assessment and opportunity analysis of the external databases that are under IGES management. This review aimed to identify urgent needs for improvement in relation to the different databases as well as exploring opportunities to increase the level of cohesion and coordination across these databases to ensure greater accessibility to the combined wealth of information held across these databases.
This document presents the main findings of this study. It seeks to assess IGES external databases (DBs) and recommend a course of action (work plan) in FY2014 to revamp, improve, effectively manage and present the wealth of IGES – and other related research – knowledge, information and data to end users. Currently, content is spread across different online DBs and therefore lacks coherence and structure. The overall task is to consolidate all content from the various DBs into one uniform searchable and accessible IGES DB.
The review of the 8 IGES managed external databases found that there are three databases that are now dormant and are receiving no further funding. As these three databases are no longer actively managed, they are slowly falling into disrepair (i.e. inactive links) and an outdated visual format. Of the remaining 5 databases, three are managed under active contracts while the other two are special independent databases. Thus, proposals for database improvement place a focus and high-priority on addressing the three dormant databases because without any further work to conserve the knowledge of these data sets they could end up lost in the near future.
Both a workplan for FY2014 and a proposed solution are detailed in section 2 and 3 respectively. The workplan identifies several internal actions that are still required to further assess and prepare for a system integration of these three databases. The proposed solution highlights the creation of a single IGES Good Practices database that could be initially developed to rehouse the information contained in the three dormant databases, but could also serve for future collection and systematic documenting of sustainability good practices from across the region.
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