Global Open Data in Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative partner network analysis

Introduction

The challenge of global food security is expected to intensify over the coming decades due to an increase of 2 billion people on the planet by 2050 and 1 billion people at risk of hunger and malnutrition in the same time frame^1,2. Food security can hopefully be achieved through sustainable agriculture, innovative business models, and political will, however, access to information will be crucial to achieve this goal. Open data, which is data anyone can access, use, or share³ is key for access to information, and research has shown that open data can help enable effective decision-making and practical problem solving. Open data and transparent processes can trigger organization and sector change to provide innovations to benefit all³. The Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative uses the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) to conceptualize the full meaning of open data⁴. Open data does not exist in isolation, it must develop in the context of a global data ecosystem, which considers all stakeholders and their data needs⁵.

A vast amount of data and information has been gathered about agriculture, food security, and nutrition, which vary by language, units, size, subject matter, and management structure and process. Agriculture alone has an especially large number of stakeholders involved, all of which are in multiple locations within the agricultural supply chain (provider to consumer of crops) and the data supply chain (provider to consumer of data). Partnership, collaboration, and data sharing are important for two stages:

Open data in agriculture and nutrition is an emerging topic, and often a delicate one. Individuals and organizations are not sure of best practices, challenges, and consequences of releasing data openly. Cooperation, collaboration, and partnerships are necessary to building trust in creating a shared data ecosystem. The GODAN Partner Network (currently in November 2017) has 600 partners from national governments, non-governmental, international and private sector organisations that have committed to a joint Statement of Purpose⁶, provides a collaborative space to convene like-minded people who seek to advance open data in the agriculture and nutrition agenda.

When an organisation commits to join GODAN partner network, they agree to:

This research article paper analyses their activities and challenges, to learn how GODAN can equip partners with tools they need, empower them to achieve their goals and overcome challenges, and convene partners together both in workshops and online to build trust and collaborative power. Additionally, this information can help others learn from the GODAN partner network and to build on the research.

About GODAN

The Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative was the result of the 2012 G-8 Summit and the 2013 G8 International Conference on Open Data for Agriculture. The initiative and Secretariat was formally announced at the Open Government Partnership Conference in October 2013.

G-8 leaders created GODAN to “share relevant agricultural data available from G-8 countries with African partners” and to ‘obtain commitment and action from nations and relevant stakeholders to promote policies and invest in projects that open access to publicly funded global agriculturally relevant data streams, making such data readily accessible to users in Africa and world-wide, and ultimately supporting a sustainable increase in food security in developed and developing countries.’

Methods

In order to become a GODAN partner, organizations register on the GODAN website (www.godan.info/partners), which is linked to a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system (CiviCRM). When registering, potential partners must give organization name, freetext info, location, website, logo, organization type, and point of contact information. This is the only information GODAN has on all partners. Partners must then agree to a commitment to open data in agriculture and nutrition, or recognize the importance of open data to achieve food security goals. There is no fee or membership cost. The reason for this is to allow the partner network to be as inclusive as possible. Once a partner has registered, a point of contact from the organization is sent a link to the survey. Partners can choose to take the survey or not. GODAN partners that have responded to the survey are hereafter referred to as “respondents”.

The purpose of GODAN is two-fold: to help raise awareness about the different open data activities that are happening in the network, and to help organizations who are seeking data to find potential partners and overcome open data challenges. At its inception, the GODAN Secretariat believed that in order to facilitate partnerships and effectively advocate for open data, the Secretariat must survey partners and their open data activities. The survey was created in Survey Monkey collaboratively by eight members of the GODAN Secretariat. The complete survey “BQ sample”, as it was presented to GODAN partners, is included as a PDF document in this research article (Supplementary File 1). The survey aims to profile the organizations and their open data activities, as well as the challenges that accompany these challenges.

Respondents are asked a variety of both free text and multiple choice questions to clearly state their opinions, challenges, and needs in open data, and the various open data activities they are involved with. This information helps both partners and the wider community to see how open data in agriculture and nutrition is developing, and exactly who is doing what. Respondents do not have to complete the entire questionnaire. The first GODAN partner survey was sent to partners on April 10, 2015 and was sent to partners as they joined. On February 10, 2017, the GODAN Secretariat revised the survey. This paper analyzes the results of the first survey.

Both authors of this article analysed the results of the survey using Microsoft Excel 2013 downloaded as a CSV file from Survey Monkey. An anonymised version of this downloaded CSV file is included as a dataset in this article (Dataset 1), which does not include name of organization or contact info). To ensure privacy, we removed the information about challenges, and included it as a separate spreadsheet (Dataset 2). Quantitative results used formula analysis in Excel, and qualitative results involved Excel search functions and human confirmation of results.

Ethical statement

Considering the absence of identifying information in data published in aggregated form here, and the non-sensitive nature of the survey, no ethical approval was sought for this study. No information presented here can be used to identify survey participants, and in accordance with SurveyMonkey’s data privacy policy (https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/policy/privacy-policy/), is not accessible to third parties.

It is not a requirement of the GODAN partner network to fill out the survey. When sending the survey to new partners, we state, “After analysing the questionnaire data, we will use the aggregated information to show how the open data community in agriculture and nutrition is developing and who is doing what”, thus resulting in this research article.

Results

Between April 10, 2015 and February 6, 2017, 225 of 432 GODAN partners had filled out the partner survey. Nine were from different representatives of the same organization. This represents 53% of the GODAN Partner base at that time. Geographical and sector data is collected from partners at registration (Table 1, Table 2). Generally, the survey is a balanced representation of our partnership network as a whole. However, our partnership network is heavily skewed towards Africa, Europe and North America. The survey is also skewed towards universities and research institutions, and private sector completing the survey compared to its distribution in the Partner Network.

GODAN partners primarily use open data to achieve goals around sustainable food production and food security (Table 3). The focus of open data is primarily on economic gain, with the social aspects less of a focus, especially gender balance.

When the survey began, the GODAN Secretariat believed that those who joined GODAN would already be working with and producing open data and have open data activities to share (Table 4).

160 partners have at least one open data activity, 65 do not, or do not know. Of the 160, 36 have a second activity, and 4 have a third. Overall, GODAN partners are developing 200 open data activities. Agriculture is the most common focus for an open data activity, with a joint agriculture and nutrition activity close second. Nutrition-only activities are strongly underrepresented (Table 5). A general observation is that most of the “neither” responses focus generally on open data, open access and open government (see Anonymized Partner Survey Spreadsheet).

Most GODAN partner respondents are involved with data collection and publishing (Table 6). However, about half of respondents were involved with four or more aspects of open data listed in Table 6. Sixteen respondents were involved with all seven aspects, 26 with six, 38 with five, and 37 with four.

Data collection means sourcing any data directly through research, instrumentation, surveys or other methods. Publishing includes producing static products drawing upon your own open data, and/or open data from others. A data intermediary makes open data more accessible for others, through creating applications, interfaces or derived datasets. A service provider uses open data to support services such as farm extension, weather information, market information, etc. A data provider makes open data available to others, and an end user uses open data directly, or through an intermediary, to affect their practice (e.g. farmer/farmers’ organisation, advocacy organisation, practitioners). These details were given along with the question (see BQ sample; Supplementary File 1).

Table 7 analyses activities the respondents described. All partners were asked an open-ended question to describe their open data activity with no text limit. To analyse the activities, the GODAN research team created a word frequency table (Table 7) based on text mining in the free text sections and categorized them. When text mining, the authors used the search method in Excel. Activities marked with an asterisk (*) show the search term used, which accounts for variability in the ending of the word (ex: app* includes app, apps, application, applications). The authors personally viewed the results to ensure that the word was used in the correct context. (ex: “approach” is not included under app*). The words were checked by one of the authors to ensure that they were taken in the correct context. All information to determine these results are in Anonymized Partner Survey Spreadsheet.

Under methods of working, collaboration, sharing, and open access are on the top of the list. In terms of outputs, research and publications were the highest (but we are not sure if it is research data and published data and otherwise), and platforms, portals, and tools feature highly as well. Some initiatives, centers, and policies are created as well.

Governments are the most common stakeholder to engage with when it comes to open data, which makes sense since they are both large users and producers of data, and have the capacity to gather data. Researchers and farmers come next, which also makes sense since researchers are primarily looking for data to complete their research, while farmer’s data is valuable to almost all within the food system. (Table 8).

The majority of respondents are engaged with more than one stakeholder group, and many engage with 2–4. Several engage with more, but only one engages with all stakeholders (Table 9).

Respondents were asked the open-ended question: “What are the key challenges your organisation faces in developing this activity further with respect to open data? Please share your insights in a few sentences.” Respondents were encouraged to answer in their own words. Each response was individually read and analysed by a member of the GODAN Secretariat Research team. Through this process, the answers were aggregated into a format we could analyse (Table 10). For example, those who mentioned “financial issues”, “needing funding”, or “monetary burden” in their challenge were placed into “cost” category. The challenges are categorized by buy-in, data, resources and skills, methods, culture and other. These challenges stem from the activities listed above and can be found in the Challenges Partner Survey Spreadsheet”.

The most frequently mentioned challenge was cost; many do not have the funding to begin an open data activity or to maintain one. It costs money to train in open data management and, often, people with those skills are more expensive to employ. Managing and accessing open data is difficult as well, even if cost isn’t an issue. Convincing specific sectors of the importance of open data and actually buy-in to the open data agenda is a big challenge as well.

Conclusions

The partner survey has become a strategic resource for the Secretariat to develop the GODAN initiative towards; 1- geographic, topical focus and stakeholder group representation and 2 - stakeholder needs in terms of support (capacity building, providing resources, building advocacy). The GODAN initiative and its partners provide inspiration, show best practices and connect with partners beyond the current network. The purpose of the GODAN Secretariat is to facilitate partnerships and provide our partnership network with resources to advance the open data agenda and this publication is one of those resources.

The survey has a balanced representation by region of those who have answered the survey and our partnership network as a whole. However, our partnership network is heavily skewed towards Africa, Europe and North America. GODAN hopes to improve our partnership network representation globally to have equal representation and holistic understanding of the state of open data activities in agriculture and nutrition. In order to do this, the GODAN Secretariat could adjust our advocacy messaging to more specific regional audiences.

The survey is skewed towards universities and research institutions completing the survey compared to its distribution in the Partner Network. This also makes sense as to why research is a primary activity output (as listed in Table 7). Increased government input to the survey would be tremendously useful, especially since lack of policy and lack of government buy-in is a significantly mentioned challenge and a number of our partners express the need for assistance in convincing governments why open data is important. Together with Open Data Charter, GODAN is in the process of developing an Agriculture Open Data Package for governments⁷ to help with this goal.

The use of data in gender equality is very much underrepresented in the GODAN partner network. While 42 respondents stated they are working on gender balance, it wasn't clear if any respondents open data activities focused on gender, neither as gender data used or provided, nor empowerment of women and girls. Since researchers have concluded that an equal gender balance is essential for positive sustainable agricultural and nutrition outcomes⁸, the absence of any gender-focused activities is unfortunate. We must focus on not only improving our gender data representation within GODAN, but also emphasizing the message that partners must integrate gender considerations into their work.

Although GODAN aims to focus on agriculture and nutrition, the number of nutrition specific focused initiatives is low. However, a large number of activities focus on both agriculture and nutrition which is a link that spans the supply chain and connects various sectors. When we consider the data supply chain, and the movement of a certain data point as it provides information from one stakeholder to the next, we have a large number of activities that can help facilitate this work.

Based on the results of Table 7, a large number of partners focus on applications of data instead of data infrastructure, and lack of data infrastructure is a challenge. The need for data to create applications may drive the development of data infrastructure, however, data infrastructure must develop alongside the applications as well so they can constantly inform each other. Interoperability is crucial especially when working at a global scale. Currently, existing data infrastructures seem to be in their infancy, as many pre-requisites such as common vocabularies, ontologies and exchange standards require a collaborative effort from the user community. While some sectors are developing fast (eg. genomics^9,10, precision agriculture¹¹) others are developing much slower or have not even started to think about the prerequisites for data infrastructures.

The most common challenges, collectively, are the ones actually related to data. How to find it, access it, manage it, store it, organize it, keep the sensitive data secure, and ensure that the rightful owners are ensured the benefits. GODAN is already focusing on these issues through our Responsible Data and Data Ownership pieces^12,13, and various working groups¹⁴ on the subject. However, we realize that these challenges are not simple and will have many solutions according to the context. No respondents’ activity is focusing on data ownership, or FAIR data, however, through personal communication with partners who did not answer the survey, GODAN does know other partners, such as DTL and the Engine Room, are working with FAIR data.

A common challenge was the culture of opening data and the shifting of mindset to integrate data stewardship into the workflow of each sector and prioritizing effective data governance. Many people are not aware of open data or and even if they do, they do not have a specific and trusted path to follow to implement good (open) data stewardship into their work. Funding schemes are changing and may even evolve further to take these components into account. And the way research is performed much of the outcomes need to realign to the needs of a global data ecosystem. The GODAN partner base could be leveraged to determine some solutions to these issues and find support for good data stewardship.

Capacity building, and empowering partners with the tools they need to act, is one of the most effective actions that GODAN can do. The GODAN Capacity Building Working Group¹⁵ is focusing on training for open data advocacy, publishing of open data, and developing business models for open data.

Cost is the most listed challenge and is linked to data governance, management, and human capacity. Funding for open data work as well as research and practical solutions on sustainable business models for open data should be an essential component of the open data agenda.

At GODAN, we would like to utilize our partner base to engage with them as much as possible. Now that, through the survey, we understand our partner’s needs and challenges better, we can work, alongside other initiatives, to equip partners with tools they need, empower them to achieve their goals and overcome challenges, and convene partners together both in workshops and online. Our common results and output can help others to learn from the GODAN partner network, to build on our research, and help foster collaboration, trust, and innovation to combat world food insecurity, develop sustainable agriculture and provide safe nutritious food.

Data availability

Dataset 1: Anonymized Partner Survey Spreadsheet. Directly downloaded from Survey Monkey. DOI, 10.5256/f1000research.13044.d189522¹⁶.

Dataset 2: Challenges Partner Survey Spreadsheet. Directly downloaded from Survey Monkey. DOI, 10.5256/f1000research.13044.d189523¹⁷.