Annex 1: easp terms of Reference Annex 2: fivims timeline (1996-2003)

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  Provide organisations persepctives
  
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  To understand and participate in any discussions on the current goals of FIVIMS, to contribute to any debates on the processes through which it seeks to attain those goals, and to report on FIVIMS to my superiors.
  
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  Coordination and Collaboration
  
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  Technical leadership.
  
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  represent WHO's interest in the global FIVIMS activities and promote FIVIMS issues back in related WHO activities
  
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  Country representative in the area of FIVIMS related activities
  
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  Provide guidance to IAWG activities, support its activities, advocate for FIVIMS, act as a focal point for linking UNICEF's work on FIVIMS related activities 
  
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  Advisor and Provider of IS/ICT solutions to FIVIMS, in particular in the area of Database and Indicator Tracking and Mapping tools for FIVIMS users.
  
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  Echanger sur les bonnes pratiques en matière de SICIAV; mettre en application ces pratiques dans mon organisation et mon pays; coordonner l'assistance (technique et financière du secrétariat du SICIAV.
  
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  Country representative in the area of FIVIMS related activities
  

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  At this stage, there are no real useful functions.
  
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  Supporting developing countries and linking to global MDG (however not doing latter)
  
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  There are a couple. First, it is very important to have the national fivims attend the IAWG to continue to highlight to the international agencies the important resource constraints the national bodies face in carrying out their work, as well as to expose the national fivims to alternative institutional structure under which fivims operates in other countries. Secondly, the IAWB does provide an important technical venue at which technical ideas can be shared and their appropriateness judged, given the resource constraints within which we all function. However, it is clear that the most important technical ideas are of an institutional nature, rather than ICT. 
  

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  Collaboration and Establishment/strengthening
  
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  The IAWG during my time provided an extremely useful forum for technical communication among participants from different agencies and different sectoral perspectives.
  
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  information sharing to promote inter-agency collaboration
  
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  Current information generation and dissemination for effective and timely responses 
  
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  Provide overall technical guidance on political matters, coordinate inter-agency efforts (global-level initiatives only), develop methods and tools, and disseminate widely, report on situation (gaps and progress). Recognize and highlight agency-specific and inter-agency efforts
  
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  I believe it is absolutely essential that the various agencies meet and are part of a substantive specific working group to echange ideas, work and coordinate activities. It is a means for encouraging more synergies that should be taking place within the UN and Donor Community. It is a perfect opportunity for aligning with a Regional Country meeting to get the feedback and progress from our "customer"!
  
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  organisation des échanges sur le suivi de l'insécurité alimentaire et vulnérabilité; assistance technique et financière aux pays
  
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  Current information generation and dissemination for effective and timely responses 
  

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  The Problems we all are facing when dealing with Information Systems are not technical, but mainly political! People, especially decision makers, are not really concerned with information! They are not keen to use information for decision making process! And this is for several reasons: 1) Information is not reliable! 2) They don't know how to analyse information; 3) the decisions are taken based on other factors, rather than information (friends, "nepotism", pure economic interest, etc.) 
  
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  More focus on global and etting beyond little projects to be strategic.
  
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  The contributions of the international agencies involved seems quite varied in quality and relevance. There may be little that can be done about this, given the open invitation nature of the IAWG. However, if some structure could be imposed on the time they have to address the IAWG, greater value may be derived. Of course, this may be at the expense of fewer agencies participating in the IAWG.
  
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  More strengthened dialogue
  
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  In general, the IAWG process at global level did not translate into effective collaboration at national level, although there were some exceptions to this. Ownership of the IAWG at technical level did not translate into ownership at the political level within the collaborating agencies. Most importantly, the merger of the IAWG secretariat within the internal FAO FIVIMS secretariat blurred the differences between the FAO role and the role of the IAWG, and made it difficult for others to feel that they were full partners. 
  
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   a good question, but is difficult to answer as IAWG does not have any official status in any of our participating Organizations 
  
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  Establishing National sub-offices and enhancing capacity and capability of national FIVIMS
  
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  Reduce the global level top down structure, establish and support regional-sub-regional structures, focus primarily in areas that have chronic food insecurity
  
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  There needs to be a separation and funding of the secretariat work and the project and actual substantive work. More effort should also be placed on the FIVIMS web-site as a communication and working tool!!!
  
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  Organisation d'échanges sur des thèmes pertinents; maîtrise des charges de fonctionnement; plaidoyer en vue de la mobilisation de financement pour le fonctionnement des SICIAV nationaux et régionaux
  
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  Establishing National sub-offices and enhancing capacity and capability of national FIVIMS
  

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  Insufficient funds
  
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  Conflicting duty travel
  
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  Discontinued direct involvement
  
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  Not on staff
  
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  Not designated
  
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  Not involved
  
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  Preoccupied
  
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  Not invited
  

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  FIVIMS Human Resources!
  

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  Dedicated staff members
  

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  A value added of FIVIMS is the fact itself of bringing together people of different institutions, countries, technical background to brainstorm on issues related to information systems.
  
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  Linkage with appropriate project formulation for the identified food insecure and vulnerable groups.
  
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  In its current format and organizational structure, FIVIMS has little relevance to the work we are doing in food insecurity and vulnerability assessment, and early warning.
  
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  awareness building among countries with food security problems
  
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  FIVIMS is people-focused and works towards combining indicators of FI and vulnerability, with spacial analysis, as well as qualitative analysis. Value added is that FIVIMS accepts any methodology that adds to understanding of FI and vulnerability, without promoting one methodology or another. However, more work is needed to more clearly demonstrate the relative value of each tool under different circumstances.
  

2. 
   Please indicate the importance level that you would assign to the possible activities of the FIVIMS program during the next five years
   

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  Provide training on the relation between international agreements and national strategy
  
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  Provide training on GIS-based vulnerability assessment methods
  
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  Provide technical assistance on incorporating analytical results in national strategic plans and international agreements.
  

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  The IAWG Meetings are attended by the partners, but they ignore FIVIMS in reality. This is clear at headquarter level and in the field, where very few people other than the focal point know of the existence of FIVIMS.. Standards development, training, and technical assistance activities have been tried in the context of FIVIMS and have failed in practice. For example, core indicators have been developed and agreed at IAWG Meetings, and then ignored by the agencies (surprisingly, even by FAO in some cases). Core anthropometric indicator was agreed, and IFAD (an IAWG member) uses a different anthropometric indicator in its field work. Another example is WFP; at every FAO Conference they give their report, and never has FIVIMS been mentioned. They also have prepared a useful software product -- VAM -- used in many countries. Never has FAO or WFP tried to consolidate efforts, and thus we have two FAO-created products (KIDS and KIMS) that compete with VAM, and countries seem to largely favour VAM. And WHO is undertaking almost all its food security activites independently of FIVIMS (e.g. anthropometry).
  
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  The int'l FIVIMS activity could play a useful role in stimulating debate, raising issues, being a forum for training and TA, but it needs to break away from its heavy focus on the UN/Bretton Woods organizations, and become more interested and interactive with bi-laterals, NGOs, national/regional ^3rd world groupings etc. Less identification with, and management from FAO, and more of each from a broad variety of interested organizations is essential if FIVIMS is to play a role.
  
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  education of selected (FAO) country offices/representatives on FIVIMS and food security matters (during my mission to write a project proposal for a country FIVIMS in a country it appeared that the FAO country representative and part of her staff was not aware of the ins and outs of FIVIMS and there were also lacks in the knowledge of the concept of food security. During discussions with other UN institutions in that country the same occurred. I don't know whether this is typical or a-typical.
  
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  One important aspect missing in the above list relates to the need for the Secretatiat to be more effective in "communication and advocacy", and to train others (e.g. member states and member agencies) to better communicate information on FI and Vulnerability of different population groups. On the other hand, it is noted that unless the Secretariat is strengthened, providing more responsibilities will be counter-productive. Nevertheless, communication and advocacy should be high on the list of priorities.
  

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  It is not for lack of trying on the part of the secretariat that the international cooperation under the auspices of FIVIMS has not worked. I don't think it is worth pursuing the IAWG. Even within FAO it has not worked well. FIVIMS, in fact, can encompass the entire mandate of FAO, and it is probably limiting to collect a subset of technical areas within FAO and call it FIVIMS. It may be more useful and practical to bring technical areas together for systematic data dissemination (e.g. FAOSTAT, food composition databases, anthropometry databases and dietary survey database) and analyses/data interpretation as presented in SOFI, but let the professionals operate as technical units rather than under the control of the FIVIMS Secretariat. The most useful role for the FIVIMS secretariat would be to administer extra-budgetary money for big food insecurity projects, and to coordinate the preparation and publication of SOFI. 
  
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  Most of the problems of FIVIMS had to do with its ambiguous identity! Out of FAO, people believed that FIVIMS was an effort of FAO to get more funds. Very few persons (speaking of representative of the different international institutions) were looking at FIVIMS as at an Inter-Organisation work. Even at national level, when I discuss with people, they identify FIVIMS as a FAO business. This is an issue! Other big issue, somehow linked to the previous, is the "cat-dog" relationship between all UN-agencies! I am the owner of data on nutritional status: why should I share my data with you? So far, (though I did not attend the last meetings so I don't know if things changed somehow) FIVIMS focused on supplying technical tools (KIMS, KIDS, Guidelines, etc.). However, problems are not technical!      
  
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  get core funding and make inetr agency esp WFP buy in and less project focused
  
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  FIVIMS ought to pursue the following objectives: A. Assist countries in developing a data network system; B. Support country teams in the effective use of the data through proper analysis and policy formulation; C. Facilitate mainstreaming food security in national strategic plans (incl. PRSP's). Hence, objective C ensure the effectieve use of the data which is the ultimate goal of FIVIMS, objective B ensures proper analysis and conclusions, while objective A is a necessary exercise to ensure data availability. It should be noted that much emphasis should be placed on institutional issues to ensure the realization of objectives A-C, but this responsibility should be shared by stakeholders involved, including international institutions such as WB, various UN organisations, scientific community, NGO's, donors etc. The IAWG has to take up this responsibility, or install a support unit to FIVIMS.
  
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  A fuller and more dedicated understanding of the policy process operative in fivims countries is needed to establish effective fivims organizations. Otherwise, you possibly end up with technically competent institutions producing information that is never used or is not what is needed by policy makers in the food security arena. FIVIMS recognizes this, but it is unclear whether much pro-active dedicated work in policy analysis is being done by FIVIMS to assist countries in this sort of institutional analysis. It is a researchable topic.
  
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  Strengthened Resources
  
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  The IAWG FIVIMS secretariat should be given its own identity completely separate from that of the internal FAO FIVIMS secretariat. Responsibility for backstopping national FIVIMS projects should be assumed by IAWG members with relevant technical competence. The secretariat should concentrate on fostering information exchange, maintaining an up-do-date website with operational links to national FIVIMS information sources, sponsoring technical workshops and symposia, managing a methods development and publications programme on behalf of the IAWG members, and coordinating the process of responding to national requests for technical advice and support. 
  
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  .With respect to Kenya - data collection, collation, food security analysis and reporting is carried out collaboratively by members of the technical committee of the Kenya Food Security Steering Group (KFSSG), namely the ALRMP, MoA, FEWS NET, WFP/VAM and UNICEF. An important step by FIVIMS would be to conduct an evaluation of possible areas of collaboration that are innovative and consistent with national objectives. 
  
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  Basically, I am supportive of a strategic role of the FIVIMS Secretariat and IAWG. Most of the substantive work should be done by the individual agencies that have strong presence at the regional and country levels
  
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   From the remark a few lines earlier I could imagine that facilitation of better understanding of FIVIMS and food security to country offices of UN institutions in general and FAO in particular would benefit the countries in which they are operating. 
  
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  Secretariat needs to be able to function more independently to more effectively serve as Secretariat of the IAWG, in order to obtain greater participation of other agencies. For this, more core funding is needed.
  
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  Methods should be sought to ensure the spirit, information exchange, collaboration and networking taking place at the Regional IAWG continues through the year. It may be helpful if an actual IAWG workplan is made a key output of each meeting! 
  
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  Le SICIAV devrait mettre l'accent sur l'élaboration de méthodes et normes et vulgariser les bonnes pratiques en matière de suivi de la vulnérabilité. De même, le renforcement des capacités nationales en vue d'une meilleure internalisation des SICIAV dans les pays devrait constituer une priorité. 
  

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  Informar a los países sobre fuentes de cooperación técnica y financiamiento para implementar el SICIAV en los países 
  

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  Desde mi posición como especialista del VAM, considero muy interesante y oportuna la idea de esta evaluación externa de la iniciativa SICIAV y por ello respondo a la misma.
  

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  He tenido referencias del SICIAV desde su surgimiento a partir de la Cumbre de la Alimentación en 1996, aunque no he participado directamente en este sistema. Mi más directo vínculo fue la participación en la 6ª Reunión celebrada en Managua en el pasado año 2002, y las relaciones que mantengo con el Instituto de Nutrición e Higiene de los Alimentos del Ministerio de Salud Pública en Cuba y el conocimiento de la Red SISVAN y su enlace, la Doctora Santa Jiménez.
  

He realizado tres ejercicios VAM en Cuba desde el año 1999 a la fecha, apoyado por un especialista en SIG, desde una oficina creada en el Instituto de Planificación Física en el Ministerio de Economía y Planificación y monitoreada por la oficina del PMA aquí en Cuba.

(first click, then type on grey boxes. Navigate from box to box with TAB key)

1. 
   Is there a food insecurity and vulnerability mapping and information system in your country?
   

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   What is the name of the system?     
   

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   Technical assistance (please indicate whether support received from FAO, FIVIMS Secretariat or other)
   

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   Financial or material goods(please indicate whether support received from FAO, FIVIMS Secretariat or other)
   

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  FIVIMS Web site 1 2 3 4
  
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  Key Indicator Mapping System (KIMS) 1 2 3 4
  
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  Key Indicator Database System (KIDS) 1 2 3 4
  
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  FIVIMS Guidelines for National fivims 1 2 3 4
  
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  FIVIMS Tools and Tips 1 2 3 4
  
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  FIVIMS IAWG Working Papers 1 2 3 4
  
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  SOFI Report (State of Food Insecurity in the World) 1 2 3 4
  
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  Other (specify)     
  

2. How would you rate their usefulness to your work on fivims? Please place an “X” by the appropriate rating. Please use space provided to indicate any suggested improvements

(1=not useful, 2=somewhat useful, 3=very useful)

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  FIVIMS Web site 1 2 3
  
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  Key Indicator Mapping System (KIMS) 1 2 3
  
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  Key Indicator Database System (KIDS) 1 2 3
  
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  FIVIMS Guidelines for National fivims 1 2 3
  
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  FIVIMS Tools and Tips 1 2 3
  
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  FIVIMS IAWG Working Papers 1 2 3
  
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  SOFI Report (State of Food Insecurity in the World) 1 2 3
  
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  Other (specify)