Agricultural Data- RDA Interest Group Charter

The Agricultural Data Interest Group is a domain oriented interest group to work on all issues related to data important for the development of global agriculture. The interest group aims to represent all stakeholders producing, managing, aggregating, sharing and consuming data for agricultural research and innovation. Efforts will be made to get an active representation of the major international institutions, which work on agricultural research and innovation. It will take stock of existing problems and experiences and will pave the way for a number of domain specific working groups to make precise proposals for solution in specific area. This interest group will help to promote good practices in our research domain : data sharing policies, data management plan, data interoperability.

The Agricultural Data Interest Group will also follow the work of RDA as a whole to draw domain specific conclusions from the general developments and will discuss measures to implement them in the domain.

The Agricultural Data Interest Group has a specific interest in data interoperability. This refers not only to exchange of data of the same type, but also to data of a different types, which refers to the same object. In this context the interest group is planning a first working group on "wheat data interoperability" in close collaboration with the "Global Wheat Initiative".

The Agricultural Data Interest Group does not plan to substitute or to compete with any other cooperation mechanism, which already exists in the domain. Therefore the Agricultural Data Interest Group will not only look for the active participation of worldwide public and private stakeholders, but also working in close  contact with other global initiatives including  the CIARD movement (http://www.ciard.net), which aims to improve access to agricultural knowledge generally and worldwide.

The Work of the agricultural Interest Group will be co-ordinated by a Chair and a Co-Chair. Face 2 Face meetings of the group and of eventual working groups will be organized alongside the regular RDA meetings. The Interest Group will use the RDA structures for on line collaboration between face 2 face meetings.

The temporary chairs of the interest group are  Johannes Keizer, FAO  (Chair) and Devika Madalli,  ISI (Co – Chair).