Survey update and next steps- Timeline

[Alfaro, Daniela (CGIAR Consortium)]

Dear Survey Committee Members,

 

We are glad to inform you that we are ready to send the Survey to our stakeholders next Tuesday November 11^th .

 

I order to keep you informed about the following steps of the Survey Process we would like to share with you the tasks and timeline we are currently facing:

 

-          Yesterday (December  5) we finalized the delivery of all the 16 CRP Stakeholders lists to Globescan. They will double check it and produce a clean, complete and standardized database for tomorrow (Thursday 6). We also sent them a global list of stakeholders using GCARD II list of participants and registered that will be part of the full database.

  

-          On Friday 7 Globescan will send Frank´s invitation to all stakeholders to announce  the survey.

 

-          We are expecting to receive today the questionnaire from Globescan to test it online and review it in terms of its correspondence with its final version. If it is technically fine we will give them the final approval  so they can translate it to the other languages.

 

As you may see we now have a very tight timeline if we want to be far from Christmas time so we are trying to advance as firm as possible every day.

 

Thank you very much for your support. We will keep you informed.

 

Best regards,

 

Daniela

   

 

[Alfaro, Daniela (CGIAR Consortium)]

Sending again, it should say December 11, instead of November 11.

Dear Survey Committee Members,

 

We are glad to inform you that we are ready to send the Survey to our stakeholders next Tuesday December 11^th .

 

I order to keep you informed about the following steps of the Survey Process we would like to share with you the tasks and timeline we are currently facing:

 

-          Yesterday (December  5) we finalized the delivery of all the 16 CRP Stakeholders lists to Globescan. They will double check it and produce a clean, complete and standardized database for today . We also sent them a global list of stakeholders using GCARD II list of participants and registered that will be part of the full database.

[Holderness, Mark (OEKD)]

 

Dear Daniela and Partnership survey colleagues,

 

Going through the survey once again I still feel strongly that the present layout proposed still cannot generate the valuable answers on the nature of partnership we would all wish to see.  There is nothing here about perceptions of change in the partnership attitude of the CGIAR as a result of the reform process itself? Surely this is a fundamental linkage to make at this stage 4 years into the reform?

 

The core problem to me remains, that the survey makes an initial assumption about ‘partnership and collaboration‘ without exploring what is actually meant by the terms, or without allowing others to say how they at heart regard the actual nature of that partnership construct.  It is teased apart under Q8 but by then respondents may feel very lost as to what they are actually being asked about and it will be difficult to back-analyze those detailed responses without a clearer understanding of the basic nature of partnership being discussed.

 

In the case of GRISP for example, there are 435 research partners identified in the project document and a further 467 development or other ‘boundary’ partners.   There will be many different degrees of partnership within each of these. Even for research they can cover everything from contributors of fundamental research findings to sub-contracted bodies to those impacted in a way several steps removed from the direct role of the CGIAR.  Shouldn’t we be asking from the outset what form of partnership they feel they are involved in?

 

Other than asking the category of organizational type, there is nothing here that asks what is the perceived basis, the essential quality of the partnership under consideration.  From Q6 and its onward flow, the survey as presently framed gives a crude and simplistic measure of some vague partners or collaborators concept, without furthering understanding of what is changing through the reform or what partnership behaviors are actually desired.  To quote the GCARD 1 AR4D partnership workshop study of that I circulated earlier: “Partnerships are intended, through a shared interest approach, to connect those with complimentary advantages, resources and skills to offer, those with specific needs and knowledge on the ground, map those that can apply innovations and identify the pathways which can bring this to scale”. 

 

Partners and collaborators are themselves two quite different degrees of relationship – a third which is not touched here is that largely dependent upon CGIAR funding to make it happen, which can become essentially one of sub-contracting given the power imbalances involved. 

 

A question on this kind of differentiation of partnership purpose could give a much more useful basis for exploring partnership quality than just naming a type of institution, most of which have multiple partnership functions also (e.g. farmers as local innovators, NGOs as financiers).

Without that it will be very hard to make sense of subsequent answers.

 

I also attach here some proposed changes for the formal categories to make the definitions used more distinct.

 

I also feel the extent to which the partners feel they own the objectives and are themselves valued in contributing towards that end is fundamental and should be brought out more strongly in Qs 8 & 18.  Q8 is much improved, but still lacks a core question on the extent to which objectives are truly shared.

Without true shared ownership there will be poor subsequent uptake and use of technologies and a lack of commitment of partners own resources. We should probe that issue much more here – have we truly moved the partnership basis forwards now through the reform as we believe we have?

The CRPS have themselves shown a wide spread of behavior, from those re-framing existing work to those, such as the dryland systems programme, who  proposed an entire first year of essentially listening to partners to then shape their work accordingly - and for which incidentally they were heavily criticized based on the funding criteria used! Can we not make use of the spread of approaches used by the CRPs to learn more, rather than assuming the CRPS are uniform which they patently are not?

 

Similarly, the partnership questions do not yet explore how the CGIAR can support the development of enabling policies for impact or support other investment in their partners- a shared responsibility for outcomes that has always been part of the reform.

 

A few other points:

Overall perceptions section:  Q2 Since the SRF has determined that the CGIAR’s role is to address Intermediate development outcomes shouldn’t that be stated here rather than a scoring of perceptions of eventual impact?

 

 

It is very useful that the CRPs are now addressed separately from the CGIAR, though I agree fully with Teunis that many will not yet be sufficiently familiar with the CRPS to differentiate the two, nor that the CRPS are sufficiently advanced.  Q 17 in particular seems unanswerable for those CRPs that have yet to start up. We need a framing that allows comment on objectives and proposed approach, even if the programme is not yet fully operational

 

I am attaching here also some comments on the categories of respondents proposed. Also attached are some editorial observations on the survey background wording itself.

 

I feel I am restating points I made earlier, but they are important and frequently expressed from the perspectives of the CGIAR’s partners.  It is a great pity we have not had another teleconference chance to reconcile these issues and I hope this can be arranged tomorrow; frankly  I feel the survey launch is being rushed without these issues being picked up.

 

Warm regards,

 

Mark

 

Mark Holderness

 

Executive Secretary,

The Global Forum on Agricultural Research

 

c/o Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Viale delle Terme di Caracalla,

00153 Rome

Italy

 

e-mail: mark.ho...@fao.org

 

Tel: +39 (06) 570 55047

Fax: +39 (06) 570 53898

 

http://www.egfar.org

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[Van Rheenen, Teunis (IFPRI)]

Dear Daniela,

 

I fully agree with Mark.

 

As you know I also had problems with the survey as it was in the final version that I saw. In bilateral communication between us I mentioned that merely being familiar with a CRP would not necessarily put someone in a good position to do a proper ranking. I am afraid that the results will not say much for those questions and might give a wrong impression. Was this concern addressed?

 

Feel free to call me whenever you want.

 

Kind greetings from a very grey Washingtin.

 

Teunis.

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[Alfaro, Daniela (CGIAR Consortium)]

Dear Mark, thank you very much for your feedback. It´s very good to have it. Most of Committee remarks were incorporated over the last 10 days since the deadline for approval, which was on Friday November 30th. Globescan is now testing the survey online with us so it would be difficult to implement big changes. 

 

I believe we must maintain our approved objectives. We exchanged with Teunis about this last week and he agreed that we can`t try to incorporate too much things to the already overloaded survey. This is a baseline survey, in such sense we don´t intend to compare with the previous situation but with the future. So asking for the recent evolution of CGIAR partnerships compared to the past would be out of our current role and defined objectives. This would also be rather inconsistent with one of the last observations in your email when you point out that some CRPs would not be advanced enough to assess them yet and many respondents would not be able to separate CGIAR from CRPs. Please note that they will be able to declare this when they choose not to answer about any CRP. This is one important addition regarding Teunis comments. 

 

As per the nature of partnership issue is one of your major concerns please recall that question dd7) asks about the current activities that the respondent`s organization is developing with the CGIAR. Indeed, dd7) ask for the type of activities that the partners develops. This classification was suggested by one of the Committee Members and dd7) it was actually included due to your concerns regarding the type of partnerships and its incidence in the answers. Using the Committee suggestion we used a "participatory" approach that looks for activities rather than roles of the partners. Even if not perfect I hope this could fulfill your expectations of having a more clear definition of the relationship between partners and CGIAR. Of course, we understand partnership is an extremely complex concept but to a good extent we would have to rely on the respondents opinion as this is a perception survey and it`s not intended to obtain strictly comparable responses from one individual to another. Furthermore, I guess it would be difficult to agree and effectively transmit the concept to the surveyed. They respond as they understand the issue anyway, unless we make an initial assessment of what those stakeholders understand as "collaboration" which is far from our objectives.

 

Please see below dd7)

 

dd7)       On what types of activities do you currently work with or partner with the CGIAR Consortium? Select all that apply.

 

SELECT ALL THAT APPLY

 

 

1.    Research

 

2.    Outreach and communications

 

3.    Research applications

 

4.    Policy processes

 

5.    Technology transfer

 

6.    Capacity strengthening

 

7.    Other (please specify):________________________________

 

 

The degree of support to the survey has been very high so far, we received around 200 positive replies just this morning.

 

Certainly, we look forward to having your collaboration in further steps of the survey process.

 

Best regards,

 

Daniela

 

 

 

From: Holderness, Mark (OEKD) [mailto:Mark.Ho...@fao.org]

Sent: 10 December 2012 17:22
To: Alfaro, Daniela (CGIAR Consortium); partnersh...@cgxchange.org
Cc: Rijsberman, Frank (CGIAR Consortium); Jones, Monty (FARA)

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[Alfaro, Daniela (CGIAR Consortium)]

Dear Teunis,

 

We exchanged mails. Yes, your concern was well addressed in the survey.

 

My best,

 

Daniela

[Van Rheenen, Teunis (IFPRI)]

Dear Daniela,

 

That is great. Will we be able to review the changes before it is sent out?

 

Many thanks, Teunis.

[Van Rheenen, Teunis (IFPRI)]

Dear Daniela,

 

To clarify our email exchange last week, though I expressed support of both the survey objectives and the increased emphasis placed on the CGIAR as separate from the CRPs, I made clear my reservations with moving forward with the revised survey given that the CRPs are not yet – as Mark put it – sufficiently advanced. I hope there was no misunderstanding in how I conveyed my concern that the revised survey still might create confusion.

 

I very much look forward to the next version

 

Many thanks in advance and I am impressed with the way that you are handling the preparation of this complex survey!

 

Teunis.

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[Alfaro, Daniela (CGIAR Consortium)]

Dear Teunis,

 

Thanks for your email. As you know  we have incorporated significant changes to the contents and structure of the questionnaire over the last 4 weeks of work on it. To the extent it was feasible, we have incorporated the comments and inputs from the Committee and several experts in each assessed area (Gender, Capacity Building and Communication).

 

Regarding your concern (the questions about CRPs) please note that we have incorporated the possibility for the surveyed to exclude themselves from this part of the questionnaire as they can say they are not familiar with any of them. They will be able to define and declare if they know enough to answer the questions about CRPs.

 

If you are right, most of the respondents will say they are not familiar with any CRP and we will have first-hand information about it, which is part of what we want to assess.

 

The Consortium Office believes that the possibility of self-exclusion from the questions regarding CRPs is the most efficient way to move forward. I hope you can share with us this point of view and I will be more than happy to have a call with you to discuss it as soon as possible.

 

Globescan has been working very hard to incorporate all of our changes into the questionnaire. It is expected to finish today with the programming and testing of the survey online. I would ask Globescan to send the survey link to the Committee once they have finished it. And please note that we need to close this step today or not later than tomorrow in order to send out the survey this week.

 

Thanks and best regards,

 

Daniela  

[Van Rheenen, Teunis (IFPRI)]

Dear Daniela,

 

The point is actually a different one. Many respondents might be familiar with a CRP but that does not put them in a proper position to do a ranking.

 

Kind greetings, Teunis.

[Alfaro, Daniela (CGIAR Consortium)]

Thank you Teunis. I Think is very good to discuss this in order to understand better where we are and we are heading to with the Survey.

 

First of all, I would like to highlight that according to the initial discussion with the Committee in September, we agreed with Globescan not to make a ranking among CRPs as this was considered inappropriate for our purposes. Anyway, I assume you are not using “ranking” in such sense. Just to be sure we are talking about the same.   

 

Regarding your specific point about familiarity with a CRP and the respondent´s position to make a proper evaluation of it I would like to say that this could be more like a methodological issue which I am not in the best position to respond as I am not an expert on survey´s methodology. This is why we are working with Globescan and I´m sure they are available to discuss with you these details if you think is suitable.

 

My personal point of view is that as it is a perception survey and we want to know what they think about the CGIAR and the CRPs (provided that they declare they are familiar with any of them) their opinion is useful, regardless of how objective that opinion is. In such sense, we would be more interested in knowing the image they have about CGIAR rather than CG exact performance in partnerships (that would demand a consultancy or a specific working group as it did the 2008 external review , which produced very interesting results).

 

I am available to discuss with you these details at any time but I agree that I could be not the right person to respond this specific issue. Maybe Globescan or the rest of the Committee could provide you higher quality feedback about it.

 

Thank you very much again. I hope this helps.

 

Best regards,

[Van Rheenen, Teunis (IFPRI)]

Dear Daniela,

 

Thank you for this response. After going through the survey though I would like to reiterate that I share Mark’s concerns, specifically those that relate to the CRP questions.

 

I fully understand that we are trying to capture stakeholders’ opinions about the CGIAR and the CRPs rather than conduct an assessment of the CG’s performance in partnerships. It is out of support for the need to capture these opinions that I maintain that the questionnaire as is will fall short of being able to do this, particularly in such a critical area as the emergence of the CRPs. As Mark stated, the questions that ask stakeholders to rank the CRP that they claim to be familiar with should be reconstructed as questions that intend to capture expectations of performance rather than opinions on current performance. Given the premature nature of the CRPs, this approach would do more to create the type of baseline desired for future comparisons.

 

Thank you again on behalf of the Committee for being receptive and attentive to our comments and feedback and for being the liaison between the Committee and Globescan.