Steve Katz

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Multilingual Knowledge Management as a Strategy
to Defeat Poverty and Hunger

• Steve Katz
• Chief, WAICENT/FAOINFOF.A.O. of the U.N.

Managing Schemas in a Multilingual Semantic
WebBudapest, 10-11 May 2001
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Topics of Discussion

• About the Speaker
• Information Within a Context (WFS)
• The World Agricultural Information Centre
• Content Management Architecture
• WAICENTs Inter-Governmental Process
• Standards and International Co-operation
• Taxonomy Server Project
• Metadata Integration (Harvesting vs Real-Time
  Query)
• Meeting the needs of LIFDC
• Conclusions, References and ...

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About the Speaker

• From NYC, Lived in Rome, Geneva, California
• BA, Behavioral Science, University of Chicago,
  1980
• Tried to Make it as a Rock n Roll Star
• 20 year Career in Information Technology and
  Knowledge Management
• Chief of the Information Dissemination Program of
  FAO
• Part of the World Agricultural Information
  Centre (WAICENT)

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World Food Summit

• World Food Summit - November 1996
• Leaders of 186 Countries Pledged to Reduce by
  Half the Number of Undernourished People in the
  World by 2015 (About 800 Million in 1996)
• FAO has a Major Role in Assisting Countries in
  Implementing the Provisions of the WFS
• For Example, Improving Access to Information...
• It is necessary to target those people and
  areas suffering most from hunger and malnutrition
  and identify causes and take remedial action to
  improve the situation. A more complete,
  user-friendly source of information at all levels
  will enable this.

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Information and Knowledge Management at FAO

• The First Article of the FAO Constitution
• The Organization shall collect, analyse,
  interpret and disseminate information relating to
  nutrition, food and agriculture.

• My responsibility to provide Tools and Standards
  for
• Knowledge management
• Dissemination
• Information exchange

In English, French, Spanish, Arabic Chinese!
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WAICENT

• FAOs Strategic Program on Information Management
  and Dissemination (Key to implement component E
  of the Strategic Framework)
• Based on a Philosophy of Decentralization
• Sound Principles of Information Management
• Strategic use of Metadata and Content
  Repositories
• Separation of Content, Presentation, Processing
• Controlled Vocabularies (e.g. AGROVOC)
• Categorization Schemes (e.g AGRIS)
• International Non-Proprietary Standards (e.g
  XML)
• Cooperation with Internal/External Stakeholders

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WAICENT (cont)

• Primary Manifestation is WWW.FAO.ORG (20 million
  hits/month, 800,000 sessions/month)
• WFS Follow-up (e.g. SPFS, FIVIMS, Telefood)
• Technical and Scientific Information Resources
• Integrated Statistical Databases (e.g. FAOSTAT)
• Photos, Maps, and other Multimedia Apps.
• Early Warning and other Information Systems
• Agricultural Yellow Pages (people, inst.,
  projects)
• Info. From Normative Programmes (e.g. CODEX)
• Meeting Documents, including Council/Conference
• Outreach and Capacity Building Component
• Intergovernmental Process (COAIM)

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WAICENT (cont)

• And Now After All the Theory....
• The Architecture of WAICENT!!

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Portal Architecture Diagram Standardisation in
Information Collection and Dissemination
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Portal Architecture Diagram Standardisation in
Information Collection and Dissemination
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Publications Work-Flow
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Inter-Governmental Process

• 1st Consultation on Agricultural Information
  Management (June 2000)

• Recognizing the key role that information and
  knowledge play in ensuring food security and
  sustainable development, the Consultation aims of
  to bring agricultural information management
  policy issues to the attention of the
  inter-governmental process, and to establish a
  global framework for the normative work of
  WAICENT

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COAIM Agenda

• Improving Access to Agricultural Information
• Strengthening Information and Knowledge
  Management Capacities through International
  Cooperation
• Standards and Guidelines for Agricultural
  Information Management

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COAIM Recommendations

• Work with Regional/National Programmes and
  Partners
• Document evidence of successful implementation of
  information and knowledge systems based on modern
  technologies
• Promote coordination between Development
  Assistance Agencies working in the area of
  information management in agriculture

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More COAIM Recommendations

• In close collaboration with other stakeholders,
  assist Member Nations in adopting international
  standards for content management
• Assume a leading role as a clearing-house for
  international agreed information management
  standards in the agricultural sector
• Maintain and further develop the multilingual
  thesaurus AGROVOC

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Who are the Users?

• Academic and Research Organizations
• Government Institutions
• International Organizations
• NGOs
• FAO Staff
• General Public

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WAICENT Statistics (November 2000)
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The Information Access Problem

• Quantity of Internet information is spiraling out
  of control
• Standard search engines provide too many and
  non-relevant answers
• Only a small percentage of sites are Indexed
• Decentralization Information is vastly
  dispersed around the World
• The inevitable and obvious consequence
• It is very difficult to find information on the
  Internet

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What to do?(Standards Intl. Cooperation)

• Establish, adopt, and promote metadata and
  content management standards for agricultural
  information published on the Web
• Adopt existing open and International syntax and
  grammar standards (e.g. DC, XML, RDF(S))
• Seek guidance from experts in the community
  (Agstandards Project)
• Implement a Pilot Project with existing portal
  initiatives (e.g. WAICENT, AGNIC NOVAGate, BIOME,
  GFIS)
• Publish the specification/schema of all adopted
  standards in an authoritative on-line repository
  at www.fao.org

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Taxonomy Server Project

• Will offer a conceptual model for representing
  relationships within and between authoritative
  sets of controlled vocabularies and
  categorization schemes or topic trees
• Will explore the use of RDF Schema and RDF syntax
  for describing and binding the concepts in
  thesauri and classification systems within a
  common framework.

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Taxonomy Server Project (Cont)

• In particular we will attempt to
• Create a vocabulary registry including our
  multilingual agricultural thesaurus AGROVOC,
  other specialized vocabularies in the subject
  area of agriculture, forestry, fishery and
  nutrition and possibly thesauri from other
  broader subject areas that overlap (example
  Envoc)
• Define for each term its own concept namespace
• Define some properties formally for each term
  (RT, BT, NT, Usage, Scope, etc.)
• Relate a term to one or more other terms from the
  same or another thesaurus or controlled
  vocabulary
• Integrate general purpose classifications schemes
  (e.g. Dewey) or specific ones as the one for
  AGRIS/CARIS

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Taxonomy Server Project (Cont)

• This system of concepts and relations should be
  encoded as an RDF Schema similar to what is
  described in the article published at
  http//www.desire.org/results/discovery/rdfthessch
  ema.html
• The ultimate goal will be to provide a platform
  for multilingual interoperability between the
  authoritative controlled vocabularies within the
  agricultural community and with other related
  sectors

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Multiple Database Host Search Engine
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Benefits

• Dynamic processing!
• No aggregate database overheads
• Up-to-date, real-time information
• Distribution of labour

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Problems

• Dynamic Processing!
• Host is down, sorry no data available!
• Retrieval speed
• Quality Issues - How to aggregate different
  classification schemes?
• Quality Issues - How to deal with duplicate
  records?

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The needs of LIFDC
Access to information is hard enough in the
North....

• Expertise and technologies DO exist!!
• Tools and methodologies must be scalable. Cant
  let LCD determine the technical solution.
• UNESCOs CDS/ISIS is a widely-used tool,
  particularly for publishing bibliographic info!
• FAO and partners have the tools to bring CDS/ISIS
  from DOS to Windows to the Web... with links to
  text!
• The next step is interoperability CDS/ISIS
  should be able interpret metadata schemas (using
  RDF/XML/DC)
• Establishment of a CDS/ISIS Consortium
• Institutional Capacity Building for
  Web-Publishing/ Content Management (WAICENT
  Resource Kit)

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Wrap-up Summary

• Vital role of metadata and content repositories
• Need for authoritative repositories for the
  specifications of metadata standards in
  agriculture
• Need for a clearinghouse on multilingual
  controlled vocabularies in agriculture and
  related fields
• The need to develop open, portable, scalable
  tools that take full advantage of the standards,
  and can be easily adapted to the needs of
  technologically advanced countries and of LIFDC

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Conclusions

• Content Mgmt. and metadata standards provide
• A platform to develop common tools and
  applications for subject and thematic gateway
  services, and to exchange information
• A framework to ensure improved access to
  multilingual agricultural information, thereby
  contributing to the goals of the WFS

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A Few References

• FAO Document Repository, http//www.fao.org/docum
  ents
• FAO On-Line Catalogues, http//www4.fao.org
• Home-Page of FAO, http//www.fao.org
• Home-Page of AGRIS, http//www.fao.org/agris
• WAICENT Access Statistics, http//www.fao.org/www
  stats
• Rome Declaration on World Food Security and World
  Food Summit Plan of Action, http//www.fao.org/wfs
  /final/rd-e.htm
• Home-Page of WAICENT, http//www.fao.org/waicent
• Yours Truly, Stephen.Katz_at_fao.org

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• Information is only power if you can find it!
• THANK YOU !!!!!
• J