The MEA Information and Knowledge Management Initiative

20th Meeting of the Working Group

28th January 2014, Bonn, Geneva, Montreal, Nairobi, Rome

Report
Meeting Participants

AEWA/CMS - Florian Keil,

BRS - Osmany Pereira
CBD – Olivier de Munck, Kata Koppel,
CITES - Marcos Regis Silva, Hyun-Hee Park
ITPGR-FA - Francisco Lopez,
UNCCD - Rita Benitez,
UNECE – Fransiska Ilg,
UNEP/DELC - Eva Duer, Kelly Kabiru, Iddah Kabiru, Lucy Mwakio ,
Eau de Web - Miruna Badescu, Cristian Romanescu
Legal Resource Initiative – Maria Jose Ortiz
Regrets: Ozone, UNFCCC, WHC

Meeting Summary

I Updates from MEA representatives

□ CMS family
(Awaiting input from CMS)

□ UNCCD
An ongoing review is currently underway of available IT resources in the Secretariat. Until the review
is completed the capacity of UNCCD to implement the API will be limited unless there are additional
resources made available through the ICA. Work on the Reporting Tool is ongoing and the
questionnaire templates have been developed on the Adobe Lifecycle Suite. A procurement process
is initiated to find a service provider to host, publish and aggregate data from questionnaires. Ms.
Benitez agreed to share her comparative review of reporting systems and approaches with
interested colleagues.

□ CBD
First version of the technical platform hosting the ABS Clearing House was completed and
development is still ongoing. The CBD Secretariat has also established two distinct units: Knowledge
Management (KM) and Information Technology (IT) . Operational issues related to these units are
discussion.

□ UNECE – The Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP)

The UNECE Conventions and LRTAP in particular are currently considering participation in the IKM
initiative. The Secretariats expressed their preference with regard to 1) [accessing?] the complete
list of Protocols included in InforMEA, 2) have UNECE Conventions assigned to all relevant regions
(such as the LTAP in the North American region); 3) use of tag clouds and tags assigned to treaty
portions and 4) the presentation of selected decisions only. LRTAP also referred to its own on-line
reporting mechanism, and indicated that there was no need for the Convention to consider any
other tool at this stage.

□ CITES
CITES is in the process of transferring their website to a new Content Management System (CMS)
based on Drupal. With regard to the InforMEA Single Window project, CITES has identified a number
of consultants and will invite additional comments and open the project for participation through a
dedicated sub-group (to include possibly CBD and the BRS).

□ BRS
The BRS conventions reviewed standards related to the Odata protocol, as well as to SOAP (Simple
Object Access Protocol) and live-Apps. The further development of the InforMEA API generated
products that are being used with the BRS Clearing House Mechanism. Other products are under
consideration but their further development or implementation is dependent on sustainability.
Integration of legacy systems found in each Convention of the BRS group is still ongoing, as is the
further harmonization of the three websites. The Online Reporting System of the Basel convention,
launched October 2013, is now in full production capacity and has already received 20 reports from
Parties. In March 2014 the tool will be launched in the six UN official languages.

□ Plant Treaty
The Plant Treaty is focusing on content management issues. Mr. Lopez drew attention to a new
project called “Giving Greater Access to FAO Normative and Governance Information” by the Central
Services of FAO. Of interest is that the project appears to have similar goals to InforMEA. Such
similarity may offer opportunities for collaboration.

II Update by the MEA IKM Team

Ms. Duer reported that funds from the ENRTP project were released (since January 2014). She also
reported that first agreements with MEAs had been established. She confirmed that an overall
amount of 140 000 USD was available for individual agreements with MEAs lacking IT or other
resources to implement the InforMEA project and encouraged all MEAs to make good use of this
opportunity.

Furthermore, a first contractual arrangement was concluded with regard to the development of the
E-learning tool of InforMEA. Ms. Maria Ortiz was introduced as the e-learning expert who will
collaborate with the MEAs in the development of individual or clustered modules, beginning in the
next fewmonths. Ms. Ortiz is an environmental lawyer, formerly with UNITAR, with experience in the
development of online training material. Her first priority under the contract will be the
development of a UNEP introductory course. Under this and other activities related to the project,
she will engage with the MEAs who have submitted material for inclusion fro the development of the
E-learning tool.

Ratification information in InforMEA: Following the introduction by UNECE, colleagues from the UN
Treaty Section, Office of Legal Affairs confirmed, in principle, their intention of linking with InforMEA
by exchanging treaty information data. The details of this new collaboration will be discussed in the
coming weeks. On Tuesday, 4 February 2014, a first teleconference was held exploring technical
solutions and both sides will proceed with preparing this collaboration.

Outreach: The IKM Team reported on the dissemination of a questionnaire sent to 1500 focal points
via email. Reference was made to a high number of bounced messages due to incorrect email
addresses harvested from MEA websites. This information will be made available to the MEAs
Participants were invited to re-consider the target for InforMEA and to participate in the
development of an outreach strategy. Also, some funds are available for the translation of the
InforMEA Graphical User Interface into the six UN official languages. A number of participants
offered to share their experiences with translation of websites and glossaries.

Tentative dates for the 5th MEA IKM Steering Committee Meeting: 3-5 June 2014. Unless a number
of regrets are made before 14 February 2014, preparations for the meeting will begin.

Items Discussed

Multi-stakeholder process on InforMEA Glossary/Thesaurus: Reference was made to the decision

by UNEP to adopt GEMET as a standard for its Thesaurus and how this should be taken into account
in the enhancement of the InforMEA Thesaurus. Participants discussed possible approaches to
collaborating with UNEP and making use of their work with GEMET. The possibility of an initial
assessment of MEA vocabularies and the InforMEA vocabulary by a taxonomy expert was believed to
be prerequisite on making a decision on the best possible way forward. The suggestion was made for
a back-to-back session on the Thesaurus during the MEA IKM Steering Committee Meeting.

 The Group decided to establish a Sub-Group on the Thesaurus. The first Skype conference is
tentatively scheduled for Thursday, 13 February 2014, at 15 o clock CET.

(Reporting and Plans) Obligation database: The implementation of the obligation database has not
progressed. In part, participants found it difficult to select relevant treaty and decisions articles from
the unfiltered drop down menu. The approved schema may still be more complex than necessary.
Participants expressed a preference for retaining an overview of reporting obligations and
obligations to develop national action plans. Work will be undertaken using on example and the
proposed way forward regarding the linkage between the reporting and plans obligation database
and the search facility will be presented to the next Working Group Meeting.

Filtering of InforMEA feeds:

Problems associated with InforMEA-data received unfiltered as a service when harvested ‘back’ or
by a third party has been raised several times lately, including by the UNEP live team. Not all MEA
colleagues have been aware of this situation. There is a belief that better filtering of information may
an important incentive for continued participation by MEAs. It may also be an important incentive by
Partners who may wish to display InforMEA information in their own tools or applications. In this
context, the advantages and disadvantages of Odata were considered, including the preference of
MEAs to remain platform independent and the preference to adhere to established standards.
There was a joint consensus that an in-depth consideration of this issue was required and a
dedicated sub-group would convene separately.

Initial Follow up regarding Filtering

A first follow up Skype call was held on Monday, 3 February 2014 with representatives from BRS,
CBD and CITES and the following situation was established: the Java based OData library used on the
InforMEA server to expose back MEA information has not been programmed to enable filtering,
selecting, ordering and other functionalities that are provided by default when using Microsoft
based OData library. Two possible solutions were considered by the group: a) complete the current
computer programme to enable those missing functionalities or b) use a Microsoft front-end server
to expose the InforMEA API, which will automatically enable the missing functionalities.

The first option was perceived to be fairly rigid and unsustainable taking into account to the
computer programme maintenance needed when a new schema is added or changed, and the
propagation of those upgrades to the Toolkit.

The second option is perceived to be more sustainable taking into account the absence of computer
programming to enable the above stated functionalities but represents a minor investment by the
Initiative. Nonetheless, using non open-source systems may have a negative impact on the toolkit.

Practical solutions would have to be further evaluated and carefully considered before a joint
decision on the way forward would need to be taken possibly at the next Working Group Meeting.
BRS offered to develop an initial proof of concept with contact information.

Email from Mr. Hortoneda 5 February 2014:

… I have investigated the option of using a Microsoft server on top of the InforMEA backend to
expose MEA data to possible consumers. I wrote a simple program to browse the current InforMEA
API for contacts and re-expose them from a Microsoft server. To ease the exercise, I have cached the
contact data on a database. I have also excluded the treaties information. Using a Microsoft front-
end, those functionalities are coming automatically without the need to program them, no matter
which data source is used.
You can see a sample application to display contacts with server paging, filtering, selection and
ordering at http://informea.pops.int/InformeaCachedContacts.htm
You can execute a query like this one to get 3 contacts from France in reverse order and retrieve just
the name:
http://informea.pops.int/informeaCache/informeaCache.svc/Contacts?
$select=firstName,lastName&$filter=country eq 'FRA'&$orderby=lastName desc&$top=3