Proposed use cases:
Our Email q’s answered:
What is the current state (how is data collected, stored, transformed, shared) and what are the gaps which FarmStack will help address
Data is collected on a seasonal basis (twice a year) using an in-house customized system called e-Agrology (see short video here). The main gap Farmsatck will help address is sharing these data with donors (private companies such as Kellogg, Bimbo, Nestle, Heineken and others) including personal identifiable information from which we have proper informed consents.
What kinds of data controls are required
We require matching the informed consents with individual data flows to be able to share only those lines that have consent.
We're keen to learn about the farming communities the projects work with - are there clear livelihood, climate, and / or gender considerations
Small and medium farmers (between 0.5 – 15 Has) depending on agriculture as main economic activity, located in the Bajio region where water is scarce. We work with them to put in place sustainability plans that can help them produce more with less impact (water-use efficiency, soil quality, air quality, etc)
Are there timeline constraints / requirements we'd need to commit to
Ideally, we would start the pilot this season starting from June-july to be able to share seasonal data by the end of the year with the donors.
Could we establish CIMMYT as an FS steward and eventually build internal capacity within CIMMYT to utilize FarmStack for X more use cases reaching Y more farmers and Z more partners, etc.
Yes. Absolutely. We have the team in place to be trained. Actually I heard from my colleague Steve Kemp within the Digital Initiative in the ONECgiar where I am Co-lead, that they are also having conversations obaout this so we coud put a set of global use cases togeher for this.
Is this a good opportunity for a sort of "showcase" collaboration that could lead to a beneficial communications and brand awareness campaign to support our advocacy work in this space
Yes
Call plan for May 18:
Hello, intros as needed
Two different ways of interacting - CIMMYT w/ some projects in Mexico, then the One CGIAR digital initiative has some additional use cases (Rwanda, India, etc) \
Andrea leads M&E at CIMMYT, ICT for Ag, info systems for data collection, cleaning, ETL processes etc
Leads the e-agrology system
Jelle leads the bi-lateral projects, hub system in Mexico, localized innovation networks, sustainable agrifood systems program
Dive into the more technical questions / clarifications from below
VNS:
Andrea share data sample and informed consent form they have
Andrea to put us in contact with the developers to work directly with
Scope out basic product, big and small picture, costs, and share
Prepare initial agreement of collaboration - CIMMYT is the owner here (step 1), in parallel we do the concept note with Dalberg
Set up recurring call to move this forward, create the requirements in a solution sketch, then come to how we will execute, baseline targets, and costs associated
Identify focal people from both sides, including who can address tech q’s for CIMMYT
What to do about the concept note with Dalberg? Focus on the use cases for now, or work on that concept note in parallel
Potentially focus on the use cases and drop the concept note
Or, if we pursue the concept note - more closely tie it with these use cases, understanding the other potential challenges this same solution can address?
We need to look at the level of effort which will be required from our team and determine if it is feasible to pursue this first phase pro-bono, on this timeline. We’ll come back with some specific options.
Our detailed q’s (from Vineet’s mail, May 16, 2022 plus some from Andrew in red):
What data sets and who are providers/ consumers? - Sample if available would be good.
Providers = farmers, consumers = private companies and researchers (in the future?)
Ask for sample data
Around 500 variables per plot
up to 3 crops per season
What is the current approach for collecting consent? Is there a need for our support there to build in consent manager to e-Agrology
Extension agent reads a general consent to the farmer when collecting the data
In order to share that data on to donors they must go back to the farmer one by one to collect additional consent from the farmers
Their need here is that sometimes the data requested by the donor is different - like relating yield with practices used etc, which needs specific informed consent
Maybe they can do a more general high level consent to share with 3rd party individually, but tbd. trying to get back to farmers with concrete benefits for sharing that data.
Agro-tutor is interface for the farmer, this will include privacy / consent built in >>> this is kind of a wallet, could push to it
Opp to build in SDK (data wallet, consent, etc)
Right now the donor has access to the general dashboards, but the outside access to the more dynamic dashboards need some control on the data sharing
Where do the data sets reside?
If servers then:
logistics of installing the FS instance
It is better that someone in our team is given access
They will need to maintain the access control and firewall setting
There are always surprises here - so if in the initial case this can be avoided then better
If public cloud like AWS/ Azure/ GCP then:
We create an test instance and give them the image
Data access:
If APIs - any documentation or swagger hub link
If DB query - then access to the DB test instance
If file - then who will be uploading
Data pipeline view:
What are the triggers for data sharing to start? - push vs pull
When is data collected – you said twice per year, when exactly so we can understand the timeline better
Collection is May - Nov, by november have sharing in place
Custom applications to be written
Requirements:
Informed consent collection, reduce burden of doing this somehow and track the consent per Mexican law
Dashboard access to 3rd parties (sharing from CIMMYT to the donor)
Application where farmers can see, input, share their data from the app (farmer sharing data to CIMMYT or third parties)
What is the starting point? The consent piece can take time and we have a tight timeline. The connector w/ sharing to donors is lower hanging fruit but maybe less important.
Their priority is the consent manager, they already have consent signed for the season but might have to go and inform them about future consent. She’d like to have it in place to let farmers decide what to share or not
Need to design the overall process but likely looking at the consent manager first then the connector
Call on June 7
Discussed this plan and refined the scope
Scope discussion etc:
Additional request from Andrea for “training” - this is included in the handover
If additional support is needed we will need to define clearly the amount of time we’ll spend on this handover / training support, we don’t know their
the spanish consent form is an image, but we need the text
Can we use whatsapp instead of SMS? >> this is used instead of SMS / telegram etc
In our experience in India the whatsapp APIs have a significant cost
Alternative is to work with CIMMYT’s AWS partner, they have access to SMS and Whatsapp, so we need to explore this – this also has a cost
This will be costly, but less than WA, and it uses an international number like an OTP notification
DG tech will need to meet with the project team and tech team folks of CIMMYT to present the consent mgr thing to them and get their feedback
Other q’s:
Can we discuss the engagement in blog / social media? We can include a line on this in the collab agreement if needed, but we like to share these kinds of partnerships with our community
Outline it in the collab agreement and collaborate with their comms on messaging
VNS:
Shreya to share latest version of collab agreement w/ markups and notes
Add the list of tasks outlined to the agreement and share, it will take time
Andrea to share text of the consent form
DG team to put together the story boarding based on this
Andrea to get Vineet / etc in contact with AWS partner to look at SMS integration
Andrea to bring project team into the discussion to get their input on donor needs, consent mgr flow, interface with farmers etc
Vineet to provide some days / times which work to connect with these teams
1.5 hours for overview and tech architecture
~45 minutes for the project team to understand what the farmers / beneficiaries will get out of the process, Andrea to present
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