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Other initiatives and general issues |
There are an increasing number of initiatives which recognise the important role of making information more accessible (such as WIN, SUSTRAN, PIARC Technical Transfer Centres, and an strengthened profile of information brokerage services such as IFRTD and ILO-ASIST) and most professionals who were asked to participate in the study welcomed the opportunity to analyse and articulate the mismatch between their ongoing – and changing – demands for information to do their jobs effectively, and the information supply. They also welcomed the World Bank’s implicit intention (in funding the study) to strengthen the quality and quantity of information available to those working in the sector. With few exceptions, the more than 100 people participating in the study through workshops, literature search, interviews, said that this was the first time that they had been asked to think strategically about the role of information in pursuing their development objectives.
The study’s investigation of existing information systems and services is not yet complete, but a range of issues are emerging with undermine their efficiency and effectiveness.
These include:
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Out of date mailing lists – TRL’s mailing list contains more than 3,800 names, but this has not been significantly edited for more than ten years.
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Translation – many useful documents are not translated to make them accessible to wider audiences (though PIARC translates some of the TRL publications such as the International Road Maintenance Handbook for its members according to demand and assessed suitability), or if they are, they are not made available to all relevant stakeholders (e.g. Mozambique Government funded translation of Overseas Road Notes into Portuguese is not available in Brazil).
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Awareness among staff - within larger organisations, staff are often unaware of the full range of information that is available for dissemination, and are often unwilling to take the responsibility for promoting it when they travel.
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Incentives - staff do not prioritise information or even acknowledge it as an important part of their jobs. There are inadequate systems in place to either incentivise or authorise staff to carry out this role as part of the organisation’s broader Information and Communication Strategy.
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Under use – some organisations (such as TRL, WB Help Desk etc) have systems in place (e.g. databases, technical enquiry services etc.) that could provide valuable information on what is the current and anticipated demand for information from a variety of stakeholders, but these are not being employed for this purpose and opportunities are being lost.
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Coordination - there is a general lack of awareness of what is an organisation’s niche (as an information provider) within the broader spectrum of information on transport and rural infrastructure, i.e. how they complement other organisations in delivering a portfolio of information to users. This leads to lack of co-ordination and referral between suppliers such as IFRTD, TRL, ILO-ASIST, WB etc.; possible duplication of information provision; and confusion on the part of users about where to go for what kind of information.
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Personal behaviour - professionals working in the transport sector do not make connections between their behaviour as information consumers - the lack of time to read long documents - and the way that they disseminate information themselves – often through long documents.
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Traditionalism – few organisations either encourage staff to involve information users in research, or to develop effective communication materials, and donors are unwilling to fund the range of techniques that have been shown to be ‘communications best practice’.
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Impact assessment – there are few attempts and fewer tools to evaluate the impact of information activities. Some organisations track the delivery of information outputs, but most assume that so long as the information reaches the right people their objectives have been met, and much (especially DFID) information is unbranded, making it difficult to estimate impact from user surveys.
