MIS capabilities

MIS in Agriculture

The Indian Council for Agricultural Research, in referring to its Agricultural Research Information System, stated that agricultural scientists can carry out research more effectively by having systematic access to research information available in India as well as in other countries, better project management of agricultural research, and modernization of the office tools. Information is the blood of an organisation, country or region and its management is vital for effectiveness, efficiency and economic and social stability. In many organizations, countries and regions, there have been increasing calls for the development of integrated, national (geo-) information infrastructure for management, resource planning and decision-making. ACP scientists who work in the various disciplines generating scientific data on climate, water, soils, land etc need to pay more attention to integrating the data sets to improve decision making at the policy and enterprise level including farms to contribute to socio-economic development.

MIS - capabilities

The term 'information system' is a general term for a system that facilitates access to information; however, a ' management information system' refers to integrated data sources and information systems, which meet the particular needs and requirements of planning and decision-making. In an ideal case, the major objectives of MIS are to:

1. reach an understanding of the relevant processes on the basis of the available historic information. This element forms the basis for the development of models, required for forecasting and simulation.
2. provide information on the current situation, especially for early warning purposes, for instance related to issues impacting on food security, water resources or pest and disease status.
3. forecast changes and impacts, either natural or man-made , as an element in vulnerability assessments.
4. forecast the consequences of policy decisions and measures before they are implemented in reality. This implies evaluating options for several given scenarios based on the possible results and predicted consequences, and selecting the most acceptable alternative.

Existing environmental information systems in ACP countries consist of isolated data sets (soil type, climate, land, water, forest and fisheries resources) and systems, aimed at management of specific resources: water, land or forest; they hardly reach the second objective mentioned above. The third and fourth objectives (forecasting changes and simulation) are currently almost only reached within one discipline mainly in meteorology (weather and climate forecast) and to a certain extent in oceanography. This is due to the fact that the ACP countries, in addition to operating within serious financial and human constraints, must grapple with inter-institutional competition (individuality of scientific disciplines and competition for resources), limited agreement on harmonized standards, formats or quality assurance and legal constraints (lack of common data policy).

The following table provides an overview of different phases of data/information systems.

CATEGORY	ELEMENTS	USAGE
environmental information systems	traditional knowledge	oral transmission and exchange
manuscript/printed archives	documents in files and folders	visual inspection and analysis
isolated digital data archives	databases, spreadsheets using different standards and formats	computer-aided review and synthesis
coordinated digital data archives	databases and spreadsheets, using common standards and formats, user interface	automatic review and synthesis
GIS (Geographic Information System)	databases and data layers with common (geographic) reference, user interface	integrated analysis
MIS (Management Information System)	databases, models, user interface	integrated analysis, extrapolation, forecast, simulation
DSS (Decision Support System)	databases, models, artificial intelligence, user interface	integrated analysis, extrapolation, forecast, simulation, weighted ?advice?