Final Project Report

Open Agricultural Data in Jamaica – Caribbean Knowledge

Economy – 106099-001

August 2011

Prepared by:

Centre of Excellence, Mona School of Business

The University of The West Indies
Mona
Kingston 6
Contents
Executive Summary....................................................................................................................................... 1
1. Background ............................................................................................................................................... 2
2. Technical ICT Artifacts ............................................................................................................................... 4
3. OpenData Visibility & Events .................................................................................................................... 7
4. Recommendations for Further Development of OpenData in the Caribbean.......................................... 8

APPENDICES
Appendix I – OpenData API Design Specification
Appendix II - Demonstration Prototypes: MFI Loan Prototype / Android Mobile App
Appendix III - Slashroots Developers’ Conference / Codesprint Report
Appendix IV - Denbigh Agricultural Showcase Report
Executive Summary
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the IDRC in planting the seeds of this initiative: Firstly in
terms of the ideas that emerged from the IDRC-facilitated Workshop, “Towards a Caribbean Open
Institute: Data, Communications and Impact”, held in Kingston, Jamaica June 30 - July 1, 2010; Secondly,
for providing the “seed” funding that enabled the development and pursuit of a set of activities that
have demonstrated considerable potential for OpenData in the Agriculture domain in Jamaica, and has
also created a stream of research and ICT4D opportunities that we hope to continue to pursue both in
the Agriculture and other Information-intensive sectors of national importance.

This project was conceptualized with the basic objectives of:

a) Exploring the feasibility of a Pilot Project that applies the concept of OpenData to Agriculture
Production in Jamaica
b) Building a demonstration prototype of an application that illustrates how open data can improve directly
and indirectly the efficiency of value chains in Agriculture in Jamaica, with emphasis on small farmers.

This final project report describes three streams of outcomes that have emerged from the initiative:
i. Development of technology artifacts to demonstrate the concepts of OpenData
ii. Engagement of key constituents and stakeholders through high visibility events
iii. Future possibilities & opportunities for OpenData initiatives in Jamaica and the Caribbean
These outcomes as summarized in Table 1, have usefully demonstrated aspects of the open
development hypothesis that is increasingly being contemplated as the basis for "Openness in ICT4D"
i.e. "positive development can emerge through new models of engagement and innovation that are
more participatory, more collaborative, and driven more by the beneficiaries" (Hagel III, Brown, and
Davison 2010)

Table 1: Project Outcomes - Supporting the "Open" ICT4D Hypothesis

Project Outcomes Activities & Deliverables Supporting the ICT4D Hypothesis
Development of Opendata OpenData Webservices API for Illustrates how OpenData can increase
technology artifacts Agriculture Data the applications and benefits derived from
(concept demonstration) Microfinance Loan Management existing Public sector data by facilitating
Application greater access, participation and
AgroAssistant mobile application collaboration
Engagement of key constituents Slashroots developers’ Conference and Engaging the local developer community
and stakeholders through high Codesprint in contemplating innovations in
visibility events agriculture;
Denbigh 2011 Agriculture Showcase Opportunities for greater degrees of
“Open” innovation through engagement
of both producers and beneficiaries
Future possibilities & opportunities Concept Note Components
for OpenData initiatives in Build institutional capacity to promote, facilitate and provide sustainable support for
Jamaican and the Caribbean OpenData policy, standards and initiatives across the region
Field deployment of Agriculture Opendata initiatives
Extend OpenData principles to other information sectors (local & regional)
Opendata and ICT4D Research initiatives

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We believe the creation of an OpenData "Community of Practice" (Node) that:
a) operates on a Regional basis;
b) continues to develop and offer the technical and institutional expertise and capabilities to build
OpenData resources; and
c) encourages OpenData approaches to the management and dissemination of valuable Research and
Public Sector data;
can become a catalyst for collaboration and innovation in critical development sectors, particularly
those that are information intensive, and ultimately play a significant role in realizing aspects of the
vision crafted for the Caribbean Open Institute, notably:

Progression of the Caribbean towards a knowledge based society.

Caribbean researchers actively collaborating and engaging in dialogue and sharing information; and
policy makers using this evidence-based information for decisions.
Regional Governments embracing Open Data programs as an essential component of their
information dissemination strategies and development goals.
Researchers and users (including project planners, public organizations, NGOs, civil society) taking
advantage of Open Data initiatives to create new services and provide new ways for presenting
valuable information and positively impacting and empowering the constituents they serve.
ICT entrepreneurs actively building creative, content based applications for external and internal
markets.

1. Background
The workshop, “Towards a Caribbean Open Institute: Data, Communications and Impact”, hosted by the
International Development Research Centre (IDRC), June 30 - July 1, 2010 at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel,
Kingston, Jamaica brought together international experts and stakeholders in the Caribbean to explore
opportunities for strengthening policy-oriented research in the region. The principles of Open Data and
the process of making more data available online in open formats in order to strengthen the work of
governments, researchers and civil society, was one of three major themes examined during this forum,
the other two being Communication and Monitoring & Evaluation.

The meeting established a preliminary vision and guidelines for a regional initiative to drive open
institutional data approaches that would contribute to an emerging Caribbean Knowledge Economy.
Specific recommendations related to advancing and promoting the use of Open Data included:

a) Identifying organizations already inclined to openness, to serve as champions (technical, policy,

institutional), target groups (NGOs, academia, private sector), open access and open source
communities and crowd-sourced data opportunities

b) Establishing a forum established among the participant institutions that can provide a basis for
Collaboration, dissemination of best practices and sharing of lessons learnt

2
c) Conducting Pilot projects to serve as proof of concept and attract credit, recognition and visibility for
contributing agencies, as well as providing incentives for organizations to make data open in order to
promote the availability of high visibility, high value raw data

d) Building visibility and awareness with various stakeholders and through the engagement of
traditional and new media; promoting the understanding of the issue in civil society, sensitizing the
public and reinforcing the benefit of open data.

e) Development of a set of tools and documents with clear definitions of open data, of the role of the
different actors, the benefits expected (best practices), and instruments for assessing the availability
of data/readiness of each country/organization will help to guide the process

f) Institutional and community capacity building through events and workshops ; dissemination of
open data standards, index of datasets, applications, formats/ ontologies, best practices, sample
code, open source tools, sample implementations, training tools and standards/formats/vocabulary
harmonization.

This Pilot project addresses directly recommendations (c) and (d) by building on the existing
collaboration between the Mona School of Business, UWI and the Rural Agricultural Development
Agency (RADA) in the Ministry of Agriculture, Jamaica to demonstrate the possibilities and opportunities
associated with extending the accessibility, reach and utility of several of the Ministry's significant
information resources through OpenData principles.

One of the activities that RADA carries out in their many extension support services to farmers is the
collection and management of data about farmers, their farming production capacity and ongoing
production activity. This is a critical resource for supporting Agricultural supply-side planning production
and statistical reporting. The ABIS - Agricultural Business Information System provides the electronic
repository for much of this Production data. More recently the Jamaica Agriculture Market Information
System (JAMIS), was established by the Ministry of Agriculture to collect and disseminate pricing data of
agricultural commodities traded in the local and regional market place, on a weekly basis.

This Pilot project applies OpenData approaches to the existing RADA & JAMIs Agriculture data resources
to demonstrate the potential for OpenData approaches to increase the utility, applications and benefits
derived from existing Public sector data by facilitating greater access, participation and collaboration.
Specific objectives of the project include:

a) Exploring the feasibility of a Pilot Project that applies the concept of OpenData to Agriculture
Production in Jamaica through the development, promotion and validation of an OpenData web-services
API that allowed access to 10 years of Agricultural production data maintained by the Rural Agricultural
Development Agency (RADA)
b) Building a demonstration prototype of an application (using the API) that illustrates how open data can
improve directly and indirectly the efficiency of value chains in Agriculture in Jamaica, with emphasis on
small farmers.

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The remainder of this report consists of Section 2 - a description of the technical artifacts developed
during the project, including the OpenData API and demonstration prototype applications; Section 3 -
describes two significant events and activities geared at promoting visibility and awareness of the
OpenData initiative and it's benefits; Section 4 - provides recommendations for extending the OpenData
initiatives through the establishment of a “Community of Practice” to advance the development of the
requisite institutional capacity, skills and resources at a local and regional level in the Caribbean.

2. Technical ICT Artifacts

The ICT Artifacts developed as part of this project can be usefully described and analyzed using the
principles of the Design Science Research paradigm. According to the prescriptive guidelines offered by
(Hevner et al. 2004), Design Science Research is motivated by problem solving and is geared towards the
building, evaluation and application of innovative, purposeful ICT artifacts that can address practical
business needs. Table 1 summarizes how these seven (7) guidelines apply to this initiative.

Table 2: Design-Science Research Guidelines

Guideline Description Relevant Project Activities

Guideline 1: Design as an Design-science research must The specific ICT artifacts developed through this project:
Artifact produce a viable artifact in the form •OpenData Webservices API for Agriculture Data
of a construct, a model, a method or •Microfinance Loan Management Application
an instantiation. •AgroAssistant mobile application
(see table 3)
Guideline 2: Problem The objective of design science The challenges associated with the effective
Relevance research is to develop technology- dissemination, use and utility of public sector data are well
based solutions to important and established and include:
relevant developmental and business Limited access to high quality data that is timely and
problems accurate
Limited availability of structured, current, machine-
readable and locally relevant data for public
consumption.
Treatment of data produced using public resources as
the private property of the organization which
produced it
Guideline 3: Design The utility, quality and efficacy of a Various processes and mechanisms for evaluating the
Evaluation design artifact must be rigorously artifacts are proposed (see table 3)
demonstrated via well executed
evaluation methods.
Guideline 4: Research Effective design science must provide It is expected that this initiative will provide a basis for the
Contribution clear and verifiable contributions in formulation of a larger Open Data Research initiative that
the areas of the design artifact, will help to establish the institutional capacity to develop
design foundations, and or design and disseminate open data standards, index of datasets,
methodologies. applications, formats/ ontologies, best practices, sample
code, open source tools, sample implementations, training
tools, etc.

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Guideline 5: Research Design science research relies upon Appendix I & II describes the main ICT artifacts and the
Rigor the application of rigorous methods design choices and development methods
in both the construction and
evaluation of the design artifact.
Guideline 6: Design as a The search for an effective artifact Several PHP frameworks evaluated as potential platforms
Search Process requires utilizing available means to for API (incl. Agavi , Recess , cakePHP) before selecting
reach desired ends while satisfying cakePHP.
laws in the problem environment
Guideline 7: Design Science research must be This report is one of several mechanisms used to
Communication of presented effectively both to the disseminate the outcomes, findings and implications of
Research technology- oriented as well as this initiative. Other events such as the ./roots conference
management- oriented audiences. and the Denbigh Agricultural showcase are described in
Appendix III & IV
Adapted from: Hevner et al (2004)

Table III overleaf, provides a summary description of the three main ICT Artifacts developed through this
project, their purpose and the basis for evaluation. Detailed descriptions and specifications are
contained in the referenced Appendices.

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Table 3: Summary of ICT artifacts
ICT Artifact Description / Purpose Evaluation and References
OpenData Webservices API RESTful API that allows developer access to 10 years of Agricultural production data and farmgate The effectiveness and robustness of the API
for Agriculture Data price data maintained by the Rural Agricultural Development Agency (RADA). The API was was validated during the Slashroots (./roots)
developed using CakePHP, an open-source, rapid development framework for PHP, that facilitated Developers’ Codesprint competition.
the implementation of the API Webservices in a structured and rapid manner–without loss of Technical specifications are contained in
flexibility. Appendix I and the API is currently published
at the site: http://opendata.org.jm
Microfinance Loan A demonstration prototype application that illustrates how OpenData can improve the efficiency Evaluation of the application and it’s utility
Management Application of value-chain microfinance loan processing that could benefit small farmers. This application will be examined as part of a field
enables a microFinance Institution to evaluate a Farmer's loan application by querying the deployment being planned as part of the
OpenData Web-service with his RegistrationID and retrieving information on his farm property as expanded OpenData project. Application
well as crop production history, which provides quasi-Agricultural collateral. specifications and design details are
described in Appendix II. The live
demonstration application can be viewed at:
http://mfidemo.data.org.jm
userid: demo | pwd: bankdemo
AgroAssistant mobile The AgroAssistant is a companion mobile application developed to extend the capabilities of the Evaluation of the application and it’s utility
application Agriculture OpenData web-service. This application for the Android1 Smartphone provides the in supporting the RADA extension officer’s
RADA field officers with remote decision support and information access to the both aggregate field activities will be examined during the
and individual agriculture data stored within the API. field deployment being planned as part of
the expanded OpenData project.
Functionality includes: Application specifications and design details
On-demand data access to the farm, crop and price information stored in the Agriculture API are described in Appendix II.
Location-based searching: An extension officer is able to look up farmer, price or crop information
within a geographical area or using the Android's built-in GPS device.
Remote data entry: Update farmer records, such as the location of a farmer's property or crop
production information

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3. OpenData Visibility & Events
One of the goals of the Pilot project was to begin the process of building visibility and awareness of the
Opendata concept with various stakeholders and promoting the wider understanding of the potential
benefits of open data. Two significant events provided the main promotional platform that helped to
heighten the awareness of, and interest in the OpenData concept while several other activities utilizing
traditional and new media were employed to disseminate information about the OpenData initiatives.
These activities are summarized in Table 4 below.

Table 4: OpenData Events & Media Activity

Event / Channel Description / Purpose Target audience/Reference
Slashroots Developers’ The primary purpose of the event was to provide visibility for Technical developer community;
Conference & the OpenData initiative by exposing the newly-developed Web
Codesprint, Feb 24th / services API for Agriculture data to the local developer See Appendix III for report on the
25th, 2011 community, and validate the effectiveness and robustness of ./roots conference
the API.
Conference presenters included John Wonderlich, Policy Conference site:
Director, Sunlight Foundation. The highlight event was the http://slashroots.org/content/rootsd
staging of a 24-hr Developer competition, where 13 teams of ev-conference
software developers competed to develop value-added
applications in the Agriculture Domain using the Open Data
API which was released for the 1st time, at the conference.
Slashroots Conference Photo archives:
archived content http://www.flickr.com/photos/varunbaker/sets/72157626035
269339/
Presentation videos: http://vimeo.com/channels/186421
Denbigh Agricultural The OpenData project was showcased at the Denbigh 2011 The Denbigh show provided an
Showcase Show, the 59th edition of the Caribbean’s premier agricultural opportunity to expose the OpenData
exhibition (held at the Denbigh Showground, May Pen initiative and receive feedback from
Clarendon). The theme of the 2011 edition was “Opportunity a wide range of stakeholders
and technology driven, Denbigh 2011”, which resonated with including Farmers, RADA extension
the OpenData exhibit that was titled: ICT INNOVATION IN officers, researchers, teachers, etc.
AGRICULTURE THROUGH OPEN DATA INITIATIVES See Appendix IV for report on the
Denbigh Exhibit
Media article Interesting commentary on Innovation prospects in Agriculture http://jamaica-
and the Slashroots initiative by Don Wehby, CEO of gleaner.com/gleaner/20110421/busi
GraceKennedy Limited ness/business7.html
CVM-TV Technology CVM Television Technology feature Interview on the http://www.youtube.com/user/Mon
Today Interview OpenData initiative aSchoolOfBusiness#p/a/u/0/SB_zcg
MZei0
Slashroots Community Slashroots (./roots) is a newly formed organization of young Website: http://slashroots.org
developers and technology enthusiasts, that were responsible Twitter: /slash_roots
for the planning and organization of the Slashroots Youtube: ./roots/TV
conference, working in partnership with MSB, and have Discussion Forum:
become an active online community and discussion forum for http://groups.google.com/group/slas
various technology and ICT4D issues. hroots
http://data.org.jm The data.org.jm website provides the online platform for the
OpenData initiatives. The site currently hosts the OpenData
web-services API and technical documentation; and a catalog
of demonstration application prototypes that were
conceptualized and developed using the OpenData API

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4. Recommendations for Further Development of OpenData in the
Caribbean
The following proposal seeks to build on the work and outcomes of this feasibility study and provides
the basis for extending the OpenData initiatives in Jamaica and the Caribbean. It contemplates the
establishment of an OpenData " Community of Practice " (Node) that:
a) operates on a Regional basis;
b) continues to develop and offer the technical and institutional expertise and capabilities to build and
utilize OpenData resources; and
c) encourages OpenData approaches to the management and dissemination of valuable Research and
Public Sector data;

Project Title: The OpenData Community of Practice: Creating Possibilities & Opportunities for OpenData
initiatives in Jamaica and the Caribbean through increased Access, Collaboration and Innovation

Executing Agency: Website

Mona School of Business - Centre of Excellence http://uwimona.edu.jm/msb
http://data.org.jm

Person Responsible within the Executing Agency

Last Name First Name Position within the organization
McNaughton Maurice Director, Centre of Excellence
e-mail Telephone Address
maurice.mcnaughton@ 876 977-6035 Mona School of Business
uwimona.edu.jm UWI, Jamaica W.I.

4.1 Background - Challenges and Goals

This project will seek to address several of the challenges that constrain the availability and effective use
of Research and Public Sector data in the Caribbean, as identified during the IDRC-facilitated Workshop,
“Towards a Caribbean Open Institute: Data, Communications and Impact”. These issues include:

Limited access to high quality, locally relevant data that is timely, accurate and available in
structured, machine-readable formats for public consumption
Data produced using public resources is often considered the private property of the organization
which produced it and, therefore, limiting the wide availability or accessibility of quality Caribbean
research data
Capacity-building efforts are required within research groups and local/regional institutions to
effectively use new technologies to communicate research results and recommendations to policy
makers and the public at large.
There may not be sufficient institutional incentives for research institutions to make data available
as well as institutional incentives to communicate research results to policymakers.
Cultural and institutional limitations that hinder the use of data, and other forms of evidence, for
policy making.

8
The Project is expected to advance the progressive development of the Caribbean Knowledge Economy
by contributing to the following vision statements as articulated in the aforementioned workshop:
Caribbean researchers actively collaborating and engaging in dialogue and sharing information; and
policy makers using this evidence-based information for decisions.
Regional Governments embracing Open Data programs as an essential component of their
information dissemination strategies and development goals.
Researchers and users (including project planners, public organizations, NGOs, civil society) taking
advantage of Open Data initiatives to create new services and provide new ways for presenting
valuable information and positively impacting and empowering the constituents they serve.
ICT entrepreneurs actively building creative, content based applications for external and internal
markets.

4.2 Project Components

1. Build institutional capacity to promote, facilitate and provide sustainable support for OpenData
policy, standards and initiatives across the region
This component will involve the establishment of a team of technical resources at the UWI that will
provide resident knowledge and expertise in OpenData technologies, standards and methods. Activities
will include:
a) Technical training and exposure of the Resource team to OpenData technologies, standards and
best practices
b) Identify and establish relationships with regional and international organizations already doing
extensive work with OpenData initiatives to facilitate knowledge transfer and build local capacity
(eg. Sunlight Foundation, World Wide Web Foundation, and Ciudadano Inteligente ).
c) The development and dissemination of tools, documents and electronic resources relating to open
data standards, index of datasets, applications, formats/ ontologies, best practices, sample code,
open source tools, sample implementations, training tools and standards/formats/vocabulary
harmonization.
d) Conduct events and workshops to build awareness and visibility and facilitate Institutional and
community capacity building
e) Identify and work with Target organizations (including Regional Governments , NGOs, academia,
private sector) to embracing Open Data programs as an essential component of their information
dissemination strategies and development goals.

2. Institutionalization and Field deployment of Agriculture Opendata initiatives

The work already completed with RADA and the Ministry of Agriculture , represents an important
demonstration of the feasibility of OpenData approaches in the Agriculture domain in Jamaica and
provides useful leverage as a platform to increase visibility and validate the utility of OpenData
principles . This component will involve:
a) Working with the Ministry of Agriculture to formalize and institute OpenData Policies as an
extension of the current freedom of information policies in place that adhere to “The Access to
Information Act 2002”
b) Field deployment of the mobile and web applications developed as proof-of-concept during the
feasibility study
c) Streamlining of feeder data collection processes for agriculture production & retail pricing data
using mobile devices, to enhance the timeliness, accuracy of the OpenData resources.

9
3. Extend OpenData concept to other information sectors (local & regional)
Identify and extend the OpenData initiatives to at least two additional Information-intensive sectors of
national importance. Candidates include trade related data, tourism information, crime statistics,
transportation data and ICT data. This component will involve:

a) Consultations with various Agencies (NGOs, academia, private sector) to establish relationships and
identify opportunities for Opendata initiatives based on national priorities, information-intensive
sectors, source data availability, etc.
b) Data Analysis, Sourcing and API development
c) Building a catalog of demonstration prototype applications
d) Conduct Awareness, orientation workshops locally and regionally

4. Opendata and ICT4D Research initiatives

Develop an active Research agenda that investigates and informs the use and impact of Opendata on
ICT4D initiatives in Jamaica and the Caribbean. Activities include:

a) Establish research linkages with existing wider research agenda (eg. IDRC’s project with W3C.br and
ECLAC)
b) Encourage and facilitate academic interest in research initiatives based on Opendata sources, use
and impact
c) Generate at least 2 x academic publications on OpenData/ICT4D initiatives in the region

References
Hagel III, J, J. S Brown, and L Davison. 2010. The power of pull: How small moves, smartly made, can set
big things in motion. New York: Basic Books.

Hevner, Alan R., Salvatore T. March, Jinsoo Park, and Sudha Ram. 2004. Design Science in Information
Systems Research. MIS Quarterly 28 (1):31.

10
Appendix I – OpenData API Design Specification
This Appendix describes the technical design considerations, choices and methods that informed the
development of the OpenData Webservices API and includes the database and programming
specification .

SOAP vs ReST
An Application Program/Programming Interface (API) provides software developers and users with a set
of routines, protocols and tools for building software applications. Web APIs or Web Services provide an
online service that accepts a defined set of HTTP requests message over the Web and returns a response
that includes a definition of the data structure of the response and have become a key point of
integration for different applications belonging to different platforms, languages and systems. The
design of the Agriculture OpenData API contemplated two of the more prevalent architectural
approaches to Web Services implementation.

SOAP, Simple Object Access Protocol, provides a simple and lightweight mechanism for exchanging
structured and typed information between peers in a decentralized, distributed environment. It uses
XML to define a messaging framework providing a message construct that can be transferred over a
variety of underlying protocols, and it is independent of any particular programming model or any other
implementation specific semantics. SOAP is considered the grandfather of web services is highly
regarded due to its structure and extensibility. SOAP is commonly used for Enterprise applications to
integrate wide types and number of applications as well as to integrate with legacy systems. This
extensibility of SOAP however is one of the major factors that adds to its perceived complexity.

ReST, Representational State Transfer, developed by Dr. Roy Fielding as an architectural style for
distributed hypermedia and large-scale networked software, takes advantage of the technologies and
protocols of the World Wide Web using HTTP GET, POST, PUT, DELETE to perform create, read, update
and delete (CRUD) operations. Web Designs adhering to ReSTFUL principles for defining and addressing
distributed data objects, or resources are considered to be a cost-effective means for the easy exchange
of information and providing for scalability.

Advantages
SOAP REST
Language, Platform and transport agnostic Language and platform agnostic
Designed for distributed computing environments Much simpler to develop than SOAP
Provides good support for and has good support from Small learning curve, less reliance on tools
other web Standards
Built in error handling (faults) Concise, no need for additional messaging layer
Extensibility Very close in design and philosophy to HTTP and the web
Requires less server side processing Requires less client side processing
Provides stronger typing Human readable Results
Can provides atomic ACID transactions over a service Simple Extensible and Flexible
Supports Web-Services Security Utilises less network resources
Easier to test and troubleshoot
Easier to implement caching

Appendix I - 1
Disadvantages
SOAP REST
More Difficult to implement, more complicated that REST Assumes point to point communication model. Requires
abstraction when implemented in distributed computing
environments
More Verbose Lack of standards for security, policy and reliable messaging
Harder to develop, require tools and specific knowledge of Tied to HTTP transport protocol
the XML specification
Utilizes more bandwidth

SOAP has been in existence before REST and was the technology of choice for powerful web services.
However, most web services do not require the level of reliability and security that SOAP provides.
ReSTFUL web services have been increasing in popularity in recent years because the ReST paradigm
allows for ease of implementation, ease of access, ease of consumption and ease of understanding. This
has been in part due to the intimate relationship that the REST paradigm has with the web as it is
developed on the HTTP protocol.

For building the OpenData API that has its primary emphasis on enabling easy access to data, a
RESTful API implementation that employs URIs to employs data requests that return structured XML,
CSV or JSON responses is an excellent fit. A SOAP implementation for this type of system would be
adding unnecessary complexity and may detract from the ease of access and limit the class of potential
users of the API. One of the more prominent examples of a RESTful API

Development Framework
Several PHP frameworks were evaluated as potential platforms for the API development, including
CakePHP, Agavi and Recess. CakePHP an open-source, rapid development framework for PHP, was
selected based on it’s functionality that facilitated the implementation of the API Webservices in a
structured and rapid manner–including built-in functionality for exposing API data via REST. More
importantly, CakePHP appeared to have the maturity and an active developer team and community, to
provide the requisite ongoing support.

Programming Interface – Data, URI Schema and UseCases

Data Tables: farms, crops, prices
Query Format: http://data/org.jm/api/[table_ident]/?([col_ident] [delim] [$var])

Table Column
Crops FarmerId
PropertyId
Parish
Extension
District
Farm (?)
FarmSize* (micro, small, medium, medium-large, “ “)
FarmerAge
Group
Crop group

Appendix I - 2
 Table Column
Group type
CropArea
CropCount
CropDate
PropertySize
xCoord
yCoord
Farms FarmerSize*
FarmerAge
Firstname
Lastname
FarmerId
PropertyId
Parish
Extension
district
Farm (?)
PropertySize
xCoord
yCoord
Prices Parish
cropType
price
priceMonth

URI Root: http://data/org.jm/api/...

URI Description Example
This Documentation: http://data.org.jm/documentation.html
Queries
/crops Returns the hierarchy of values for CropGroups /
CropTypes and production summary
/crops/parishes Returns the hierarchy of values for Parishes / CropTypes
(i.e. available croptype data by Parish)
/farms Returns a tabular (xml) summary of Farms in the
OR database by Parish; includes counts and total
/farms/parishes PropertySize
/farms/parishes/extensions Returns a tabular (xml) summary of Farms in the
/farms/parishes/extensions/distri database by Parish/Extension/District; includes counts
cts and total PropertySize
/prices Returns the average values of Prices for Parish /
OR CropTypes (i.e. croptypes for which there is pricing
/prices/parishes information per Parish)
Parameters/Arguments

Appendix I - 3
 URI Description Example
In addition to the basic URI schema above, data can be selected using Argument based Queries
/?([col_ident] [delim] [$var]
In cases where Arguments are presented with the URL, all data column values are returned for rows satisfying the
specified Queries
Date Parameters Date arguments are specified by indicating startdate and/or enddate parameters. A range
is indicated using both parameters
eg. 2009 is &startdate=2009-01-01&enddate=2009-12-31
eg. After Aug2009 is &startdate=2009-08-01
eg. Jan09 – Aug10 is &startdate=2009-01-01&enddate=2010-08-30

Paging Queries are limited to returning a maximum of 1,000 records at a time. In order to
manipulate a large result-set, developers can use the following Paging parameters:
per_page – number of results per page, for pagination of the result-set. Default setting is
50
page – utility parameter for paging through a large result-set. Indicates the page number
requested from the recordset.
eg. /farms/?parish=stcatherine&per_page=100&page=2

Aggregates
In cases where developers need to aggregate data across large (or the entire) data-set, Aggregate parameters may be used.
Eg. To find the largest tomato farmer in St. Catherine. The following Aggregate parameters will be Available: Count, Sum,
Max, Top
Count eg. # of Farms in St. Catherine:
/farms/?parish=stcatherine&count
Sum=[col_ident] Eg. Total Acreage of Banana production in Portland last year:
/crops/?parish=portland&cropdate=2009&Sum=CropArea
Max=[col_ident] Eg. Largest yam production Farm in Trelawny:
/crops/?parish=trelawny&Max=CropArea
Top=[col_ident] There are cases where it is more useful to find the Top 20%, rather than a single
i.e. Top20% Maximum..
Eg. Largest Cassava producers islandwide, last year
/crops/? &Top=CropArea&cropdate=2009
NB> Developers could accomplish these results using standard queries, paging parameters and local processing, however
this will be more efficient

Use Case Scenarios

Use Case Query
Crops planted in St Elizabeth /crops/?parish=st.elizabeth
Carrots planted across the island /crops/?croptype=carrot
Carrots planted over time period – Jan09 – Aug10 /crops/?croptype=carrot&startdate=2009-01-01&enddate= 2010-
08-30
Credit proxy by microfinance institution
Farmer products over last year /crops/?FarmerID=90410367&startdate=2009-01-
01&enddate=2009-12-31
Number and size of properties farms/?FarmerID=90410367&count &Sum=PropertySize

Appendix I - 4
 Use Case Scenarios
Use Case Query
Price of crops planted /crops/?FarmerID=90410367&startdate=2009-01-01
/prices/?croptype=Pumpkin
Number / Area of other farms planting same crops /crops/?croptype=xxxxxxx&count&Sum=CropArea
Farmers
Crops of other farms growing in an area /crops/?parish=st.elizabeth&district=junction
Highest producing crop last year /crops&startdate=2009-01-01&enddate=2009-12-
31&Max=CropArea
Price of a particular crop /prices/?croptype=Green Banana
Best place to sell a crop /prices/?croptype=cassava&Top=PriceAvg
Supermarket/Retailers/Agro-producers
Largest producers of a crop
Best places to buy a crop
Properties near a particular plant
RADA / Government Agency / Min Of Agriculture
Most efficient farmer
Highest growing extension, district, parish
Which farmer sizes are most efficient
Farmer sizes or properties that are under performing

Appendix I - 5
Appendix II - Demonstration Prototypes: MFI Loan Prototype / Android
Mobile App

This Appendix describes a prototype application that was developed to demonstrate how the
Agriculture open data resource can be used to improve directly and indirectly the efficiency of value
chain finance in Agriculture in Jamaica, with emphasis on small farmers. The specific application context
is a Microfinance Institution that operates in the Parish of St Thomas (Eastern end of the Island), where
Agriculture is the dominant activity (i.e. both primary production and Agro-processing). They operate a
Microfinance portfolio and are developing a program based on a “value chain lending model (VCLM)”
that was conceptualized to provide more organized economic opportunities for the MSME sector in the
parish. The prototype application was developed to enable this VCLM's knowledge-based decision-
support process using the OpenData API to provide access to Farmer and Production information, as
well as utilize a mobile-enabled data capture/delivery system to better facilitate more efficient data
collection, queries and information access in the field.

The Appendix is structured as follows: The Requirements Overview describes the context within which
the Open data approach is being applied as a value-added solution and provides a high-level
specification of the application that was developed. The Application Features section discusses some of
the main features, considerations and components that were employed in developing the application.
Evolutionary Considerations outlines plans for the field deployment and possible further enhancements
to the application.

Appendix II - 1
Requirements Overview
Access to information and access to finance are two of the most powerful drivers of rural development.
Accurate, timely and inexpensive information is an increasingly necessary requirement for efficient
market operation and sustained economic growth. Likewise, access to adequate and timely financing is a
necessary component of sustainable production. Rural Agriculture in Jamaica is particularly vulnerable
to the lack of both financial and information resources resulting in market pricing anomalies, high cost of
finance, and poor agricultural practices.

Value-chain finance (VCF) activities that focus on linking financial institutions to the Agro value chain by
building relationships and offering services to support the product flow between primary producers (i.e.
Farmers), Agro-Processors and Markets. VCF spreads the risk-usually associated with micro and small
enterprises and rural farmers across multiple value-chain actors, and provides alternatives to traditional
collateral requirements. However, value-chain lending has been traditionally constrained by limited
access to information about those financially excluded actors it was designed to benefit.

Microfinance Loan Process

The solution therefore, is predicated on enabling and facilitating the increased access to horizontal
information across the value-chain for all actors. The focal Actor In this case is the financial institution
and its decision-makers involved in the process of making financial resources available and accessible to
small farmers in an efficient and risk-controlled manner. The application enhances the microfinance
Loan application process by providing access to information on the Farmer applicant (i.e. property /
crops planted / current market prices), retrieved from the OpenData API (See fig 1).

Figure 1: OpenData Support for Microfinance Loan Process

dfd Business Process Flow - Farmer Assist

RADA Agriculture
OpenData API

Loan
Loan Retrieve Loan Administration
Application External Data Application / Farmer
Processing Support
Services

Farm Property Crops Planted Crops & Pricing Loan Performance Value-Chain
Loan Application Partners
Information Information Information History

Appendix II - 2
In addition to decision support on the Loan Application Processing stage, the application was designed
to provide information support for the end-to-end microfinance lifecycle through the following
additional features
Farmer Information Management, segmented into the following main segments.
o Basic contact information (Name, Address, Age, etc.)
o Farm Property Information: (Farm location, size)
o Crop Production Information (Date planted, CropType, CropArea)
Manage each approved Loan as a Project with milestones and tasks relating to the Loan
repayment schedule and a predefined set of Loan-Processing or other Support activities
Provide standard Customer Relationship Management (CRM) functionality to continue to
manage the Farmer as a client, including keeping track of calls, interactions and other support
services
Provide information on potential downstream value-chain partners that can become associated
with and ultimately participate in individual loan applications.
Develop and maintain a KnowledgeBase for common Farmer/Crop Queries

Primary UseCases
The primary user role in this application will be loan decision-makers within the financial institution i.e.
loan officers. This role also incorporates client (farmer) management functionality as well as tracking the
performance of individual loans over it’s life-cycle. We also contemplate functionality that would enable
a farmer to submit a loan application via email or web, and to get notifications (via email/sms) of
scheduled loan events such as disbursements, repayments, visits, etc. These use-cases are represented

Figure 2: Primary Use-Cases

uc Use Case Model

Manage Farmer
Account Information
View Crop
Information

Retriev e Search
Farm/Crop/Price Know ledgeBase
Information (API)

Setup Loan
Disbursement &
Loan Officer Manage Loan Repayment schedule Apply for a Loan
Application «extend»
Farmer
Processing

Status Notifications of
Loan Account
Track Loan
Performance

Appendix II - 3
Information domain
The prototype application is primarily about access to, and the effective management of information for
purposes of decision-support to the microfinance process. Table 1 summarizes the key information
objects to be managed in this domain. The Open data API contributes increased access and transparency
for three of the five information constructs (i.e. Property, Crop Production, Crop Pricing). As each
participating entity (microfinance institution) develops their own local information content relating to
loan applicants, loan performance and value-chain participants, these information resources take
increased precedence as the decision support basis. Over time, increased opportunities will emerge to
collaborate and share those information resources on a peer-to-peer basis with other institutions to
provide shared financial collateral and credit information.

Table 5: Domain Information Entities

Entity Description

Farmer Account Represents the Account for a Farmer that has applied for, or has been processed for
a Loan.

Farmer Contacts One or more persons associated with a Farmer Account.

Property (Farms) Represents a Property - Identified by PropertyID

(populated from API)

Crops/Pricing Information on the various Crops grown in different geographical regions from the
RADA database. Also includes retail pricing associated with Crops-Regions.
(populated from API)

Crop Production Information about actual instance of Crop Production by a specific Farmer
(populated from API)

Loan Contract Record of all approved Loan contracts with a Farmer. Each Loan will be managed
using a Project metaphor. Project Milestones and tasks will be used to represent the
Loan disbursement repayment schedule and a predefined set of Loan-Processing or
other Support activities that can be scheduled to be performed on behalf of the
Farmer, in administering the Loan.

Support Service This describes any general interaction to manage the Farmer as a client, including
keeping track of calls, interactions and other support services

Value-Chain Partners Various downstream partners that provide outlets for Crop production and could
become associated with a particular Loan account as a Value-chain partner

Appendix II - 4
Application Features

Accessing the Application

The application was developed as a web-based application for flexibility and ease of access and
deployment. The vTiger OpenSource CRM was used as the base platform from which to build the
prototype as it already provides many of the core components required to represent the information
entities outlined in Table 1.

The main login screen is shown in fig 3, and provides for different user roles, as well as a choice of
theme preferences. The demonstration prototype is currently staged in the application showcase of the
OpenData project website (http://data.org.jm), and can also be reached directly at
http://mfidemo.data.org.jm

Figure 3: Main Login screen

Consistent with the theme of Information management and decision support the main homepage of the
application presented at login, presents the user with a dashboard of status and key metrics relating to
current loans in process and upcoming targets/milestones as well as overdue repayments. It also
provides information on pending loan applications in the pipeline and other service requests.

Appendix II - 5
 Figure 4: Application Homepage

Client (Farmer) Information Management

The main client account screen, shown in fig 5, provides the basic identification, contact and address
information for each client. The most significant feature is the "Retrieve Farmer Information" which
uses the Registration ID, provided by the farmer to query the Opendata API and retrieve on-demand,

Figure 5: Farmer Information management screen

Appendix II - 6
property and crop production information relating to this Farmer. The information is stored and
represented as shown in fig 6. This screen also displays all other activity information relating to this
Figure 6: Farmer Information Details

farmer such as current or prior Loan information, documents, queries, etc.

Crop Pricing Information

Crop information is provided for reference purposes and displays the Crops planted in each geographic
locale (based on data contained in the RADA database. The "Retrieve Price Information" feature allows
the most recent available retail pricing information to be retrieved from the API, for the specific parish
location. This can be updated on-demand.

Appendix II - 7
Loan Administration
Once a Loan contract has been approved, the application provides features that enable the Loan
contract to be managed and administered as a project with targets, milestones and tasks that maintain
visibility of all activities relating to the loan. This loan information is represented in tabular and graphical
formats as shown in fig 7 and 8, and summarized in the status dashboard on the homepage.

Figure 7: Loan Contract Administration

Figure 8: Loan Administration - Gantt Chart

Appendix II - 8
Value Chain Partners
Potential Value chain partners include various downstream organizations such as Exporters, Agro-
processors and Retailers. The application provides a database of existing organizations that could
participate in any of these roles. Any individual value-chain organization can be linked to a specific Loan
arrangement to represent either a formal or informal association with that loan arrangement.

Figure 9: Value-chain partner information

Mobile Extensions
Together with the Internet and the World-Wide-Web, the mobile phone, which is rapidly becoming the
platform of choice for access to and dissemination of Digital content, present significant opportunities
for extending the potential reach and impact of Open Data.

As part of the demonstration prototype for this pilot project, a companion mobile application was
developed to extend the capabilities of the Agriculture Open Data API. The “AgroAssistant” mobile
application will provide the RADA field officers with remote decision support and information access to
the both aggregate and individual agriculture data stored within the API.

The major application functions are:

On-demand data access: The application provides the field officer with full access to the farm, crop and
price information stored in the API. The extension officer can also perform specific search requests
based on any of the fields stored in the API

Location-based searching: An extension officer is able to look up farmer, price or crop information
within a geographical area or using the Android's built-in GPS device. The farmer can use integrated
mapping visualizations to search farms within a chosen area.

Appendix II - 9
 Crop Support: The application facilitates searching various crop related information and aggregates,
such as top farmers for a particular crop, top parishes for a crop, expected or past crop production.

Remote data entry: Using the phone’s mobile data connection, the extension officer is able to update
farmer records, such as the location of a farmer's property or submitted crop information.

The application was developed on the Android platform and the main screen-shots are shown in fig. 10

Figure 10a: Main menu - Android Figure 10b: Farmer Search Menu

Figure 10c: farmer Search by name Figure 10d: Display Farmer Information

Appendix II - 10
Evolutionary Considerations
It is worth noting, that the Ministry of Agriculture already has a policy of providing public access to the
information contained in the Agriculture production databases maintained by RADA, consistent with
“The Access to Information Act 2002” legislation enacted by the government of Jamaica to grant the
right of access to records in the custody of Government Ministries, Agencies, Departments and Public
bodies, to groups, organizations and the ordinary Jamaican citizens.

Hence, there is already considerable progress in the Government’s intent to promote transparency and
government accountability through this Act. However access to this information would traditionally be
effected through existing publications, the Ministry’s website or obtained on request from the Data
Bank Division of the Ministry, which provides the public with access to all aspects of statistical data on
the Jamaican agriculture sector.

The prototypes developed help to demonstrate one of the important principles and benefits of Open
Data, that of creating opportunities for independent developers and innovators to take this publicly
accessible data and build quite powerful applications for consumers and businesses to:
- Access, consume and reuse those data;
- Deliver new and valuable services to citizens;
In this instance, the applications have the potential for delivering considerable utility to microfinance
institutions operating in the Agriculture domain and the clients they serve, in particular small farmers,
by making information that may have been previously accessible by other means, available online, and
on-demand in an open format.

The benefits of this specific innovation example, derive from exploiting the combination of OpenData
and Open Source software, two of the more prominent manifestations of the “Openness” philosophy.
Because Opendata facilitates more horizontal and distributed information flows and stakeholder
relationships, it also presents new opportunities for peer-to-peer collaboration and value creation. An
example of this evolutionary progression would be the scenario where each participating entity
(microfinance institution) develops their own local information content relating to loan applicants, loan
performance and value-chain participation. Over time, increased opportunities will emerge to
collaborate and share those information resources on a peer-to-peer basis with other institutions to
generate shared financial collateral and credit information.

Appendix II - 11
Appendix III - Slashroots Developers’ Conference and Codesprint

The Slashroots (./roots) Developers’ Conference and Codesprint was hosted by the Centre of Excellence,
Mona School of Business, UWI, on Feb 24th / 25th, 2011. The primary purpose of the event was to
provide visibility for the OpenData initiative by exposing the newly-developed Web services API for
Agriculture data to the local developer community, and validate the effectiveness and robustness of the
API. The ./roots event also provided an opportunity to explore the premise that OpenData can lead to
increased innovation. The Conference was organized and executed by the ./roots community, a newly
formed organization of young developers and technology enthusiasts, working in partnership with MSB.

The Conference featured a wide range of presentations from a panel of local and international speakers,
all broadly under the theme of Open Innovation – create.share.apply. Notable speakers included:

 Skye Bender-deMoll, Data Visualization Expert

- Keynote: Getting from "Public" to "Open" Data: lessons learned scraping and structuring corporate
subsidiary data for api.corpwatch.org
 John Wonderlich, Policy Director, Sunlight Foundation - a non-profit, organization that uses the
power of the Internet to catalyze greater government openness and transparency
- Keynote: Open Data Initiatives, Aspirations and Limitations.
 Felipe Otamendi – Principal Game developer for Trojan Chicken Game Studio, Uruguay
- Python gaming software design/development Workshop for OLPC
 Angel Goñi Oramas, Founder and former leader of Nova Cuban GNU/Linux Distribution.
 Allan Pierra Fuentes, Head of the Operating System and Open Source Technologies Department and
Cuban Government's Assessor in Free and Open Source Software migration
- Cuban Experiences in Open Source Adoption
 Professor Haniph Latchman, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, at the University of
Florida, Gainesville
- Innovation Case Study: Building security-hardened, lightweight but scalable and highly available
communications appliances with Asterisk, FreeSwitch and Kamailio using the Alpine Linux platform
 Ross Sheil, Jamaica Observer
- Transforming Business Process through Technology: The Observer and Social Media
 Dr. Maurice McNaughton, Director Of Center Of Excellence, Mona School of Business, UWI Mona
- From Users to Creators--Institutional Approaches to Technology Adoption
 David Bain, Open Source Enthusiast / UWI Lecturer / CEO Alteroo
- How to contribute to open source: from download to contribution
 Panel Discussion on Building Innovative Capacity
* Kenrie Hylton, Director at NCU
* Dr Arnett Campbell, Director At Utech
* Dr Daniel Coore, Department of Computing UWI
* Dr. Sameer Verma, San Francisco State Univ
* Marc Gayle, Technology Entrepreneur/Founder of Compversions

Appendix III - 1
However the highlight of the conference was undoubtedly the staging of a 24-hr Developer competition,
where 13 teams of software developers competed to determine which could develop the most
innovative value-added application in the Agriculture Domain. The teams were required to develop
their applications using an Open Data API (Application Programming Interface) which was released for
the 1st time, at the conference and provided access to Agricultural Production & Pricing Data provided
through RADA and the Ministry of Agriculture. The Agriculture API was the result of an ongoing
Research project being conducted by the MSB Centre of Excellence in collaboration with the Ministry of
Agriculture and funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

A panel of judges used the following criteria to

evaluate the applications built by the teams:

Usefulness (Who will use application?

Potential Impact)
Usability (User Interface, Responsiveness, Look
& Feel)
Technical Considerations (Degree of use of the
API, Data Visualization, Extensibility of Code)
Coolness factor (Multiple API usage,
Technologies)

There were impressive efforts by several teams over the course of the 24-hr competition period. Some
of the highlights included:
Team / Institution Developers Description of the Application Target Users
YamZilla / Private Paul Allen and The application's goal is to connect markets with supermarkets or
Jermaine Byfield farmers. It is mainly geared at supermarkets or mass market
mass market customers who are looking for customers who are
providers. They would visit the website and search looking for
for ""Carrots"" and the application would attempt providers.
to find, rank and display the best farmers to provide
carrots. The ranking metrics are based on location,
price and supply status for products in the farmer's
region.
The A-TEAM / Trinidad Yudhistre Jonas, Craig The application was designed as a complete Farmers and
(UWI) Ramlal, Gyasi platform that incorporates both web and mobile Financial
Ambrose technologies. This was done to maximize the reach Institutions
of the data and also to increase data usability.

The WEB module of the application consists of a

webpage frontend where we have developed a
FLASH based application that assists with
aggregation and visualization of the data provided
by the API. The main feature of this module is to
assist farmers seeking financial assistance such as
micro-finance loans. The application can also be
used by the very same financial institutions to
better assess the suitability of the applicant’s claim.

The MOBILE module (Android and basic Blackberry

JAVA ) of the application consists of mobile
applications and mobile web technologies to deliver
data accessed from the API. This module was

Appendix III - 2
 designed to enable access to specific data that
would be most useful to mobile users. This data
includes geographic location of crops, farmers, and
prices. The mobile module therefore leverages
portability with data accessibility.
Sapna / UTECH Tennison Dougherty, The application is a Decision Support System that The application is
Dean Jones, facilitates loan providers in making decisions on the targeted at banks
Julian Jarrett loan amount that a farmer qualifies for based on: and other loan
(1) the crops that he intends to plant, (2) the agencies as well as
location and size of his farm, (3) the term over farmers who need
which he will plant them, (4) and the historical guidance.
performance of such crops in similar locations over
a similar periods.

UWI team Aston Hamilton, A game that provides a fun and exciting Primary School
Jonathon Smith, Stuart environment for teaching young students about Children aged 7-12
South Agriculture in Jamaica.
NCU1 / NCU Shawn, Derron, It’s a 2 part application. One is a mobile phone for Farmers
Nicolas which farmers can use to see the trends of crops.
The trend utilizes past data of quantity, prices and
location to give a predicted outcome.

Farmers can also select a specific crop to view the

feasibility of planting it.

Part 2 is data visualization for the Agriculture data.

The judges were particularly impressed with the technical

scope and completeness of the application built by the A-
team from Trinidad, UWI. However in the final analysis, the
Yamzilla team was given the edge, due to the usefulness,
usability and immediate applicability of their solution. The
winning team was awarded Android phones courtesy of LIME
and became the 1st holders of the ./roots Developers trophy
awarded by Grace-Kennedy.

The ./roots Competition demonstrated an important principle of the

OpenData philosophy, that data becomes far more valuable with use. It
also demonstrated the potential to stimulate the local software developer
community to contemplate innovations in agriculture, thereby engaging a
wider constituency of interests in agriculture that can accelerate the rate of
ICT innovation in the sector.

The following links contain photo images and video archives from the
./roots Conference as well as articles and features in the local and regional
media that reflect the considerable visibility generated by this event, which
has helped to heighten the awareness and interest in the OpenData
philosophy.

Photo archives: http://www.flickr.com/photos/varunbaker/sets/72157626035269339

Presentation videos: http://vimeo.com/channels/186421
Media article: http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20110421/business/business7.html
Media Interview: http://www.youtube.com/user/MonaSchoolOfBusiness#p/a/u/0/SB_zcgMZei0

Appendix III - 3
Appendix IV - Denbigh Agricultural Showcase Report
The work of the Mona School of Business’ OpenData project was showcased at the Denbigh 2011 Show,
the 59th edition of the Caribbean’s premier agricultural exhibition (held at the Denbigh Showground in
Clarendon, July 30-August 1, 2011). The theme of the 2011 edition was “Opportunity and technology
driven, Denbigh 2011”, which resonated with the MSB exhibit that was titled: ICT INNOVATION IN
AGRICULTURE THROUGH OPEN DATA INITIATIVES

Against a background where rural agriculture in Jamaica is particularly vulnerable to the lack of both
financial and information resources, the exhibit featured the products of MSB's collaboration with the
Rural Agricultural Development Agency (RADA), demonstrating the use of OpenData resources together
with Web and Mobile technology and applications to illustrate how these approaches can enhance
directly and indirectly the efficiency of value-chain microfinance loan processing in Jamaica to benefit
small farmers.

The following 3 technology components were featured in the exhibit:

Web-based application showing how Agriculture data is enhanced using geospatial visualization
Business application that enables a microFinance Institution to evaluate a Farmer's loan application
by reaching into the ABIS Dataset with his RegistrationID and retrieving information on his farm
property as well as production history, to provide a quasi-Agricultural collateral.
Mobile application that enables a RADA field officer to provide more effective extension support
services including data collection and providing remote access to geographically contextual
property, production and market pricing information

Positive responses to the initiative were received from members of the public as well as from various
interests in the Agriculture fraternity. A number of ideas for further development and collaboration
were generated from the active discussions with various persons that visited the MSB booth. A selection
of these ideas, interests and comments include:
using the mobile application not only for RADA extension officers but also for the general public so
they can find farmer crops and prices info whether for purchase, research, collaboration, or just for
general access to the information.
utilizing the Visualization application for general purposes such as in the classroom for teaching
social studies or other subjects as applicable, use of the interactive charts for download and use in
school projects, or just used to locate farmers, crops and compare prices, etc.
some farmers wanted to know if they would be able to update their own farm and crops info so to
allow the data to be more current.
Greater integration of functionality with the Ministry's ABIS and JAMIS applications and use of the
mobile application in their current ongoing collection of data.

The following pages show samples of the brochure and posters prepared for the Denbigh exhibit, as well
as some images from the event.

Appendix IV - 1
Appendix IV - 2
Appendix IV - 3
Appendix IV - 4
Appendix IV - 5