Dear Bitange,
It was really good to meet you at the Linked Open Data workshop organized by REEEP in Abu Dhabi.
I wanted to follow up with you in relation to the conversation we had regarding supporting better links between research and policy. At the Institute of Development Studies (UK) we have been involved in the provision of services, such as www.eldis.org and www.bridge.ids.ac.uk, to support evidence based decision-making through making the findings of research more accessible to policymakers and practitioners. As I explained when we met in Abu Dhabi, we have developed an Open API to allow other organizations make use of the datasets of development research we host.
We are running a call for proposals for the development of applications to make use of this content (see below), and I wondered whether you might be able to forward this to any contacts of yours who you might feel would be interested in the call? The deadline for this call for proposals is quite tight but we will be running more of these later in the year.
In addition to this I wonder whether there might be other ways in which IDS Knowledge Services might be able to support your work in strengthening the links between research and policymaking? Would it be worth having a follow up phone call to discuss further?
Best wishes,
Duncan
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Duncan Edwards
Information Systems Innovation Manager
Institute of Development Studies, Brighton BN1 9RE, UK
Charitable Company No. 877338
email: d.edwards@ids.ac.uk tel: +44 (0)1273 915797
fax: +44 (0)1273 621202
Skype: duncan_ed1
Twitter: duncan_ids
Eldis Community: http://community.eldis.org/duncan
Knowledge Services at IDS:http://www.ids.ac.uk/go/knowledge-services
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IDS Knowledge Services have some technical grants available to create applications that make use of their datasets on academic research on development issues. These grants are available to application developers in developing countries wishing to use information and communication technologies to repurpose, and contextualise research on development issues and so inform evidence based policy making.
Please see the call for proposals below and documents attached and contact api@ids.ac.uk if you are interested. And please do forward to technical staff within your organisations if relevant.
Call for Proposals
The IDS Knowledge Services Open Application Programming Interface (API) provides easy programmatic access to tens of thousands of thematically organised resources, primarily academic research, on development issues that are freely available online.
IDS Knowledge Services invites your organisation to apply for a small technical grant. These grants are available to application developers in developing countries wishing to use information and communication technologies to repurpose, and contextualise research on development issues and so inform evidence based policy making.
Individual grant maximum: GBP £3000
Implementation period: 5 weeks
Application deadline: 13 February 2012
We are currently offering two types of grant:
1) Plug in grants
These grants are allocated to design and build plug-ins/modules/add ons to existing content management systems and web platforms. The plug-ins will import or display a user defined selection of data from the KS data sets. There are two grants currently available, for developing a Wordpress plug-in and an HTML embeddable "widget".
2) Innovation grants
These grants are allocated to design and build applications or services that use innovative ways of combining data and information from different sources, to create new tools, applications and systems which are useful, meaningful and relevant for informing development policy and practice.
Preference will be given to proposals that focus on the programme’s key thematic or technological areas, as follows:
THEMES
• Climate Change
• Food and Agriculture
• Health
• Governance
• Gender
TECHNOLOGY
• Mobile
• Mapping
• Applications supporting people in areas of limited connectivity
Full details can be found in the attached documents, or online http://api.ids.ac.uk/about/grants.shtml
Simon Colmer
Information Projects Officer
Knowledge Service Department
Institute of Development Studies
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9RE, UK
+44 (0) 1273 915771
http://api.ids.ac.uk
api@ids.ac.uk | Twitter: ids_api