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CANRI Projects 2001-2002
The planning and selection of projects for CANRI funding will take place in two stages: Key 2001 planning dates
Any organisation can submit an Expression of Interest. The CANRI Board will favour proposals which have the support of CANRI participating agencies and/or peak NSW natural resource management stakeholder organisations, but this support could also be gained at the project planning phase, once a proposal has received initial support from the Board. The CANRI program has received nearly $4 million in capital funding from NSW Treasury over four years from July 2000. The CANRI coordination are funded from this budget, leaving a total of $800,000 to $850,000 for projects across all agencies and other organisations in each financial year. Projects of varying sizes will be considered. Wherever possible, CANRI funding should be supplemented by funding from other sources or in-kind resources from the organisation carrying out the project. CANRI funding should not be used as a replacement for normal recurrent funding of a government agency’s core business activities. Expressions of Interest should build on the existing CANRI framework and improve community access to natural resources and environmental information, so as to support better decisions and environmental outcomes for NSW. You should be familiar with the existing CANRI website at http://www.canri.nsw.gov.au . Please read these guidelines carefully, responding to all relevant issues and questions raised. Your EoI should also be aligned to the CANRI Collaboration Principles.The Board will favour proposals which have wide-ranging benefits across New South Wales and across the natural resources management sector. Local or regional pilot projects may be supported if there is a commitment within the project to facilitate their wider adoption across the State. Proposed projects must be completed and deliver clear benefits within the 2001-2002 financial year: funding cannot be carried over beyond June 2002. While you are encouraged to plan ahead, there is no guarantee that projects funded for the coming financial year will receive any further funding thereafter. CANRI participating agencies are specifically requested to submit Expressions of Interest to provide access to datasets in the CANRI Data Priorities via the CANRI framework. See also the sections below for specific instructions on completing each part of the Expression of Interest form. Evaluation criteria based on the information here are being prepared for use by the Board in selecting projects. These evaluation criteria will be published to the CANRI website shortly and their publication will be announced via CANRI-News. Proponents are strongly encouraged to subscribe to the CANRI-Talk email list to discuss their Expression of Interest with others. When you have completed your EoI as described below, save it as a Word document using the short name or acronym as the filename (substituting underscore characters for spaces), and email it to canri@canri.nsw.gov.au. The deadline for submissions is Friday 1 June 2001. You should send your EoI as soon as it is complete, as this will give the Board and others a better chance to read it and understand it. You are welcome to submit a draft EoI early, to seek comment from others and update your submission before the deadline. You will receive acknowledgment of receipt and your EoI will be published on the CANRI website at www.canri.nsw.gov.au/activities/projects/2001/eoi. You may also be contacted with specific questions on your EoI. The CANRI Board will consider all Expressions of Interest at its meeting on June 8th and you will be informed of the results of this meeting shortly afterwards. You would be well-advised to contact at least one of the Board members before this meeting to ensure they understand your submission. The Expression of Interest form should be completed according to the instructions below. Parts of the form, such as the headings, are "protected" so that you cannot change them. Use the check boxes and drop-down lists, and type longer answers into each of the areas provided, which are marked with white backgrounds. Use the mouse to move around the document. When entering lengthy text, you will find that the "Enter" key does not start a new paragraph as you would expect. However, as soon as you type text after pressing the "Enter" key, this will appear on a new line as expected. To ensure the Board has time to read and compare all Expressions of Interest, please keep within a maximum of 2000 words (as measured by Word’s "File > Properties > Statistics" function)–about four A4 pages. Submissions longer than this will be truncated. Further information can be provided as a separate backgrounder document if you wish, but this may not be read by the Board, and in general these further details will be needed only as part of the second phase of project selection. When you have completed your Expression of Interest, save it as a Word document using the short name or acronym as the filename, and email it to the CANRI coordination team (canri@canri.nsw.gov.au) by Friday 1 June. A short, easy-to-remember word or phrase to refer to the project. Please use this name as the filename for your Expression of Interest, substituting underscores for spaces. For example, if your project is called "Feral Sightings", save your Expression of Interest document as "Feral_Sightings.doc". Briefly describe the proposed project. What needs does it respond to? Why is it a priority? How does it align with the CANRI Collaboration Principles, and other key NSW Government and Commonwealth programs? Note that the first 50 words of your overview will be presented on the CANRI website index of Expressions of Interest, so try to ensure these give a good feel for the project, eg:
What, specifically, will the project deliver (ie what are its outputs)? Identify which "environmental theme" your deliverables fall into, from the categories provided. Tick one or more. This will be used to gain a picture of the overall balance of CANRI proposals across different the range of priority issues. Thinking about project deliverables in terms of an overall system architecture will help us build an integrated CANRI framework rather than a series of "stovepipe" projects. This will help us minimise duplication, identify and reuse generic components and hence maximise community benefit from limited resources. Identify which of the following categories, detailed below, your project’s deliverables fall into. The categories are based on the "ACORN" model from the OpenGIS Consortium.
Read the following sections carefully and address the questions or issues raised when you describe the deliverables from your proposal. The Macquarie Dictionary defines a portal as "a door, gate, or entrance, especially one of imposing appearance…". Web resources available in CANRI should be organised into a handful of "portals", or web pages which bring together and provide direct access to a range of sites or information resources for a specific audience group. These audience groups, or "communities of interest", might be formed along various lines: By sector By location A location-based "portal" could conceivably be automatically generated in response to any given location or set of map coordinates. By environmental medium State government agencies, and within them, groups of scientific, policy and operational staff are often organised this way. Each CANRI "application" is a website which provides a discrete service (also known as a function, business process, life event or user activity). In other words, the application gathers the resources a user needs to do a specific task and guides him or her through the process. Examples: CANRI’s Natural Resources Atlas depends on a data catalog to discover, describe and integrate available spatial datasets. The Biodiversity Information Network’s Master Names Lists will catalog flora and fauna for use in a range of applications. Your project might propose a new catalog about things other than data, such as people, organisations or web services. Some catalog ideas are listed in CANRI Framework ideas. In this context an operator is an online computer program used by a number of web applications to perform a discrete service, such as transforming or modelling data in some useful way. Your project might require an operator or model to transform data in some way, or provide some other service as part of your application. If this service might be of more general benefit to other applications, perhaps it should be made generally available on the CANRI framework. If so, you should identify this deliverable as an "Operator". Some ideas for general-purpose operators are listed in CANRI Framework ideas CANRI websites access data from a shared pool or repository. Each dataset in the pool is served and managed directly by the creator or custodian of that data. What data will be made available to the CANRI framework by the project? How does this data align with the CANRI Data Priorities? If it is not mentioned in that list, why should it be considered a priority for CANRI? What level of access to these data will be provided to the public? Levels of access include: For the purpose of the Expression of Interest, assume technology will be available to provide data efficiently at all of these levels. There are about 4000 natural resources datasets listed in the NSW Natural Resources Data Directory. Of these, about 80 are available now through the Natural Resources Atlas. Clearly, priorities must be set, according to the needs of our stakeholders, for making more of these (and other) datasets available. CANRI funds should only be provided for data serving (including preparation and loading) where: Expressions of Interest are sought from custodian organisations to meet the priorities listed. Commitment is also required from the custodian organisation to maintain these data priority services into the future, beyond current planning processes and after CANRI funding ceases. Your project may need to include some "network" components. CANRI relies technically on computer hardware, software and networking. It also requires networking between people and organisations. Coordination CANRI needs to develop and strengthen its strategic alliances with the following groups. If your are associated with these groups, or your project will otherwise help to achieve this purpose, you should highlight this in your Expression of Interest. Strategic alliances: Communications When planning and budgeting your project, be sure to include appropriate communications tasks to "bring your product to the market", such as presentations, brochures, workshops, forums and conference papers. Explain any key deliverables which don’t fall into the above categories. For whom are the project’s outputs intended? Indicate the primary target audience and any other audience sectors. The category "Natural resource management committees" means regional committees established by Government under various natural resource management programs, including Catchment Management Boards, Water Management Committees and Native Vegetation Management Committees. Indicate the main NSW region of your audience, if applicable. If the project provides a component of a wider system, rather than an end-user product, indicate what other components would use the outputs from this project. What is your estimate of the funds needed from CANRI to undertake the proposal during 2001-2002? This will assist the Board in comparing the total for all proposals with the available CANRI budget. Do not prepare a detailed plan and budget at this stage; these may be required later as part of a Project Plan. Which organisation would take the lead for the project? This may be your own organisation, or you may propose a project for another agency or organisation to undertake. Provide the name of the organisation and its website address, if any. If the proposed lead organisation is not one of the CANRI participating agencies, which of these agencies might act as the primary connection between the project and the CANRI Board? Name any other organisations which would be involved, and their role. Has any contact been made with them as yet? Provide your name and details, as the author of the Expression of Interest, as well as the name of your organisation and its website address if any. The personal details you provide (including your name, email, phone and fax numbers) will be published along with your Expression of Interest on the CANRI website, so that others can contact you to discuss your submission. By completing those details, you consent to our publishing them as described. Also indicate who would take a major role in the project, either as Project Sponsor (taking responsibility on behalf of your organisation to ensure the project meets its stated goals) or as Project Manager (actively working to manage or coordinate the project on a day-to-day basis). In general, CANRI participating agencies will be expected to sponsor projects, with agency-based project managers joining the CANRI Program Implementation Group (PIG). Alternatively, a project might be sponsored by another organisation as long as the Board deems it to be a priority for CANRI, and is satisfied of the organisation’s capability to manage it successfully. Community Reference Group (CRG) members could act as sponsors for some projects, such as coordination of portals of applications for specific audiences. Besides the work proposed in your project, what else will be required for your project to succeed? For example: If you have thought at this stage about the technology to be used to deliver the project, explain this here. Will you use parts of the CANRI technical framework? Will the project involve substantial new technology development? If so, would it be of benefit to reuse this technology elsewhere in the CANRI framework? If so, how will this be achieved? (Will the new software support standard application programming interfaces? Will the software be freely available?) See also the CANRI collaboration principles. Add any other information you believe is important for the Board to know about your Expression of Interest in this first stage, or leave this section blank. You might include here answers to any questions you think the Board is likely to ask about your proposal. |
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